When God tells you, “I’m the Father you’ve always
been looking for,” do you mistreat it with lightweight
acknowledgement because unsolved issues of the
heart and mind truncate the stretch of its truth? Or
does its remarkable revelation resound, and gives
the narrative of who you are, the clear-eyed ardour
it deserves?
made our streets, homes and offices possible, the
Kopitiam uncles with garish tattoos turned bluish-
green with time-passed, brimming with stories of a life
in the shadows. “People are broken. I want them to
feel special because they are. They need to know that,
but we can only reach out to them if we know who
we are. That’s how Jesus loved His disciples. He didn’t
just tell them about love or faith, He showed them how
to love and care. We need to live it, and people will
recognise the difference that is in us.”
For Marika, a half-Korean half-Fijian 21-year old, these
words secured him with a sense of belonging he’s never
known, and he’s cleaved to it. It wasn’t too long ago
that he was reeling from the angst of acute loneliness.
He confronted it with his strive for acceptance, but
like a parched remedy, he was quenching thirst with
salt water. His parents divorced when he was young,
and his mother was too preoccupied with her new
marriage to care for him. His father had returned to
Korea, never to be seen again. From a young age,
he was fostered to live with his mother’s aunt. Drugs,
extortion and street fights didn’t dim this rising star as
a National Rugby player. But a misinformed decision
to attend a “vocational school” with lots of girls led
him to a Discipleship Training School in YWAM Fiji. A
deep stirring inexplicably drew him to a subject titled
The Father Heart of God, and prompted him to turn
down a 3-year rugby contract in France.
As Marika traverses the line from rebel to royalty, he
keeps his Father’s words close to his heart:
WALK ON WATER AND FIX YOUR
EYES ON ME.
Currently serving on the mission field in Southeast
Asia, these words have never made more sense to
him. “My journey to be a missionary is like walking on
water. It’s hard, and sometimes, almost impossible.
This call isn’t mine, and it can be very challenging.
But when I fix my eyes on God, to the One who called
me, I want to do everything that He desires. The lives
of those who have yet to know Him break my heart. I
want Him to use me for His purposes. That’s my way of
worshipping Him. He never promised that the journey
will be easy, but that the arrival will be worthwhile.
Simple obedience is all that matters.”
Encountering the truth of his identity was like
compressing the coal of his experience into a
diamond, “I come from a royal family because our
God is a King! He’s the King of Kings! And I’m His son.
This understanding allows me to reach out to others
regardless of who they are. They are my brothers and
sisters.” But what shimmers more brightly than this
childlike reverence is his honesty to form.
Marika’s newfound identity in God provokes a quality
of love that is almost enviable and his actions remind
us that identity lies outside of ourselves. To know who
we are, we need to know whom we belong to. We
belong to God the Father, such oft-uttered words,
that they are in danger of sounding mundane. We
need to dig deep for the truth in our responses, and
the strength of our words cannot divert from true
reflections of ourselves in behaviour. The worse mistake
we can make is to perceive anyone as lesser. The
deeper we look, the clearer it becomes that a person’s
dignity should not be defined by distinguishing
characteristics like gender, age, frailty, sexuality and
race. Once our hearts are open to those around us,
we will “look beyond what we can see in the people
we encounter; see their gold and remind them where
it is.” (Shawn Bolz’s)
Love looks like something (Heidi Baker’s). And you
recognise it from his daily 2am walks in the streets of
Geylang, as he becomes that brother that he says he
is, to the human beings we’ve built fences around –
the South Asian low-wage migrant workers who have
Marika’s aunt, Lili (a staff of YWAM Singapore’s
School of Frontier Missions), encouraged him to
enrol into the course, and he is currently fulfilling
his 9-month internship in Southeast Asia.
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