When you commit to following God, you never know where He might take you.
I had just experienced a pivotal moment during my week-long retreat in the mountains: forced to confront my identity issues, I was able to work through them, find relief from the things that weighed me down, and quiet my thoughts enough to hear what God was trying to tell me.
At the end of that retreat, we were asked to write down what we thought He was saying. I wrote the words “seminary,” “go overseas,” “missions,” and “Asia.”
Little did I know.
Around that same time, one of my friends and colleagues, a former missionary to Japan, asked me if I’d consider leading a prayer team there to pray for members of the church he served at. Japan hadn’t been on my radar at all, and since our church had no existing partnerships there, I didn’t see how I could justify the trip to our leadership.
But something inside me told me not to say “no.” I replied to my friend that I’d think about it.
What I really meant was that I’d talk to my wife about it first.
I went home and asked Soo what she thought about a mission trip to Japan. She considered it for moment, then nodded and said, “Yeah, I’d be a missionary to Japan.”
“I didn’t mean all of us,” I chuckled. “I meant just me going, for ten days or so.”
I talked to my supervisor about this and got the green-light to explore the possibility of leading a trip to Japan. I kept this on the back burner, but in all honesty, this was not a high priority to me.
All that changed with a Skype call.
My friend had arranged for my prayer partner and me to pray with a missionary in Japan via video chat. I won’t share details out of respect for this person’s privacy, but I will share that the Holy Spirit’s presence was so powerful throughout this call that it felt as though we were all praying in the same room, not half a world away via web camera. This was the moment the Japan mission trip took on a tremendous sense of urgency– I knew we had to go, even if it was for just this one person.
It was like Saving Private Ryan. Or, better yet, the words of Jesus himself:
Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? (Luke 15:4 NIV)
I prayed about this trip for the next month or two, as I only wanted to go if this was truly God’s leading and not my own planning.
Meanwhile, I had learned that Fuller Theological Seminary offered a special admissions program to those who do not have an undergraduate degree but have served in full-time ministry for at least three consecutive years. That was me! Was God providing a way for me to go to seminary, even with my failed academic career? I eagerly downloaded the application and began to work on it.
I mentioned to one of my mentors that I was planning to apply to seminary. He asked, “Did you pray about it?”
Oops.
I hadn’t prayed about it at all. I just sort of assumed that God would like it– after all, didn’t I get the word “seminary” at the retreat the previous month? Wasn’t this God’s will for me?
As I prayed about applying to Fuller Seminary, I kept sensing that it was a “no.” I couldn’t understand why, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that this was not where God was leading me at the time.
Instead, I would receive several more dreams that would point me elsewhere.
In one dream, I was in a vehicle with my prayer partner when a black SUV flipped over in front of us. My friend and I pulled over and ran to the overturned car to help pull the driver out before the vehicle caught fire, but when we opened the door, the driver had already been reduced to a pile of ashes, even though the car itself was not in flames.
As I struggled to make sense of what happened, I heard the haunting words, “Soon, it will be too late to save anybody.”
I had another dream in which I was at a party at a beach house. Everyone else was panicking, but I wasn’t, for some reason. I implored, “Stay calm. He’ll be here soon.” They continued to panic and told me to do something. I repeated, “Just calm down. He’s coming.” The chaos wouldn’t cease, so I glanced up at the clock– the hands were on 11– and picked up my phone to call whoever this “He” was.
The voice on the other line said, “I’m on my way.”
I hanged up the phone and decided to go open the garage to allow this “He” to come in and park when He arrived.
As the garage door opened, we could see a gargantuan tsunami, as high as the sky, roaring towards us. We all knew we were doomed, but I thought to myself, “The only one who can save us is Him, and He’s on His way, so stay calm.”
I didn’t know what to make of this dream at the time, but it would soon make sense.
The new year rolled around. On January 2, 2011– a Sunday– I prayed and asked God if I was supposed to proceed with this missions trip to Japan.
I got two impressions: the first was “land of the rising sun” and the second was “Psalm 136:8.” I looked up the verse on my phone:
(to Him who made) the sun to govern the day, His love endures forever (Ps. 136:8)
Land of the rising sun? This verse was saying that God is the One who makes the sun rise. I took this as confirmation to proceed.
I started praying about whom to invite, and God would highlight them to me that very same day.
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