Before I came to know God, He had already reached out to me first.
There was a time when my family—my parents, my older brother, and I—lived together in a single-room home. It was somewhere in Seoul during the 1970s, a time of relentless poverty.
One day, as spring was turning into summer—I must have been about five or six years old—my parents were out, and my brother and some neighborhood kids were playing with me in the room.
Then, out of nowhere, my brother and the other boys decided to play a mean prank.
They locked me inside the room alone and ran off, laughing outside the door before eventually disappearing somewhere.
I was terrified. The suddenness of it all left me paralyzed, unsure of what to do. I sobbed and begged for them to let me out, but no one was there to listen anymore. The realization that I was truly alone filled me with an overwhelming fear.
As I trembled in that fear, a thought suddenly came to my mind—
“I should pray.”
Our Sunday school teacher had said that God always listens when we pray.
It was the very first prayer of my life, and it was as simple as could be:
“God, I’m so scared. Please make me not scared.”
With my hands clasped tightly together, I prayed with all my heart.
In the more than fifty years I have lived on this earth, I have never again experienced God’s response as swiftly, precisely, and unmistakably as I did that day.
The moment my short prayer ended, an unexplainable peace washed over me, pushing out the fear that had consumed me just moments before.
Even as a five-year-old child, I was struck with wonder at what had just happened. I was too young to grasp the significance of it, too little to even entertain the grand notion that I had encountered the living God. But looking back over my life, I now see that it was a moment where God powerfully imprinted upon me that He was there—watching over me, protecting me, always with me.
How do I describe what I felt? It was as if light had rushed in, forcing the darkness out. Peace overflowed within me, driving away all my fear.
In any case, after that one simple prayer, my fear vanished completely, leaving only peace behind.
For the next several hours, until my parents returned, I stayed in that locked room—utterly alone, yet perfectly at peace.
I remember hearing once that God delights in the prayers of children. It was true.
These days… as one preacher once said, “Even silence can be an answer from God.” And indeed, I rarely receive clear answers anymore.
Because of that, I don’t pray as often as I used to. But even so, I still hold on to the belief that God is always listening.
In the next story, I’ll share one of those rare moments when God answered me once again.
What is Life? A Perspective from God’s Truth