A Short, Glorious Life: Jamison and Kathryne Pals Went to Heaven instead of Japan

Your life may be more important than you think. I hope this will show you why, and increase your joy in what The Lord brings you to do each day. I think this is something the Pals family would have wanted. Jamison and Kathryne Pals were a young couple that attended our church. They were preparing to move to Japan as missionaries. They would bring with them their four-year-old son, two-year-old daughter, and a newborn son. Last weekend the whole family was on the road to Colorado for the final part of their training before moving overseas.  

In April, Jamison's blog Joy of Japan included a post with these words which he wrote to his wife Kathryne three years ago:

“I do not know how things will turn out for us.  As a husband I feel obligated to lead our family toward obedience—whatever the end may be.  Whether it is life or death or discomfort or disappointment, it is clear the Lord Jesus calls us not to an easy life.  However, He calls us to take up our cross just as He did to suffer and die.  Perhaps we will toil for years to raise support and never make it overseas.  Perhaps we will go and utterly fail as missionaries from all the worldly perspectives.  Perhaps we will labor for decades without any visible fruit.  Or perhaps through willing obedience many will pass from death to eternal life.” 

That road of obedience led them through Nebraska last Sunday. In the middle of the afternoon, a semi crashed into their car from behind and the impact caused a fire that took the lives of the entire Pals family.

Many people would only see this as a sad and tragic end to their dreams and hopes. Yet while the grief of family and friends is tremendous, there is also a surge of hope rising up in the midst of it. I did not get the joy of knowing the Pals personally, but I know friends who did, and I see that hope rising to the surface for them. In the stories that follow below, you can see that same hope in their parents. Part of the reason for that hope is that we firmly believe that the Pals are in the presence of God now, where there is no sorrow or regret at being welcomed home early. Christians know that the presence of God is unending joy and uninterrupted worship. Forever. That is why Paul says that to depart and be with Christ is "far better" than life on earth. (Phil. 1:23).

Another reason for that hope is that God never wastes our obedience and devotion to Him. Christianity has a history that shows extraordinary results from the humble deaths of people who loved the Lord. Sometimes death can produce a greater impact than a long life, if you leave the right things behind you. There is much that the lives of Jamison and Kathryne may yet do for the people of Japan and others who will be inspired by their story. The news of the accident as reported in the Omaha World-Herald the next day was full of details on the missionary vision for loving the people of Japan that had brought the Pals through Nebraska. Their story has been nationwide news. People magazine ran an exclusive story on its website this week that, again, displayed the heart of the Pals in bringing the Gospel to people in Japan. It also included many quotes from their parents showing their hope in the Lord even while mourning. Their blog Joy of Japan will now be read by far more people than they ever may have dreamed it would. How many of those people will learn for the first time that the 120 million Japanese people in Japan have almost no Christian witness among them? (See the Joshua Project for more.) Imagine if their story caused another 10, or 20, or even more people to dedicate their lives to the Gospel in Japan.

This has reminded me of another missionary, Amy Carmichael. Amy served in southern India from 1895 until her death in 1951. She worked to rescue young girls from sexual slavery and established a school and home to support and train rescued children, named Dohnavur Fellowship. In 1931, as she was concerned about financial support for the school, she suffered a terrible accident. She fell into a pit inside a dark house just rented for the school's purposes, breaking her leg and twisting her spine. It left her bedridden for the rest of her life. She was unable to actively serve in the ministry of the school she had worked so hard to found and support, although she continued to direct and lead it. While confined to bed, she wrote prose and poetry that ended up becoming known around the world. Through this writing, the work of her school and home for rescued children also became known across the globe, and her ministry received enough support that the Dohnavur Fellowship continues today.

Who can say how the Lord may now use the lives of Jamison and Kathryne? Amy Carmichael's personal disaster ended up making the work of sharing the Gospel in India known and funded, also drawing attention to the horror of young girls being enslaved and exploited in the temples. But she likely never imagined her work would gain such attention. She was just doing what she believed God wanted her to do. Just like Jamison and Kathryne followed the Lord in preparing to serve in Japan.

