The journey with God is not always a smooth one – and there are many surprises and challenges along the way. Listen as Bill Arnold talks with pastor Peter Chin about his journey of church-planting and his wife’s cancer diagnosis.
“Trials and hardships are not proof that I’ve done something wrong, or that God is not walking with me.”
“My expectations were not purely biblically informed but a hodgepodge of influences. They were tainted by the world and what it told me I should expect.” After God called him, his wife Carol, and their two daughters to plant a church in Washington D.C., Carol suffered a miscarriage and was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Peter shares how he reacted. “There was this brutal collision of calling and excitement and the worst fear, disappointment and suffering we had ever experienced in our lives.”
Peter and Bill explore:
• Why love and suffering are intimately connected.
• How Peter’s wife demonstrated choosing joy in the midst of suffering.
• The biblical definition of love versus the world’s definition of love.
• What happened when Carol was found to be pregnant while undergoing treatment for cancer.
• How Peter and his family overcame racial divides to build a church of Korean-Americans and African-Americans.
Peter shares what he’s learned through these trials.
“[Love] is deeper and stronger, but more mysterious than we often give it credit for. After all this happened to my family, I couldn’t help but feel that I was not being loved by God. I was not an uninformed Christian, and yet here I was, completely surprised by it.”
How can we learn from Jesus? Peter points to the garden of Gethsemane as an example of courage in the face of hardship.
“Jesus has an intense time of lamentation where He’s sweating drops of blood – but when it was time to stop, He stopped. And moved forward into God’s will. It is okay to lament and cry out to God – but when it’s time to get up, we get up.”
Key Scriptures: 1 Peter 4:12-13; Job 1; Isaiah 43:1-3
Theme Song: You Won’t Let Go by Michael W. Smith
