How far has the gospel reached? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
My mother-in-law recently got an IPhone and thus, no longer needs the ITouch that she’d got for Christmas. She sent it to my wife instead. Now my wife, Allie, has a love for most everything Japanese, except their food. She can’t stand their food. One app she downloaded was a Japanese radio app. She was surprised to find a Christian station on there and one that included hymns. Allie doesn’t care for hymns too much, but she knows that I love them.
So last night as we’re going to sleep we hear these Japanese singers singing hymns and I am just moved with amazement. Japan is a religious country in many ways and a highly technological country, but Christianity does not have too much of an impact there sadly. It’s because of my wife’s great love for the country that we pray God will bring the gospel there every night and we’d love to get to be a part of that somehow. (I have this great dream still that someday I’m going to get to take my wife to Japan.)
The weddings in Japan are usually Christian, but births and deaths are more done in Shinto and Buddhist style. It’s not the case that Christianity is unheard of. It’s just not ranked well, although there actually are Japanese seminaries which makes me glad to know that even there, young ministers are training for the gospel.
It’s also an honor based system which would make it even harder to go outside of one’s family lines and take on a different religion. I heard these singers last night and thought that these people are getting no recognition most likely for what they do. Many of our singers in even Christian music today can go on concert tours and be recognized. Probably not so over there. I wonder how a radio station supporting hymns and other Christian music even stays open.
But what’s incredible the most about this? They love Jesus. I just thought last night about how cool it is that in this country out in the ocean so far away in time and space from where the story of Jesus took place, that there are several people who love Jesus. As Allie pointed out, they probably love him more than many of us do, and their great reason could be that they sacrifice so much more to love Him.
Often times, skeptics of Christianity tell me that if God wanted to get His message out, He chose a poor way to do it. Yes. It’s a way that’s so poor that here, 2,000 years later, in our own neck of the woods (Here in America at least), greatly separated by time and space, we are still talking about this subject constantly to this day. It was such a bad method that today in America, there are numerous people who would be willing to die for Jesus at this moment and you’ll find millions more, if not billions more all over the world.
Some you’ll even find in Japan.
Because some Japanese people love Jesus. How cool is that?
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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