The kids just started their summer break from school last week. They have about five weeks off from school, from the end of July until the end of August. During the break, the neighborhood gathers at the school ground at 6:30am every morning to do radio calisthenics together (It’s a Japanese tradition that started first in 1928, you can find videos on YouTube if you are curious). Manon and Jude have been going faithfully since it started. I finally went with them this morning and, all in all, it was kind of a fun way to start the day.
Our days and weeks seem to be a kind of slow drip of new connections and relationships. Every week there seems to be one or two new people. Kumi and I laugh because our YouTube channel subscribers seem to be growing at about the same slow, steady pace. 82 now as I am writing this. They often will write to us. Japanese Christians, usually in a location with no churches nearby. “I have been watching your videos for a few months,” one person wrote. “I feel like God is calling me deeper and I want to yield more to him.”
This is so our heart—being a voice to call people to a deeper place in God. Christians in Japan are some of the most genuine and sincere people you will ever meet. They demonstrate a patient endurance, something we are exhorted to walk with in the scriptures. But many have not experienced the filling of the Spirit, or his presence resting on them. Many do not know that there is a deep life of being in love with Jesus where we can grow in intimacy with him, really knowing and being known by him. And there isn’t a sense of living for something greater than their own life. It is easy to become focused on our own life and on the pressures and needs we have, especially when we don’t have anyone else that is encouraging us in our faith. But God invites us into His great story and plan. When we can see that we are living for something much bigger than our own life, something rises up on the inside of us, because that is truly how God has made us. We each have a significant and important purpose and role in his design.
Many believers in Japan simply haven’t had anyone really model life in God, especially outside of the pulpit, so they don’t really know what it looks like. There are a few resources of teaching on YouTube or Christian books that are available, but of course without anyone to really walk with and share real life experience, it is difficult to apply to your own life. We are very aware of this in everything we plan and do. We want to use every interaction and opportunity with people to pour out and offer what God has done and is doing in our own life. It feels a bit like a treasure hunt, finding people that God wants to touch and that are hungry for more, or connecting with people that he wants us to meet or partner with.
God has something amazing prepared for this nation, but we must be ready to receive it. I feel that a preparation of the soil is still necessary, hearts still need to be made ready, mindsets need to be shifted. John the Baptist prophetically prepared the way of the Lord. He went before Jesus and called people to turn their hearts to God. I believe that being that forerunner voice is a place that we all must take in the spirit and in faith, declaring and receiving what the Lord wants to do.
Thank you for standing with us in your faith, your prayer for us, and your financial support. I know that we will see new aspects of beauty of God’s glory displayed through and from this nation that the world has yet to see.
-Jeremy