A Doctoral Program Crisis

At the end of 2006, after completing three years of a doctoral program in public health at Loma Linda University, I faced a situation in which I had no living expenses or tuition fees while preparing my dissertation. As an international student, I needed another year of study to complete my dissertation, and my wife could not work as an international student’s spouse. Why would God, who knows everything, allow this difficulty? I wondered. So I asked Him and searched to know His will, fully expecting to see His goodness.

I knew God would surely hear and answer our prayers as He had before, according to His promises. And I hoped His intervention would not only be for us to experience God’s wonderful works but also as a testimony to others of His grace and goodness.

At the same time, I felt that God was inviting me to look beyond and rejoice. Look Beyond and Rejoice is a spiritual intervention doctoral dissertation program I had created for patients who had life-threatening diseases or chronic pain in the setting of an economic crisis.

I emailed my three dissertation advisors to inform them that starting the following month, I wouldn’t have money to cover my living expenses and educational costs. I told them that I felt God calling me to try the Look Beyond and Rejoice spiritual intervention in my economic crisis, requested their prayers, and expressed that I was looking forward to seeing how God would help me.

My wife and I decided to experiment and take this matter to God in prayer to see what He would do.

Nearing the end of November we thought God was surely only days away from answering our prayers, as we had to pay rent for our apartment by December 1. We believed God would fulfill His promise that “whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame” (Rom. 10:11). Having entrusted everything to God in prayer, we felt that the problem was His to solve, and our hearts were filled with complete peace and hopeful expectation awaiting His response. We didn’t know how He would meet our needs, but we thanked Him, rejoiced, and praised Him in advance.

The day before we had to pay the rent, my wife received a phone call from the wife of a pastor we had known 15 years before. She said her son, who is a physician, sends money to missionaries every month, and she had told him to send US$2,000 monthly to me.

My wife explained our situation to the pastor’s wife, telling her that we had been praying and waiting for God’s response. The pastor’s wife, in turn, said that for the past month she couldn’t shake this strong impression that she had to help our family. It would be an honor, she said, for her to do so.

Our living expenses were taken care of until I graduated! We thanked and praised God for His promised response.

Moreover, the dean of the School of Public Health, upon recognizing the potential of my research project, offered to waive my tuition fees during my dissertation writing period. Further, through the Faculty Seed Fund, which is typically available only to professors, I became eligible to apply and receive a US$5,000 grant, enabling me to proceed with the program.

With joy I reported back to my professors and the dean the results God had given to me when I experimented with the Look Beyond and Rejoice strategy in the midst of economic trials. The dean replied, “You’re an inspiration to all of us.” I gave glory to God for what He had accomplished.

Incurable Disease and Indefinite Fasting and Prayer

In the midst of many trials in my life, God has invited and led me to trust Him.

The first unforgettable test of faith occurred in my 20s when I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, an incurable arthritis, which I suffered from for more than a decade. I received many treatments to no avail. My situation worsened to the point where I wished to die. I attended a Presbyterian church at the time, and I’m sure I would have committed suicide had I not been a Christian.

In the midst of intense pain, the world seemed dark, but in those moments that I read the Bible, I felt as though I could see light. The Bible gave me hope that nothing is impossible for God. But when I closed the Bible, my heart would once again darken.

In desperation I climbed up a mountain with the goal to fast and pray indefinitely. At that point I preferred to die of starvation than painfully suffer without hope. I surmised that I would either die on that mountain or God would open up a path to life.

A week into my fasting and prayer vigil I left the prayer cave. As I walked along the snowy white mountain road, I was reminded of what God says in the Jeremiah 29:13: “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” I felt hopeful. If I was already doing everything I could in my search for God, then He surely was near.

God heard my prayers and touched my life in several ways.

Shortly after my prayer and fasting season I received a book from a Seventh-day Adventist containing eight natural remedies extracted from Ellen White’s writings. The book opened my eyes to the cause of my illness and showed me a path to healing.

A few years prior I had told a Seventh-day Adventist young woman whom I had met at an Adventist English language institute that I was an incurable patient. She had encouraged me that I could find healing through healthful lifestyle changes. She so believed that I would improve that she gave up her graduate studies in music at Andrews University in the United States to be with me and support me as my partner in Korea. As I prayed for Him to heal me, God granted me the path to healing through natural remedies, to the glory of His name.

I had been looking for the miraculous power of God, who had raised the dry bones in the valley in Ezekiel 37. But God showed me a different miraculous pathway to healing through lifestyle changes.

When I realized that God was alive, loved me deeply, and had answered my prayers, my life was totally transformed. Joy and praise overflowed my heart, and my prayers shifted to contemplating how I could help other suffering people without worrying about myself anymore.

Through God’s miraculous intervention I married that Adventist young woman, and, incredibly, my health gradually recovered over time.

