A Two-Hour Run In Japan Led Me To Spiritual Discoveries About Discipline, Stillness, & Hope

In this solo Radiating Faith episode, I officially begin the Solo Scripture Samurai Arc, a new Japan-inspired series focused on Scripture, Christian history in Japan, spiritual reflection, and real-life lessons from my time living in the Land of the Rising Sun. While I have already recorded sermons during my stay in Japan, this episode marks the beginning of a more intentional journey into Japanese Christian history, the modern revitalization of Christianity in Japan, and the beauty of seeing the same God worshiped across different languages, cultures, and nations.

This episode came from a spontaneous two-hour run after a hectic stretch of typhoons, heavy rain, recovery, and physical exhaustion. Instead of repeating the same running route, I pushed past my normal turning point and discovered new trails, beaches, boardwalks, mountain stairs, parks, and a lighthouse I had been looking at from a distance for years. That moment became a lesson about discipline, boredom, perspective, and how distance can distort what we think we understand. Whether in fitness, relationships, faith, or personal growth, the angle we view something from can completely change what we believe about it.

I also talk about the importance of stillness in a noisy world. After my recent conversation with Coach Steve Wright about being still, unplugging, and listening for God, I decided to take my own advice. I ran without music, without podcasts, and without distractions so I could take in the ocean, birds, mountains, plants, and the evidence of God’s creation around me. Through that silence, several Psalms came to mind, including Psalm 46:10, Psalm 42:11, Psalm 34:18, and Psalm 23:4. I reflect on how Scripture reassures the downcast, comforts the brokenhearted, strengthens the crushed in spirit, and reminds us that God is present even in the darkest valley.

Throughout this episode, I connect physical discipline with spiritual discipline and explain why Christians should train their bodies, minds, and spirits to be ready to serve. I also reflect on the power of hearing Scripture in both English and Japanese, showing that while cultures, languages, and locations may differ, God remains the same. The Solo Scripture Samurai Arc is about more than Japan; it is about faith, discipline, stillness, Scripture, and discovering how God is already moving in places we may have never thought to look.

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Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Radiating Faith, the ministry sub-series on the Kapoonix podcast. Although this is not just a regular Radiating Faith. This episode is the first in a new series of the miniseries, right? But this is specifically Radiating Faith, the Solo Scripture Samurai Arc As some of you may know, and if you don't, I'm currently residing in Japan for the summer. I've been here twice before on vacation, and now I'm here for a longer term vacation. But in this particular trip, because of the extended time, I'm actually studying Christianity within Japan as well. The rising sun in the land of the rising sun, so to speak. It's great to be here, and honestly, I am genuinely surprised by how much Christian history there is to Japan, and the revitalization we see going on. I'll be attending some live Japanese English masses and worship gatherings and other groups. I'm actually a little upset that I haven't gotten to one yet, despite having been here for a month already. Uh, but it's been a hectic, busy time. Now, while I've done some solo sermons already while being here in Japan, none of them were Japanese inspired or Japanese history as these other sermons are going to be. Now, I'm excited for this. It's a different project. It's not, uh, supposed to be, uh, you know, like, what do they call it? A cultural appropriation or anything like that. I'm just very excited to be here. To learn about some of the things we'll g- be getting into is, uh, people actually being crucified in Japan, which I never knew. You know, I, I know that there have been Christian persecutions around the globe, uh, but to know that there was crucifixion in Japan blew my mind, and I'm actually going to be traveling, hopefully to Nagasaki to the site where that happened and recording some content and checking out different historical locations throughout Japan. Very excited for this solo Scripture Samurai arc. I'm here by myself, but I'm definitely gonna be meeting some Christian leaders here in Japan as I can. That doesn't mean I'm gonna be able to interview all of them, but just to have the conversations and see what's going on in the modern-day landscape as I also study the historical landscape. It's gonna be awesome, and I say awesome in a sense that it's sad that there was persecution and there's been a lot of suppression of Christianity in Japan. But it's so interesting to see how it has traveled here, to see the