A Piece to the Puzzle

Sometimes a song is the missing piece. A simple song by an artist not so famous. This particular song was made without the knowledge of what we are discussing in our service. Yet God moved them to create a song that coincides with what we are talking about. Enjoy God’s wondrous works and his ageless message.

It is amazing that the words spoken by these men (one of my favorite bands) fits so perfectly with our message.

Here's the group picture from our 6th Hope English Service! Thank you all for coming, it was so good to see all of you there.

Missed the Train, Caught the Sunshine

Patience is a tricky discipline that we so easily discard in our lives. The sermon yesterday focused on a promise fulfilling God. We learned from the stories in the Old Testament that God’s timing for keeping his promises do not necessary correlate with our own timing. Unfortunately, our society has become used to receiving our fast food, well, fast. Patience, it seems, has been readily disregarded in exchange for “efficiency” or “entitlement.” We feel that we deserve to be treated according to how we feel is the correct way and the correct time. Some practical ways we see this is in our need for better things. We need the new iPhone now. We can’t miss the early train. We must receive our shipments today. The restaurant meal is too slow. Our lives are captured by “business hours” as though each day loss could cost millions of dollars. We feel that something that “takes forever” is a great loss to us.

One Sunday, my wife and I were running a little late for Church as we walked down our hill in an effort to catch the train from Ichibu station. Our house is located roughly fifteen minutes away and thus usually takes some time management to effectively catch the train. Being that I am a person who likes scheduling things, I was a little worried that we were going to miss the train. Sure enough, we arrived at the station precisely as the train was pulling away. We had to wait another fifteen minutes before the next train arrived.  My frustration was not hidden well in my words and my wife noticed. I was about to lash out when I realized something. That day was one of the first days it cooled down from the overheated Nara summer and the sunlight cast through the trees created a still early Autumn morning. My wife was beautiful as always and my daughter smiled cheerfully as they sat on the platform waiting for the train. My words that I was going to speak could have ruined this gorgeous, God created morning and for what? My “objective” which I thought was more important than the “stage” God had set. I thank God for stopping me. I could have completely missed that wonderful fifteen minutes God had orchestrated to sit and enjoy my family.

Sometimes our objectives are not God’s. Sometimes our timing is not God’s. Patience is a virtue in which we “get to” exercise in order to enjoy life. We truly don’t need the new, hot item, the food to arrive now, receive something in the mail today, nor catch the earliest train. We don’t need to hear the answer from your friend, go to the mall nor get our “alone time” now. My wife states that this last point is a hard one. As a mother of an infant, she feels as though she is in a rush to get the baby to bed in order to have her “own time.” She feels impatient when the baby does not operate on her time.

This lack of patience in our society has had grievous consequences. We have people in major debt, divorces and generally anger filled people due to not being able to wait it out. People cannot control their emotion and fights break out between friends, couples and family members. Again, for what? So that we can get the hottest item? To manipulate our relationship in the way which pleases us?

God operates on ‘God time’ precisely so he can teach us. In fact, we don’t have this patience naturally, that we have to exercise it in order to gain the skill. If you observe a baby, this is readily apparent. The baby is constantly in need and crying to be fulfilled in his or her own terms. Each biblical character we talked about yesterday, Noah, Abraham and Gideon were tested in their patience and faithfulness. They learned to exercise it in order to see the bigger picture, God’s picture. Will you exercise this patience so you won’t miss a great morning?

Faith not so faith

Hello to all. I hope your week with the Lord has been amazing as you seek out what “faith” is. I know I have been growing in the Lord and have been experiencing what it is to live by faith, believing in the Lord’s plan.

It is exciting to be starting this journey on the blog and I hope the readers will find some gems of truth in it. I’m hoping to basically loosely follow our sermon series and cater this blog towards people who need a little more explanation or simply need encouragement. I will also write updates in Japanese so to allow our Japanese readers to follow. I’m currently reading a book by William Lane Craig on apologetics and thought it would be a good opportunity to also share some interesting insights about why we believe what we believe.

As many of you know, I was in Minnesota from 2004 to 2010. During that time, I attended a Japanese church and had the privilege of being a part of the ministry. Being one of the only Japanese services in town, we attracted numerous exchange students from Japan. One such student, Mr. A, was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. He specialized in genetic engineering and was a sharp man. Although he was an atheist, he was curious about our church and found it very comfortable. One day as I was discussing Christianity with him, the conversation turned into a very cordial debate. Neither of us was trying to convert the other, but we simply discussed the meaning of faith. He had a hard time with the concept and kept stating that having faith in something invisible and intangible was quite difficult. I acknowledged his conundrum but pointed out that many things in life took faith. Sitting on a chair, crossing the road, believing in another person’s commitment or love, believing in the doctor’s ability to heal etc. As though a light bulb went on in his head, he nodded in agreement. The next thing that came out of his mouth was rather surprising. He said, “Yes, you’re right. Everything does take faith. Many of the scientific theories that we propose are simply theories. It takes faith to believe that those are correct and will yield the same results if we were to test them over and over again. Actually, technically scientific laws, such as 1 + 1 = 2, are also a theory and we assume that it is representing reality.”

I found this statement rather profound and use this story even to this day. We humans put a surprising amount of “faith” into many things. We believe that the scientists are correct in assuming or calculating the earth’s age, that the doctors have come up with the correct medicine, that there are such things as morality, that our fate is in our own hands etc. Everything in life takes some form of faith. It even takes faith to believe in your own mind, logic or empirical experience!

Having faith in God is just another form of faith we utilize in our lives. As with anything, we believe that the cough drops contain some form of cure that will help our cold. We experience the result once we take it. In a similar way, we experience God’s power once that step of faith is made. As Noah trusted God in his statement and plan, we are given a choice to trust God’s voice. Are you willing to take that step?