Prayers please...

"You guys are so great." "You have great power." "I admire you so much..." "I pray that God sees your efforts and gives you fruit..."

These statements from church members hurt deeply. On the surface they are so...laudatory. But the words hint again and again that the ministry I'm doing here is not freeing or discipling the church, but putting it in even deeper bondage to the currently-held pictures of ministry and Christianity.

My power. My greatness. My efforts to do ministry. On one hand, I feel like I'm constantly disappointing people by not working hard enough or connecting to enough people. On the other hand, when I hear statements like this, I feel like all I'm doing is propagating the idea that missions is for Americans, relationship with God is for Americans, God's power is for Americans, truth is for Americans, prayer is for Americans...

What am I trying to communicate? I would love to express to the dear church members that the God of the Bible, the Creator-Yahweh-Savior-Christ-Holy Spirit-God, is for them. Not the head of another religious organization that they can add to their list of religions. Not the teacher of a moral code. Not a foreign, American deity...but the one, true, living God who creates lovingly and powerfully, deserves and demands glory, justly sees and judges sinful hearts, pours Himself out (His blood to redeem and His Spirit to sanctify), and seeks for all to be loved, called His own, and join in lives of celebrating all He is--a celebration that can never end, because He never ends.

Good grief. It's no wonder why I'm having trouble communicating that--I can't even put it into one coherent written sentence.

How do I speak? And, even more importantly, how do I live, and work, and build relationships, and share moments?

A former college professor of mine would, I think, say something like, "Tell them who they are."

And maybe that is really what is needed.

These people come to their 12-person-church every Sunday, with a painfully slow organ and cold air seeping through window cracks. They spend 3 hours with other Christians, talking about pets and food and the weather, and then they return home to their families who are not Christian, to the culture which mixes temples and shrines and churches, and to the news that continually is reminding them of the struggles in the world caused by discriminatory beliefs and those who radically hold to any kind of truth.

It's hard to remember who we are in this world--and who we are not. It's hard to remember who God is.

So I'm back to prayer and the truth, again--prayer that God's communication would happen, and the truth because that is the only way we will learn our true identity--the only thing that brings freedom and light into darkness, confusion, and bondage.

Please consider praying with me. Pray for the church in Japan, that Truth's freedom would push off the weight of many lies. Please pray that a living faith would burn in the hearts of those who simply add Christianity as a religion with all their other religions. Please pray that family members would come to faith as a unit, and that spouses and children would be blessed with faith, so that whole families can stand firm together in faith, love, and joy, and actively remind each other of God's grace and their identity as God's children. Please pray that I would know when to work and when to rest, when to fight and when to fail...so that people don't see an American, but they see God.