When we first moved to Japan in 2014, everything was new and we had no idea what we were doing, especially when it came to the festivals! Our twins Becca and Anna went into Japanese kindergarten and soon after came our first experience with Tanabata. Thankfully the other Japanese parents were extremely helpful in getting us oriented and we were soon pros at the whole thing.
Fast forward to 2020 and all three girls have danced in a number of Tanabata Festivals — but this year was a first for us as Joshua took his turn. Normally this festival is held in July, but due to Corona, they postponed it until September. We are very thankful that the school found a way to make it work — dividing the whole school into three different groups to limit the amount of people together at the same time.
Even though the festival felt very different, it was still great to see Joshua and his friends all dressed up in their yukatas, dancing together and having a great time.
Blending Cultures
When you move to a new country, cultures are going to blend. The extent to which that happens depends on you and what you want for your family and children. For us, we are embracing as much of Japanese culture as we can. There are so many wonderful parts and we don’t want to miss out. What we won’t do is compromise our beliefs — we won’t worship other gods or idols, but we certainly respect everyone else’s choice to do so. Our Heavenly Father gives us such a rich and rewarding life that we need not seek out some other source of blessing — He is more than enough! And we are super blessed to live and work in such a beautiful country with its amazing people.
We need to plan to live. The better the planning, the better the living can be. Without good plans, the best intentions fail. But plans are a funny thing. We can only plan as well as our ability to see ahead. If you’re driving a car and see a sharp curve ahead, you know to pump the brakes, slow down, and prepare to turn safely. The problem comes when you don’t see the sharp turn and you’re barreling down the road full speed ahead.
We plan the way we want to live, but only GOD makes us able to live it.
Proverbs 16:9 The Message
I love this verse from the Bible — full of wisdom! Our own ability to plan will only take us so far. When it comes down to it, we’re at the mercy of God to be able to live out our plans — we’re at the mercy of God to be able to live at all! So what does that mean for planning?
Every year our Paz Team — the team behind our church, our coffee shop and many other noble endeavors — takes a couple days out of our busy lives to prayerfully look down the road and anticipate the curves ahead. It’s best to plan ahead as much as possible. Last year we made some great plans for this year, almost all of which were obliterated by Corona and 2020! But something truly phenomenal happened — the goals we had for reaching more people and expanding the ministry moved forward by a huge rate anyway! It shows God’s hand at work in the midst of all the turmoil of 2020.
Planning Ahead
In light of 2020, how can any of us be so bold as to plan ahead? I think planning ahead this year looks very different than it did last year at this time. There are things we consider now that we’re even a discussion a year ago. We’ve seen how important it is to stay connected to people, even if we can’t meet them physically. We’ve seen the strain and the stress this year has put on families, homes, emotional health and the general well-being of people everywhere. And we’ve realized we can’t take anything for granted.
This year has refined our values and our purpose. It has put in perspective things that really matter — the “non-negotiables” of life. We can no longer plan ahead without a larger perspective. Living in different countries and cultures will certainly open up your perspective, but the greatest perspective we can have is a heavenly one — the very perspective God has.
In the Bible we read the story of God and his creation. We see how it all came to be, how man messed it up so badly, and how God is bringing it all back together. We realize that the stories of our lives are not individual story lines that criss-cross, but they’re a part of a much bigger story that God has been writing since the very beginning. God invites us into His story, and as we receive His invitation, our future is made secure and our path defined.
My recent message from Paz Church — God Has a Story for Your Life
Now the question remains — have I let God into my story to change it, to rewrite it as He sees fit? Have I truly put every part of my life before God, surrendered to Him? The result will be a complete transformation of our lives as we are filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. I move from fighting to control the story line of my life to letting God fight my battles as I rest in Him and follow His lead. This is what the Christian life is all about, and I love it! There’s no other life for me.