revitalization of it now, both online with social media accounts, pushing Japanese Christianity with different people here running churches and other events. So very excited to explore this more. This sermon is actually what I would call spontaneous. I went for a run today, and I decided to do something different. I went and ran for two hours straight Not something that a lot of people would do, especially on a whim, and I was already in recovery mode because we had two typhoons and an earthquake hit Japan basically all at the same time. And I got soaked because I was out on Awaji Island exploring a couple different things. We got rains from the typhoon. It didn't hit me exactly as I was there, uh, but it, it was pretty bad already. And luckily, you know, praise to God, it was a, a lighter day, but when it did get heavy, uh, I just so happened to have been lost in the country mountainsides, and I ended up running for 30 minutes straight up and down these mountains in these dirt roads in jeans and a dress shirt, completely soaked with heavy rain, the heaviest it was all day, and I was just running around. So I was already in a little bit of leg recovery from that unexpected workout. No stretching, no warmup, just it's raining, we're running, we're running, we're running. We can't find anything anywhere, and that was after spending about five or more hours walking around the island, including it was almost a four-mile or whatever walk that I had done, uh, up and down mountains to different viewpoints across the island and stuff. So yeah, I was in recovery, but today I decided, uh, you know, it ended up being a beautiful day out. I wanted to leave the house, went for a run, and that's where the sermon part comes in And it's not just a sermon, but also just life advice in general. And the lesson that I want to focus on, one of the main ones at least, is that boredom leads to the decline of discipline, and that routine that is too rigid leads to boredom, which leads to the decline of discipline. Routine can enhance discipline through repetitive patterns of doing certain actions at certain times and whatever it may be. But a lot of people get bored, and when they get bored, they get tired and exhausted emotionally, mentally, and even physically of doing the same things. Running around a track in circles is convenient, yes. But is it as effective, especially for the mind, as going out for runs outside on different trails? And I had grown bored of running along the same exact road and seaside path. Uh, you know, they have this cement pier along the beach here. I was tired of it, and I would run it for about an hour every other day, sometimes an hour and a half, sometimes thirty, forty minutes on the lighter side. And some of you may be laughing saying, "That's his light side." Uh, but yeah, that's my light run. And I was getting bored, I was getting tired. And I always turn around before this, you know, crossing bridge over the road in a different part of town. And I said, "You know what? Not today. We're going, and we're just gonna keep going until I feel like turning back, and we're just gonna go explore, explore a part of town that I've never seen." It turned out to be a whole peninsula of different parks and trails and wooden boardwalks along the beach, a lighthouse. And it was amazing to see the lighthouse because for the past two years, uh, whenever I have been in this location, I've looked out by the apartment and I've gone up on the mountain behind the apartment and seen this white tower on a mountaintop. And it looked pretty far away, like you'd have to take a train or a bus or something. And my friend and I and, you know, my fiance and I, we always looked at it like, "What is that? A planetarium, an observation tower? What is it all the way by itself on the mountain there?" And finally, after two years, I ran to it. It took me over an hour to get to it, and I had to run up all these mountain stairs and there from the typhoons we had a lot of muddy trails, different types of cement, different types of asphalt, different types of wood. This workout, yes, there was no end destination or goal. We were gonna run as far and as long as we felt like, but man, was it so effective. I went over so many different terrains and elevations, which was amazing because I live in the South of, you know, the United States of America, and there's not a lot of elevation where I'm at, uh, on the very East Coast side by the beaches. It's pretty flat. And I was New Jersey born and raised, a very mountainous region for those who aren't familiar, and I used to run a lot of mountains, and it's been a while. And it was great, you know, the, the way it affected my calves and knees, uh, not as much later on in the day, but I loved it. And One of the interesting parts of it was that when you got to the lighthouse, it was so different than expected. Looking from my apartment, the lighthouse looked like it was in the middle of a mountain. It was super