God's Path

3 Mar 2013

Dear Phyllis,

Last Friday night I sat at an empty table, silently looking at the front door, through which no one walked. Finally, Pammy said, “Let's go out in the kitchen and you can teach me the Bible”. It wasn't too great. At 8:30 we turned off the lights, and went up stairs. I sat in my chair on the balcony and watched World War 2 historical You Tube series on my computer. That wasn't exactly what we had in mind.

The other night Pammy and I were trying to have a time of prayer. She prayed first. When my turn came I started to pray, and suddenly words simply would not come out of my mouth. I groaned and panted so hard that Pammy asked if I was alright. I replied, “Physically I”m okay, but spiritually there is something desperately wrong.”
“What is that?”
“The people in this muban (housing area) aren't saved.”
I feel like a man sitting in the path of a huge tsunami that is about to hit here in a few minutes, trying to crank the car to flee. But the car won't start.

I wonder what Noah felt like for 100 years as he was building his ark. Peter called him a preacher of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5). He must has warned his neighbors, friends, and relatives about the coming danger. He had access to his grandfather Mathuselah, and his father Lamech. His great grandfather was Enoch, who walked with God. When Enoch's son was born, he put the name on him, Mathuselah which meant “Upon His decease will be the going forth of waters”. You can't get anything more clear than that. Mathuselah was God's time clock. He and his son, Lamech, were there every day while Noah was building the ark. The Bible calculations show that Noah's father, Lamech, died five years before the flood, and Mathuselah died the year of the flood. We can't pin it to the day from the Scripture, but I rather suspect that when we get to heaven, we will see, the moment Methuselah took his last breath, there was a loud clap of thunder; Noah and his family were already in the boat with the door closed, and the rain began. We are living through a rerun of that today.

Samuel Rutherford said, “Christ has His own gate where He will come in.” While we stand at the door with flowers waiting for the Lord, He will come in the side door unannounced. The ways of the Lord are so much different than ours. We are very good at drawing a path on a map, and telling the Lord how to go from point A to point B. But the Lord has His own road, and frequently will get there some other way; quite different than what we expect.

When Adoniram Judson set sail from America, he was on his way to India to work with William Carey. Very much against his plans, he wound up in Burma. He labored in Burma for years seeing minimal results. His first convert was not a Burmese but a Karen minority tribe man. His life was a terrible heart break.

Several years ago I had the privilege of spending an afternoon in Takelec with the number two man in the Baptist convention of Burma. He said that they still have a long ways to go among the Burmese, but work among the minority tribe people is almost done. There are two ways of looking at that. It is true that several of these minority groups now have a strong Christian culture. They are Christian in the sense that America was a Christian nation until the past two decades. But not everyone in America was saved. An enormous number of the Karens, Kachins, Ahkas, and secveral other groups are genuine believers but much of that Christianity is more culture than saved believers. If Judson was to come back today and see the change in Burma and the number of Christians, he would be overwhelmed with gratitude. This was not what he expected, but the Lord did get His work done, and used Adoniram Judson, in a very major way, to do it.

One of the major experiences of my life was building the Karuizawa language school chapel. We had tried unsuccessfully for two years to raise funds to put up that building. At a committee meeting one day, I suggested I could do it. “How?” I would make glue lams – laminated wooden beams. That was a major miracle project. As I got into it, the Lord began to do miracles for me to the degree that I thought I could do anything. I got very arrogant in faith. I wanted to show people how faith could move mountains, and I was the man who could move them. I felt it was critical that we have good weather the day we put up the beams, and – of course – I asked the Lord for His day. I came up with a day that I felt certain was the day to do it. It was right in the middle of the rainy season, but that made it even better because it would be an outstanding miracle. I was absolutely euphoric with faith. Man howdy, did we get wet! It didn't rain – it poured every minute we were outside. The only time it quit was when we went inside for lunch, and when we finished at 8:00 o'clock that evening. The building was a great success, but I was a severally chastened man when I saw how the Lord went out of His way to show me that He was in charge of His work – not me.

Another major event in my life was “my cow experience”. When the world began to go crazy with computers, I was determined that was one road I would never go down. But in 1994, when I was in the states, my son, Dave, bought me a beautiful word processor for $150. That changed my life. Oh me, it was amazing! If I made a mistake, I could correct it by simply hitting the delete key. I could change entire sentences. I could record what I had written on a floppy disk. I could print out my letters in different fount and even add colors. And most of all – it had a spell check! With a wave of a wand, that word processor brought me out of the world of near illiteracy to being a gifted letter writer. But three years later my word processor went south. Something went haywire, and I couldn't get it fixed. I thought, shigata ga nai (there is nothing I could do abut it), I will just buy a new one in Japan. After a very diligent search, I was surprised to discover that they simply did not sell English word processors in Japan. True, they had tons of word processors, but they were all for Japanese. They did have English on them, along with half a dozen other languages, but, man howdy, were they complicated, and terribly expensive. I could learn the wiring diagram for the space shuttle before I could figure out how to work a Japanese word processor. And the price was about or five times higher than what my little English one cost. I felt like a bird that had his wings clipped. My letter writing days were over.