There are many unique aspects of Japan and its culture, and this week we have a fun look at one of those things — our kids’ Japanese backpacks, or ランドセル (pronounced “Randoseru”). This backpack is bought when a child enters 1st grade and is used all the way through elementary school! It is strong and durable, which also makes it quite expensive.
But it’s not just the backpack itself that’s unique compared to other countries. It’s is all that goes into it. Not only are the “normal” school items all personalized: notebooks, stationary, pencils, musical instruments, but they all have their own special cloth bag. Then there’s even more unique things: shoes to be worn indoors, sewing kits, wood carving tools, kanji brushes and more! Just looking at the bag and its contents gives you your first glimpse into the complicated and thorough Japanese education system.
It’s really kind of crazy — we’ve lived here over six years, right along the banks of the Tama River, and never once enjoyed a dip in the water until this year. We heard that the river wasn’t a clean river, and so we avoided entering it. But looking at it, it looked so inviting and refreshing. We saw other people kayaking, other people swimming, still others barbecuing nearby. We would admire it from afar, but never enter in ourselves.
Then this year came. Pools and beaches are at limited capacity. Restrictions in place that keep us from enjoying the water like we would like. Couple that with the extraordinary heat of the last couple of weeks and the shortened summer vacation, and we were needing a place close by to go to and cool off.
One of our friends researched the Tama River and found, to our delight, that the water is not only swimmable, but it has a high grade “A” ranking right by where we live, which is the ranking just under drinkable water at AA. What a discovery! So we found a nice shady spot where the water was safe, the current calm and we waded on in with our family. Wow! What a refreshing thing to do — and so close to us! Our experience with the Tama River just improved a hundred times over this Summer, and we would have never discovered it unless everything else was limited as an option. Funny how life’s limitations can lead to the greatest breakthroughs.
God’s Presence is Like a Refreshing River in the Hot Summer
As I was making this video, I realized it is a perfect analogy to God and His presence in our lives. God’s presence is there for each and every one of us — we can see His handiwork all over creation (it’s His very own work, after all). God’s presence is described in the Bible as a River of Living Water, a perfectly pure river which you can drink from and never be thirsty again, a river you can enter and go deeper and deeper until you float away in God’s great current. It is a place of refreshing for the weary and restoration for the tired.
God’s presence is with you now. Maybe you’ve seen it expressed in our lives or in the lives of others who are full of His joy. But have you ever experienced God’s presence in such a way that it refreshes and revitalizes you?
Experiencing God’s presence is the difference between religion (trying to be good to earn God’s favor) and true Christianity, which is receiving God’s love for you through Jesus Christ and trusting him to make you clean. It’s when you stop trying to do life by your own strength. God graciously gives His Spirit to everyone who believes in Him, and His Spirit is like a river of living water that flows from our very hearts. This is a spring of refreshing like no other, and it only belongs to those who have given their hearts over fully to Jesus.
I could have no greater hope and prayer for you that you would discover this source of refreshing that brings life in the midst of so much restriction and that the heat of summer that would dry up all your joy would in fact become a source of joy as you enter in God’s goodness in His river of life.
My only regret in living close to the Tama River all these years is that I didn’t actually enter it until this year. All those hot summers gone by in the stifling heat, and I could have been swimming all along! All of those days with not enough time to go somewhere far, but all I needed was close by and I didn’t even realize it. It was staring me in the face the whole time!
Don’t make the same mistake with God. Don’t wait longer to look into who Jesus is, to believe on Him and receive the Holy Spirit. You can be refreshed right where you are, right now. You too will wish you would have tried it sooner in life!
Imagine if you could say 2020 was the best year of your life so far because it was the year, through all the difficulties, that you found the greatest treasure of all that was so close all along: God’s sweet river of refreshing in Jesus.
Normally, our summer break is filled with lots of fun little day trips capped off with some sort of big summertime excursion. However this year is not normal. Two weeks is hardly enough time to have a normal summer break, and with all the concerns and restrictions in place, we had nearly completely discounted the idea of a decent summer excursion this year.
