My Beloved

Bringing out a book of prayers titled My Beloved has given me great personal joy, because through it I can tell you how full of love God is. A book of sermons can only go so far in conveying God’s love, which is generous and frank and overflows like the sea.

Like you, I pray to God every day, and I was always wondering as I prayed: How does God see a matter like this? What kind of faith does he want me to live by? How am I to get through this suffering? In the midst of those prayers I began to sense God’s love spreading quietly through me. Afraid that I might forget it, I wrote that love down, and what I wrote is My Beloved.

Friends, God’s love knows no conditions, and he is a Father who longs for his children to be clothed in his glory. I want you to look a little more deeply into that Father’s heart and live according to his will. Like parents who laugh along when their child laughs, he dances for joy when you offer him praise. And when you call to him, he answers more loudly than you called, saying that he is here and that he loves you. That is our Father.

I would love for your hearts to find peace and rest as you read the prayers in My Beloved. We are children who serve so wonderful a God. I hope you will never forget that God is there, moving heaven and earth and the angels to protect you, and that you will stand all the firmer in this harsh world and live it out by faith.

This is what God would say.

He would say that when you come to heaven, you will be astonished again and again at how many people went to hell and how few are in heaven. You say that you can go to heaven because you believed in Jesus, because you went to church. But if it were that easy, he would ask, why would he have carried the cross?

I welcomed God into my life at the age of twenty-nine. Because I had met him so late, I wanted to know him all the more, and so I began to read the Bible. I read forty chapters a day, every day alike, for ten years, and God began to come into view, though only as much as the tip of a needle. Of course, there are times now when I feel sorry before him, wondering whether, in all my busyness writing sermons, I am failing to keep my first love.

How much of the Bible are you reading? When I had read it through about forty times, I began to hear a voice speaking quietly in my heart. Every event and every person brought some new understanding. Wondering whether the Holy Spirit was giving me wisdom, I read the Bible more diligently still, and prayed. I longed to write sermons that would help God’s people meet him easily, and that longing led me to train myself in long hours of prayer.

How much do you read the Bible each day, and how long do you pray? If you truly want to meet God, you must read the Bible. If you want to know what God desires, what kind of life he would have you live, and how much he loves you, you must pray. Then God will see that your spirit is full, and he himself will make his heart known to you.

Friends, Satan is hard at work to hinder the saving of souls. How will you stand against him? Unless you take refuge in God’s arms, as a child afraid of a fierce dog runs into its father’s arms, you will not overcome Satan. To flee quickly into God’s embrace, you must read the Bible and pray. Then, when Satan attacks, God himself will become a fence around you, who are always full of the word, and will hold him off. Because of that, Satan will retreat of his own accord.

May you praise our loving God all the more, and lean all the more on the God who gives grace. Then God’s love and grace will overflow in your lives.

This is grace I received myself, but my earnest hope is that you will read these prayers, see how much God loves his people, and come to love him all the more. With the prayer that God will warm the heart of everyone who reads My Beloved, I offer this book to you.

Lastly, after we gave away the book we published in 2017 to many people, our church brought out a second printing of My Beloved in 2019. I am glad that we can feel God’s heart together with even more people.

Cho Chun-sook, Pastor of Watercourse Church