I was enjoying a lovely cup of coffee – as well as the inevitable cake - when I noticed two police officers sitting at a nearby table. Thankfully they hadn’t come to arrest me. But as I thought about that I realised that I had been arrested - or at least my attention had – by a headline in a Christian magazine which said, ‘God is using gospel music to draw Japanese people to himself’.

It made me sit up and think because the author (who has lived in Japan for more than a quarter of a century) was suggesting that this was happening in spite of the fact that less than one per cent of the population is Christian.

It would appear that their fascination with gospel music started some time ago with the release of the movie ‘Sister Act’. Music schools tried gospel music, and it became so popular that lots of people who had no interest whatsoever in going to church started to enjoy listening to Christian songs.

As I pondered that fascinating piece of news, I found myself thinking about a few things I have discovered as a Baptist pastor. Firstly, it has become increasingly obvious to me that I serve a ‘God of infinite surprises’ and that He often works in ways I little expect or even thought possible. Like the author of the article, I’ve had to learn that I shouldn’t try to ‘box God in’. I couldn’t anyway. If a dead Jesus could walk out of a tomb He can’t be contained by anything or anyone.

I also found myself reflecting on the author’s assertion that he will keep on singing because he would love to see lots of people coming to faith but that all depends on what God does for that is His work. I believe the author was both right and wrong when he said that because the New Testament shows us that when we are trying to figure out why some people respond positively but others do not, we are faced with a paradox: it is ‘God’s work’ but it is also down to us.

Jesus made this very clear. Stressing that it is God’s work, He said, ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me’. But on another occasion, He underlined our responsibility when he told the crowds who were gathering around Him ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. In other words, we have to choose whether we are going to follow Him or not.

Conversion then is a mysterious process but we can’t escape the fact that each of us must decide what we are going to do given that God doesn’t expect us to understand everything. He simply wants us to trust Him believing we that we will get the answers to our questions when we meet Him.