JACOB SHIN

Jacob Shin is a lay elder at Table Rock and works full time for Crossing Borders, a ministry that serves North Korean refugees. 

While raised in a Christian home, I didn’t truly encounter the peace, care and love of God until my freshman year in college. Having grown up with an abusive father, I harbored a lot of anger, bitterness, and resentment. I walked around with this heavy burden for most of my teenage years until one day, through tears and frustration, I brought it to Jesus at a church worship night. I remember his gentle words telling me that the weight was too much for me to bear and that he would take it for me. In that moment, I felt a comfort and peace I had never experienced in my life.

My wife also grew up in a Christian household. Similarly, she didn’t start to truly walk on her own faith until after we had our first son, Jonah, in 2008. Since finding each other in 2002, we had been preoccupied with enjoying life and having too much fun to make time for God. Then we both heard God’s call to stop “playing church” and to take our call to follow him seriously. So we did. We served wherever needs came up, opened up our home and invited others in, both in and outside the church. In serving and seeking the Giver, God has given us joy and satisfaction that far exceeds the pleasures we felt in our previous pursuits of simply enjoying his gifts.

In this season of life, as a father to two growing teenage boys, as we cross into our third decade of marriage, and being stretched in the ministry that is my full time job as well as serving as an elder at Table Rock Church, I find myself with wishing I had more wisdom to deal with life’s complexities and trials. As James says in the first chapter of his book, I pray that the various trials continue to deepen steadfastness and wisdom in my life. And through seasons of testing, as Peter encourages in his first book, that the genuineness of my faith would result in praise.

My prayer for Table Rock Church is that we would be awed by God in his glory and brought to our knees by the love and grace of Jesus.