Lazaro, el soñador

There are two things that never cease to amaze me.  Thing number one:  How good and loving God is.  Thing number two: how shortsighted and foolish I am.

Last week I spent a few days at the house of my friends, David and John.  I always enjoy spending time over there because their father, a Cuban expat, always talks to me.  If you know me, and many of you reading do (and that is, in fact, the reason you read) you know that I love to talk.  I love ideas and I love free exchange of those ideas.  So I love being at their house.  Also, I love being around Cubans.  Always have.

During my last conversation with Mr. Gonzalez I learned about his new job (or maybe he said it was a hobby), which is to write devotions for The Gideons.  He told me about one of the devotions he had just written on Lazarus (here's the good part), paying special attention to focus on the fact that Jesus didn't come when he was called to heal Lazarus.  He didn't even make it back in time for the dead body to be prepared.  He finally came in after Lazarus died.  I saw the immediate connection between that passage of scripture and my life.  I could easily see, that day, how my situation in waiting, in a sense, for God was nothing like Lazarus's.  Even though things sometimes look dim, I thought, I'm not about to die, and even if I were, what of it.  Jesus showed up right when he was supposed to, four days "late".  I get it man, Jesus shows up when he's supposed to so that we may believe.  I know, I know.

I forgot.

I spent the majority of the day receiving bad news.  Getting a work visa to Japan is not the easiest thing to do, especially for US citizens.  I don't suggest trying it unless you absolutely have to.  It's disheartening work, too; calling every company I can find just to have them tell me systematically that they don't sponsor workers but will hire anyone who already has a visa (you have to have a company or relative sponsor you in order to get a work visa to Japan).  The three or four companies that were willing to give me sponsorship all told me that if I had called a month ago or two months ago I would be a very good candidate because they would have had time to secure a work visa before the school year starts.  A month or two ago I was still under the impression that work was going to be found for me.  It all felt so unproductive and discouraging.  I spent most of the day near-wallowing in self-pity.

But just now I remembered Lazarus.  If I die before I wake, Jesus will be glorified, and that's really the whole point of it all anyway, right?  Thinking about Lazarus makes the whole situation seem just a little less terrible.

God's timing is so much better than mine.  I don't always remember it though.

So Pray for me.

Graciously, not Gracefully.

Sometimes following God is painful.  Sometimes He makes us watch as everything we’ve known is dissembled and cast to the wind.  The Israelites knew about it.  They watched as Jerusalem was “the cauldron” and their families “the meat for the stew”.  Hosea knew about it.  All of the disciples, including Paul knew about it.  Sometimes following God hurts.  Sometimes a lot.  Sometimes almost more than we can bear.

I don’t think that it is a coincidence that so many people, friends, family, even people I’ve never met before, have been sending encouragement my way right now.  God knows what is happening and what will happen, and I believe that he has influenced the people within (and without) my life to help me through a very difficult time.

So thank you.  Thank you to Hannah, John, Justin, Patrick, Angela, my parents, the entirety of the cowboy church congregation, Maegan, Jason, James, Megumi, Tom, Dakota, Elizabeth, Sarah, Rebecca, Savannah, Kyle and everyone who has sent me encouragement.  Thank you so much.  You all are impacting my life right now more than I could possibly express through words.  Thank you very much.  I feel God’s hand and I know it is from your supplication.  Thank you all so much.

Please, continue to pray for me.

Chests and doors.

The other day I wrote about how I've been feeling discouraged.  Things aren't working the way I had hoped they would up to this point in my endeavors to serve God and the people of Japan.  My mom asked me a really insightful question the other day, that I kind of put off thinking about until (of course) I read something in Proverbs during a quiet time that brought the question back to my mind.

What she asked me was, "At what point are these things that are going wrong demonic interference, and at what point are they God closing doors?"

Initially, I pushed off the question.  Not that I didn't have an answer.  I did: God has put a passion for the people of Japan in my heart for a reason and every time I pray or read scripture I feel a level of reassurance.  I believe that these are good reasons, but maybe I'm putting too much stock into how I feel about everything.

I've been giving some thought recently to the balance of living somewhere between how I feel and what I know.  While I was thinking about it I remembered reading "Men without Chests" the first chapter from C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man.  I packed all of my books up and sent them home when I moved out of my house in Southern California a few weeks ago, but luckily someone posted the whole book online, so I was able to read through what C.S. Lewis had to say.

I hope anyone reading this has had a chance to read that book.  If you haven't, it is short, it took me less than an hour to reread the first chapter and there are only four chapters total to the entire book.  The link provided has all four chapters, please, if you have time, read or reread the book, it is worth it.  Here's a small piece from the end of "Men Without Chests" that struck me more severely:

"The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal."

