Kingdom values in work life

These are the testimonies of two Japanese men mentored by Marty Woods (missionary with Japan International Sports Partnership).

Minori’s story

Over the last few years at my workplace, God keeps expanding his kingdom culture and his freedom through an ordinary believer like me. This amazes me.

I’m an aircraft engineer, making sure this chunk of metal with wings is safe to take off to its destination. One other thing about me—I love growing with those I am working alongside.

Due to the nature of my job, I often work with other departments and companies. Those colleagues are pilots, cabin attendants, airport coordinators, and mechanics.

Encouraging my colleagues

One day, God gave me a great opportunity to learn how we can use God’s kingdom principle of encouragement in practical ways.

I proposed we give feedback to our colleagues so we could see our “blind spots”. My boss liked it. It worked so well that now we have a few feedback meetings a year where we exchange honest feedback without being judged. Within this setting, people experience a safe space where they are invited to be honest and truthful, free to express their feelings. They feel heard and seen; they are cared for. We hear of our blind spots that others have negative feelings about. As a result, we can choose different responses because we now see how our behaviour comes across to others. We start growing.

The head of the airport coordinators department is very thankful for what I have brought to their team. I am simply trying to bring in God’s kingdom culture. I am inspired by Ephesians 4:29, which says, “Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them” (NLT).

Another example of practicing encouragement: Sometimes I lead a meeting with icebreakers, inviting people to affirm those sitting next to them. We end up engaging well with one another and we leave encouraged. We don’t normally experience this within our Japanese culture . . . but we do within a kingdom culture.

We are now no longer running merely task-focused meetings, but building relationships in our workplace in a way that reflects the kingdom.

Sharing honestly

Not long ago I started working with a young Japanese man who recently married. He had never read the Bible and didn’t know about God.

After work, we have time getting to know each other more. He’s been impressed about how open I am with him, how naturally confident I am in talking about my faith and beliefs. I share stories of my ministry.

One day I shared more about how I’ve been fighting the battle to be a man of God towards my wife. I was surprised that he was blown away when he heard there is a way of life that can truly lead him to purity that honours his wife. Nobody had ever told him that a life like this was possible.

He said, “I want to love my wife that way!”

Something within him was awakened. Since then, he’s been growing rapidly as a man. There was confession and healing, just as James 5:16 describes. In relationships, he is now experiencing true freedom. We have regular catch-ups where there are celebrations and affirmations as well as questions and reflections about how he is doing and the way he wants to grow. We pray together. God is blessing this young man and his household.

I know the Father has given me the authority and relationships to do these things. He is working amazingly through the role I have in the workplace, to glorify him and his kingdom.

Masashi’s story

One day my son, Soma, who was in the second grade, came home from school and told me, “I’m not going to talk about God at school anymore!”

When I asked him why, he said, “After experiencing God’s presence during Sunday worship, I wanted to share that joy. I tried to tell my friends that what I believed was common sense, but no one understood me. Instead, I was mocked.”

I thought, That is a completely expected outcome in Japan. At the same time, I realized that if things continued this way, we would be educating him to live with a divided heart.

Where’s my treasure?

I used to work tirelessly, day and night, weekdays and holidays alike. Because I got home late and also left early in the morning, time with my family was limited and the responsibility of raising our six children was left almost entirely to my wife.

On my days off, I would force my exhausted body to move and take my family out, often to crowded places, just to spend time together. On Sundays, I went to church for worship—but where was my heart? Where was I storing up my treasure? What was the one thing truly worth giving my life for?

I started to ask more questions: Was I working so many hours because it was the “normal” thing to do? Was I being controlled by money? Had I closed off my heart and was simply meeting quotas? Was that joy real? What role was I meant to fulfill?

In 2020, through a spiritual father, I experienced a great release that brought radical change to my life. My spirit was stirred so strongly that I can honestly say I am no longer interested in anything except working to expand the kingdom of God.

After wrestling with these questions, I decided to leave my job as a paramedic, which I had held for 18 years, and start a business to find a creative way to support my family. My colleagues were shocked. Why would I give up a stable job?

Working for the Lord

For me, work is not something I have to do. It is something I want to do. My motivation is not sales. I want everything I do to be a response to the Lord. From Sunday to Sunday—365 days a year, 24 hours a day—I want to worship him. This is my joy: to worship the Lord. My trust is expressed through praising him. I want to choose to please the Lord continually, not by calculation. This is the finest offering to the Lord.

By the Lord’s miracle, a Christian business owner entrusted me with managing his solar power business. In addition, I help with a friend’s estate clean-up company and we run a business selling reused items from the estate cleanup. Through this work, we truly realise that we can’t take anything from the earth up to heaven at all.

Now, six months in, I have no regrets. Our dream of helping others is growing. We work hard so that every person who works with us becomes like family—ekklesia.

Among those who work in our business, there are no labels such as Christian or non-Christian. The question now is: How can we live out the life of the Kingdom together with them? How do we daily choose faithfulness to the Lord?

Returning to the question that arose for my son: My hope is he will see the answer within me—as a son responding to the Father’s love. As I strive to become a man for others and to please the Lord with an undivided heart, I pray that he will see my masculine spirit.

Photo submitted by authors