Then one day in, 1999, Rusty White called me. I had just gotten back from a trip to SEA where I was smuggling Bibles into Vietnam. In those days I was working at New Life League as a carpenter, and that was my sole source of support. I didn't get paid if I wasn't working there and my trips to SEA were expensive. Rusty had just bought a penshon (small hotel) and wanted it converted for a church. I was a major job. I desperately needed the money I would get for working at NLL, and working for Rusty was free. But, shigata ga nai, it was the Lord's work and I couldn't refuse him. Rusty came up in a tiny pickup truck and hauled most of my shop to Higashi Yoshino, near Nara. I wound up spending three months down there building a very nice church and home for them; but didn't make a yen.

The Whites had good support, and money was no problem. Rusty's dad was a PHD making a lot of money. The Whites were calling home almost every day, and anything that they wanted, his dad would send out in the mail. I had been praying asking the Lord to give me a new English word processor for over a year. Now I saw a way the Lord could answer my prayer, with a little help from me. Rusty was deeply grateful for all the work I had done for them, and I was sure he would be delighted to give an orei (gift) for my services. I told Rusty one day, “If you would like to do something for me, I would be grateful if your dad could get me an English word processor in the states”.

Two weeks later Rusty walked in with a silly grin on his face, and a huge box in his arms. It looked like he was carrying a washing machine. With great delight he said, “Can you use this?” I opened the box to find a large professional electric typewriter. The box was covered with $50 stamps. Mr. White had bought me a top-of-the-line office typewriter. My heart sank. It wasn't a word processor at all. It didn't have a spell check. It had a very small memory. To check something, I would have to type it out on paper, look at what I had written, and redo it. And it was huge. I couldn't carry it around with me like my little word pro. I didn't know what to say. There was no way I could use it, and I couldn't say thank you. It was worse than nothing. I never took it out of the box and left it in the room when I left weeks later.

I could understand how Mr. White could make a mistake like that. He had banks of stenographers working for him, and an electric typewriter would be their hearts desire. But he didn't know that I didn't know how to type, and couldn't use a typewriter. But my problem was the Lord. I couldn't understand how Jesus could make such a mistake. He knew my need, and it was Jesus that I had asked to give me a word processor. I thought this was worse than a dirty tick that the Lord had pulled on me. I felt just like I had asked Jesus for a horse to ride to church, and He gave me a cow instead. And I couldn't drink the milk. I called that “my cow experience”. I mean to tell you it was a big problem. For a long time I was afraid of the Lord. I told Jesus, “If this is the way You do business, count me out. I can't trust You. I might ask You for a car and You will give me a boat instead.” For months I couldn't ask the Lord for anything. In my dilemma I asked the Lord why He made that big mistake. He told me clearly, “This is what you get for trying to help me out. You asked Me, and then you thought you would help Me by asking Mr. White.” Okay, I could understand that.

But I was really at odds with the Lord. I thought if He hates my letters that much, I am through. Roald Lidal was going to the states, and could have easily bought me a word processor while he was there. But I refused to ask him.

Then one day my friend, Tagawa, was going to Akihabara. Akihabara is the craziest electronic place in the world. It is the electronic center of Tokyo. If there is anythng electronic in the world, Akihabara has it. I asked Tagawa san to see if they had any English word pros in Akihabara. He came back saying that he couldn't find an English word pro, but they had tons of lap top computers. In desperation, I thought, if I could get close to a word pro with a lap top computer, perhaps that might be an answer. The next week I went in with him. He took me to a little hole-in-the-wall shop on the 8^th floor of a building. When we walked in, there was a little IBM lap top sitting on a table for $100. Tagawa went out of his mind. He said, “This has everything!” I didn't have $100 but Tagawa san said he would give me $50. He was so excited, I bought my first computer for $50. They cost $2,500 to $3,000 in those days.

I was delighted that at last I had something I could type on that had a spell check and worked just like my word processor. More than that, pretty soon, I got into e-mail. Then I began to branch out into the cyber world. How I thank God for “my cow experience”! Had it not been for that, I never would have got immersed in the cyber world. I never would have gotten into e-mail, and a host of other things. God knew my need, and gave me a painful experience, so He could give me the best. I was waiting for Him to come in at one door, but He came in a totally different way.

Yes, His ways are much different than ours, and vastly better. Praise God!
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