Already But Not Yet

We've been back two days and I can already feel my head swimming with thoughts, ideas, hopes, and prayers for my family and for Japan (this is partly also jet lag's fault). The trip was encouraging, difficult, and affirming. Amilia had a fever, Hiroko had a fever, I was surrounded with a language I have a minimal understanding of. I genuinely feel that we were being prepped in a short stint for what life abroad will look like for the family.

A couple of thoughts on our trip:

• Japan is lost.
• Everywhere we went (literally, everywhere) there were what kept coming to mind instances of "artificial happiness". Whether it was the blaring noise of a pachinko parlor, a billboard promising benefits of life only God can give, friends laughing together over drinks, recorded sounds of birds chirping happily in a subway five levels below ground, they were everywhere. I say these are instances of "artificial" happiness because at the end of the day they aren't sustaining. They're fun things; good things in a lot of cases. Japan's population is 99% comprised of people who dabble in Shintoism, Buddhism, Cults, and those who elevate the culture to positions of worship.
• Here's the kicker though: how is this different from the US? How is this different from our own hearts? We all are prone to seek the created over the Creator (Romans 1:18-29), to elevate things to a higher place than they ought. There is one way that it is different, though: .25% of Japan has been reached with the Gospel. 99% of the people in Japan have never heard the gospel. Stop and think about that for a minute--it's easy to gloss over. Matthew 9 says that Christ had compassion as he looked at the crowds. A friend had our team do an exercise in which we were asked to look at and count 1,000 people (statistically, maybe one of those people would have heard the gospel in Japan) and look at their faces. Are our hearts moved to compassion when we look at the crowds and see them in their spiritual state as Christ did, harassed and helpless? 
• The need is great.
• The people we met with who are working for the Church expressed this to us. Japan needs workers. The workers are so few! If all of Japan is to be reached, many churches need to reach 70,000 people or more. 70,000 people--less than 1% of which may have heard the gospel. I am reminded of the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts whose conversation with Philip is recorded in Scripture: So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Later, we see the continuation of the conversation: Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. Oh, that more would go to their neighbors, families, and nations to open their mouths and tell the good news about Jesus!
• The church, the Bride of Christ, is God's most powerful way of disciple-making and sanctification. Through his Church, and through his people his manifold wisdom is made evident and proclaimed. Japan needs churches, and church planters. Men and women to be guides and ministers of reconciliation to the world. We met many who desire to see churches planted and it was encouraging.

Tonight Hiroko and I worshipped at The Village for the first time in a month. My heart was filled with gratitude to the Lord for this place, the people here, and this church's role in my family. I thought on how much I will miss it.

In this good there is also room in my heart for complacency and stagnancy. I found myself sad at the thought of leaving; tempted to stay. There isn't a problem with being sad, but there is a problem if we operate in emotions rather than the call of God. Paul wrote on this struggle in Romans 7: So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Hiroko and I aren't leaving without inhibitions or struggles. We delight in our calling, we want to go. We have been called. We are going in faith. The way will be rough, difficult, and wrought with tears and sorrows. There will be days of rejoicing and days of confusion. Our desire is to finish our time here well.

We were once far off, but by God's grace were brought near to Him. May we all elevate the call of God on our lives more than the beckoning of the law of sin. And exhort one another to operate in faithful obedience to the call of Life that God beckons to us all in Christ.