Month: April 2008

It’s always interesting to watch God work. I mean, we “know” he does amazing things, at least we always say we know it, but it seems far less often that we actually step out in faith enough to witness it. Last week was a small reminder of that for me.

Human nature seems to drive people to chose the path that is easiest and most comfortable, and to leave those which are difficult and seemingly unpleasant until there are no other options. For me it appears that one of the most reliable ways of determining what God wants me to do is simply to look at the things I’ve been avoiding — usually those are exactly the things He wants me to do. Call it the Jonah syndrome if you like. In this case the thing that I was avoiding was asking people, one on one, face to face, to support me financially. I hate asking people for money; and even though I know that I’m not asking them to give me money, but to give money to God, and His work, part of me still feels like I’m asking for myself.

So, naturally, I did what most any human would do to try to raise support: whatever seemed to be the most comfortable. I wrote letters, sent out little cards, set up a website, created a Facebook group, spoke in front of church and wrote Newsletters. All stuff that is necessary, beneficial, and helpful; all things I will continue to do. In fact God has been bringing in a steady, though small,stream of supporters through these methods. But the one thing I didn’t want to do was call someone up, ask them if I could meet with them and invite them to support me. And since I didn’t want to do that, I didn’t… until last week.

Last week I met with five of my closest friends that had not yet started to support me. I talked to them on the phone, or sent them an email, made an appointment, shared about what I was going to do, and asked them to support me financially. All five of them said yes. To put that in perspective, I previously had seven financial supporters, after roughly six months of support raising. In addition to those five, God brought two additional supporters that I didn’t talk with. That means that this month God doubled the number of supporters I have, and it looks likely that my percentage of support will also have doubled by the end of the month. And to make things even better, I actually enjoyed getting the chance to share one on one with my friends where God was leading me, and was incredibly encouraged to see their enthusiastic responses.

God is good; He is faithful to reward us when we place Him first and humbly obey Him, He encourages us when we are discouraged, He causes us to rejoice at the most unexpected times. I have over 10% of my needed support! Look what God has done!

I’m not sure how many of you guys watched the “American Idol Gives Back” program on Fox last night, but if you did you probably were shocked at the song they chose to close with. They sang, “Shout to the Lord.” Now, I’m a pretty cynical guy, so when I watched it on YouTube, I sort of rolled my eyes during the first minute or so. Especially when I noticed that they changed the opening line from: “My Jesus…” to “My Shepherd…”

“Here we go”, I thought, “Now the song could be acceptable to Christians, Jews, Muslims, heck, anyone who believes in a supreme diety.” However I kept watching, and the rest of the song remained unchanged, the words were still unmistakeably Christian; the song sounded like it was being sung in a church. Not like my church, maybe more like a mega church like Saddleback, what with all the lights and the big choir in the back and the full band, but it sounded like part of a church service none the less. And this was on prime time, national television, not TBN. I decided to watch it again.

This time the irony of it all hit me. Ryan Secreast announces the song this way:

“Now, singing Shout to the Lord, once again here are your American Idols!”

And then, “America’s Idols” took the stage and sang:

My Shepherd, my Savior, Lord, there is none like You;
All of my days I want to praise the wonders of Your mighty love.

I don’t know if any of these guys are saved. I don’t know if they even cared what they were singing, or if they were just doing it because they were told to. Maybe some of them were really, actually worshiping God. But the remarkable thing to me is that here we have on national TV, these people that are supposed to represent all that America Idolizes, and worships: the fame, the fortune, the talent, the lifestyle of rock stars that we as a country lust after, and these eight peple are in a contest that is supposed to give them all this – and here they all are singing that there is none like God, that all day they want to sing God’s praises, that there is something more than what they are pursuing. And that, in itself, is something to take notice of.

Now, God knows their heart, and that is the most important part of this. Clearly Christ said in Mark 7:6-7 that worship is in vain if the heart is not in it.

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

Maybe that was all that happened last night. Maybe all we watched on TV was a bunch of hypocrites pretending to worhsip God with their lips while their heart was set on fame and fortune. That part we don’t know. What we do know is that in front of the whole country these guys truthfully proclaimed that there is none like the Lord, and that He should be worshiped by all the earth, that nothing compares to the promise we have in Him. And with that I’ll rejoice as Paul did when he said in Phillipians 1:18

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

The “idols” may or may not have benefited from their worship last night, but who knows how many people throughout country may have been startled by the thought that there just may be something greater than all that they currently idolize.

Check out what my friend Mark thinks

Tachikawa = The name of the City in Tokyo
Ekimae = “Near the Station” or maybe “Accross from the Station”
Kyoko = “Church”

The near the station part usually gets a bit of a laugh from Japanese people, because it’s usually attatched to the names of things like convinience stores, or Pachinko Parlors, it’s almost more of a marketing term. So to use it to describe a church sounds funny. And it usually implies that whatever is “Ekimae” is within eyesight of said station. Now, the church is about three blokcks from Tachikawa station, one of the largest stations in Tokyo, however it’s no longer visible. It was when it was built, but the surrounding area now has many much taller buildings.

If anyone who speaks Japanese can correct me on this, please do (Tomo, Jon, or Yoshie).

A shot of the church service in progress. As you can see, most people dress somewhat formally, and what you can’t see is that the songs are mostly Hymns sung with accompaniment by a church organ, much like many traditional churches here in the US

Me standing out as I usually do when in Japan.

Well just a quick update. I moved last weekend. Now I’m in Capistrano Beach, sharing a house with the same two guys I was before, Jeff and Matt. Previously me and Matt were living in Jeff’s house, renting a room from him. Not Jeff sold his place, and Matt rented a new house, and Jeff and I are renting rooms from Matt. So, in a lot of ways, not much has changed. Except all my stuff is in boxes, and for now at least, I have my own room.

My plan is to rent from Matt until July, and then move back in with my parents for a year while I try to save up as much money as possible, and pay off my loans… or something. (There may be something else I could spend 10 grand on a year from now, but there’s still a lot of undefined varibles there.) The reason I’m not moving straight into my parents house is that it’s sort of crowded right now, and my little brother is getting married in June, which means that probably even more people will be staying there. At the very least my girlfriend usually stays with my parents on weekends, and will be there for two weeks between the time she’s done with UCI for the year and the time she flies back to Japan, and we like to keep things on the up and up.

Oh yes, for those of you who don’t know, I’ve been dating my younger brother’s fiance’s younger sister, Tomo for the last five months. She’s from Japan, Jon (my brother) and I met both her and Maki (his fiance) on a mission trip to work with the church her father pastors. I’ve known Tomo and her family for almost five years, but it wasn’t till she came to the states as a foriegn exchange student that I finally got the nerve to ask her out. I’m not quite as bold as Jon, who started dating Maki while he was in Japan, and then three weeks later came back to the US to continue a three year long distance relationship while he raised support to move to over there. I give him props for that.

My support raising goals for this month:

1. Contact 10 people to schedule a appointments to meet in person and share about Japan, how God’s calling me there and ask them to join my team as a financial supporter.
2. Contact three churches about supporting me and/or allowing me to come speak at one of their services, sunday schools, or Bible Studies to enlist their memebers as supporters.
3. Get monthly support up to 22%

That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll be unpacked by next week, and I’ll have some more to report.