Those of you who have opened this book are likely seeking to know the God we’re introducing—and perhaps hoping to meet Him personally. Some of you may have visited a church before. Others may have drifted away for a time, only to return after someone shared the gospel with you. Many people come to church, and yet some eventually leave. Some leave because what they found wasn’t what they’d truly been searching for. But there are also those who genuinely meet God here. It is my sincere hope that every one of you will be among them. And I pray that you will come to receive and fully possess all the happiness, joy, and life that God longs to give you.

For that to happen, we need to draw close to God—and have a heart that is ready to receive what He wants to give us. But this isn’t something anyone can do on their own. If our hearts aren’t prepared, no matter how much God desires to give us, we simply won’t be able to receive it. That’s why some people can be deeply devoted in their faith for a time, only to walk away saying, “This isn’t it.” And yet, many of them find their way back to God later—through some unexpected turn in life.

That is why I hope you will come to meet God as soon as possible. Our lives are too precious to spend without Him. Because once you truly meet God, things begin to happen from that moment on. Everything changes. The difference between knowing God and not knowing Him is beyond comparison.

Before I knew God, I rarely felt happy. I struggled desperately to find happiness. Most of my life was spent in darkness. But ever since I met God, I find myself saying “I’m happy” almost every day. And I bless others with those same words: “Be happy!” The joy simply doesn’t stop. Of course, life still brings all kinds of difficulties. But that joy is never touched by them. It remains. There is so much in this world that is frightening—and yet none of it can take this joy away. That is the happiness and joy that never changes—and it is exactly what I hope you will find. What we are after is not what we ourselves want to obtain, but what God wants to give us. Not what you wish for—but what He has been longing to give you all along.

To put it simply, what God wants to give us is this: Truth and the Holy Spirit. What God desired to give humanity—He went to extraordinary lengths to make it possible, at tremendous cost. And what He gave us through all of that is Truth and the Holy Spirit.

Let’s say it together:

“Truth and the Holy Spirit!”

“Truth!”

“The Holy Spirit!”

“Truth and the Holy Spirit!”

It sounds unfamiliar, doesn’t it? Truth—this is what He has given us. The Holy Spirit—this is what He has given us.

Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.” He also declared, “I am the truth!” So in other words, what God gave us is Jesus Christ Himself—He gave us Truth. And He also gave us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God—the Spirit who dwells in God alone. Human beings have a spirit. God also has a Spirit. And the Spirit of God is what we call the Holy Spirit. And that Truth is the Son of God. So God gave us His Son, and He gave us His Spirit. In other words, He gave us everything that He is. He held nothing back. He gave us His very flesh and bones. Everything that belongs to God—His very heart, His very life—He has given to us.

All of this originally belonged to God. And yet He gave it to us—to human beings. Human beings who call themselves descendants of animals. And to people like that, God gives what is His own and treats them as He would treat Himself.

Truth and the Holy Spirit. Are you ready to receive them? What you’ve come to find is not wealth in this world. It’s not the comfort of thinking, “Believing in Jesus makes me feel at peace.” It’s not simply having someone to pray to—so that when college entrance exams come around, you have someone to call on, or when you’re looking for a job, you have somewhere to turn. We are not stopping there. What we are after is what God wants to give us—Truth and the Holy Spirit. If you have no interest in this, even if He gives it, you won’t receive it. It will simply pass you by. That is why so many people come all the way to church and then leave. They go away thinking, “There wasn’t much to it”—but what actually happened is that they never met the One they truly needed to meet. They didn’t receive Truth. They didn’t receive the Holy Spirit. How heartbreaking that is. That is why you need to make up your mind right now about what you are truly here to find. What we are seeking, right here and now, is Truth.

