Dear God,
Your Spirit is moving through the people in Morioka, and in their constant prayers. They gather to pray on Wednesday, and bring You their time and resources and faith in action.
I ask for forgiveness for my cold heart, my small mind, and my “good manners”.
Back home, I see that my peers and I tend to be quiet rather than to share the good news.
Maybe we are too polite to be faithful to God in this area of sharing the gospel. Maybe we are more concerned about people’s response than God’s glory. Maybe we are more concerned about their feelings than God’s. We wrongly fear them. We don’t want to cause awkwardness. We want their respect, and after all, we figure, if we try to share the gospel with them, we’ll look foolish!
And so we are quiet. We protect our pride at the cost of their souls. In the name of not wanting to look weird, we are content to be complicit in their being lost. As one friend said, “I don’t want to be the stereotypical Christian on a plane.”
You do not like having Your truth suppressed, and that’s what the non-Christian is doing (Rom. 1:18). Good manners are no excuse for unfaithfulness to You, but I have, too often, used them so.
Change my heart, Lord.
at the still point of the turning world 