8. How you maintain spiritual zeal

Somehow this is a topic I shy away from. It feels like I'm blowing my own horn, the opposite of humility. I also believe that there is no single way to do this. God gives each person their own style and I shouldn't suggest that the way I do it is any better than anyone else's. But anyway, I've committed to answering these questions here in a public forum, so I cannot shy away from this.

However here is the disclaimer: I'm no spiritual super hero. These are just the ways that God has enabled me to stay close to him, and really, it is more to do with him holding me close than me clinging on to him.

(This is the eighth in a series of questions I'm answering for a friend's Bible college assignment. You'll find links to the other answers in the series here.)

David and I have read the Bible and prayed together in bed before breakfast for our entire marriage. We don't just pray for ourselves and our family, but this is our main prayer time for all that (and who) we've committed to pray for. I'm not saying that we always do a great job (I fell asleep in the middle this morning, awoken by David saying, "I have to go and make breakfast now, I've prayed for the bottom four things on the list, you have these..." Yes, we have a prayer list, a somewhat complicated one actually, that helps us cover lots of territory (including all our prayer supporters) over a month. We use Our Daily Bread as a reading guide (you can check it out here, but we use the paper version).

I read a lot, as I said last post in this series. I try to not just read fiction, but also non-fiction, particularly edifying types of books. This is not easy, particularly as I like to read to wind down at the end of the day and edifying books aren't always easy to concentrate on when you're winding down. In the period leading up to Easter I forgo fiction altogether and try to devote myself to spiritually-building-up books entirely (again, not always successful on this count).

I'm trying to read all the way through the Bible. I've actually never done this cover-to-cover before and I'm finding the discipline hard. I've been at it since last January (having been significantly derailed by last March's disaster).

For cross-cultural workers, church is difficult, particularly those like me who don't have a great grasp of the language. Listening to a lengthy piece of soliloquy is a very difficult linguistic skill. I am thankful that we go to a service that has simultaneous translation and I frequently take advantage of that. There – I've admitted it! Without the translation, listening to a sermon in Japanese for me is more of a linguistic exercise than a spiritually helpful exercise. I try to hear vocabulary that I know and connect that to the main points on the screen (which are often bilingual).

I go to lots of prayer meetings. Our monthly OMF prayer meeting, monthly class prayer meetings for each of our boys, and weekly CAJ parent's prayer meeting. I find it really helpful to pray with others, it keeps me on track. I get to lead sometimes too and that makes me delve deeper.

Lots of people pray for us. Do you realise what a privilege this is? Do you have 300+ people praying for you and your family? Only in heaven will we know the true extent of this privilege. I count it as one way that God is maintaining my spiritual zeal, by answering all those prayers. I'm also sure some people think how terrible it is to have to rely on others for our financial support, but the truth is, it is a blessing, because we see ourselves as waiting on God to supply our needs and that is an amazing journey.

In the same way we are very often cast upon those prayers when we run into difficulties that are too big for us too manage. I remember being absolutely desperate in a Japanese hospital with my middle son when he was 11 months old, I had no family around to help, they were thousands of miles away. He had pneumonia and wouldn't go to sleep the night he was admitted. I rang someone on the last few yen of my phone card, asked them to pray for us. He fell asleep straight after that call. Just one story of amazing miracles that God has done in our lives as we've relied on him. Last post I talked about the various stresses that we've encountered, but I didn't mention that these things cast us on God's strength again and again. Having to cope with difficulties like this strengthens and deepens your faith.

The last two years I've also done an English Bible study with some other missionary women. We've used Beth Moore studies so no one has to lead, and yet we have preparation work to do ourselves for it during the weeks between meeting. And yes, these seven or eight week Bible studies have taken us months to complete due to incompatible schedules! It has been most refreshing to do these studies. It isn't easy, as a missionary, to choose to spend your time like this. It feels like you should be ministering others instead. However, I'm glad that my friends persuaded me to do these studies.

Last month I mentioned a retreat I went on, as well as an OMF conference. Both of these are annual spiritually refreshing times.

And the less frequent one is home assignment. Different people have different understandings of what a missionary does when they are in their "home" country. One of the reasons is to maintain their spiritual zeal. Spiritual refreshment and renewal after pouring oneself out in another culture is very important. Unless you've lived overseas and worshipped in another language for lengthy periods, you'll not realise how much of a privilege it is to worship in your heart language. We miss it, often playing worship music in English in our house and singing to our boys.

That brings me to something that I particularly notice when I'm in Australia. Something that often sets missionaries apart from those who remain in their home country and that is being proactive about maintaining spiritual zeal. You need to be a self-feeder. Spiritual passiveness just won't carry you through as a missionary. I don't believe it does anyone any good, actually. Actively pursuing a deeper relationship with God is not an easy task, but one of great value, one that God honours.

I now have two questions left in this series, again neither of them are easy.

9. What are the positive and negative aspects of your relationships with other missionaries?
10. What are the positive and negative aspects of your relationships with national Christians?