Another word for “truth” is “what is real”—what is genuine. The opposite of that is falsehood. Deception. So truth, at its core, is what is most genuinely real. God is a true God. He does not deceive people. The God we believe in does not lie. Do people lie? Of course they do. But is there anyone who never lies? There are good-hearted people who rarely lie. Some even make up their minds: “I will not lie.” But can they actually keep that? They still do. The intention is there—”I won’t lie!”—but the ability isn’t. They’re not precise enough. And so, without even realizing it, they end up lying. And a promise only stays true if it’s kept—but we say things we cannot follow through on. “Everything is going to be fine! Don’t worry!” Haven’t you said something like that? But does everything really turn out fine? Can you guarantee it? It’s meant as comfort—but it becomes a lie. “You said it would all work out. You said not to worry…” And it becomes a lie. Then there’s this: “I will love you forever. Let’s never change. My feelings for you will last forever!” Is that true or false? It’s false. Even if two people stay together faithfully until the very end of their lives—is it still false? Yes, it still is. You promised to be together forever—so why do you leave first? No matter how much we want to be truthful, we simply cannot keep our word. Every word a person speaks is bound, sooner or later, to become a lie.

And the longer we live in this world, the more accustomed we become to deception. Not long ago, I bought a carton of “100% orange juice.” I’m quite sensitive—whenever I eat processed foods or anything with additives, my body reacts almost immediately. So at some point I stopped being able to eat those things. They make me cough. I have to have 100%. So I bought what said 100% and drank it—but something felt off. It didn’t taste like freshly squeezed orange juice. There was something added to it. And yet, right there on the label, it said 100%. So I looked more carefully, and sure enough—citric acid, sodium, all kinds of additives. And still it said 100%. How is that possible? What they had done was mix concentrate into water along with citric acid and sodium—and the concentrate itself was 100% pure orange. So technically, the concentrate was 100%—but they had added all sorts of other things on top of it. Is that 100% orange juice? Of course not. And yet that’s what it said on the label. If you read the fine print, the additives are listed—but still. It’s deception. It’s misleading people. That’s how advertising works. It keeps finding ways to deceive. And we’ve grown so used to it that we barely even notice anymore.

And when we read the news, there’s no shortage of absurdity either. Online headlines especially—you click on one and the actual content has almost nothing to do with what it promised. “So-and-so getting a divorce?” with a question mark at the end. You think, “Oh, they must be splitting up!” and click—but no. And they’re off the hook, because technically it was just a question. Headlines that have nothing to do with the story itself. People have been deceived so many times that all sorts of mocking names for journalists have come up. Of course, reporting is their livelihood—they have to grab people’s attention somehow. But still. It’s the same with food.

When I was in China, I met a pastor who was running a side business. He was out in the countryside, roasting and selling duck. And I noticed something dishonest about the way he was running it. So I said to him, “I’m not sure you should be doing it that way.” And he said, “You can’t do business without lying. Lying is just part of it!” I understood where he was coming from. When you’re trying to make a profit, dishonesty can start to feel normal. That said, not everyone in business operates that way. But the point is—he had gotten so used to it. What do you think his faith life looked like? If lying came that easily to him, what do you think his walk with God was really like?

There was also someone I knew who was traveling back from a trip and made a stop at an intercity bus terminal. When he got back on the bus, he was carrying a cup of coffee—in one of those aluminum cups that belong to the terminal restaurant. He just brought it with him and was drinking it on the bus. I was puzzled, so I asked, “Isn’t that a cup from the restaurant? Is it okay to just take it?” But he didn’t think anything of it. And this wasn’t just someone who attended church—he actually worked there. What do you think became of him later? It didn’t end well.

So what did we say God is giving us? Truth. What is most genuinely true. And yet the hearts of those who want to receive it are full of a casual attitude toward dishonesty. Can they really take it in? No. It keeps getting twisted. Even if they receive Truth, it ends up becoming something false. That is why there are so many cults and counterfeit religions that look just like Christianity.

