He knows my name (and yours, too)

As I was waiting near the escalator at Kyoto Station, I noticed a Westerner standing not too far away from me and felt this nudge to go talk to him.  I prayed about it and heard in my spirit, “Go ask him if his name is John.”

“Nah, that’s kind of weird,” I countered.  “We’re at a train station, I’m in a different country, I don’t know if that’d be acceptable here,” etc…  I was trying to negotiate my way out of a prompting of the Holy Spirit, as I often do.

“C’mon.  Go ask him if his name is John.  Just walk up to him and say ‘excuse me, are you John?’ If he says no, all you need to do is apologize and say you thought he was someone else you were supposed to meet.  Go, try it.”

I hesitated for a moment.

“Nah, that’d still be weird.”  I glanced over at this person to scope him out.  He was alone, in his mid 30s, and had fear written all over his face.

He glanced up at me.  I said hello.  He nodded and said “hi” back to me.  I resolved to at least go over and talk to him.

He told me that he was in Tokyo during the earthquake and had gone down to Kyoto with his wife to get as far away as they could.  They were now on their way back to Tokyo to catch a flight to the US, where he was from.  They were fleeing in fear.

I introduced myself and said, “By the way, I’m Stephen.”

He extended a handshake, smiled nervously, and replied, “I’m John.”

D’oh!

If only I had obeyed the promptings of the Spirit, I thought.  He might have been blown away that I knew his name, he’d ask how I knew, I’d tell him that God really wanted him to know how much He cares about him, I’d lead him to salvation and baptize him at the water fountain, etc.  The whole “what-if” scenario played out in my head.

But since God is still in control, I needed to trust that this was playing out exactly as it needed to.  A teammate later mentioned that John might have been freaked out if I had gone up to him and called out his name cold; John was already stricken with fear as it was.

After John told me where he was headed, he asked me where I was headed (and he kept glancing at my cross and “hope” T-shirt).  I told him that my team (I pointed out the others wearing the same T-shirt as I was) and I were heading up to Tokyo to serve with the relief effort.

He lit up; something had been stirred in him.  “Wow, that’s great!” he said.  His wife, a Japanese woman, came by and John introduced me to her.  He excitedly told her, “These guys are going up to Tokyo to help with the relief effort!”  She glanced at my T-shirt, read “hope” out loud, smiled at me, and said “Thank you.”

I had been hoping for a chance to offer to pray for him, but since they had to go, I could only tell him that I’d pray for them to have safe travels.  They thanked me and we parted at the train station.

Lessons I learned out of this encounter:

• Don’t be afraid to take a risk when the Holy Spirit moves you to.  The only thing I had to lose by asking a stranger what his name is was my dignity, and that all boils down to pride.
• Sharing God’s love with people doesn’t always require words.  In this case, our witness to John and his wife might have simply been the ministry of presence: we were there in Japan when many others were trying to leave, and we were heading into Tokyo when many others were heading out.

God is good.

-Stephen

 

 

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