high up. But it's not. It's on the beach, and it's actually was not that high of an elevation compared to other parts that I had ran through But the miles between us shifted the perspective And that's true to life too That's very true to life, especially when it comes to distance relationships, whether that's family members, friends, or most importantly, a romantic partner. The distance can really shift perspective compared to when you're up close. There's a lot of fights that happen based on topics that wouldn't matter if you were physically with your partner. And I don't just mean physical intimacy, but a ton of other issues as well, including emotional and spiritual connection. And I think all the time about, you know, God didn't put Adam and Eve in different gardens and tell them to be pen pals. He put them right together to be together. And I don't wanna villainize distance relationships and say they won't work. I've been in a few. I've had success, and I've had not success, you know? But I was really reflecting today on how distance really shifts our perspective physically, geographically, and emotionally, and mentally. Distance can create disconnection, or it can change the angles. You know, they have different terms, I know, in the nuclear operating world, uh, and probably in other blue-collar industries where you use gauges. A gauge can look like it's on a certain number depending what angle you're viewing at it from. If you're not viewing at it from the proper angle, if you're to the side, to the right or left. And so it's really important to think about how are we looking at this? Are we at the right angle? Are we at the right distance, or is our perspective really shifted? And is that shifting biasing towards maybe a negative side or maybe a positive side? And this sounds maybe too philosophical for me just running, but running, and I'm sure a lot of people who run can agree, same with working out, whatever it is that your physical activity is for reflective thinking, it can be that source and place for that. When I run, it's very reflective thinking, especially when I'm running for hours at a time. You know, and I definitely wonder what marathon runners think about. I, I, I'll share the joke that I love is I, I think about if I don't reach that tree or that telephone pole before the car next to me does, I'm gonna die, you know, or I lose. Uh, it's fun to set little goals like that. But for me, it was observation today And reflective thinking, but in a different way than normal. This trip is an opportunity for me to change and reflect. A lot of people make this statement, "Oh, I'm going on vacation, so I'm gonna change everything. I'm gonna change my perspective," or, "I'm gonna change, you know, my life," or, "I'm gonna change this or that," or, "I'm, I'm gonna become a new person." It's a great idea thinking that a geographical change will result in a personality or mindset shift, and it can. We've seen single moments change people's entire lives. I will never discredit that or disqualify that or say it can't happen. However, most people get so fixated on a vacation being a turning point rather than what it is. It can be a time to relax and unplug and de-stress, which may shift your mindset or allow you to, you know, focus on some things that you've been pushing off, or you may learn something new that you implement into your life. But the reality is vacations are busy, especially if you're going to a foreign country that you've never been to before. A lot of people are going from place to place to place. There's not time to reflect or think. You can take in the experiences and reflect afterward, or you're taking them in at a rate, and it's just not changing anything, 'cause you find out there's a lot of similarities in other countries. It's not like there's hidden wisdom, magic spots around the countries that if you happen to walk through one, you're like, "Wow, I'm a new person." There can be cultural teachings, whether they're famous sayings or something you see in a museum or just learn from someone at a bar or restaurant. Sure. But the deal is that usually it's too busy. With me staying for three months, I am given this advantage of being able to actually spend time reflecting and changing and studying and learning and growing. Man, I'm very grateful to God for that. I realize that is not an opportunity that everyone is afforded, especially for the amount of time that I'm staying or for the financial cost that I managed to get it at. That being said, for me, the real reflection was following through on my own advice. In a recent episode with Coach Steve Wright, great guy, I've known him for a couple years now, actually, believe it or not. Time flies by. And He and I are both also so busy. We're always doing something, so time goes by even faster because we are just, he and I are, you know, solopreneurs. And we always joked about doing something called Japan to Jamaica, where I would podcast from Japan