Pastors' Blog

Ever heard of Vuja de? I hadn't either. Until I began reading Adam Grant's new book, Originals: How Non-conformists Move the World. Grant, the 36 year old American psychologist and author who teaches organizational psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has spent the last ten years researching the how's and why's, the in's and out's, of originality.

Déjà vu we all know. "Déjà vu occurs when we encounter something new, but it feels as if we've seen it before." But what's this vuja de? Vuja de is simply déjà vu backwards! "Vuja de is the reverse—we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems." (p 7)

Take for example economist Michael Housman's effort to discover "why some customer service agents stayed on their jobs longer than others." Housman combed through data from over 30,000 customer service agents (for banks, airlines, cell phone companies, et al), and noticed that his team had included in the data regarding these employees the particular internet browsers the customer service agents were using. "On a whim" Housman ran the numbers to see if browser choice was related to job longevity or quitting. Stunned with the results, he then added the sales performance data of these customer service agents. His discovery? "After 90 days on the job, the Firefox and Chrome users had customer satisfaction levels that Internet Explorer and Safari users only reached after 120 days"(p 4).

Why would which internet browser you use say something about you? Simply because Internet Explorer and Safari are browsers that come as part of the package with Windows and Apple computers. If you use the Google Chrome or Firefox browser, "you have to demonstrate some resourcefulness and download a different browser. Instead of accepting the default [browser], you have to take a bit of initiative to seek out an option that might be better. And that act of initiative, however tiny, is a window into what you do at work" (p 5).

"The employees [in Housman's study] who took the initiative to change their browsers . . . approached their jobs differently. They looked for novel ways of selling to customers and addressing their concerns. When they encountered a situation they didn't like, they fixed it"(ibid).

Adam Grant's point? "The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. Hence his déjà vu vs vuja de expression.

Maybe that's what we need when we come to "the old rugged cross." Vuja de—when "we face something familiar [the cross], but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems."

How many times have you and I come to Calvary—reading the Gospels through again or partaking of the Lord's Supper again—and we have neither seen nor experienced anything personally fresh or particularly insightful about that encounter. (After all, we've read the story before [yawn]—we've been to the Table before [boring].)

What if the next time we approached the cross (in the Gospels or at the Lord's Supper) we asked the Spirit of Christ to lead us past our usual default setting and give us new eyes to see, a new perspective to comprehend. "Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified" (Galatians 3:1). It's that fresh clear portrayal that we need most.

Perhaps it's as simple as breathing a prayer as we approach His cross:

Open my eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth You have for me
Place in my hands the wonderful key
That shall unclasp and set me free.
Open my eyes, illumine me,
Spirit divine.

        —Clara Scott

Perhaps in the realm of the Spirit, too, the most successful are the ones who in their browsing move beyond the usual default and discover God's "hallmark of originality."

You got to love it—here I am with my son Kirk Monday evening waiting and watching for the historic moment when the President of the United States and the President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea meet and shake hands—when without warning my screen goes into freeze mode. Can you believe it! All I wanted to do was witness that history-making handshake, and my screen freezes. Freezes, actually, with their two right hands reaching to clasp each other. No words, no movement, no nothing except two hands—frozen.

Presumably, the rest of the world was able to watch that much ballyhooed and eagerly anticipated handshake with the brief words and muted smiles that followed—but no matter where you live or what ideology you subscribe to, the truth is it was a meeting fraught with global consequence and significance.

And, I might add, particularly for the Kingdom of God. As a Seventh-day Adventist Christian—whose mother 89+ years ago was born in Pyongyang (when Korea was an undivided nation) and who himself was born in Tokyo and attended high school in Singapore—I certainly was drawn to this dramatic diplomatic feat (playing out on live television) for reasons beyond the geopolitics of the event.