When I realized that God was alive, loved me deeply, and had answered my prayers, my life was totally transformed. Joy and praise overflowed my heart, and my prayers shifted to contemplating how I could help other suffering people without worrying about myself anymore.

Wrestling With the Word

When I started my master’s program at Loma Linda University’s School of Public Health, I had no idea how I would pay for it. But my wife and I felt God had a plan. We remembered reading a book about the prayers of George Mueller, a British pastor who, through prayer, received the finances to raise thousands of orphans. We had wished we could have similar experiences, and here was our chance.

As an educational evangelist in the last year of my theological studies, I had taught the Bible to a young woman who had struggled with Sabbathkeeping before she was baptized. Because of the health challenges I had experienced, I was well positioned to help those with poor health, but I found I lacked the confidence to tell her what to do, because I had not experienced such an economic test of faith. If I was to help others in their struggle to trust God to provide financially, I needed to experience God’s provision in my situation through faith alone.

In the face of an impending economic crisis, my wife and I agreed to tell no one but God. We saw our experiment in looking only to God in prayer as an opportunity to experience God’s power. Concerned about the health of those around me, I started a volunteer nonprofit to publish, in Korean and English, a monthly newsletter called Re-Creation. This was in addition to my studies.

The first time our money almost ran out, I felt as though my feet were sinking. Like Jacob at the Jabbok River, we wrestled with God over Matthew 6:33. And as we pressed on prayerfully, relying on God’s Word, He met our needs in unexpected ways. A Jewish American reader of Re-Creation, for instance, learned about our volunteer work and called the president of the Southeastern California Conference and the dean of the School of Public Health of Loma Linda University to encourage them to support our ministry and my tuition.

In July 1994 we faced five overlapping needs, including tuition fees, living expenses, and car troubles. We had no money at all, so we prayed to God, laying out our needs and asking Him to provide the necessary large sum of money. That same month a piece of land that my late father had purchased in the 1960s became known to my elder brother and me and was sold for an amount that filled all our needs and even leaving a surplus. A remarkable occurrence precisely in answer to prayer.

Later, when I returned to work in South Korea, where smoking rates were the highest in the world at the time and there was a lack of health education, a company CEO offered to sponsor my dreamed national health project. I resigned from the hospital where I worked as a health educator to start the project.

Shortly before the project started, the CEO died of a sudden stroke, and my financial backing vanished. Once again our livelihood became desperate. And once again my wife and I prayed and experimented with believing in God’s promises as we pursued the national health project.

As we trusted Him, God filled our various needs one by one, including the surprising sale of educational booklets and CD sets that I had published. God also allowed me to receive awards from the president of Korea and from the minister of health and welfare for our health education project, as our reward for helping many people.

As we have experimented with relying only on God’s Word in the midst of various trials and leaving them to God in faith as He leads us, God has filled our needs with many miracles and wonders. In many cases He knows and meets our needs before we even ask. God answers to our prayers may not always look like miraculous deliverance, but we have learned that He always hears us and He cares.

When we encounter sudden crises, remembering the crises we have experienced before and the grace of God shown in the midst of those challenges gives us strength to endure. As Ellen White wrote: “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”[*]

God’s Amazing Laboratory

We are living in a rapidly changing era in which people are fearful of the future and unable to see even one step ahead. War, earthquakes, global pandemics, global warming, and economic crises cause great anxiety.

While the Lord has not promised His people exemption from trials, He has promised that which is far better. He has said, “As your days, so shall your strength be” (Deut. 33:25). “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). And above all, He gives us Himself, the greatest blessing. The belief that God is with me and helps me gives us peace, joy, and the strength and courage to face the world.

God’s marvelous miracles and wonders not only are present in biblical times but are equally at work today. For God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and His promises never change.

What I have learned from many experiments led by God is that there are laws in the invisible spiritual world as there are in the material world, and there are laws in miracles. If we ask in line with God’s Word, He will surely respond, sometimes in miraculous ways.

In the moments of greatest crisis in my life, I have discerned a call to experiment with “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). And when I have looked to Jesus, I have tasted of the unforgettable salvation, peace, and joy of heaven.

Further, while conducting the Look Beyond and Rejoice programs for patients and for individuals experiencing depression, I witnessed numerous instances in which participants experienced swift healing and transformative changes in their lives when they looked to Jesus.

Look to God alone. God has prepared the easiest and most powerful healing remedy for us through the blood shed on the cross of Calvary. He invites us and is working with us.

Even in this turbulent world, amid the despair and depression experienced by many, we can find joy and perfect peace in God. He has the power to transform our adversities into amazing blessings and leads us to reflect the light of heaven and share the gospel with our families and neighbors.

God invites us to His amazing laboratory today with such unchanging promises as these: “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8, NIV); “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jer. 33:3).

[*] Ellen G. White, Life Sketches of Ellen G. White (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1915), p. 196.