letters to a modern-day Job

If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.
– Woody Allen

Dear friend,

Here’s a story.

From excelling in many categories of life, even wanting to be a missionary doctor at one point, to 15 years of a steady excruciating debilitation. Burns and inflammations covering 70% of my body due to a faulty autoimmune system (Eczema). At it’s worst, I spend most of 2008 and 2009 stuck in my bedroom, writhing in pain. I lost career, health and friends. At times, children ran away after looking at my face. Medical experts  sent me to a shrink because they reasoned I was the reason that I couldn’t recover when their myriads of treatments had sub-optimal results. Friends and family thought I wasn’t working hard enough to get well. Atheists mock me wondering where my God was. Christians thought I was not praying hard enough, not having enough faith, or I had the wrong faith. My significant other left. The world had no meaning for me. I became a pariah. This was my Abyss.

The Abyss culminated in 2 whole years being imprisoned within the four walls of my bedroom. There seemed to be nothing left to grasp on to. Body wasting away with peeling flesh.  Blood and plasma dripping. Mind gone numb due to the multitudes of drugs and medicine in my system. Searing burns. I felt like a Walking Dead. This was The Room.

Yet, it was in this Room where Redemption all started.

To others, it was a time where I was nowhere to be found. Where the “Boo Radley” becomes more and more irrelevant to the world. Many disregarded me as “giving up”. In truth it was the most challenging, life-changing journey – my deadliest and most serious odyssey of my imagination, mind and spirit. Like Neo and the Matrix, I had to traverse spiritual truths, and the outcome of this heavenly journey corresponded to real effects on earth. In this sincere journey, I had to overcome various truth claims, emotional scars, disinformation by post-modernism to peel through all the layers to clearly see the core.

To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful that he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
Oswald Chambers, The Shadow of an Agony

That core is Jesus. The covenant that saves is the Gospel of Grace.

The more I peeled back the layers and saw the many faceted aspects of this Gospel, I felt my destiny change in the heavenly realm, or my imagination, so to speak. Over time, this change in the heavenly realm leaked its way in my life today.

Today, I still feel I am living in a strange dream.

I’m much more pain-free today. I’ve had a career totally redefined – and it’s better than I could have imagined. I see the world in many greater dimensions.

Within that Gospel of Grace came healing, wisdom and favor. God gave me healing to get me through the “critical” phase of my problem. And then to maintain it, I “discovered accidentally” by God’s orchestration of events, tweaks to life and diet to greatly aid in helping my eczema that those specialists never emphasized. I “discovered accidentally” how to do well in the stock market in those 2 years of dark, painful isolation. God lead just the exact few people to come into my life to get me where I need to be in terms of career right now. How can I not give God the glory? I saw how my resume didn’t get me very far after losing so many years of my career. I saw how many people despised the way I looked. I saw how many people gave up on me.

If you are still reading up to this point, perhaps the one thing I hope you may get out of this story is this. That no matter who you are and what you are going through. This is indeed a testimony of:

“even if your father and mother forsake you, the Lord will take you up (to higher places)”
Ps 27:10

It wasn’t a secret formula. It wasn’t doing the right things per se. It wasn’t about getting the right prophet or holy man to pray for you. It wasn’t about going to church and praying together. Even if you have nothing, except for a lonely bedroom, and the world has given up on you; that’s enough for God. I’ve gone through that personally. I wouldn’t wish that on my enemy. But on hindsight, redemption looks beautiful.

That’s enough for Grace. That’s enough for the Gospel.

I write to elucidate the spiritual journey experienced in The Room, this 2-year prison, and how the realization of the true person of Christ caused changes in his heavenly destiny which started to miraculously trickle down into real life. It’s not a story to be missed. It’s a modern day parable, a modern day miracle, it’s about a modern-day Job.

Thank you for joining me in my journey. May Jesus do for you as He did for me.

Don’t give up,

Ken

—

Picture this, Imagine that
Crawling on my fists, Lord, where you at?
on the bed alone, dying, I was broken and sad
like mice running away and death was the cat
2^nd degree burns, failing liver, what kind of choice was that?
Like caught in a vacuum, lose your voice in that?
broken toys in that Burlap Sack, thrown away like that
Flesh flaking, blow off the flies that my wounds attract
I’m shaking, throw off goodbyes that I shouldn’t have had.
Perspiring far too long, my skin burns right back.
Have I been gone too long? Just tell where my friends’ at?
Has it gone so wrong? I never meant that.

I never meant that.

… … … Time. Silence. Breath. Fall. Timing. Arriving. This hand I call.
Racing. Showcasing. Grace. On. New dawn. Has fallen. A new ship has gone. And …

A voice rings out, it sings loud, re-route this “doubt”
Removes the decibels (db) so we can see out
Quiet is the lion, dark is the sun
Small is the ocean, He’s bigger than when time itself begun
“Be still your dreams, This is Redemption, Son,
Refill, jet-streams, with you I’ll run.
from rainbows and hell-fire, the Past broke from Future
just when you think you can never get over
you hold a boldness, right here on my shoulders
That these two become one, here on my shoulders……
We two become one, here on my shoulders
Even as the world gets colder, you’re still that little lamp sitting over my shoulders

you’re still that little lamp sitting over my shoulders”

Kenneth Koh, a Modern-day Job, March 2007 (before the worst was to come)

PS: This website is still a work-in-progress. I will still be adding and changing material. I decided to open this page to the public even though it’s far from complete. It makes it all more personal.

Here’s a link to my blog.

Here’s a link to a list of chapter drafts.

Chapters:

Introductions 1: Welcome to my Nightmare.
Introductions 2: Real Grace. The Great Erase and Replace.
Introductions 3: Perplexing Players. Perfectly-placed Props.
Grace is Key – God is not mad at you. He loves you.
Suffering is but the starting point of Redemption
The Crownless again shall be King
Work through your Abyss with Jesus (Part 1): Keep Your Eye on Jesus to escape the Abyss to the New Country.
Work through your Abyss with Jesus (Part 2): Your LOOK at God triggers God’s LOOK on you.
Work through your Abyss with Jesus (Part 3): Real Progress requires Divinely Inspired Fundamental changes.
Work through your Abyss with Jesus (Part 4): The journey starts with the LOOK followed by the WALK through DOORS.
Work through your Abyss with Jesus (Part 5): God uses your service in the natural and makes them supernatural.