How should we feel after reading such testimonies? Usually we feel impressed, awed, and a little small in comparison. Often we feel guilty, too, as if we aren't doing enough to measure up to such devotion to God. I want to persuade you to set those thoughts of guilt aside. Instead, I think reading about the lives of the Pals and of Amy Carmichael should encourage us about our daily work and study. All they were doing was what they could, no matter how small. They had no idea where it would lead. Amy Carmichael couldn't have known that writing poems to express her feelings and faith would end up creating worldwide interest in her ministry in India and lead to generous giving and support. 

Jamison and Kathryne Pals had the same humble thoughts about what they were doing. And now, because they just kept seeking God first in how they used their time, and did not despise doing small things, holding to the hope that one day that faithfulness might produce a great result, their story is being read around the world. I hope and believe that the kind of impact they wanted to make with their lives and devotion to the Gospel will spread even farther through their unexpected deaths, showing people a faith that is worth living for and losing everything (on earth) for. If we want to honor their lives and their passion, I think we could start by seeing the ordinary things in our lives as vastly important to what God may do some day in the future. Maybe we won't see the future results ourselves, and maybe we will. But just as with the Pals and Amy Carmichael, the important thing is that other people would see, and believe.

For Supporting the Vision of Jamison and Kathryne Pals

Here is a video of the memorial service from Saturday, August 6, at Bethlehem Baptist Church. It was a remarkable service. This is one more way their story can be shared.



If you’d like to help the family with expenses, they have a GoFundMe page to raise money to bring the family’s ashes to Japan. https://www.gofundme.com/joyofjapan

Jamison’s father asked that, above all, people might take some time to read the Joy of Japan blog, and learn what they were truly about. https://joyofjapan.org

Pastor Jason Meyer of Bethlehem wrote this about the Pals. The University of Northwestern-Saint Paul radio ministry, KTIS.fm, shared the words of Jamison's father and friends of Jamison and Kathryne (along with the WCCO article linked within). The People story highlights the thoughts of Kathryne's parents.

Your Display of the Gospel Is Bound to What You Do with Trump

The public face of evangelical Christianity is about to be tested and determined this month.

Evangelical leaders of different ministries and denominations are about to decide what to do about Donald Trump as a candidate for president. A meeting of nearly 500 evangelical leaders is set for June 21 with Trump and his staff. This is a call for all of us to pray, because regardless of what you think they should do, you can pray for discernment and wisdom and faithfulness to God. They will need it. There are all sorts of wrong reasons that could tempt and persuade someone to support a politician, and they will be present in force that day.

It's also time for us to get serious with each other. What these leaders decide to do is going to reflect on Christianity and the entire church. We all have a right to participate in politics and voting as citizens, but nothing can separate the choices we make there from what people see of our faith and our beliefs about God. When people see what you value and support as a Christian, and how you make decisions, you are testifying to them about what is important to you and what you believe is right. Michael Gerson explains why what these evangelical leaders do is going to mark the church, either with the behavior, attitudes, and vices of Trump or with the convictions we stand on in remaining apart from him. The church is much more than just the political involvement of its members and leaders, but we can't convince people to set aside what we do politically as Christians from what they know about our faith and beliefs. Actions demonstrate beliefs. Choices demonstrate values.

We are ambassadors for Christ - each and every one of us - whose entire lives are a witness of the kingdom of God and the Gospel. Every minute we are testifying to what we believe and what the Gospel is about - even when our testimony is false because our actions are out of step with the Gospel. We're still portraying it a certain way to people, and they see the message our actions send even when we are getting the message wrong. Which is why Paul says: “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel[.]” (Phil. 1:27). The manner of your whole life. Every part. All your conduct, even in how you eat your lunch - as Paul confronted Peter: “But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’” (Gal. 2:14.)

The nomination for the Republican Party belongs to Trump now, despite all efforts to prevent that. But we don't belong to any party or kingdom on earth. We belong only to Christ, and the first and absolute priority of how we act in this world is to be faithful to Him and display the Christian faith and Gospel accurately. I shared some of my concerns here about how it harms the Gospel when Christians endorse a candidate as "the Christian choice." But even when we don't say we think Trump is a Christian, or we specifically say we don't agree with his statements on religion or his values, we are still showing the world something if we say we support him. Many of these evangelical leaders may go the same way that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and other Republican elected officials have gone, submitting to Trump with excuses or resignation. We have to pray and decide whether we will follow those leaders, or whether the great responsibility and privilege of reflecting the Gospel to the world requires us to take a stand and choose between God and political influence.