and he would be in Jamaica because he would go there on vacation, and now he just recently moved there. And shortly after I got to Japan and shortly after he got to Jamaica, we followed through on it. This is the kind of people that he and I are. You know, if we say we're gonna do something, we're gonna make it happen. Did it happen last year when we first said it? No. Did it happen the second time? No. But we made it happen. And, uh, you know, it was a great episode, one of my most popular episodes actually. And among all of the camaraderie and laughter because he and I, you know, get along well and we joke a lot, there were some important points we made. Very important points. And one of them was stillness. Stillness in the busy world, stillness in scripture, stillness in society and the digital noise, unplugging And I said, "I need to take my own advice." I've been spending a lot of time on this trip on the computer, on the TV, on the phone. Uh, you know, spending time talking to people, both locals and tourists alike. And whenever I run, I play music. I play all kinds of different things. Sometimes podcast episodes, sometimes sermons, sometimes songs. But today I said, "I just wanna take in the scenery. I just wanna hear God." You know, Coach Roy and I shared a quote that is really powerful. It's a short but powerful quote. "Be still and know that I am God." And I wanted to do that, and it was so refreshing. Running, didn't know where I was. The terrain kept changing, but I'm along the beach and I'm seeing this beautiful view of the mountains and all these strange plants. Some of them I've never seen before. Some of them are beautiful flowers. Just wonderful. People often don't realize how much evidence of the Creator we have in just looking at the scenery. And I thought about that because when I turned the corner- To your right, you had all the scenery, and that out in the ocean you had the remnants of an original lighthouse that is just a few bricks left standing in a, a cone shape, you know, or a cylinder rather. You can see just the remnants of it left. And a lot of people go, "Wow, look at what people built. Look at what used to be there. Look at that lighthouse." And I thought that too, and I said, "But look right to the right of it. Look at everything that God made. Look at all that beautifulness right there that we overlook and take for granted." And in that moment I, I really just thought to myself, like, there is so much goodness in the Earth itself and so m- many signs of God's creation and love within nature itself, and we know for years, and there's scientific studies, you know, helping compound it that getting out in nature is refreshing and resetting in recovery, and I believe it's a deeply spiritual thing as well. Coach Wright and I spoke about not being able to hear God's voice 'cause we've got so much other stuff crammed into our noggins from our phones to, from t- our TVs, the radio, the people around us. But be still and intentionally listen. Provide that space for God to actually speak to you. And, and so I, I allowed that, you know? I, I turned off the music. I just listened to the sounds of nature, the ocean waves, the birds. And as I turned the corner, I saw this beautifulness, I thought of a couple psalms, and I'm gonna be sharing them here in English, but I'll also be inserting, I made some social media clips sharing these psalms in the Japanese language because I am here in Japan, and I, I do wanna help be a part of the Japanese-English Christianity mission. But I, I want to share some of the quotes because these psalms in particular that came to mind, they're ones that I've recently read, so they were more on my mind. Some of them are deeply engraved in my heart. The first was the one I mentioned, Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God." And now I'll play it in Japanese. And there's so much beauty in that. It's a command, right? Be still. And to a young child running around, it sounds like a terrible command. But let's look at it this way. Be still. Relax. Surrender to me. Stop focusing and running around worried about all these things. Be still and know that I am God. It's a message of reassurance. It's beautiful. And then when I was looking at all those plants, I just thought to myself one of my favorite psalms, and I, I saw it not too long ago, and it really spoke personally to me, and that's Psalm 42:11. "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." It's a, it's a beautiful one, and I'll play it here in Japanese. And for those of you, uh, just listening, not watching, there... I have some video footage of some of the sights that I saw. You know, very minimum because I didn't want to spend much time on my phone, but I did want to capture these clips to help make, uh, social media videos with these psalms to help spread the gospel. But here's Psalm 42:11. And then looking at why are we downcast? Why are we disturbed? Put your hope in God. Again, reassurance. Not