But when we mentioned how much we enjoyed camping, our friends Yoshi and Takako sprung into action, finding a decent camping place close to a beach in Chiba. They know and love the Chiba area for their family vacations, and thought we would enjoy it as well. Yes, it would be hot, but we would be close by a great beach to cool down. Yoshi was excited to do his Japanese BBQ (an amazing feat, especially camping). So we blocked off a couple of days and headed across Tokyo bay to nearby Chiba for some fun in the sun with family and friends. Now we have some great memories to share!
On Making Friends
Forging good friendships is something that takes intention and work. Recently one of our subscribers contacted me asking how he could make friends. For some, friendships seem to come naturally, but for a majority of people, it’s something elusive and scary. But it doesn’t have to be scary. Here are some practical ways to make friends.
The easiest place to start in making friends is to find something you have in common. When you meet someone new, ask questions until you find something in common. The more things you share in common, the stronger your connection to the other person will be.
Recently one of our viewers reached out to me, a fellow missionary here in Japan. As we chatted, we shared so much in common it was almost scary! We could talk hours on end if time permitted. This created a strong connection right off the the bat.
So what do you do if you’re trying to make friends but don’t have much in common? In that case, or any case really, you can look for ways in which you can serve other people. Maybe you can cook them something, write them a song, or just offer a listening ear. Maybe you have a skill that can be useful to someone or something that will be of service or you can help them in some small way. Even a person who is not looking for a friend will welcome someone who blessed their life.
I have a good friend named Brent back in the States. I met Brent over 20 years ago when I began my first job out of college. Brent and I are very different people, from different generations, backgrounds and upbringings. But Brent was a song-writer and was looking for someone to help him produce his songs. I was a music producer and could meet that need. But I had some needs of my own — I was fresh out of college and had no idea how to work on my own home. Home repair was not in my bag of tricks or talents. Brent often helped me, offering his services as a handyman while I produced his songs for him. It kicked off a great friendship that remains to this day, even though I am too far away to produce his songs and he is too far away to help me with my home repair issues. (How I wish I had Brent here in Japan!)
These things will help you make friends. But the biggest thing that helps in making friends is a genuine interest in other people, and that’s not something that comes natural to us as humans because as our biggest interest is ourselves. Yes, even when we “like” somebody, we usually like them because of the feelings that they give us.
However there is a way to cultivate a genuine interest and care for other people, and that’s by making friends with God. Now this is an extremely foreign concept to many people, and some even scoff at the notion. But friendship with God is a very real thing — I know because I enjoy my own friendship with God! God blesses everyone, but especially those who are His friends. And not everyone is God’s friend. To be God’s friend, you have to believe He’s real and you have to believe that He wants to be your friend even more than you want to be His. You don’t believe me? All you have to do is look at the life of God in Jesus Christ to see the great extent God went to, crossing heaven, earth and hell to become friends with us.
Knowing the love of God in Jesus Christ opens up our hearts to not only receive his love, but to cultivate it in our own hearts, changing the way we feel, think and act towards other people. We can genuinely care for others because God genuinely cares for us, and we can do this even when other people treat us poorly. If they knew God like we did, they wouldn’t act the way that they act! God’s interest in us is not based on performance — it’s not based on anything He can get out of us. It’s based on relationship — through Jesus Christ we too are sons and daughters of God.
A newborn child does nothing to earn the love of his parents. He or she has it simply because they are a child. As they grow up in that love, they learn skills, develop hobbies and interests and turn into fully functioning adults of potential as well. But the parents’ main joy in their child is not based on their accomplishments, but on the relationship they have with their child. The accomplishments are icing on the cake of good relationships.
Good relationships and friendships are very possible. I believe the very best place to learn how to have healthy relationships is in a local church, where you will learn how to have a relationship with God and also learn how to develop healthy relationships with others. It’s a great starting point for developing healthy relationships.
