The AMI QT Devotionals from August 7-11 are provided by Pastor Ryun Chang who writes about his recent teaching trip to Cuba.
DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS FOR TODAY
Is Today Monday or Sunday?
Hebrews 10:25 (NIV 1984)
“Let us not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Is attending Sunday worship service important to you? As a believer and a father trying to model a life of faith to his children, worshiping God corporately on Sundays has been very important. And today’s passage suggests that once you miss a Sunday, it may become a habit for some.
I don’t like to travel on Sundays, but sometimes I have no other option, as was the case with my recent trip to Cuba where I taught at a seminary near Havana. My daughter faced the same predicament as her plane to Boston was scheduled to leave an hour before mine. We did try to find a Saturday service but couldn’t; I even searched for Korean churches nearby since they are known to hold early prayer meetings but to no avail.
My daughter, however, felt that she could make it to AMI’s Symphony Church if her plane arrived on time. So, I was elated to read her text, while waiting for my connection flight to Cuba, that read: “Got to Symphony service in time for the sermon.” But I wasn’t so fortunate: my plan to visit the airport chapel was quickly quashed upon realizing that it required leaving the airport security zone; there just wasn’t enough time. Then, something happened the next day in Cuba that made up for what didn’t happen on Sunday.
I went to Havana, with my teaching assistant Jon (staff at Radiance Christian Church), to teach from Monday through Friday. But the first Monday class didn’t start until after 3 PM because the week begins with a prayer service from 10 AM to 1 PM. There were over 200 people, comprised of students and local church leaders, in attendance. It was a full service with an hour-long worship, intermittent prayers, and a sermon, which I preached. During the worship, I asked Jon (who also missed Sunday), “Is today Sunday or Monday?” He assured me that it was Monday! We then broke out in joyous laughers with me saying, “Thank the Lord; we didn’t miss Sunday service after all.”
Sometimes we have no choice but to miss a Sunday, but don’t make a habit of it. If you missed it last week, write this down in your phone: Meet God at His house this Sunday.
Prayer: Father, thank You for giving us a living institution, Your church, where we can worship You corporately. Forgive me whenever I become lackadaisical about Sunday worship and give into temptation. Help me to truly worship You. Amen.
Bible Reading for Today: John 16
Lunch Break Study
Read John 4:24: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth”;
Mt. 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
1 Cor. 12:12: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”
Questions to Consider
- How should we worship God and what does that imply?
- We can certainly worship God alone but how is that different from worshiping the Lord corporately? Think about the workings of the Body of Christ.
- What is the great obstacle in your life that diminishes your weekly worship experience, including being inconsistent with attending Sunday services?
Notes
- We are to worship God in spirit and truth. Worshiping God in truth would certainly include worshiping Him with right doctrine (1 Tim. 4:16, 2 Jn. 1:9). Worshiping God in spirit would include worshiping with the right heart, with prayer and praise to Him.
- The corporate worship of God, that is, together physically with members of the body of Christ, can accentuate the presence of Christ among them when it is done in spirit and truth. This is not to underplay the importance of individual worshiping of God at home or other places.
- Personal response.
Evening Reflection
Let’s conclude this day with a beautiful psalm that beautifully depicts the worshiping of God.
Slowly read Psalm 95:1-7 as you worship the Lord.
“Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”
The AMI QT Devotionals for July 31-August 6 are provided by Christine Li. Christine, a graduate of University of Pennsylvania, currently lives and works in New York City. She serves at Remnant Church in Manhattan. 
Every so often, my roommate and I will find ourselves with a plethora of snacks left in our apartment – either gifts from other people or food that we purchased for the occasion. Over time, the snacks still get stale no matter how many preservative chemicals have been added to keep them fresh. We have to throw them out before anybody else comes over and wants to eat them. While they might be barely edible and non-toxic, they’re no longer fresh and enjoyable.
Recently my family and I took a vacation to Europe. One of our sights was an iconic basilica in Budapest, and my brother and I decided we would go to its rooftop and see the city view. We thought it would be a fun idea to take the stairs (over 300) because it would surely give us a greater sense of satisfaction when we made our way to the top. We started the ascent through a cramped, windowless stairwell, making sure not to be too slow for the sake of the people coming behind us.
A couple of years ago, I sprained my ankle on a day trip, and it started swelling up on the bus ride home. I had always been proud of my ability take care of myself, but I found that now I had to suddenly depend on others. I had to call a friend to let me stay at her place because I couldn’t climb four flights of stairs to my home. I needed help getting groceries or getting a ride to church. I felt embarrassed asking for help, but what I was thankful for was others’ willingness and generosity. There were times when I was literally carried by others during my recovery.
In college, three friends and I completed our Senior Design project together. As a team, we spent a lot of effort brainstorming, building, and creating the final product–even using our own money to buy parts and finish it. We were quite proud of our final product. Naturally, that’s what we presented officially to our teachers and classmates: the final product. We never pulled out the simplistic proof-of-concept, the machine parts that burned out, or other rough drafts we had scrapped.
For more than ten years, I have followed food bloggers intently. Whenever I tell people, they become acutely interested and ask, “Are you a good cook?” Unfortunately, I must say no. I have acquired a lot of knowledge through these blogs, their videos, and eating, but I’ve spent very little time actually practicing any of those things. I can throw fancy words around like “julienne” and “batonnet,” but I am totally unable to follow through in reality. What a waste it is to know so much and be so terrible in execution. Because it’s never translated from my head to my hands, all this knowledge is essentially useless.
I had a co-worker who had some very expensive travel luggage. I was marveling not only at how expensive it was but also how beaten up he had allowed it to get—it was scuffed over, with bumper stickers messily taped around. He assured me that that the whole mess was deliberate—you had to show off that you’d done quite a bit of traveling. His luggage, therefore, publicly bore the battle scars of wear and tear.
Last year around this time, the game Pokémon Go was released. It sent a flurry of students and working people exploring their neighborhoods, searching for Pokémon to collect. Wouldn’t you know—an empty park or hotel lobby in real life actually teeming with Pokémon! Who knew that a game could turn such common landmarks into places of treasure?
weekly Sunday service when the police raided our church. As the police rushed into our meeting, our members did their best to make it appear like we were simply having a casual gathering; however, the police knew exactly what we were doing and immediately ordered us to stop. With my heart pounding in shock, I looked at the worried faces of the locals and the leadership, and it was in that moment when I finally began to understand what it meant that there’s a cost in following Jesus.
Jennifer Kim, a graduate of Boston University, spent a year in Shanghai as one-year intern from 2013-14. She is currently serving as a staff at Catalyst Agape Church (New Jersey) while attending Alliance Theological Seminary.
While many have heard the testimony of my time serving in Shanghai, not as many people know about the long two-year journey I had wrestling with God before I obeyed Him to serve overseas. On a regular Friday night worship service, our church was singing the song, “How Great is Our God,” and while I was meditating upon the words, I was so encompassed by the truth of the lyrics of how majestic and awesome our God is. Captured by His presence, I prayed to the Lord, “There is nothing more that I want than to serve the awesome God You are for the rest of my life.” Immediately after, I heard the Lord say to me, “Then will you go.” While this was one of the greatest moments of my faith, it also became one of my most shameful moments, because while I had just prayed this prayer of submission to the Lord, the moment God asked me to go overseas a fear came upon me, and all I could say was, “God I can’t do that.”