Along with thousands of Christians, perhaps many of you, I've found myself praying earnestly these last few days for the diplomatic success of this meeting. For one simple reason. Over the last three decades, we have witnessed the "opening" of Russia, China, and Cuba to God's endgame appeal "to every nation, tribe, language and people" (Revelation 14:6-12). While all three of those countries remain solidly communist in their political governance, the fact is that Christianity along with our own faith community has experienced unprecedented growth there over the last thirty years. I have preached evangelistic series in two of those countries. But the political tolerance that has fostered such growth is already being tempered and in some cases withdrawn.

So a divine door of opportunity opening eventually in North Korea, the last communist nation to remain closed to Christianity, would present a powerful breakthrough for the "everlasting gospel" and our mission to reach that people group.

Could it be the promises we claim for Japan are appropriate as well for North Korea? "I am the LORD, and there is no other. . . . From the rising of the sun [far east] to the place of its setting [far west] people may know that there is none besides Me. . . . Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other" (Isaiah 45:5-6, 22). One by one the nations of this third millennial world are being drawn into the circle of God's passionate endgame appeal. Country by country the Three Angels' Messages are penetrating. But never forget that the Apocalypse promises even more, "After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his glory" (Revelation 18:1 emphasis supplied). The entire earth surely includes North Korea—and even our own nation here at home!

So we must (1) keep interceding before God for the fulfillment of both His Three Angels and Fourth Angel breakthrough promises. It is high time God's people were on our knees daily supplicating His throne of grace and mercy on behalf of the unsaved billions in the Far East, the Middle East, the West, the North and the South. And we must (2) help answer our own prayers by volunteering our financial resources, and even our own availability and willingness, perhaps, to enter one of these opening doors to answer God's call to "Go!"

Mother is buried beside Dad in Loma Linda, far away from the land of her birth. But the dedicated missionary lives that were spent penetrating a world closed much more tightly then than now were not in vain. Rather it is the legacy of this generation to finish the mission task of that generation and reach this civilization one last time for Jesus before He returns. All of that I pondered in a frozen handshake a few nights ago. It really is time to "Go!"—isn't it?

It was a first for me, this idea of posting an online daily journal from the frontlines of evangelism (www.pmchurch.org/japanjournal). But I'm glad I did, because even if no one read the journal, the very exercise of recording the acts of the Holy Spirit inspired my own soul. So on this first Sabbath back at Pioneer, let me share a few lines from my next to the last journal entry:

"As the Sabbath draws to a close here in my guest room apartment on the Saniku Gakuin campus [201 college students, 70% non-Christian] . . . on the last day of this short but intensive evangelistic series, what an experience this has been for me. And what a blessing to have a small army of prayer partners who have unselfishly devoted extra intercession time to pray for Japan and this college and the advance of the everlasting gospel to this great unreached people group. My reciprocal prayer of gratitude this Sabbath is that God would pour back into your life--in the currency of His Kingdom--a super bundle of blessings for your unselfish
ministry! Thank you."

"Cars and busses from all over Chiba prefecture (prefectures are small state-like governing administrative units throughout Japan) arrived on campus for the ten o'clock worship celebration in the gymnasium (see photo gallery) and the outdoor baptism and lunch and afternoon concert that followed. My friend, Masumi Shimada, the Japan Union Conference president [we grew up together], told me this afternoon that they counted 775 . . . in the morning event in the gym and Granger Hall [the campus church], an overflow livestreaming site for elderly worshipers. . . ."

"It was my joy to preach on the second coming of our Lord Jesus, the eleventh and final piece in this campus series. . . . My translator, one of the pastors in this prefecture, did a masterful job (as did the other four translators who stood up and preached with me through the week). It is my opinion that translators are the Spirit-guided preachers who deserve to be remembered long after the visiting foreigner preachers have left the country. Because no matter how well or how poorly the guest preacher does, the communication event is what transpires between the translator and the listeners. So I say, God bless them every one."