I pray we have the courage to be faithful to God, even if it requires us becoming irrelevant politically this year. There has never been a clearer example of a candidate who put us to the test of whether we will do that. As Gerson so clearly articulates it: "Support for Trump involves a massive, disorienting shift, especially given the reputation of the religious right. It is, well, unexpected for evangelicals to endorse a political figure who has engaged in creepy sex talk on the radio, boasted about his extramarital affairs, made a fortune from gambling and bragged about his endowment on national television." 

Yet that's the choice before us. Which is why I wrote a couple of months ago that Christians Must Have the Courage to Lose this Election (if Necessary). I stand by it. Ready or not, now is the time for Christians to prove what they worship and who they put their trust in: men or God. There's no halfway here. Either stand firm in faith, waiting on the Lord, or you are bowing your knee to worldly power and saying that political power and control of government is something you can't bear to surrender even if it tarnishes the image of the church. Even if your associations and alliances become the picture of the Gospel and Christian community that the world sees.

"Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation."
Psalm 146:3

"Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord!"
Psalm 31:24

As you ponder how to respond, I commend Matt Lee Anderson's article here, with which I wholeheartedly agree: Evangelicalism After Trump
This is a good example of wrestling with the reality that our choice about Trump is inseparable from what it means to be a Christian.

Bible Reading Made Easy

The way I started reading my Bible every day was by reading Proverbs. My father-in-law suggested it because there are 31 chapters, so you can read a chapter a day and that will take you through the whole book in a month. It's easy to keep track of, and having a sense of accomplishment right away is helpful. After working through the book four times, I really wanted to expand and experience the rest of the Bible. In the previous 10 years I had managed to read through the Bible perhaps twice, over a long period of time. But after starting simply by doing Proverbs chapter by chapter, I was hungry for more of the change in my outlook that I had experienced in those four months of daily Bible reading.

Just like any new habit, the key to sticking with it is to avoid biting off too much to chew at the beginning. Start with too much ambition and you're likely to get discouraged. It's more important to start and stick with it than it is to accomplish a certain goal right away. So where do you go after Proverbs? Or should you start somewhere else? There's no right or wrong place. The entire Bible is valuable. Listen to how Paul cherished it: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

So all Scripture is useful, and you can start wherever you are most interested. If it helps to have a suggestion, I recommend starting with Matthew 1 and going through all four Gospels at whatever pace works for you - even just half a chapter a day. Spending time listening to and observing Jesus each day will do amazing things for your life.

How I Discovered Satisfaction in God

This post is basically the overview of what made me come alive and taste real satisfaction. The posts to come will expand on the outline here and show how it all played out. I was raised without any belief in God for nearly 19 years. Sometime I will share how God opened my eyes to see the truth about the spiritual life and convinced me that Christ is my Lord and my Savior. But in my first post here I emphasized that there was still something missing from the faith I was living. This post starts to lay out how I went from being a Christian who believed and prayed, but was disappointed and still caught up in desires for sin, to becoming a Christian who enjoys God and finds satisfaction in simply experiencing Him.

I can't give you a secret recipe that will automatically introduce you to satisfaction in God if you just take the steps in the right order, because finding satisfaction in God happens through developing a personal relationship with Him. It's not mechanical – it's a dynamic, living, spiritual experience of coming close to the Divine and learning to know and trust Him. You let Him quiet your mind and release your tension in prayer, you listen to Him, you tell Him what troubles you, you wait for Him to do things in your life and in your heart, and you learn by experience that He is faithful and gives you what you need. Truly knowing God and finding satisfaction in Him is not like following a map or trying to learn how to operate something. It is much more like falling in love and starting a new relationship.

