God-is-able Story
My name is Kevin Park. I am from South Korea and was born in Seoul.
I lived in Korea for nine years and came to New Zealand in 2000. After my primary to high school years in New Zealand, I visited America for three years to see my father and extended families, and then came back to New Zealand on the Boxing Day of 2014.
Although I have cerebral palsy, God has been working through me, especially in New Zealand and America, and even before I became a faithful follower of Jesus.
How I became a Christian
One time when my family went to a Korean church in New Zealand, the car was parked at the edge of the cliff. I nearly fell over when I got out of the vehicle.
I did not fell over, so my mum told me that it was God who saved me.
In high school, my friend invited me to the youth event of LifeChangers Church called Ruckus. I went to Ruckus because there was nothing better to do. I used to hate studying.
After trying the youth event, I loved it so much that I begged my friend to keep inviting me to future events.
Several months later, I joined LifeChangers Church. However, it was for the wrong reason. I wanted to hang out with my friends more, instead of worshipping God.
Since I was a people-pleaser, I volunteered many church things like setting the church equipment in a hall in the early morning and being a greeter.
When it was worship time, I also imitated people by putting hands up. This was to win favour from people.
While I was having fun in New Zealand, I had to go to America and live with my dad because of my visa.
In New York, I realised that I have extended family I did not know about.
As I love to volunteer in a church, my aunt introduced me to Promise International Fellowship, the English ministry in Promise Church.
I tried it and quite liked it.
Therefore, I joined the Connect Group and became a volunteer in the church after a while.
During one of the connect group’s potlucks, I encountered God.
He was saying that I should get to know Jesus better through the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
So, I slowly began to know Jesus better by hearing the church sermons. After several months, I got baptised.
Building God’s Kingdom
One year later, I received a gift of writing.
When I got encouragement from reading online devotionals, I wanted to try and write one for others.
At first, I thought writing devotionals was just a hobby but as I kept writing them to encourage others with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, I sensed that Christian writing has been the will of God for me.
Although I did not feel like writing all the time, I still kept writing devotionals until I became a student at Carey Baptist College on July of 2016 and joined the young writer’s ministry for Christian Today on July of 2018.
The reason for this is that my joy has been based on spreading the good news of Jesus Christ and following applications of this. As my top hope for the world is that everyone gets reconciled to God, I desire to see that everyone finds their everlasting satisfaction in God.
Since I cannot write devotionals and articles because of the limited time, I had to quit one. Quitting to write devotionals was my choice, but I have learned and developed my writing skills through writing articles for Christian Today.
Other than my writing ministry, I became one of the prayer leaders at Windsor Park Baptist Church. I was offered to do an internship as an E-Prayer Lead due to my commitment to the prayer ministries. This was from 2017 to 2020.
While I was doing Mission Track in 2019, one of the requirements it had was participating in mission practice whether it could be engaged with one’s church or on by oneself. I chose to become a prayer calendar facilitator for Windsor Park Baptist Church. After all, my intention has been developing my prayer life more. Since the online prayer wall was created in the church’s website to make lots of people participate, I ended my role as a prayer calendar facilitator in 2020.
When I needed to do mission practice for the final year of Mission Track, in 2020, I thought about becoming a testimony speaker at Waiheke Island Baptist Church as a ministry of Windsor Park Baptist Church. I had wanted to become a testimony speaker for a while, to spread the good news of Christ. Waiheke Campus Pastor Roi Nu also told me to speak testimonies every time I visit the church there.
Since these two reasons got intertwined with each other, I believe becoming a testimony speaker has been part of God’s will in my life. Hence, I am going to continue to become a testimony speaker at Waiheke Island Baptist Church, and maybe also at other churches, as my missional work from next year.
Overall, God can use everybody for His kingdom and glory, even worthless or disabled people. According to the world, it may seem that some people could be useless, but according to God, every person, including powerless and disabled people, could be counted as worthy.