One of the best things you can do to broaden your perspective and open your eyes to the world around you is to move to another country — preferably one with a culture much different from your own. Moving to another country has a way of opening your eyes to things you never saw before. The most open-minded, interesting people I have ever met are often people who have lived in other countries and have a perspective much larger than just their own culture.
Now, I’m not talking about visiting other countries — that is certainly beneficial — but when you move to another country, you begin to put down roots there. You create a new lifestyle based upon the culture where you live — for better or for worse. Whether your experience is positive or negative will depend on how well you can adapt and what kind of roots you can develop in that new culture. How much do you adapt? How much do you hold onto your own culture? What is the balance? These are all practical, day-to-day decisions every person who lives outside their own country has to face.
What’s the Best Culture in the World?
We have decided to embrace the cultures we live in — whether in the States, in Brazil (becoming avid soccer fans) or in Japan. This doesn’t mean we lost our core identity though. Because even though we’re seen as Americans most everywhere we go, the truth is that we belong to the Kingdom of Heaven. Our citizenship is ultimately with God and his people, the Church. We have a Kingdom Culture that is defined by God’s Word, the Bible, and lived out in practical, day-to-day living. We are ambassadors of this Kingdom wherever we go, and our joy is working with the Church.
What does this living look like? Well, you can start by watching some of our Life in Japan videos to see! Kingdom Culture is marked by love, joy, faith, hope and loving discipline. It puts others first. It values people over things and experiences. It is a view of life focused primarily on God and others. Ironically, when one lives this way, it is fulfilling and satisfying. One can enjoy themselves wherever they live. I am personally convinced that every culture in the world shows a little bit of our true heavenly culture. But what marks Heaven’s culture above all others is love.
A Culture of Love
Love is something not naturally found in the world itself. That’s because it comes from God and has its’ true source in him. The closest thing we have to true love is a mother’s love for her children, and yet that still falls drastically short from the God-kind of love. Love is from God, and Love is God. God’s love holds the whole universe together, and even though many people chose to ignore God, He’s there, pouring out, giving people good gifts, blessings and second chances. God’s ultimate human expression is in the person of Jesus, who is fully God and fully man. In him we can see exactly how far God was willing to go to show his love to us. He gladly gave up his rights as the Prince of Heaven to come and serve fallen humanity. Only true love would do something like that.
Love is not some distant, far off emotion that get stoked every once in a while. Love is not a guise for lust. Love is a commitment, a drive, a passion, a desire to serve. Love heals, restores, forgives, renews, believes and hopes. Love rights things that were wrong and sacrifices self for the good of others. And we were made for this kind of love — the God kind of love. We can search the whole world over, culture by culture, country by country, and never find the kind of love we are looking for until we look up to God. Then we realize it doesn’t matter where we live, God’s love can be experienced and enjoyed anywhere — wherever his Church is, there you can see a physical embodiment of his love.
Experiencing a Culture of Love
Have you experienced God’s love in this way? For most people, their first experience with God’s love is not through God directly but through one of His people who then opens the door to experience the real thing. If you have experienced God’s love, then you’ve also been called to be an ambassador of that love — to be an active part of this Culture of Love means to be actively involved in a local church. Getting actively involved in a church, whether you consider yourself Christian or not, is one of the best decisions you can make. And if you don’t have a local church home, then please consider making our church home your very own!
For more information on our local church: https://paz.church/japan