My weakness and His greatness.

My favorite season is here.

I am so glad God created October. 

I love crunchy leaves,  sweater weather, the clear sky, hot cocoa, and smell of cinnamon.  Fall  makes me feel like having a fresh start although spring is considered as the beginning of the every season in Japan.  Maybe because my birthday is on October???

Yesterday was one of the beautiful autumn sunny day. It was a little chilly tho.

I attended the Sunday morning service as usual. The worship team played 4 songs and I was familiar with 2 of them.

I am not really familiar with Japanese worship songs because my first church experience was in the US and I was going to international / bilingual church even in Tokyo. In those churches, they mostly played worship music from the US, such as Hillsong worship music.

But in CCC, the student ministry I belonged in Tokyo, we sang Japanese worship songs. That’s why I know some Japanese worship songs.

And the first 2 songs that we did at church yesterday reminded me of the not-so-much-but-kinda old days with CCC friends. It used to make me miss CCC and the life in Tokyo. But now I feel differently.

I feel joyful. I am grateful that God has an amazing plan for me. I am so weak and what I can do to this world is so little. But He still uses me to do His great work in this city. It is a huge blessing.

My new friend from church, Risa is an exchange student from Thailand. I met her for the first time only 3 weeks ago but I like her so much already. I usually introduce myself as Risa to foreigner, so we have the same names!☺︎hehe 

Yesterday, She brought her friends to the service. One of them spoke only Thai, so I got to talk to the other girl in Japanese.

When I see new people at church, I try to welcome them and have some conversation. Sometimes I share my testimony or little story about God with them. So I asked what she thought about the service. She also asked me since when I started going to church. 

We had lunch together at church and we talked for a hour.  As we continued our conversation, I noticed myself talking all about myself instead of introducing Jesus to her. It's like missing the little chances of sharing the gospel with her.

Lately, I have been feeling bad about this habit I do all the time. Like, I recall the dialogue and I regret that I talk too much about my story. Why is it happening?

After the time with Risa and her friends, I attended another service called CFK. CFK stands for Christian Fellowship in Kurume(my hometown) and it is a group gathering of local churches and they try to have fellowship to support each other. I think it's wonderful that those local churches are connected and working together for God in this city.

During the message, one of the pastors mentioned a bible verse from 2nd book of  Corinthians.

2 Corinthians 4:5 New International Version (NIV)

5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

I wanna do something like that! I thought.

God surely knew my heart and spoke to me with the word.

Until recently, I always wished that people look at me think I am special. I wanted everyone to like me. I hated doing out-reach but I always liked to talk about myself and how I love God. The subjective was always "I".

Recently, God gave me a heart for evangelism. He made me want to tell people about Him more. Then I started facing with my weakness of being self-centered.  

Even now while I am typing out this story, I am deleting and re-writing so much because somehow I shift the topic to talk about me.lol 

It maybe hard to quit the habit. But I really hope God will work on my heart and weakness. I want to switch the subjective to "He", instead of "I". I want to have courage and boldness to tell the good news to the world. I want to be completely in love with the gospel more and more. I want to be gospel-centered instead of being self-centered. 

Ephesians‬ ‭3:7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.
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Matthew 5:16

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Ephesians‬ ‭3:20‬-21 NIV‬‬

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.