Reading: Psalm 32:7-8
You are my hiding place;You shall preserve me from trouble;You shall
surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;I will guide you with My eye.
If a Christian nurse had not spoken to me about Jesus on April 10th 1948, when I was dying in the hospital from a burst appendix, I possibly would not be here now. The next day I asked Jesus into my heart and the Lord raised me up from my deathbed.
How often the decisions we make affect our lives, not only for the immediate future, but for many years down the road.
I left Melbourne for Japan on September 28th, 1954, and read in the morning paper of the sinking of the Toya Maru, a passenger ferry that sank in the port of Hakodate in Hokkaido, and felt uneasy, as I knew I would have to travel that same route, and did many times over the years. I spent 4 days in Adelaide, then travelled across Australia by train to Perth a trip of 2 days (one part of the line is 1,100 km long without a single bend!)
As I rode the train with some other young missionaries I wondered, "what is ahead of me?" It was all exciting. From Perth I got on a ship that went to Vietnam, Singapore where I spent 6 months studying Japanese, and then finally arrived in Japan in April 1955.
I had a pocket New Testament and Psalms in my pocket on that trip and my reading as I embarked on my long trip to Japan was the above Psalm.
Here David the Psalmist was making a confession.
(1) You are my Hiding Place.
(2) You preserve me from trouble.
(3) You will compass me about with songs of deliverance.
These were wonderful thoughts for me at that time and many times since. I have meditated on these words many times.
The Lord being our Hiding Place means a place of safety. No one can get by Him. Psalm 91 talks about "he who dwells in the secret place of the Almighty."
If the Emperor of Japan were to write me a letter and said, "Don't worry, I will protect you," I would value that letter, but would wonder how he would do that. He would be in his Imperial Palace, and I'm here there and everywhere. I might be in another country, such as Indonesia or Myanmar. How could the emperor protect me there?
But the Lord who is everywhere has written us a letter and promises to be our Hiding Place, no matter where we are. His promises are for every child of God.
Preserve in time of trouble, means that we stay under his shadow as it says in Psalms 91.
Songs of deliverance are praise that releases the power of God into our lives.
When I first came to Japan, I was a keen Christian with an evangelistic zeal. I always wanted to preach and share Jesus with the Japanese people wherever they were on the trains, on buses, anywhere. In those days, the Japanese were poor and very polite, and always wanted to try out their English. In fact on one occasion when Eileen and I were going on our honeymoon to Karuizawa from Sapporo where we had been married (May 1957), I gave a tract to a man sitting opposite us in the train. He put the tract in his mouth and ate it! Japan was really hungry for the Word of God! The early days were days of trial and error, little language ability, but plenty of zeal to share Jesus. I even slipped in my Japanese once, and instead of saying to the group that "all men are sinners" I said "all carrots are sinners!" In Japanese the word for men is ningen, and carrots is ninjin.
The other thing we can learn from this passage is that God will teach us the way. Hearing from God is very important. After being in an evangelical mission for 14 years, in 1969 I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and this greatly changed our lives and the way we did ministry.
The Lord brought a new release into our lives and we began to see miracles happen as we preached the Word.
In 1970 we formed Japan Good News Ministries and started a ministry that also opened doors in other parts of Japan and Asian countries.
In 1975 we moved to Niiza, and had we not obeyed the Lord you all would not be here.
In February 1976 I was in North America on a ministry trip, and my wife Eileen and our ministry assistant Sachiko started a ladies' meeting. A few ladies got saved, and this was the start of the church in Niiza.
The Lord watches over you. One night I was praying for the Japanese government, and the Lord put on my heart to pray for Indonesia. I did not know how to pray so I prayed in tongues. As I prayed I could see like a film through my mind, that what I was praying for, was for the Indonesia government and religious leaders. After some time, I felt I had gotten through and went to bed. Three days later I read in the newspaper that the religious leaders had been trying to force through a bill that would end all missionary work in Indonesia. That bill was defeated, Praise the Lord and is still open today.
I later went to Solo, Indonesia every year for 20 years, and have ministered in North Sumatra. Out of one church in Medan, some 170 churches exist today.
The Lord says He will protect and guide with His Eye. He has a personal interest in each one of us. As we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us and guide and protect, and put a song in our hearts of praise to Him.
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