Thankfully, a lot of people before us have developed this relationship and have left great advice on how they went about it. The relationship still depends uniquely on the interaction between the two people involved and how they relate to each other, but the experiences of others give us a good idea how to get started. Most importantly, a relationship with God is unique because He gives and invests far more than you do and He actually works spiritually inside you to change you. So it will differ somewhat for each person, but the things below were fundamental for me, and from reading widely through what other Christians over the centuries have experienced, I believe these things will be fundamental for most people in finding a steady satisfaction in God.

• I began reading my Bible every day.
• I was genuinely unhappy and dissatisfied with where I was spiritually and with
  the results of my own efforts to manage my life. I confessed that I had done a
  lousy job and that I was not keeping God's Word faithfully on my own. I wasn't
  succeeding in fighting the desire for sin, and I was sick of being trapped in a
  cycle of doing things I was ashamed of and then having remorse and guilt.
• I learned to consciously focus on admitting I could not do what I needed to do
  myself and putting my trust entirely in God to do it instead. I was learning
  that prayer doesn't just include asking God for what we think we need, but also
  includes asking God to change us and do in us what He desires to do. I learned
  that you don't keep God's commands by trying harder; you keep them by asking Him
  earnestly to make you obedient and trusting Him that He will do it.
• I truly desired to know God more and find satisfaction in Him – I was becoming
  convinced that we were meant to enjoy God Himself for who He is, not just for
  what we get from Him, and I wanted to learn how to do this.
• As I read the Bible daily, I was learning to trust God's Word and His promises
  instead of having my attitude shaped by how I felt or what I saw in my own life.
  I was learning to put aside my own expectations of what was possible or what was
  going to happen and believe that all things are possible with God instead.
• I began to trust God that I could really let go of the things I had been holding
  onto for comfort and pleasure, and that He would replace them with something
  better and more satisfying. I learned to practice turning to Him when I was
  tempted by sin, trusting that He would ultimately give me more satisfaction and
  pleasure than sin could – without any shame!
• I made my relationship with God and my time with Him my highest priority.

That Sounds A Lot Like a Conversion…

This is a short post, but includes a long list at the end.

Some people would say that this sounds a lot like the difference between having faith and not having it at all. But I believe there were many signs to demonstrate that I truly believed in Christ and had faith before this happened. It seems to me that I was a genuine Christian, but I was also stuck in a shallow state of sanctification that I needed to be pulled out of. I have known other Christians who seem to have been through the same process or are still struggling with it. It is important for Christians to think about when faith actually begins and how we can know if we are truly alive in Christ or just deceiving ourselves like the Pharisees who persecuted Jesus and the Early Church. You need to be sure that you really know God, not just some imitation you have created for yourself to justify your way of life or make you feel important. But for the moment my purpose here is to encourage those who already believe in Christ who are nevertheless still struggling with satisfaction and yearning to experience the abundant life that Christ promised.

I also want those who may read this who don't believe Christ is their Savior to see just how extraordinary and powerful the pleasures of knowing God can be. If what you read is moving you, then I encourage you to take a Bible and literally ask God out loud to show you whether Christ is the answer. As you listen for Him, read the passages below and see what happens in your heart and mind. No one can explain quite how faith happens - it's a spiritual thing - but this is the way many people have found confidence to believe that Jesus Christ is who He says He is.

"but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear." Isaiah 59:2

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… ." Romans 3:23-24

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Romans 5:1

"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Romans 5:8

"if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." John 3:16-18

"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." John 1:12-13

"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. …" 1 John 3:16

"For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus… ." 1 Timothy 2:5

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."
Colossians 1:13-20

"For 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'" Romans 10:13

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

"yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified." Galatians 2:16

"'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' And they said, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.' And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house." Acts 16:30-32

"these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." John 20:31 (which means there is more to see if you keep on reading!)

Scripture quotes courtesy of this excellent online Bible website: ESV Bible Online

I also recommend: Bible Gateway (many, many different versions can be searched)

What Does Satisfaction in God Mean?

I am absolutely convinced that what happened in my life to introduce me to lasting satisfaction and joy was the work of God. There is no other way to explain the radical change in my heart and mind that caused me to lose interest in sin and awakened me to find satisfaction in experiencing God. What I mean by "experiencing God" is a peace, fullness, and contentment that come from thinking about God, reading the Bible, praying, loving other people the way He taught us to, and enjoying hope because of all the promises God has made to us.

