Isaiah 55:6-7 Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

Isaiah 55 is so loaded with deeply moving, highly important truth! This statement of God’s invitation to salvation is notable for three things. It starts off by pointing out that the invitation is not limitless in time; there is a window of opportunity. Many people are aware of their need of salvation but they have the feeling of “some day.” However, we never know when our window of opportunity will close. I have known several people who died very suddenly, either from accidents or from unrecognized medical problems. Some have been Christians, but more have not. One in particular haunts me, because she had been given multiple direct invitations to commit to Christ but had declined, not recognizing that she was in the place of the land owner in Luke 12: “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.” (Luke 12:20) The second point is that repentance is essential. If we don’t forsake the old, we can’t receive the new. Too many people trip up on this point. The old is familiar at least, whether or not it is comfortable. We tend to love our sins! There can be no real forgiveness without repentance. That’s certainly not to say that we’ll never stumble again, but it is to say that the choice must be there to leave the sin behind and follow God in obedience. With those two points firmly established, this goes on to speak of the richness of God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Sometimes we hold back because we can’t believe that He really will forgive us. If the repentance is there, the forgiveness is there. (1 John 1:9) That is truth we can, and must, bank on.

As a pastor in Japan, this is the message I am constantly trying to get across. I would dearly love to see a higher success rate! I see two things as being perhaps the biggest hindrances to Japanese coming to Christ. The first is the reluctance to accept a deal to which they contribute nothing, essentially. Japanese are very hard workers and they have a strong sense of obligation and duty. It’s very hard to give a gift in Japan, because you will almost always get something in return! We are indeed to give our bodies, our lives to Christ, (Romans 12:1) but this is in response to God’s gift of salvation, and not something to earn it. They have trouble wrapping their minds around that. Probably that is why the Jehovah’s Witnesses are more successful in Japan than most genuinely Christian denominations. The other barrier is the feeling that Christianity is a foreign religion. They don’t relate to this passage speaking of “our God.” Japanese have an intense cultural/racial identity, and they run from things that they fear will detract from that. That is even an obstacle to their learning foreign languages, because they have the subconscious feeling that thinking in another language will make them less Japanese. At the same time, they deeply admire foreign things/countries, particularly America, and that feeling has been widely used in evangelism. Though I was born and raised here, with one foot on either side of the cultural divide, I still have great difficulty getting through with the Gospel. I am totally dependent on the Holy Spirit to get the job done, but that’s actually not untrue anywhere in the world; it’s just more obvious in Japan.

Father, thank You for this reminder, and for enabling me to put the issue into clear words. I continue to pray that You would pour a Spirit of repentance out on this nation, that all the barriers would be overcome and people be washed into Your kingdom by the tsunami of Your love, for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!