Wonderful park-day

Today we "discovered" a new park. Well, we went to a park that we hadn't been to before (Showa Kinen Park - or Emporer Showa Memorial Park). It is a little less than an hour's drive away and about half the size of this park that we also love. So it is a little more convenient, but still has lots of wonderful things to do.

I just love driving Tokyo streets at this time of year, though. Arounde very second corner you are surprised by beauty. Cherry blossoms are out and they are in all sorts of surprising spots around the city.

Even sitting at roadworks, we were delighted by the beauty at this spot.

Once we got there, though, we were delighted by tulips, daffodils, cherry blossoms, camellias, and a number of other flowers/flowering trees and bushes that I don't know the names of. I took nearly 100 photos, feast your eyes on this small selection:

This part reminded me of my hometown, Toowoomba, in late
September during their annual Carnival of Flowers.

I love the randomness of this bush that shoots out sprays of
flower-laden stalks.

And plenty of photographers, who are way better than me.

But boys wouldn't be happy if there wasn't play equipment. So we visited these too (in between gawking at flowers).

About 1/3 of the "rainbow hammock".

Hilly trampolines!

And a mysterious area supposed to be the "Misty Forest", but there
wasn't much forest and only the occasional mist.

We took a packed lunch and sat here:

A Japanese-style picnic spot where you remove your shoes and sit
on the floor. Most of us actually sat on the benches on the outside (you
can see David there) without removing our shoes.

And sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured ice-cream to finish off the day.

And special credit goes to CAJ for having this unusual Easter holiday (we've never before had Easter Monday off in the six years we've been there), which made it possible to get to the park on a weekday when there were less crowds.

After some pretty intense months (work-wise) and a bleak long winter, it is hard to express how delightful it is to get out into a park without shivering (oh, forgot to tell you it was the first day of the year that made it into the 20Cs) and seeing all these bursts of colour. 

Resurrection Sunday

Growing up, I didn't know this name for Easter Sunday, but it is a good one!

I have greatly enjoyed listening to English worship songs on this wonderful day. Hard to choose what to share with you, but here is my pick:

Rest and finding time to do it

Yesterday I wrote about how this is a stress of missionary life, in fact ministry life in general from what I've seen of my friends who are in full-time ministry in Australia. Today I wanted to put a positive spin on it and tell you what we do for rest and relaxation.

One of our favourite parks.

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll have noticed that we often go to parks, though a little less so in the midst of winter. With three active boys and no back or front yard to speak of (just enough for weeds and a few flowers, but not play), we're always looking for ways to get them out of the house. This includes going to large parks. We've found a few around the Tokyo and patronise them fairly regularly. If a park is too big a journey (most of the big parks are far enough away that they demand a whole day or close to that), then we tend to take the boys for a ride, or down to the flat spot near the river where they can run, and throw or kick a ball etc., without endangering themselves (or anyone else).

So, just being parents of active boys lends itself to taking time out to recreate. We look back on our time at language school and see that having one and then two sons helped us to have a more balanced life back then. Without kids it is easy to totally sell out to language study and take no time to relax. Our eldest son at that age needed to go outside every morning to play or he was climbing the walls, and us with him.

If you were reading here last year you'll know that we took up camping as a family recreational pursuit. That was a great way to get away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. We're still getting used to it and felt quite physically exhausted from it, but mentally and spiritually it was great to get away into nature.

Camping

On a smaller note, we try not to work in the evenings after we've done Bible time with the boys in their beds. That creates about an hour of time which we usually spend together (and eat dessert together), although not so when David was studying part-time for his Masters last year, he's taking a break this year, thankfully. Often that time is spent in the lounge room with a DVD. I often cross-stitch at that time too. We've enjoyed several DVD series in recent years including M*A*S*H, CSI, NCIS, West Wing, and Grey's Anatomy. Of course this is possible because our ministry isn't "after hours" like so many ministries are. I'm thankful.

I've written about SQUIRT time before (scroll down a way in this post), this is a parental survival tool that we've built into our weekends and holidays, a time for all of us to rest quietly on our own, often with books. We have an especially long one on Sundays during term time. Because we're not running a church we can have a pretty leisurely Sunday afternoon.

I am a habitual before-sleep reader. It is how I relax to go to sleep and have done so since I was a child. I often read for half an hour or more before I switch the light out.

I sleep-in on Saturday mornings, when I can. David makes breakfast (he hardly ever sleeps in) and the boys usually eat without me Saturday morning. Love it!

What else? I get exercise, that refreshes me. I wrote about our active lifestyle here. When our youngest was about two I used to collapse on the lounge after dinner, before the bedtime routine. I then started going to the gym and gained a lot more energy. It keeps me mentally healthier too!