just reassurance, but what am I doing? Why am I even thinking this way, you know? It's like a wake-up call to ourselves. And then, of course, when I think of the downcastment, I think of the disturbedness, of course, I think of one of my favorite psalms of all time. This is one that's very personal to me. Unfortunately, you know, it's on everyone's throw pillow and notebook. It's that popular, and I'm one of those guys. I don't, I don't want to have the most popular Bible quote. I want my favorite one to be one no one's ever heard right? And that's just nonsense pride and stuff, but I really love this one. It speaks to me very deeply and personally, and it got me through some very difficult hardships. And it's one that a lot of people use for comfort, and that's Psalm 34:18. You probably already know it, but just to share it. "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." I love that. The Bible is full of reassurance, like we've mentioned so many times in just these Psalms. But this particular niche, this population that, that this is speaking to, of the brokenhearted and the crushed in spirit, and if you read the Hebrew language, it's, it's deep crushing-ness. It's deep brokenheartedness, right? Of course, we've all experienced that. But there are certain moments in our life where that brokenheartedness and that crushed spirit is just extra. It is just really bringing us down. It's really just how we're waking up feeling, how we're going to bed feeling, how we're just living through the day feeling So I love this because God is speaking exactly to those people, and they need to hear it. Because those are the people who feel the farthest away from God. Says the Lord is close to these people, but these people are saying, "How could God be close to me? I'm brokenhearted and crushed in spirit. Why is this happening? Why did that happen? Why is this going to happen?" Right? We're full of doubt. Our spirit is downcast and disturbed. Our heart is broken. Our spirit is crushed. This is a pivotal moment where a lot of people throw away the faith because they feel far from God. But right here he's saying, "I am close." So I love that, and I'll share that in Japanese now as well. And then moving on, as I continued my run, I came across a couple tunnels. This first one, the main one, it was dark, it was damp, it was dripping water on me, and I recorded a video here that I made black and white to emphasize the power and the feeling of this psalm as you read it. And that's Psalm 23:4. Everyone knows this one. Even, even non-believers know this one. This is one of the most quoted ones. I'm gonna be reading it from the New International Version, so y'all are gonna hate me because it doesn't say the shadow or the valley of death or anything like that. It has a different translation, but it's all the same idea, right? And it says, "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me たとえ私が死の陰の谷を歩むとしても、災いを恐れません。あなたが私と共におられるからです。あなたのむちと杖が私を慰めてくださいます。 And now in Japanese And I think that it's amazing. I hope you enjoyed hearing the Japanese version. It's different, but the whole point of this solo scripture samurai arc, right, what is the main message with the theme? Yes, there's a motif of Japanese culture and history, and there's a lot of Japanese inspiration to some of the sermons that are non-historical based but are just based on scripture and lifestyle. Here's the deal: different culture, different language, different location, same God, same scripture, and it's beautiful. It's beautiful that me from America and someone in Japan grew up completely different, people from two different worlds really, could read that same quote of scripture in Japanese and in English and both deeply relate to it on such a personal level, and have a, a synergy between us because of that. We're all children of God. You know, we were split up because of sin. We were split up geographically via language. But the story of Yeshua, that is Jesus Christ, it's a reversal, and you can study that. I'm not gonna go too much into that, but it is written very clearly, right? One man, Adam, brought sin and death into the world, and then the generations beyond that multiplied sin. They tried to create the tower into heaven, and it got split up because of sin, because of pride and other feelings, greed. But Yeshua- Brings sin out of the world through one man. Brings salvation more abundantly than sin, as we read in the, in the New Testament. But there's more to it. The reversal of the language and separation, unity through Christ. The New Testament, especially the historical account of Acts, goes on to great detail about how the Gentiles, which isn't just that specific sect, but in general all people being for Yeshua, right? That, that we can all worship Him, all praise Him, all live a life like Him, and that He has salvation for all of us, right? For all of humanity. In that same reversal, we see the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, the