Ka san arrived for worship before anybody else, so we prayed for Sushi san. Ka san prayed that no matter what might happen for the next couple of hours we would be glad, because God was in control. I was a little nervous about the worship, so listening to her saying that, I was ashamed of my lack of faith. Also, I was amazed by Ka san’s, a new Christian, pure and strong faith! Boy, I realized after everybody left that God led her to pray for what would be happening during the worship!
Sushi san showed up with a cheesecake (!) and we first had dinner. That broke the ice. We moved to the tatami room and sang some praise songs. Then I prayed and we read John 8:31-41. I had everybody take a couple of minutes to think about the three points we wer considering and asked them to share their thoughts. Because the passage we read was kind of obscure, our discussion was slow. We were discussing what the freedom in this passage meant, and then we noticed Sushi san was snoring over the Bible (“Oh, no, what should I do, Lord?” I prayed). I sensed that the Holy Spirit wasn’t working. He woke up so I asked him what he thought about the passage and he said, “It’s difficult. And what you are talking about sounds like something spoken in a foreign language.”
That was the last thing I wanted to hear from a non-believer! I don’t want them to feel isolated! Then something nudged me to say, “Sushi san, is there anything you’d like to know about what we believe? Feel free to ask questions you’d like to ask us. Anything!” Then he started to talk about a girl who he met at a company he delivered something to the other day. She said she goes to church every Sunday. Her face was shining so he asked what made her life different. She said she’d been changed since she believed in Jesus and that she was filled with joy. Sharing that story with us, Sushi san asked M-san if he was really free being a Christian. M-san gave his testimony and that led Ka san to share her testimony.
From then on, we just started to talk about a lot of different things, like sin, prayer, miracles God has done in our lives, and on and on. I thought I should break in and suggest we pray before setting the Bible aside and fellowshipping, but I felt that I shouldn’t cut the conversation that was going, so I decided to serve Sushi san’s cheesecake and let the conversation go. It was unlike a typical worship. At that time, I thought, the worship was chaos. At least it was different from what I would have done last year. It was not orderly. But Sushi san, who didn’t know that Jesus was even real, learned about what He did for us humans, what sin is, and what our hope in Jesus is, and heard first-hand testimonies from believers.
Pray for Sushi-san to come trust Christ soon. Pray for this small group of believers to grow in faith and numbers.
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