regeneration

I have been listening to the Onething web stream on ihop.org, as well as sermons from their weekend podcast archives this week. One of the messages from the weekend teaching archive was on fasting. Mike Bickle named several kinds of fasting. The mos common, of course, is going without food, but he suggested prayer–a season of heightened devotion to such. Since I have had blood sugar issues in the past, my enthusiasm for going without food for long periods of time is pretty much nil. Spirit’s willing, flesh’s stupid.

Our former church always encouraged us to start the year with a 21-day fast. My former young adult pastor asked everyone on Facebook if they were doing one. It got me thinking.

As Mike spoke on fasting, he explained that it’s not about us gritting our teeth and bearing hunger for a certain period of time. It’s about deliberately weakening ourselves. We become dependent on God because our strength is diminished.

I mused: what else besides food am I reliant on? I laid down video games and comic books this past weekend–not that there’s anything wrong with such entertainment, mind you, but it was becoming a distraction. A hindrance. Mind you, I needed a distraction. Christmas in the Shores household was not a pleasant affair. Both of our daughters were sick, and though I had a week of vacation, we couldn’t afford to go anywhere, both in terms of finances and responsibility to take care of the girls. So I retreated into comic books for a few days, reading through a new series and revisiting some old series that I had loved as a teenager. It was nice to retreat into fantasy for a few days, and it was also a retreat from what I perceived to be a lie. I had heard that Christmas 2009 would be our best ever, but it was shaping up to be one of our worst.

I wonder if perhaps in my retreating into comic books, I missed something God was trying to tell me. Maybe I could have tried harder to pursue him that week. Water under the bridge, but I wonder: did I miss out on some of the blessings that could have been, be they spiritual or physical or both? I don’t know.

I just know that things have to change.

After some prayer, I decided on an unusual sort of fast: fasting English, my native language. I’ve been trying to learn Japanese for almost two years now with very limited success. What if I took 21 days and, instead of Twittering, posting on Facebook, and blogging in English, I restricted myself to only communicating in Japanese? My native language is a crutch. What if I couldn’t use that crutch any more? Would I be forced to pick up my bed and walk?

It’s a crazy idea, but I’m going to do it. Unless someone writes a comment or reply requiring me to respond in English. I’m going to take January 1-22 and only use Japanese online. This will require a ton of dictionary look-ups and probably more than a few one-word Brightkite posts, but so be it.

I believe that God commissioned me to learn Japanese back in 2007, and I’m going to take him at his word. If he wants me to learn that language, I’m going to use that language. I have been called to preach Jesus to Japan, and whether that’s on short-term mission trips or for the rest of my life, there’s no better time than 2010 to take that first step–to finish what I’ve started.

I was invited to a party in Tokyo on January 22nd. I decided to take this as a faith challenge of sorts: God, if this is really You, and if I really do this unusual fast for 21 days, how cool would it be if on the 22nd day I was finally able to go there? That would be severely awesome. I don’t know how that will work out, but you know what? I’m getting over that.

I’m getting over needing to ask ‘why didn’t that work?’ about everything. My new motto is, ‘who cares?’ I’m moving in partnership with God. My heart is set towards Him, and if I miss it, it’s not a big deal any more. I’m not going to look back.

So I might have missed some details. But that doesn’t mean that I did anything wrong, or if I did make a mistake, it doesn’t mean that there is anything fundamentally wrong with me. It just means that God has better plans. And that’s fine with me.

That’s fine with me.

Today’s speaker at Onething was Loren Cunningham of Youth With A Mission. He was talking about what he always talks about: going into all the world and preaching the Gospel. I needed to hear his message, so while I was working, I plugged in some headphones and listened with one ear. One sentence gripped me in particular: “God is calling some of you as IT [information technology] ministers. That may sound funny, but we are called to go preach the Gospel to where everyone lives. Most people live online, live on the Internet. So some of you are going to go there.”

It reminded me of a phrase I’d heard earlier this year: ‘business missionaries’. That God is sending businessmen and women to Japan as missionaries. They won’t be doing traditional missions work. They’ll be サラリイマン. They’ll be in the business world, in the marketplace. They’ll be preaching the Good News to the poor: the men and women in the companies of Japan.

Now is the time to go. What can it hurt? You jump and fall, and just when you’re about to hit the ground, God catches you. Or you fly. Or you die and get to be with Him. Whatever. It’s a win-win-win situation. We can’t lose.

This will be my last post in English for a while. Starting January 1, I’ll be posting in Japanese here, on 2nihon ブログ, on Twitter, and on Facebook, with photos on Brightkite.