speaking in tongues in different languages. Peter says, "These people are not drunk. It's only 9:00 in the morning." Because people were hearing them in their own language. If you're not familiar with that passage of scripture, I highly r- recommend looking into it. W- the significance of that. People were like, "Yes, you know, they're speaking different languages through the Holy Spirit so that they can spread the gospel." You know, Matthew 28:19, "Go forward and make disciples of all nations, teaching them what I have taught you to obey and what I have commanded, and know that until the end of the age I am with you always," right? That's a paraphrase, but pretty, pretty close. There's more to it than that. It's not just about the spread of the gospel, it's about the reversal of the separation of language, right? Language was made to separate us. It's the reversal of this, right? We are seeing as we approach the end times, unity through language being brought back toward one. Or as we got on that day of Pentecost, the ability, now we have it through technology, through the Holy Spirit, through a lot of means, to understand other languages, to translate, and to have unity more than ever before. And so this whole thing is just amazing. And like I said, I want to focus also on, on discipline, right? We are to train our bodies because one of the thing I, i- one of the things that I reflect on the most when I'm running is, what if there's a situation where I need to run and I'm not fast enough or strong enough, or there's people out there, bad people, training harder than me, right? It's important that we train. In fact, in my book, God Versus the Indomitable Human Spirit, not out yet, but in that I write about why we should pursue physical fitness if we are to live a true Christian life and to pursue Yeshua in the kingdom- We need to be ready to serve. And that's not to say that God can't use any of us as we are right now in our physical state, in our emotional state, our spiritual state, to do great things. We've seen historically amazing things done through people of all sizes, shapes, and ages, and race, right? But you should do everything to hone your craft and your physical body to be able to serve others. And that's one thing I think about. And then the discipline, right? The discipline that you have physically, uh, it factors into other parts of your life. And so one way to combat declining discipline is by keeping things entertaining, because we wanna be entertained. We hate boredom. Boredom leads to sin. We know that, right? And it leads to the decline of discipline. And so maybe having an unknown destination or goal, or maybe running in a brand-new area that you're not familiar with, be safe about it, right? But it can keep you anew in what you want to do. So I think that's really important. And as I was running today, I was like, "You know, I don't know if it's sermon-worthy or not," but I said, "You know what? I wanna share about this stillness, about this discipline, about this listening and taking in God when you're outside." It was so refreshing. I encourage everyone to do it. I know it's powerful to run with music. It helps fuel the imagination and helps, you know, send signals to the brain even to run faster, depending on the type of music you're listening to, or run slower. It can even help you manage your breathing. There's a lot of reasons to use music in tandem with running, but there's one reason, and that is a better relationship with God, to not listen to music every time, or any time if you want. But every now and then at least, just go for a run or a workout and just take everything in. In fact, I don't even wear headphones to the gym. You know, I'm there to train, and I wanna take everything in. And unpopular opinion of course, but I think especially if not the gym, when you're running or training outside, just be still and discover God, maybe for the first time, maybe again, or maybe just a daily refresher. But I really want to share that, and I hope maybe one of those Psalms spoke to you. I've got a lot of sermons coming up with this Solo Scripture Samurai arc, uh, you know, a sub-series of the sub-series, which is Radiating Faith. Super excited for it. Like I said, there's some mind-blowing Japanese Christianity history that I'm discovering that I, that I've never heard of, that I think most of the world doesn't know about. And then of course, I've got some inspired, you know, Bible sermons as well from different parts of Japanese culture, language, different lores or franchises that are popular here, so very excited for it. Thank you for tuning into this episode. I hope it was a blessing for you. And I just wanna say God bless you and take care. And if you're traveling somewhere new, I highly encourage you take a little bit time out of your vacation just to do some Christian research about the faith in that area. It may inspire you, surprise you, or be great to just pass on to someone else