To Wallpaper, or to Preach the Gospel ?

When I was preaching the Gospel in Gimcheon, there was a brother who would do church work with me. His wife’s due date was near. They had been out of food, and she hadn’t eaten in days. My heart ached at the thought of their struggle. One day, I went to a paper goods store to witness, but the store owner, instead of listening, asked, “Do you know anyone who wallpapers well?”

I immediately replied, “We’ll do it! Just leave it up to us.”

The brother and I plastered the walls for her. We worked for two days straight, neatly finished the work, and got paid 2,500 won. We felt rich. We used the money to buy a sack of rice, some sweet potatoes that the brother’s wife liked, and some mackerel.

I thought to myself that the church brother and I are all set. We would wallpaper and preach the Gospel. We had scissors, knives, and rulers from the work we did before, so we became wallpaper plasterers. We gave our numbers to the paper goods store lady and asked her to contact us if there are any more places that need wallpapering.

One day, we got a call from the lady for work. We were heading out to go plaster when someone visited us to listen to the Gospel. I was about to tell her to come back later because I couldn’t postpone my work. At that time, God asked me in my heart, “Did you come here to wallpaper, or to preach the Gospel?”

I could not answer that question.

That day, I did not go out to wallpaper. Instead, I preached the Gospel to the lady. Strangely though, when I preached the Gospel, I obtained food. A similar situation happened again on a different day when I was on my way to do wallpapering work. I thought in my heart, “God isn’t happy with me having a profession for myself. He’s happy when I preach the Gospel!”

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) Just like these words, God had given us the Gospel and the Spirit to do the good work of preaching to the people who are lost and wandering in destruction. In Acts 16, amazing works of the Gospel appear through Paul and Silas in the Phillipi. How do they differ from us? Although they were severely beaten and had to be treated, the first thing that Paul and Silas did at the home of the prison guard was to preach the Gospel. God was happy with that heart, and likewise, God

wants to give the same heart to us:

“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you… and ye shall be witnesses unto me...” (Acts 1:8)

As the days go by, I feel more deeply that we are established as witnesses of the Gospel by the spirit of God.