Time: 10:01-10:30am
Passage: 2 Kings 11&12
We first read 2 Kings 11 and shared what we learned from there.
From that story, I brought up a statement Kanami made from a previous chapter about how she learned that God always has a plan for everything no matter what goes wrong. In the same way, God had a plan to counter the destruction that Athaliah tried to bring. He hid one member of the royal family so that their generation could go on.
Currently in my life, my family is going through some kind of financial crisis. It is causing my parents, mainly my mom, a lot of stress. Therefore, it has been hard living with her because she becomes frustrated/angry about everything, especially when it comes to buying something (even groceries) or anything to do with money because she believes that we do not have the money to afford it.
I don’t want this to come off as offensive but I’m really beginning to see the mentality that she’s living by and I don’t want to live the same way.
Therefore, now that I have come to understand more that God is my real father (through the help of Masami-san and Jun), I have started to ask him to take care of situations that my parents seem unable to do.
For example, I plan to live in an apartment that is close to school but my mom is trying to make me commute by bus. I have asked God to take care of this situation of giving me a nice apartment to live in that is close to the school so that I won’t have to commute from far.
In the past, I always looked at the circumstances as a true reality that could happen to me. Although, it can be, I have come to have strong faith in the fact that if I trust God to take care of the situation, then he will make sure that what the circumstances show will never happen to me.
Kanami shared that believes the same: that God will take care of everything. She believes that faith is really important during situations such as these. God will use the circumstances to test our faith and see what we will do.
After this, we read 2 Kings 12.
From this passage, I shared about how I’ve been learning recently how important it is to put God first in the sense of giving your time to him. For me that would be helping in the church and tithing. In the past, I used to not really think that Hoshi was important, I more just saw it as volunteer work. Same thing with tithing, although I knew it was important in my head, it didn’t really have meaning in my heart, so I don’t think I was really giving with faith. However, now, I have come to understand its importance a little more than before. In addition, I really have strong faith in the verse Luke 6:38 “give and it will be given to you”. So, I’ve come to have more faith in the confessions we make during offering time and it has brought the desire in me to want to give more.
In the same way, with Hoshi, I have come to understand that it is an opportunity from God to be his vessel and be a blessing to others. Also, I’ve come to understand that it is also an opportunity to receive blessings from God. Although this may still be a bit selfish, it has stirred up a bigger desire in me to do more work for the church.
For example, in the past, I would have not volunteered to do something like helping with father’s day or even posting the piano flyers. But now, I have come to want to do these things a little more and I believe it is because God has been helping me to grow through all the help I’ve been receiving from Jun and Masami-san.
Kanami shared how she is the opposite, I believe it is in the sense that she has always wanted to do Hoshi. She has learned that it is a chance for her to see the bigger picture of what God wants to do through her. Therefore, she has been learning to see it as a way of what she can do for others.
In response to this, I shared about how I can learn from her in what she said about not just thinking about herself but in how she can help others.
In terms of our week, we did not really have anything to share. I did ask Kana if there was anything I needed to prepare for the Poke thing for Father’s Day.