Dreams, music, and new friends

“What’s your dream?” The young Japanese Christian girl asked me almost as soon as I sat down in the small prayer room at Nozomi church. We’d spent almost five hours together that day, playing guitar and piano, learning new songs, and practicing with my student who usually comes along to our twice-a-month nursing home visits. I was tired…tired of people, tired from all the new Japanese songs and kanji I’d tried to cram into my brain, and tired mostly from the daily talks and thoughts of the changes taking place at the church and my return to America. I kind of laughed at her question, because it was exactly what I didn’t want to answer at that moment. “I don’t have a dream,” was actually what I said. I didn’t want to tell her that the closest thing I had to a dream was crawling into a cave and hiding for a very long time.

“What’s your dream?” I turned the question back on her. She paused for a moment, then said, “I want to minister with music. I want to show Christians that God is way bigger than any boxes they try to put Him in…I want them to have more than a religion. I want to help them to have a relationship with God.”

My drooping eyelids flew open at her response—it was practically a direct quote of something I’d said to Cindy at lunch the day before. Who was this girl? Why had God brought her to this church right now?

A big part of my job here is leading various times of worship and prayer…and playing guitar at random prayer meetings, at the nursing homes, etc. Because of that, I’ve been searching for Japanese worship songs for many months now, frustrated with my lack of knowledge of the language…often I’ve reminded God that I struggle with simple sentences in Japanese, and asked why He’s given me a role where I have the opportunity to lead people in deep, spiritual situations in this language. I’m always struggling between staying silent, knowing how awful the language I speak really is, and between speaking, being convicted in the fact that spiritual things NEED to be said, no matter how badly they come across. All throughout these months, I’ve wondered why God has even put me in this position…there really wasn’t anyone coming after me to put in the role of “Japanese worship leader”…why would God give this church six months of poorly led music by a foreigner?

And now here was this girl, sitting across the room from me, music spread between us. When I asked her to lead some of the songs for worship that night, she readily agreed, and did it with ease, and with a spirit of joy, peace, humility…

So much for thinking that music was just my thing. :)
And so much for thinking that God's plan only lasted as far as I could see...

Since that time, we've led worship together multiple times...gone and visited a nursing home...written songs...and it's only been one week. Even while I'm in the process of stepping out of things, there are new doors of training and learning that God opens up. It's good to have a very visual reminder that He has this whole long-term plan thing worked out--for the church and for my life. And more music...