Introduction

            The Lord was teaching me a death perspective.

          The Lord gave me a heart and passion for young people when I went to South Korea for a while and served as an education pastor at Seohyun Church.  But the Lord brought me back to Victory Presbyterian Church in United State with His promise word “… I … will build My church …” (Mt. 16:18) and gave me an opportunity to serve the elders of the church.  I prayed because I didn’t know what the will of the Lord was.  In the midst of this, the Lord made me even lead the funeral service of the elders of the church and made me think of my own death.  And as the Lord gave me lessons about death, He planted the death perspective in my heart.  And I came to realize at least little bit that this is the Lord's will.  The Lord was teaching me the death perspective by making me to return to Victory Presbyterian Church to serve the elders of the church.  From that point on, I began to exhort myself and also the members of our church to live with the death perspective.  In addition, through the Internet ministry Naver Blog, Facebook, and KakaoTalk Stories and others, I began to share the lesson that we should all live with the death perspective.

            Meanwhile, at the Morning Prayer yesterday, I was praying alone after preaching based on the word of Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God” and I thought that it would be good to make a book manuscript by collecting all my writings about the death perspective that the Lord has taught me on my Naver blog and share it with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.  So I prayed that I would not only comfort God's people who are grieving by leaving their loved ones, friends, brothers, and sisters first, but also help them to have the death perspective that the Lord has taught me.

          So, from yesterday until now, I found all my writings on my blog that would be helpful to have the death perspective and collected them all here under the title “I want to live with a death perspective”.  Mainly, the writings here are the writings that I meditated on the words of God, the short writings of meditation, and the writings about my personal family ministry and church ministry.  I hope and pray that the Lord grant me the desire of my heart which is to live with the death perspective according to the Lord's will and face a beautiful death, but also comfort God's people through this book by instilling them the death perspective.

Thinking of Jesus Christ who died on the cross for such sinner like me,

James Kim