Japanese churches are busy

I have received several recordings from a friend of an old Calvary pastor's teaching in Japan. Pastor Mike Kohama was one of the first verse by verse Calvary expositional teachers. The Recordings are okay but the back gound noise is very distracting. I was amazed at how spoiled we are here at CCCM with Chucks decision to make the sanctuary as quiet as possible to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to the hearts of the people. The kids are put into classrooms and those parents who are insistent that they must sit with their kids go to the family room. In most of the churches in Japan you can't do that because of the small space and the lack of teachers to facilitate children's programs. Even in the bigger churches the Pastor must be patient as parents seem to want to be apart of the whole with their screaming kids some even walk around the church bouncing their kids and make the sound of a choo choo train..."shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo". My legalistic mentality has be become more flexible to allow for this in some cases and not become so rigid that Families feel I am anti-kids. I love kids I have 4 of them one in heaven alive. But kids cannot be the controlling influence and distract and disrupt the Holy Spirit. Some families treat the kid as the center of the Universe. Everything revolves around Juniors nap, feeding, and tantrums. When kid number 2 arrives then a new center of the Universe comes and kid number one as I have observed recently in another family, becomes an orbiting satellite who when close enough to the new child can be hostile and violent jeopardizing the health and safety of the new born. Jesus is the center. And I believe a church service should reflect that. I have a lot to learn about Japanese society and about getting rid of my American bias and centering on the Word of God and direction of the Holy Spirit.

イエスキリスト学 Christology

We have been going through the doctrines of Jesus Christ and God has been blessing as we learn together all that Jesus has accomplished for us and to us and will do in us. Keizo San has been giving a lot of heeee and the asoooka type phrases. I have been asking Mihoko translate some of the terminology also Kiyomasa helped me in the beginning to start the vocabulary list of Christology. I threw every thing into a wheel and am able to explain the doctrines of Anthropology (人類学；jinruigaku), Hamartiology (罪悪学；zaiaku gaku ), and Christology (キリスト学）. The outer most circle is "How the Bible views man" the next inner circle is "how the Bible views sin in man in relation to God", the third ring describes Christ's work to undo or change man's condition. The fourth ring is how God relates to man through Jesus' work. It is really cool. What is really cool is to look at the Kanji or pictagraphs of the word for the doctrines. The word doctrine is Shugi (主義). Within that character is the (gi) kanji for righteousness that is made up of the character for sheep over the character for self. So Sheep over self is righteous. Then Shu is the character for lord. The Lord next to the self with a sheep over it is doctrine. Cool eh? I guess you have to be Japanatized in order to geek out over things like this. A democracy is a minshu shugi 民主主義．Min represents people. This word is the people are lord and the shugi is the doctrine. So the democracy is kind of sad as the people become lord of the land and create their own righteous doctrine. The pictagraph for flood is 8 persons in a boat. Gee, I wonder where that came from? There are some books out on this stuff but it can as with anything be taken too far. We have to be careful not to spiritualize every sneeze. Here is a picture of the chart. Later.

Hurry up and wait

Well we are pressing on and the avalanche that we experienced is now slowing down as I am realizing that we still have to live for the next three months here. I am having to re-seal our upstairs veranda (patio) floor, patch holes in our garage walls, secure the cabling and wiring that has been hanging around. I may get this place so nice we may not want to leave. ;o)) I still need to go and get picts for my visa. My business phone numbers are going to go to a friend and I am going to dissolve the business. This will be good. I may keep the name as we have our insurance through it and use it as a tool for us.
The Monday night Japanese School of the Bible is going great. We are almost through the doctrines of Jesus and last night was on Sanctification (Seibetsu in Japanese) Sei means holy and betsu means separtion. I started the class just convicted that I am not as holy as I should be. We saw the three aspects of positional, progressional, and ultimate sanctification. It went really well and we realize that though we are declared sanctified we still have our part to walk the walk and talk the talk. God calls us to be holy for He is holy. But we also saw that this isn't to be a law that we are stumble through but that it is for a closer relationship to God. The Bible says "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." This can only be increased more and more through personal holiness. We are seeing in our Friday nights going through the book of Exodus that the whole wilderness experience is about the sanctification process. God is purifying the Jews for a personal relationship with him. Thank the Lord for his Mercy and Grace through the blood of Jesus that we can now in freedom enjoy the time with God and see the benefits of being close to him in every situation through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are going to go into a few weeks study on the Holy Spirit and see how God has provided for us a real comforter and helper in this area.
Pray for Mihoko going to Japan in April 7 through the 14th. Pray she will find a great place for our home and a hospital. Pray for me to keep my head in the game and work. It is hard to be thinking about what we need to do to get ready to go to Japan and neglect the work that I need to do. We have started to see some support come in and we are saving that for when we get to Japan and all the expenses we will be incurring. These are personal supporters thank you guys, Calvary's support won't start until we are 30 days in country. We had someone interested in renting our place but it didn't work out so we are now listing it on the MLS and we have an agreement with a brother at Church who will be maintaining the place and handling all the details for renting, maintaining, and credit checks and things like that. I am working on a good Friday message as we are in Exodus 17 where Moses strikes the rock. God's timing is great as good friday is all about Jesus our rock being struck. So I am excited to take the message from exodus to the first century and then close the evening with communion. God bless you guys.

Royal Silverware

Hey guys,

Walk By Faith! or as this guys walk on water by faith.

God is already providing what we need in Japan. We were thinking that we were going to have to buy a lot of stuff like Silverware (knife, fork,spoon, etc). God already has a game plan. We were informed by one of Mihoko's mom's friends that her aunt is a relative of the royal family line and she has just been placed in a home to be cared for. They were wondering what to do with all her stuff...God is good. There maybe some real cozy futons there. Definately silverware and some neat stuff like laquer-ware. This is the nice black laquer bowls and cups and stuff. He knows our needs and takes care of us. Matthew 6 "Don't worry about what you will wear"...or what you will eat with.

Garage Sale

We were planning on having a garage sale for all of our stuff to get rid of it. Some people got together and have already started to plan one for us. A few of our Japanese Lady friends from Chaya got together and held a 3 day garage sale with tons of stuff. They had a lot left over and a friend suggested about our garage sale. So I get a call saying bring your truck and pick up this stuff. I had a truck full of blessings and my friends car was over flowing as well. So we are now stuffing their garage for the garage sale that won't happen until the first weekend in May. Mark your calendars and tell your friends to come and get some outrageous bargains. We are doing it in May because a Realtor has a yearly spring garage sale for the community. I will post the date and time later when we find out the exact date. It will be in Irvine at the same location as the Home Fellowship we have.