1Co 3:5-7 - “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
This passage captures the truth of how God uses his people to carry out his purposes of bringing new life - and he often does so incrementally.
This past Sunday, we invited David Park to share about who planted and watered the gospel in his life and how God used this influence to bring the gospel’s effects to fruition in his soul.
The following is David’s testimony:
My name is David Park. My family and I have been attending Trinity Grace for about a year and a half. We officially joined the Church in the most recent batch of new Church members. We couldn’t be happier to be here.
When asked if I would do “Who Told You” I began to think through and remember the various people God has placed in my life to share the Gospel with me. I was four years old when I was saved. It’s one of my earliest memories.
I do have one memory before that, it was a doctor giving me stitches, three year old me did not like that he was poking me with a needle, then when he approached my face with a pair of scissors, I was completely done (get the man with the scissors away from me!).
I have virtually no memory of not being a Christian. I grew up in an amazing environment where Deut. 6 was lived out. The Gospel saturated our lives when we sat in our house, when we walked by the way, when we lied down and when we rose. And leading the way in that lifestyle was my father.
My dad has been in full time ministry (writing, speaking, counseling) for nearly forty years. One of the core truths he’s focused on during that time is the message of who we are in Christ. I grew up immersed in truths like,
- I am a child of God, I have been adopted by him
- You are a new creation, the old has passed away, behold a new thing has come
- I am a temple of God (the holy of holies)
- The Holy Spirit is at work in me to bear fruit
Whenever I was headed out the door, my dad didn’t say things like, "be good.” Instead he always said, “Remember who you are.” I knew exactly what he was talking about. It helps too, teenage me made way better decisions because I gained my self worth from my identity in Christ, not from my peers.
The second thing my dad did, he made the Christian life fun, adventurous, and incredibly attractive. There was so much laughter in our house. Christianity was never a stuck up, stiff, dead thing in our home. Instead we had a mission, there were people who needed to be saved, places to go, and stories to tell. My dad reminds me of King Lune from the Narnia book, A Horse and His Boy. He was a jovial, happy man who delighted in his sons and in the book King Lune tells his son,
“For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”
My dad lived that out.
Third, he has modeled a lifetime of faithfulness. In decades of serving God, he never gave up, burned out, or quit. A few years back he had triple bypass, open heart surgery. It’s a brutal procedure and he had complications that made it really touch and go for a while. But he’s there, laying in his hospital bed leading a nurse to Christ. He’s basically on his death bed but he’s busy furthering the Kingdom of God. And he hasn’t quit since. He’s in almost constant pain but he’s leading tours in Israel, he’s speaking in conferences, he’s writing, he’s mentoring people. He’s just not going to stop till he hears the Father say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.
I know what it’s like to have a dad who spoke the truth (who God is and who I am), a dad who laughed and brought joy to his home, and who did that faithfully. I recognize now what sacrifices go into that, but I couldn’t be more grateful that my father blessed us in that way.
God bless!