When I first entered university, I wanted to know about God. So I would deliberately sit on benches around campus, because upperclassmen would often approach freshmen to share their faith. I waited for someone to come—and eventually, someone did. I followed along and started studying the Bible with him. He told me he was a senior from my department. Every time we met, he would buy me bread and warm milk as we studied together. The content we covered included things like the historical reality of Noah’s flood. But after some time, I started to find out the truth about this person—he wasn’t a senior from my department at all. And a number of things he had told me simply weren’t true. I was so taken aback that I confronted him: “You’re not actually from my department, are you? And so many of the things you told me weren’t true. I’m really confused—why did you do this?” And he said, “Sometimes you can lie in order to spread the truth.” So I told him, “That is not the kind of truth I want to learn,” and walked away. At that, he demanded I pay him back for all the bread and milk he had bought me. That told me everything I needed to know about what had really been going on. It turned out the group was a cult known as JMS—an organization that disguises itself as Christian but follows a man who claims to be Christ himself. Since I wasn’t yet a believer at the time, I hadn’t known any better. I had been caught up with one of their members.

And yet I am so grateful. Because if I had agreed with the idea that “you can lie in order to spread the truth,” I would still be with that group today. But I simply couldn’t agree with it. The One I wanted to meet was someone truly honest. I had been in so much pain over the fact that there was no truth to be found in this world—wandering and searching, longing to meet someone who was genuinely real. And now I was being told that lies were necessary to bring me to that One. It didn’t add up. And I am so thankful that it didn’t.

So if you make up your mind to meet the One who is truly honest—and choose to be truthful yourself—you will meet Him. But it has to be thorough. If you settle for being halfway honest and start making compromises, you will end up on a different path altogether. However, if you truly, truly long to meet the One who is utterly true, then no matter how many obstacles stand in the way, you will inevitably find your way to God—just as water always finds its way downward. Because God alone is true.

God has never broken His word. He always keeps it—every single time. That is why we say, “He is faithful.” Jesus Christ came to this earth—but how do we know He is truly the Son God sent? Because starting two thousand years before Jesus came, God began speaking through certain people. From around 1,500 years before His coming, it was being written down—and those records continued right up until 400 years before Jesus arrived. It was all prophesied. Those prophecies are what we carry with us today as the Old Testament. It was written by many different people—over thirty writers, across many different periods of history—and yet they all point consistently to the same thing. And Jesus came in fulfillment of every one of those prophecies. He did exactly what God had said He would do. God is true to His word.

And when Jesus came to this earth, He spoke many things—and He made promises to us. Every one of those promises is being fulfilled. For example, He said, “These signs will follow those who believe: they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover, they will drive out demons, and they will speak in tongues in My name.” And now, two thousand years later, these very things are happening among us.

He also promised, “It is to your advantage that I go away. Why? Because I will go to the Father and pour out the Holy Spirit upon you!” And true to His word, the Holy Spirit came upon those who waited for Him. And He said, “When the Holy Spirit comes, He will help you understand the things I have said that you cannot yet grasp, and He will lead you into all truth.” And that is exactly what happens—when the Holy Spirit comes, suddenly the truth becomes believable. The words of Jesus become real. This is something many who have received the Holy Spirit have experienced—and I have experienced it myself. I was an incredibly stubborn person. I didn’t listen to anyone. No matter how many times people shared the gospel with me, it just didn’t get through. But when the Holy Spirit came upon me, suddenly all of it—everything about Jesus—I simply believed it. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. You must receive the Holy Spirit.

Now, there is one more thing. We said earlier that in order to receive Truth, we need a heart that longs for what is true. Because what God gives is Truth—what is real—we need a heart that thirsts for that realness in order to meet Him. And what was the other thing we said God gives? Truth and the Holy Spirit. We need to receive the Holy Spirit—but what does it actually mean that He gives us the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. God is greater than the heavens, the Most High. He is the Creator, all-knowing and all-powerful. So to whom would a God like that give His Spirit? Surely it would have to be someone worthy of it—someone on His level. So when we say He gives His Spirit to human beings, where exactly would God pour it? You might think He would gather all of humanity together and pour it out over the whole lot at once—that might at least seem fitting. But no. He pours out His Spirit on each individual person.

