Dr. Kim Sung-hae taught CHC how to be faithful in the talents given by God.
By Joshua Chang
CN PHOTOS: Bernard Soh, Gay Sen Min and Michael Chan.
The atmosphere at City Harvest Church on the weekend of May 19 and 20 was light-hearted and full of gratitude, as it always is whenever Dr. Kim Sung-hae, the wife of Dr. Yonggi Cho, founder of the 800,000 member Yoido Full Gospel Church pays the church a visit.
While Kim is best known as the First Lady of Yoido Full Gospel Church, she is also an accomplished musician, songwriter, scholar and evangelist in her own right. She is the President of Hansei University, Chancellor of Bethesda Christian University in California and the composer of many gospel songs such as “Come To The Land Of Love”.
But most importantly, Kim is the one CHC’s senior pastor, Kong Hee, calls his spiritual mother. And her message to the church that weekend told of her relationship to the church: it was a mother urging her children to use their God-given talent for His Glory.
Kim preached from the Matthew 25 parable about a master who went away on a journey and gave his three servants a number of talents each according to their ability. Two of them eventually managed to give their master a return on his investment; but the last servant buried the talent and thus yielded no profit.
“From this parable of the talents, we can learn special lessons which we can apply to our lives,” said Kim. Using stories and her own encounters, Kim shared three lessons from this parable in a simple yet endearing demeanour.
1. Receive the talent with thanksgiving.
“Everyone receives different amount of talent,” Kim explained. “The story says the master gives the talent according to the ability of the servants.
“Yet, human nature often causes people to look at others and think that their talent is smaller than others’. When we do that, we will end up not doing anything with our talents. But when we look at what God has given us, we become grateful and will try to make the best out of it.
“We need to focus, focus, focus and concentrate on what to be grateful for!” Kim emphasized.
She went on to suggest that talents are actually God’s gifts to His children. If we thank God for our talents with a grateful heart every day, He would be delighted and would then give us more!
2. Do your best with your talents
When the servant buried his talent, the master called him wicked and lazy. He gave orders to take away his talent and give it to the one who had 10 talents.
“What do we learn from this?” Kim asked. “We will receive more talents when we do our best with the talents that God has given to us.”
In heartfelt simplicity, Kim candidly shared her struggles in using the English language to converse and preach. She recounted that at her first visit to CHC four years ago, her mastery of the language was “terrible”, and people often laughed at her. However, she kept on learning the language with much perseverance and determination.
“My English is much better now, right?” Kim asked the congregation with a smile. “People bury their talents because they are afraid of failing. But if we are afraid of falling down when we walk and keep on sitting on the chair, we will end up paralyzed.”
Kim also shared on the importance in believing in oneself to fully utilize one’s talent. Drawing from English psychologist J.A. Hadfield’s book The Psychology Of Power, she highlighted the fact that if a person demonstrates confidence and thinks to himself, “I can do it”, this person may well achieve 500 per cent of his ability. However, if the same person thinks to himself, “I can’t do it, it’s not possible for me,” he would only reach 30 per cent of his ability.
“God is not pleased with the man who makes no improvement,” she said. “That is why He often challenges a believer’s faith, and the person must be willing to step forward in order to fulfill his potential.”
3. Share your talents with others joyfully
God gives talents to His children as gifts, but He does so not just to make them successful and happy, He expects them to use the talents to benefit others as well as to build up the church of Christ. The ultimate purpose of using one’s talent is so that someone else can be blessed.
Kim shared the story of American tycoon J.C. Penney, who generously gave to charities and churches after recovering his fortune from a stint of bankruptcy. Reflecting on the past, Penney said that he thought he would be happy by hoarding his fortunes, but he eventually found out that he was happier when he started giving it away.
In closing, Kim encouraged the members of CHC to find a need and use the talents they have to meet that need. She lovingly prayed for revival to come over the church, and for God to release His power over the members so that they can do the things He has called them to do.