Throughout the chapter C.S.Lewis refers to two grammarians who wrote a book on preparatory English for children in elementary school.  The problem Lewis has with the Grammarians is that they suggest that man would be better off ignoring sentiment altogether, rather than finding what emotions are just for which responses.

I wonder if I pay more attention to my appetite than I do my intellect.  I wonder if perhaps I let my stomach supersede my head, bypassing my chest.  Whether my head look larger, or my stomach, the result is the same, my chest is atrophied.  Maybe I should think more about what my mother told me.  Maybe these things happening aren't just interference designed to get my discouraged.  Maybe they are doors closing.

In any case it's worth thinking about, which I guess is what I need to do more of so that I don't look like the troll from the first Harry Potter movie, with a tiny head and chest and a great big belly.

So pray for me!

Hopefully the first of many

I'm currently in Seattle, Washington, watching Expedition Impossible.

I've been pretty discouraged recently about my upcoming expedition to Japan, and it's starting to look like maybe that should have been the subject for this show because it's looking more and more impossible to me each day.  From the departure date being postponed from the first week of July to the first week of August and then to MAYBE the third week of August, to trying to search for jobs on this side of the Pacific resulting in systematic interview invitations to be held "Once I arrive in Osaka."

Maybe I should backtrack here.

I'm going to Japan.

I graduated from Biola University last December.  On of the great things about going to a school dedicated to the understanding and application of God's Word is that every spring semester Biola has something called a missions conference, where, for three days, all of the students go to mandatory seminars and lectures.  Also present at missions conference every year is a three day fair for missionary organizations to come and sort of recruit students from Biola.  This is how I met Francis Wang from ITPS and started working with him and the other members of his nonprofit, volunteer-worker based, company.

Honestly, I've never felt called to be a missionary.  I don't know if I am the missionary type, if there is such a thing.  I do know, however that I am being called to Japan.  I feel as though God has been preparing me for most of my life to live and work there.  It's weird, because I've never been, and everything I hear and see is so foreign and strange, and I'm no good at picking up the language, but I feel so strongly for the people, for the culture as I've seen it so far, and for God to do so much work in the country.  History has shown that Japan is not a good place for missionaries.  I think that's okay because I'm not really going as a missionary, in a sense, but more as a follower of Christ.  I want people to see, in a sense, not to hear.

In any case, I met with the staff of ITPS, we prayed, and it was decided that they would help me get to Japan.

After a few months I found out that ITPS was working on securing a place for me to live in a church in the heart of Osaka, one of Japan's largest cities.  I would live in and serve a church called J-House (use your google translator).  I think I first heard about J-House in March.  It is now mid-July and I still don't know if I'll be living there or not.  ITPS is still working with them to figure out if I'll live there or not, and they have told me to plan like that's where I'm going.  I've been doing that and faithfully trusting that they will work everything out by the time I'm supposed to leave, but I'm starting to get anxious.  Like stomach hurt, heartburn every day kind of anxious.  It's a terrible feeling.

I won't technically be able to work in Japan for at least two months time, because of my visa status, so in the meantime I have to have some sort of funds in order to live and work at the church (an unpaid position).  ITPS suggested that since I will be working for the church during this time that I should send out support letters in order to raise the financial backing that I'll need to stay in Japan for at least three months and in order to buy a plane ticket.  They suggested at least $8,000.

So I sent out support letters, which to me was a very difficult thing to do for several reasons.  One, I have no idea where anyone lives so mailing letters is nearly impossible. Two, it is very difficult for me to ask someone to give me money, even for something like this.  Three, I just didn't know who I should send letters.

After several months of fundraising I still have less than $2000.  I have enough for a plane ticket, and that's about all.

I don't know where the rest of the money is going to come from, or if it will come at all, which adds to the whole, nausea, heartburn thing.

All I know is that every time I turn with this to God.  Every time I pray or open my Bible, or do one of my daily Bible readings on my phone everything tells me that I'm supposed to be in Japan serving God.  For example:  Yesterday I was so anxious, so sick to my stomach about what I'm going to do about money in Japan, or even what I'm going to do about money before I get there.  I prayed a short prayer and went to a daily reading program I do called "Unquestionable character".  The reading for the day was Psalm 49: 1- 20, the opening lines of the lesson involved read, "How should we feel when we experience a lack of resources?" The lesson went on, "Wisdom teaches that our financial circumstances are never an appropriate cause of fear."  I know, out of the situation it doesn't sound like as much, but yesterday, getting sick about this issue, it was extremely convicting.

All this to say:
I don't know how, but I know God will use me, and I'm dearly convinced that it will be in Japan.

So pray for me!