Just stop and think about this for a moment. This is no small thing. Not to the President of Korea. Not to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. But to each individual person—God pours out His Spirit. Can you even wrap your head around that? To each person?

So when did the concept of “each individual person” even come about? The word we use for it is “individual.” But did that word even exist in Korean history? Was there a concept of the individual in the time of King Sejong? During the Japanese invasions of the 1590s? No. The concept simply didn’t exist. People were not seen as individuals. In Korea during the Joseon dynasty, not everyone even had a name. Only certain members of the nobility did—commoners had no family name and no given name. In fact, Koreans only began to have both a first and last name from the 1920s onward. That’s a remarkable fact. Because you have a full name today, it’s easy to assume that people always did—but that’s not the case at all. Women in particular had no names of their own. They were all just called “Eonnyeoni,” and boys were called “Gaeddong-i.” Everyone was called the same thing. They simply had no names. It was only as the modern state began to take shape—when rights and responsibilities needed to be assigned to each person—that individual names were given. That is how absent the concept of the individual was in this land. The word itself was actually coined in Japan in the 1800s. Before that, the word didn’t exist. The idea of respecting each person as an individual simply wasn’t there.

So what was it like two thousand years ago, when Jesus came to this earth? Did the concept of the individual exist then? Was each person considered that important? Could someone have asked, as we do today, “What would you like to eat today?”—just like that, to one person? That kind of situation barely existed.

Go back another thousand years before that, to the time of Confucius. One day, Confucius heard that his stable had caught fire and rushed over. And when he got there, he asked one question—a question so startling to his disciple that he wrote it down in a book. What did he ask? “Was anyone hurt?” His stable was on fire, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “Was anyone hurt?”—and that was so shocking to his disciple that he recorded it.

Why was it so shocking? Because he asked about people first. What would the normal thing to have asked been? “Were the horses hurt?”—that’s what should have come first. But Confucius, in that age, asked about people. That’s what made it so striking. And that’s why it was written down.

Back then, people had no value. Between a horse and a person—which was worth more? The horse. One horse was worth five servants. That was the going rate. So if one of the two had to die, of course it would be the person. You couldn’t lose a valuable horse. That was the world they lived in. Battles were breaking out everywhere, and countless people were dying without anyone thinking twice about it. “Just have more children”—that was the attitude. And yet in that world, someone asking “Was anyone hurt?” was shocking. And the truth is, the rest of the world was no different.

And then Jesus came to this earth—and what He brought was something this world had never seen before. “Each of you repent and be baptized!” Each person. Each one born again. Each one meeting God personally. It made no difference whether you were rich or poor, noble or lowly. Servants, aristocrats, Pharisees, religious leaders, commoners—it didn’t matter. “Each of you repent, and each of you meet God.” He used that word “each” again and again. “Each person will be repaid according to what each person has done.” These were words that had never been spoken before. We hear them so often today that they feel ordinary—but in that time, they were unheard of. The very concept of the individual, of each person, came from Jesus.

In all of human history, the first to truly respect each individual person—regardless of wealth or poverty, nobility or slavery—was Jesus. Why? Why did every person look the same to Him? Why did every person appear equally precious in His eyes?

In our church today, there are business owners and janitors, professors and students. And yet inside the church, they are all the same. Every one of them is meeting God as an equal member of the congregation. How is that possible? What does the church value that makes this so? It values the soul. The soul! If what mattered were a person’s occupation, they would not be equals. Among those who direct traffic in our underground parking lot, there are company chairmen. And yet you can’t tell the difference from the outside. There is no hierarchy between the chairman directing parking and the other members of the congregation. Sometimes people haven’t yet shed their old habits and get irritated—”Hey, do your job properly!”—and snap at the chairman. Can you imagine what that chairman’s life is like at his company? And yet at church, he takes it. Why? Because the church values the soul. Not gender, not social standing, not education, not occupation—the focus is on the soul. That is why every person is seen as equally precious.