This amazing fullness and satisfaction is not something that can be directly compared to anything else in the world. It is superior in every way. But the pleasure we get from many things in life bears some resemblances. If you look at the most beautiful thing you know through a spyglass that is grimy and covered with dust on the end, and then look at it with a completely clean glass, you will have some idea of the difference. The pleasures of earth are a dim shadow cast by the pleasures of God - a foggy reflection.

For most of us, the strongest and most satisfying emotion we have experienced is love. What you feel for your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, or for a child or a parent, is a good starting point for thinking about what experiencing satisfaction in God means. I think that might be one of the reasons He gave us these experiences, and why He uses marriage so often in the Bible to illustrate His relationship with His people. Being satisfied with God is a lot like love: you are happy just thinking about Him or remembering something He said to you (e.g. in the Bible), or joyful because you know Him and can come close to Him in prayer. But it's better. It's deeper, and it never ends because He is always available to you anywhere, at any time, forever.

Many people find it hard to believe they can feel this way about God. I used to be one of them. But something changed in my heart in an incredible way so that I started experiencing this very powerfully. My goal here is to explain how and why I believe this happened, and I will start laying that out after the next post.

The Beginning of the Journey

I read C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" a couple of years after I first believed in God. It was a great blessing in my development as a Christian. Yet for many years after, I struggled to find contentment in my Christian life. My growth was slow and halting, and the evidence of grace in my life was at many times barely perceptible. In other words, I sinned a lot and wasn't too successful in staying away from it. Looking back, I can best describe those years by saying I was always thirsty. I was longing for something I didn't seem to have, and I wasn't satisfied in what I did have. This left me vulnerable to wounding and scarring from disappointment, depression, and sin – not to mention the effect on others.

I now count one of the greatest demonstrations of God's mercy in my life to be His delivering me from this long season of spiritual thirst by showing me how to find satisfaction entirely and completely in Christ. The difference is so dramatic and amazing that it will take many conversations to describe it accurately, but the bottom line is that I've found a fountain of life that truly satisfies when nothing else will. There are still times when I feel pain, discouragement, weariness, and temptation just like any other person does. But when I feel dry or thirsty, I now know where to go to get filled up. Instead of feeling like something's missing all the time, or running after other things that don't really solve the problem, I am learning to go directly to God and receive satisfaction from the source.

I can testify that this works: God does satisfy deeply, and the desire or need for things that are sin is weakened and much easier to defeat when you experience satisfaction in God. But there are many Christians who don't have this satisfaction, just as I didn't have it for years. There seem to be plenty of books, and good ones, that will introduce the new convert or the skeptic to the basics of Christianity. It is the middle ground between that and between truly living with a satisfaction in God that seems to be in need of more explanation and accessibility. Countless believers throughout the history of the Church have found their satisfaction in God and learned the secret of the contentment that Paul describes in Philippians 4:11-13. Yet experience has convinced me that many Christians are struggling in this middle ground and are finding it to be a very discouraging place.

You can't love anyone else without wanting them to experience as much happiness as you do. So my mandate for writing this blog is that other people would experience real satisfaction in Christ and learn how Christianity truly provides contentment. My goals are to wrestle openly and honestly with the things that make life hard for all of us, and the things that really hurt and disappoint us; to share the ideas and the truths that have blessed me and given me the most satisfying encouragement and fulfillment; to show how God has helped me understand my own suffering and my own sin, and how He has shown me reasons to be filled with joy and encouragement; and to share how I have found rest for my soul and satisfaction in my life by seeing God more clearly and learning to enjoy who He really is. Although I will delve deeply into the actual experiences that led me to satisfaction in Christ and show how I got there, I will also share other thoughts that seem worth contributing. Readers can click on the tag "Finding Joy" to just read the posts on finding satisfaction in Christ.

I don't have the answers to all of life's problems in my head, but Christ does have the answers – indeed, He is the answer. My prayer for what I write here is that my experiences will lead others to find satisfaction in God as well so that their struggles become secondary to the joy they receive from our Savior.


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