"One of the reasons it is such a joy to preach the soon coming of Christ is the tonic it provides for my own soul. As Peter expressed it, We have not followed 'cunningly devised fables' (as the KJV renders it) but we have 'the prophetic message completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts' (2 Peter 1:16, 19 NIV). It [always] stirs my soul to recall with the listeners the indicators Jesus gave as harbingers of His return—political, ecological, economic, moral, psychological, societal markers that indicate the unraveling of humanity's hold on this planet and the approach of the King of kings and Lord of lords. And for our natural tendency to dismiss these indicators with the aside—'everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation' (2 Peter 3:4)—there is the provocative Chris Martenson illustration of geometric progression/compounding we humans tend nearly always to forget (www.adventistreview.org/voices-dwight-k.-nelson). The last five minutes are what catch you by surprise."

"Once again through the decision card we made an invitation to guests and students alike to carefully weigh God's call to follow Christ through baptism. And with the final Amen, the entire convocation stood and moved out of the gym, up the winding road to the campus proper high on that hillside, where the Granger Hall outdoor baptistery was already surrounded by family and friends awaiting the baptisms. . . ."

[From the journal entry on Sunday: "Kondo sensei, the campus pastor, handed me a sheet of names when we met this morning with this written report: 'At least 24 non-Christian students put a mark on Question 2 (I would like to bury my past and rise up to new life in Jesus through being baptized as He was) on the Thursday morning decision card. . . . He also notes that at our Friday evening meeting 3 more students indicated they would like to be baptized someday—and the Sabbath morning decision cards have yet to be tallied. Plus . . . five more non-Christian students indicated on the decision card they would like to talk with someone about this decision re baptism. So God has abundantly answered our many prayers in guiding these students to their decisions!"]

"Whenever you begin one of these evangelistic series, you simply have no idea how the series will proceed and eventually end—such is the adventure of preaching. But when it ends . . . there is a quiet sense of gratitude that steals over you, along with a surrender of it all back to God. For, as Jesus reminded us, the mystery of soul-winning is truly divine: '"This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how"' (Mark 4:26-27). Or as Paul put it, 'I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow' (1 Corinthians 3:6-7 emphasis supplied)."

"And that's the way it should always be. 'But only God.' Which is why I thank Him for you, for drawing from your heart the very prayers He needed, in order to do the very work He promised to do and will yet do for His glory alone. Amen."

[Sing Doxology here.]

Last week a friend gave me Carl Wilkens’ provocative first-person account—I’m Not Leaving: Rwanda through the Eyes of the Only American to Remain in the Country through the 1994 Genocide. In his disturbing recital of what it was like to survive "the most tragic one hundred days of the twentieth century," young Carl Wilkens—country director for Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) at the time—struggles to come grips with what he witnessed, the genocide extermination of over 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children—most of them hacked to death by machetes.

He describes the surging emotions of that moment when he watched the vehicle, bearing his wife and their three young children, disappear around the corner, tight on the tail of one lone UNAMIR tank (United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda), their escort to safety outside the city and country. Because of his decision to refuse the U.S. embassy evacuation, he was asked to send a signed and dated note with his family: "I have refused the help of the United States government to leave Rwanda."

Years later he still wrestles with the choices so many made during this genocidal crisis:
"When I think about choices, I think about what Holocaust survivor and author Viktor Frankl wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: 'We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way." (33)

And therein lies a promise for every graduate in this Class of 2018—no one can take away from you the freedom to choose your own attitude. Like Wilkens, you will face radical life-changing decisions (at a pace now much faster than you may have anticipated). But no matter the successes or crises on the road ahead, the truly great news is that you will face them all in tandem with the God of the universe who has been charting your future for quite some time now.

And He has a Book full of YES CAN DO promises for you:

• "What god is there in heaven or on earth who CAN DO the deeds and mighty works You do?"
—Deuteronomy 3:24
• "I know You CAN DO all things; no purpose of Yours can be thwarted."—Job 42:2
• "I CAN DO all things through Christ who strengthens me."—Philippians 4:13
• "Now to Him who CAN DO immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine!"—Ephesians 3:20

The good news is you CAN DO because He CAN DO.

So our collective prayer for you is a simple one: May the same Jesus who was with you here be with you there—your CAN DO Friend and Lord with His CAN DO future and life—"immeasurably more than all you ask or imagine." To which I add my fervent Amen.