Moving forward often requires us to let go of what we know.
December 17, 2012.
It had been 14 months since I resigned from my role in order to go to Japan; 5 months since my last scouting trip. We had to raise 80% of our two-year budget before we could leave but had been hovering at around 50% for months.
Yet, I hadn’t sent out a single support letter or posted anything about fundraising on social media in over three weeks, after sensing that we needed to pray more, not try harder.
It was only after I let it all go that things started happening.
First, our denomination in Japan pledged to cover our housing costs while in northeastern Japan. This was a huge boost– it bumped our support-pledge level to 70% in one shot.
Then, on December 17th, I heard my email inbox chirp– it was notification of a new pledge of support. Grateful, I updated the “fundraising thermometer” on our blog, and as I was doing that, my inbox chirped again: it was another new supporter, unrelated to the first one, who just happened to be pledging at around the same time.
As I began to revise the thermometer again, yet another chirp from my inbox. And another…
Multiple new supporters decided to pledge that night and our thermometer shot up to 82%– all in less than three hours! As far as I could tell, these new supporters were not related and probably didn’t coordinate their efforts beforehand.
I believe that God orchestrated this to show Soo and me that He is the only One we could put our faith in.
Elated, I emailed our mission in Japan to let them know that we finally reached this milestone and could begin the visa application process. Due to the impending holidays– Christmas was exactly one week away– we wouldn’t begin the process until January 2013. We thought we’d get the visa quickly and leave in time to be in Japan for the two-year anniversary of the March 11th disaster, but we hit a delay: the requirements for obtaining religious worker visas had changed, so this was new territory for all involved, and it would take several weeks to figure it out.
Frustration. After all the tension of waiting for over a year, and after such a dramatic victory on December 17th, why did we now have to hit another hurdle?
God had His reasons.
Soo and I bought a small condo when we got married, and we had always been thinking about what to do with it should we go to Japan. We weren’t in a neighborhood popular for rentals, and unfortunately, we bought the unit shortly before the real estate bubble burst. For years, the estimated selling price for our condo was far too low to even make a sale worthwhile.
But during this delay, as we waited for the visa issues to resolve, one of our neighbors with the same floor plan as ours sold their unit for a significantly higher price than they’d been going for in 10 years.
Was the market swinging in our favor? We began to pray about whether or not to sell the condo– though the price was still not up to what we had originally paid for it, we would at least get most of our down payment back.
The lent season came about, and as part of my devotionals, I read about the Israelites who, after being freed from slavery in Egypt, complained about having to eat manna, the food from heaven:
The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” (Numbers 11:4-6 NIV)
The Israelites were free, living on what God provided, but they longed for the food they had while they were slaves. Would they rather remain in slavery and enjoy what was once familiar to them?
That led me to reflect: what was keeping me in slavery? What was keeping me bound because I was afraid to let go of the familiar? What were my leeks, onions, and garlic?
Later that week, I was praying with a friend who said, “I don’t know what this means, but as I pray for you, I see ‘white garlic’.”
I knew exactly what it meant.
Our condo had stark white walls. When we bought the place, I wanted our home to have a bright and clean feel to it, so we elected to paint all of the walls white– so white, some friends would call it the Fortress of Solitude, for Superman’s arctic ice castle.
Was our home in Orange County my “white garlic,” keeping me bound to the past?
In Luke 9:62, Jesus says to a potential follower, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Plowing requires one to push forward with a firm grip to make a straight line for sowing seed, and to keep turning back would affect the straightness and depth of that line. To follow Jesus requires an absolute commitment, focusing our eyes on Him, moving forward steadily and resolutely without turning back to the things we’ve left behind.
The Greek word for “fit” is euthetos, meaning “fit,” “fit for service,” “useful,” “useable,” or “suitable.” It’s related to the word eu, meaning “good,” “well,” or “well done,” as in “well done, my good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21, 23). Could this mean that those who put a hand to the plow without looking back will be considered good and faithful servants who have done well in their Master’s eyes?
With the help of some realtor friends, we sold our condo in less than a day, closed escrow 40 days later, and boarded a flight for Japan.
It was June of 2013: over six months since we hit our required 80% in support pledges, a full year since our commissioning as missionaries with our denomination, and two years to the day since I saw a family of ducks crossing the street, confirming my sense of calling to Japan.
Why did God make us wait so long?
We’d find out. But not right away.
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