How's that sound? I think we do pretty well. We probably don't do as much "ministry" as some others manage, but I know that God has made each person and each family with varied abilities and varied demands. Different people require different amounts of sleep and recreation in order to remain healthy. The trick is in finding what is the right balance for you. Our boys are quite intense and take a lot out of us. we find that we need the above to stay productive and healthy.

Do you know what your pastor (and family) do to find time to rest?

7. Any stress factors that appeared repeatedly in your ministry

This is the seventh in a series of questions I'm answering for a friend's Bible college assignment. You'll find links to the other answers in the series here.

A question we often field when we're in Australia is, "What is the most difficult thing about living in Japan, aside from language?"

Well you cannot divorce the language from the difficulties of living here, it affects almost everything. It means we struggle to understand the culture, struggle to make friends, we struggle with things that are (relatively) easy in Australia, like using banks, negotiating bureaucracy, using the phone, organising household utilities, even buying basic groceries can be a challenge, and so on. I guess most of these are not the "your ministry" of the question, although that line is very blurred for a mother!

However, other stress factors, apart from language and culture include:

Finding time for rest
It isn't easy to rest with young kids in the house. But things that we might do for rest in Australia are not always so easy here. For example, just going anywhere with them is stressful. Traffic is slow, public transport is efficient, but the culture doesn't allow much room for energetic, loud boys on public transport. Japan doesn't have a holiday-culture like other countries. You cannot book holiday units or houses, they don't exist. And hotels are too expensive for a missionary's budget. OMF has compensated for this by purchasing and maintaining holiday houses.

Hobbies are limited in choice. We have a small house and face the challenge of storing our stuff every time we go on home assignment (every four years). We cannot have hobbies that require lots of stuff.

Setting time limits. When you don't fill our a time sheet, when you aren't paid by the hour, it is hard to set limits on when you work and when you don't. Much like running your own business. We also live in a culture that works very long hours. Having a husband who comes home at 5pm and eats dinner with us and helps with the evening routine is very rare.

Not to mention the strong work ethic that pervades missions. This idea: People are sacrificing to pay for us to be here, we shouldn't waste their money. Plus, there is always more to do than there are people resources to do it. We live in a land with less than 1% Christians. Where do you stop? Can you justify stopping?

Balance between family and ministry
This is a challenge any family in ministry faces. Not just that you have to set your own limits, then you have to refrain from criticising other people's decisions and from comparing yourself negatively with others.


Fishbowl
We live in a fishbowl type situation. We have to write regularly to supporters about what we've been doing. We have Japanese watching all we do. We have regular reviews with leaders here in Japan, medical reviews etc. When we're on home assignment we have a lot of people wanting to meet us, hear us speak etc. We live fairly public lives. How much reveal to others is a concern. This fishbowl experience can also affect our relationships with our family and personal friends, who might not like sharing us quite so much.

Meeting other's expectations

This is a follow-on from above. A lot of people have a "piece" of us. Supporters in Australia, mission leaders in Japan and Australia, CAJ, various other people we serve with here, etc. We women also struggle with comparing ourselves to others. And there are a lot less people "like us" to compare ourselves to here.

Change
This is a constant. Even if we ourselves are "still", others around us are moving, changing countries, roles, etc. Then every four years we change countries ourselves twice in a year. International moves are HUGE. Our friends, leaders, co-workers, frequently change and for a girl who spent her whole childhood in one town and went to two school, that is a challenge.

Belonging nowhere
We no longer belong in Australia 100%, nor will we ever belong here. I'm not sure how much of a stress it is, but it bears mentioning. I'm sure it will be an issue especially when we eventually return permanently to Australia.


There's a few. If I thought a bit longer, I'm sure I could come up with more. Again, it can sound depressing, but all those people who support us also pray for us. That is what keeps us going. I'm certain we wouldn't still be here except that God has heard and answered those prayers.

Next instalment for this series will be: "8. How you maintain spiritual zeal."

Take Heart, I've given you heart-friends

I want to say that I'm so blessed with friends, not just the acquaintance-type who swell out my Facebook friends-list to enormous proportions. But true heart-friends who love me for who I am.

I'm struggling to write here because there are things I cannot say on this forum, but are on my heart. I've discovered someone has taken a dislike to me and is refusing to work with me, even though he doesn't know me at all. Someone else's errors have tainted his view of me. It isn't my fault and I cannot do anything about it. But it still hurts.

Thankfully the Lord knew I'd be hurting and he sent some friends yesterday to my Facebook page and they wrote the most wonderful things about me. None of them knew I was struggling, but God did and spoke encouragement into my life via my friends.

I take encouragement from the Bible too.

There are so many. Here's just one:

 Romans 8 ³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? (NIV)

I went to sleep with this words of Jesus from our Women's retreat:

John 16   ³³ “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (NIV)

Special music

There are so many beautiful songs that go with this time of the year: Easter. I've been trying to sing some of the old hymns of my childhood to my boys at bedtime – And Can it Be, There is a Green Hill, O Sacred Head Sore Wounded, etc.

Here is a newer one, that is also very beautiful and moving.