Why did Jesus place such emphasis on the soul of each individual person? Because He could see the soul. And that is why the recognition of individual rights—human dignity—began precisely when the value of the soul was discovered. Where does God pour out His Spirit? Into the soul of each individual person. So even if a person is a beggar, the moment they believe in Jesus, God pours His Spirit into them.

If I went to the United States and asked to meet President Trump, do you think he would see me? He wouldn’t. And if I went over there and declared, “I challenge you! Let’s go to war!”—do you think the president would even bother to respond? He wouldn’t even look my way. We may both be human beings, but I simply don’t have the standing to be taken seriously. And yet—does it make any sense that our God would deal with us personally? God, who is greater than the heavens. God, who created the entire universe. The President above all presidents—that God meets with each and every one of us. Ordinary people. Women. Students. Even people who want nothing to do with Him. One by one. Does that even make sense?

And He doesn’t gather all of humanity together and pour out His Spirit all at once. He asks each person individually—and gives to those who want it. That is how He has lifted each person up to His own level. The idea that human beings should treat one another with such dignity—that each person’s freedom should be respected—all of that began with Jesus Christ. He introduced the concept of freedom. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free!”

So whose is freedom? Freedom belongs to God. Human beings have no true freedom. We are bound. We need money to survive. We need food to survive. Freeze to death and that’s it. Get beaten to death and that’s it. War breaks out and you die. Nothing goes the way we want. There is no freedom. The only One who is truly free is God. “I want to live honestly! I hate deception!”—and yet we cannot escape it. “I don’t want to die!”—and yet we cannot escape death. “I hate sickness!”—and yet we cannot escape it. But the One who is free from all of these things and exists entirely on His own terms—that is God alone.

And yet God has poured out His Spirit upon us. That is why it is said that where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom. He has treated us as He would treat God Himself. To give us His Spirit like this is to regard each person—each individual human being—with dignity. With worth. And that is why He has given us freedom.

What God has given us is Truth, and then the Holy Spirit. To receive Truth, we need a heart that longs for what is genuine. And to receive the Holy Spirit—God has lifted us up this high—but if we see ourselves as worthless, can we really receive it? If we don’t value ourselves, if we don’t regard ourselves with dignity, we cannot welcome the Holy Spirit. We must regard ourselves with dignity. We must allow ourselves to be free. There must be a deep thirst for that freedom.

And yet people so often throw their freedom away. They make themselves slaves to money. They make themselves slaves to the flesh. One path leads to slavery—to the flesh, to sin. The other path leads to freedom. And yet people choose the first path. They walk straight toward slavery. Life throws all kinds of things at us—and what if you found yourself in a situation where an affair became possible? The temptation comes. And if you make that choice, a whole path opens up before you. On one side, there is pleasure—but it doesn’t last. Because along with it comes lying, fear, and the very real danger of losing everything you have—your reputation, your relationships, all of it. Some people even go as far as murder to cover it up. King David in the Bible did exactly that. He committed adultery and then had the woman’s husband killed to hide it. There is no freedom in that. And yet even when we can see clearly where that path leads, we still choose it. We keep turning away from freedom and choosing to be slaves—slaves to the world, slaves to money, throwing away even the freedom that has been given to us.

And these days, more and more people are moving away from the mindset of “I will work and eat what I want on my own terms” toward “Why isn’t the government providing for me? I wish they would just hand it out!” That way of thinking is spreading more and more.

