Dear Theophilus

I feel that God has done so many great and amazing things in my life, that I would like to make an orderly account of them to encourage and inspire hope in Jesus. It is truly humbling to consider the riches of his favor and how he has brought me through many circumstances up to the present day. While I have tried to give just the facts as I experienced them, please forgive small amendments made in the interest of protecting people's privacy, etc.*

From the start of my journey with God, I had experience with “speaking in tongues”

The night I gave my life to Christ opened with me being invited in to a circle of people praying in tongues. At the time I didn’t have any idea what it was, wrongly assuming they had memorized phrases of Latin or something, but I remember feeling that the words they were speaking were having a tangible impact on the invisible spiritual realm all around us. That very week, having received Christ but knowing almost nothing else about my new faith, let alone any theological concept of glossolalia, God gifted it to me spontaneously as people prayed over me.

At the church I attended, people prayed in tongues before, after and during most services. As I became more familiar with the Bible, I learned of other spiritual gifts including gifts of healing, of miracles, of words of wisdom and knowledge, and interpreting tongues. I had witnessed people receive healing, heard testimonies of great miracles and received words of wisdom for my life, but I had never seen or heard of anyone practicing the gift of interpretation of tongues. I prayed earnestly and repeatedly that God would give me such a gift, in order to complete the expression of the working of the Holy Spirit in our church.

It is interesting to me that God first confused languages at Babel, to prevent people from having unity and thus accomplishing anything, and then at the opening of the Book of Acts, in the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, the first gift of God’s power to the church was this ability to express the wonders of God in a language the people understood.

both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own languages about the great deeds God has done!” -- Acts 2:11

As many commentaries on the Bible are quick to point out, the term translated “tongue” refers to languages. While much of the glossolalia prayed in churches around the globe is considered the language of angels, groanings that the Holy Spirit gives to help us to express things that we do not have the words to say, the first instance of the “tongues” related gifts at Acts gives us a key to understanding this elusive gift, interpretation of tongues. In the passage quoted above, the peoples were amazed that the great deeds God had done were being told to them in a language they could understand.

I have often been involved in ministry times where I have been asked to teach and to pray for people to receive a gift of a prayer language. I encourage people that it doesn’t need to come through some spiritual effort, but that any time you express the wonders of God in a language not your own you are speaking in a tongue. As you grow in the gift, you may increase your vocabulary, but this gift is at work the moment you say “halleluiah” or “hosanna” if you will believe in your heart that it is God that empowers you to say it. I pray for the many people that have felt hurt or pressure to exhibit some kind of supernatural demonstration would be healed and given faith to more simply just believe that they are being empowered as they declare God’s goodness in words they know.

After my first trip to Japan, I earnestly prayed that God would give me a gift to communicate God’s message in Japanese. Missionaries from previous generations that I met had failed to gain more than a cursory understanding of the language, limiting their reach to those willing to learn English and take on a “western” (“American”?) cultural perspective first. My model for missions is St. Patrick, a Scot (foreigner to Ireland) that became the most important Irish figure of more than a thousand years through the call of God, his love for the people and ability to teach the Irish people using language, prayers and examples that connected with them so clearly they have become national emblems for the centuries that have followed. In a single generation the island nation went from entirely pagan to majority Christian and a missionary sending country just as mainland Europe was descending into the dark ages.

Based on that faith I began studies of what is considered one of the most difficult languages for a non-speaker to learn at the age of 20. With three years of studies at university in Canada I arrived in Japan without much ability to talk about the weather, let alone God’s glory. I spent five years teaching English and pressing on with self-directed studies, continuing to pray that God would give me the gift of interpreting this tongue and the ability thereby to communicate the wonders of God in a language the people around me would understand. That fifth year I passed the most difficult level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). At the testing center, I was the only Caucasian in a room of several thousand test takers. About 90% of the test takers were either Chinese, having the advantage of using most of the same characters in their own language, or Korean, having the advantage of very similar grammar and large number of cognates in their vocabulary.

After passing the JLPT level 1, I wanted to both continue my studies further and at the same time pursue new work, so I applied for freelancing work with a number of translation agencies. Meeting some initial success, I took the plunge and left my position teaching English to pursue full time freelance work.

Though I had made close to a half of my previous salary through freelancing in the months leading up to it, the first month on the job a client stopped giving me work and I found myself with only 5,000 yen in total income for the month. That ignited a fire in me to provide for myself, my wife and family. I prayed that God would provide me with new opportunities. In three years, with God’s help I built it up to a successful business that let me work on my own terms while having freedom for my family and ministry.

Right about that time, my children were growing, and my wife and I were looking to buy a house we could grow into. After finding a place we were interested we applied for a loan and I encountered a major difficulty to being self-employed in Japan. Without the consistent income of a salary earner, the banks didn’t want to take a risk in giving me a mortgage. The system for mortgage approval in Japan turned out to be very different than any I was used to.

As a couple, my wife and I talked out our options and I considered trying to find a job at a company where although I would earn less, it would be a salaried position that would let me get approval for a mortgage. We had barely made that decision when I got a phone call from a translation agency that I had done work for before but hadn’t heard from in months. They asked if I would like to come into their office for an interview regarding a position at their company. Talking it over again with my wife, we decided that we were willing to take a cut in my earnings if the salary they offered was a certain amount.

I showed up to the interview not sure what would be in store. We sat at the table in their conference room and they opened the conversation: “Would you like to inherit this company?”

Back when I was still in Canada, before I came to Japan, God gave me this word as his promise: “Just as Abram was called, go, there is an inheritance for you in the land I will show you.” (See Acts 7:3 and Hebrews 11:8)

The current owner had two sons, but neither wanted the company. It was offered to me as a free gift. I worked for him as an employee for just over three years to train in the operations of the company, and was given full ownership of the stock and management of the company thereafter. Proverbs 13:22 tells us, “the wealth of the [unsaved] is saved up for the righteous” and Proverbs 18:16 says, “A person's gift makes room for him, and leads him before important people.”

God’s gift of interpretation to me has opened doors in ministry and in business. It came by prayer and faith, coupled with hard work to develop and train in that gift. Through the gift of interpreting language, I communicate the wonders of God to the people around me, train others in this gifting, and have a positive financial impact for my family, employees, customers and the economy of Japan.

Praise be to God. You can experience him too.