Beloved, which would you prefer—to be handed things, or to eat what you want when you want it? The most basic expression of human dignity is being able to decide for yourself what you eat, where you sleep, and what you wear. That is why no one should have the right to restrain another person. It is the freedom of the body. And when that freedom is taken away, a person feels humiliated—that is simply how we are made. And yet more and more people are actually welcoming the idea of the government handing out food. That is exactly what socialist states do. They distribute food. But does that make people happy? Now it becomes, “Eat what you’re given.” Nobody asks, “What would you like to eat?”

When a person is treated with honor, they keep being asked. On an airplane, there are different classes. In the higher classes, they ask you more. Even in the lower classes, they still ask us the basics. “Would you like beef or chicken?” “Rice or noodles?” Once I was trying to answer and the word just wouldn’t come out right in English, so what came out was “grain, please!”—as if I were ordering straight from a farm. As soon as I said it I realized how funny it sounded. But anyway, that level of being asked is already quite something. Once I went with my family to a well-known family restaurant, and honestly it was overwhelming. “What would you like for your vegetables? What soup would you like? What meat would you like? How would you like your meat cooked? What would you like to drink?” They just kept asking. And they were so genuinely attentive about it that it actually felt like too much—because I wasn’t used to being treated that way. They even knelt down to bring themselves to eye level and looked right at us as they asked. I couldn’t even hold eye contact. I remember thinking, “I never want to come back here.” That’s what happens when we’ve never been treated with that kind of honor before. But on a nice flight, that’s exactly how they treat us.

But in a socialist state, it’s “eat what you’re given.” In prison, it’s “just eat.” No choice. No options. When I was in the military, I had worked my way up to private first class—I had earned my stripes, so to speak. But it was around that time that I experienced something from a senior soldier that made me feel deeply humiliated—and eventually filled me with rage. Here’s what happened. Now that I was a private first class, I could finally read on my own during free time. So while others were just hanging around, I started reading. Then one senior soldier, thinking he was doing everyone a favor, announced, “Alright everyone, sleep!” And just like that, in the middle of the day, everyone laid out their bedding and went to sleep. He thought he was being kind. But I laid out my bedding, sat up against the wall, and kept reading. The senior soldier walked by and said, “Sleep.” I hadn’t read the room. I said, “I’d like to read.” He didn’t say much. He just stared at me—hard. And then he said one word: “Sleep.” How do you think that made me feel? Like a pig. Eat when told to eat. Sleep when told to sleep. When I had first arrived, that same senior soldier handed me an apple and said, “Eat.” I said, “I’ll eat it later, thank you.” His hand went up. How dare I say “later” when a senior soldier was offering something. So I quickly read the situation and ate it right then. When I finished, I was left holding the apple core. And he said, “What, you want me to throw that away for you?” “No!” And I put the whole thing in my mouth and ate it. How did that make me feel? Like a pig.

“Here, eat!” “Go to sleep!”—that’s the kind of thing you might say to a small child, but even mothers don’t talk to their children that way anymore. And yet grown adults are treated like this. Is that respecting anyone’s dignity? Not at all. But people who have grown up with that kind of treatment come to expect it—and even prefer it. And because they’ve never been treated any differently, they treat others the same way. Can people like that handle the dignified treatment God gives—can they receive the Holy Spirit when it comes? They can’t.

So when God gives us Truth and the Holy Spirit, to be able to receive them, we need a heart that truly longs for what is genuine—and a heart that regards itself with dignity, because God regards us that way. The two must match. Coming to church is not simply about believing in Jesus and fitting into a religious culture. It is about receiving what the living God gives, taking it in, and becoming like Him. That is what God wants to give us. So I bless you in the name of Jesus—that with a heart that longs for truth and a heart that sees itself with dignity, you would receive everything God has to give and truly enjoy it.

God our Father, we thank You for giving us Truth and the Holy Spirit—and for allowing us to possess all that belongs to Your life and godliness. Grant us hearts that are truly able to receive and carry what You have given. Prepare us in that way. And work in each one of us so that we may treasure what You give and prove worthy of it. We pray with gratitude in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.