Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:00:02]:
Aloha and welcome to day three of 21 Days of Prayer. My name is pastor Mitch, and I am excited to be in the house getting to share what God has put on my heart and getting ready to allow us to connect with God in prayer, in worship, and in words. So if you have any prayers for tonight, ask that you text them in to 808-7935-5655 and we'll be able to get those prayers in house. We'll be able to pray for them. If you're watching this online and you see it on another day, we're gonna still get to pray for them as they come on in. So before we get started with what God has placed on my heart, we're gonna get to sing a song that we sang a couple times this summer on a couple youth trips that I went on, and it's the song gratitude. And as you get to sing some of the lyrics in this song, you get to not only show your gratitude for a God that is there for you in all circumstances, but you get to call out a voice within you that has strength because it's filled with the power of the holy Spirit. So let's rise and let's worship together.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:01:09]:
Here we go. Gratitude.

Worship Team [00:01:28]:
All my words fall short I've got nothing new how could I express all my gratitude? I could sing these songs as I often do but every song was dead and you never do.

Worship Team [00:02:05]:
So I throw up my hands and praise you again and again it's all that I have is a hallelujah hallelujah I know it's not much but nothing else did for a king except for a heart singing I know it's not much nothing else before king.

Worship Team [00:03:02]:
I've got one response us I've got just one move with my arm stretched wide.

Worship Team [00:03:16]:
I will worship you so I'll throw up my head to praise you again and again it's all that I have is a hallelujah hallelujah. I know it's not love but I've nothing else before Hal.

Worship Team [00:04:25]:
Your song.

Worship Team [00:04:29]:
Inside of those lungs get up and praise lord come on, my soul don't you get shy on me of your song you got a lion inside of the get up and praise the lord let's say church Come on, my soul don't you get shy on me lift up your song you got get up and praise the lord so I put my head praise you again and again.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:05:23]:
It'S.

Worship Team [00:05:24]:
All that I have is a hallelujah hallelujah no, it's not Nothing else before except for heart singing hallelujah.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:09:15]:
We are here to praise the Lord tonight. We're here to talk about strength and weakness. Thanks so much for working through the technical difficulties, the struggles, and it's all a part of the message tonight, as God would have it. So thanks so much. You can grab a seat. We're just going to share a short word before we get to connect with God in prayer on day three of 21 Days in Prayer. So as we go through just three points tonight. When I'm weak, then I am strong.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:09:46]:
We got a picture of me in high school, so rewind. 27 years ago, I had the opportunity to go to a camp in Canada, and it radically changed my life. You know, I am an introvert by nature. I was studying to be an engineer. I already knew what I wanted to do. I already knew the path of education I wanted to take. And in my junior year, a young life leader, a youth leader at the time, asked me, hey, do you want to go work at a camp for a month? And I'm like, well, when is this camp? And they were like, it's for the month of June. I'm like, well, my brother, who's been my brother for my entire life, graduates in June, and his grad party is in June.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:10:32]:
But let me pray about it. I had a relationship with Jesus, but I really, you know, loved my brother more than I love Jesus at that time, man. You know, lo and behold, my brother just in his humbleness, said, hey, you have this opportunity of a lifetime. I'm not going to be mad if you miss my graduation and if you miss my graduation party. And so I set off, and it was completely opposite of everything that was strong and confident in me. It was the introvert in me that was screaming, don't go. Why would you go by yourself? You know, you don't know anyone. You're gonna go on an airplane.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:11:07]:
You're gonna go to another country. You've never been out of the country. And it was just so out of my comfort zone that, you know, throughout this month that I got to work. You know, I'm five feet, three and a half inches tall, exactly how tall I am right now. And these are two of my friends that I met this month. The guy on the left is Jesse. He was just a great friend that I got to serve with in the dining hall. And then we got Sean, who was my work crew boss.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:11:32]:
And throughout that month, you know, I worked the hardest I've ever worked in my entire life. Completely out of my Comfort zone. I got injured and worked through some injuries. And in coming back from this trip, I decided I was gonna make a commitment to Christ to give him my weakness. And, you know, I wasn't gonna just give him my strengths of math and science and my academics, but I was gonna give him my shyness. I was gonna give him my introvert nature. And my senior year, I decided to wear more yellow. I hated the color yellow.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:12:10]:
Some of you asked me, you know, why is yellow your favorite color? Today you get to find out. But my last name is Okamura, and in Japanese, that means village or hill. Village. Oka is hill, mura is village. So, you know, after coming back from this trip to Canada, I really started developing a life verse that was going to walk with me, like my last name for the rest of my Life. And Matthew 5, 14, 16 says, you are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:12:44]:
Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. So, long story short, I decided senior year I was going to give everything to Jesus. I forewent my returning varsity season of soccer, helping out with young life in a lot bigger capacity, doing a lot more with Amnesty International, and just helping out others a lot more my senior year than doing what was best for me. I was doing what was best for others. As I got to decide where I wanted to go to college. I had a scholarship to go to the east coast and a scholarship to stay home. And in just this dynamic of, am I going to give God everything? I decided I was going to give him even my college dreams and my dreams of being an engineer, an electrical engineer.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:13:44]:
In 2000, in 1999, I gave up kind of that mainland dream to really stay at home to work on some of my weaknesses. You know, we have this story in or description, 2nd Corinthians 12, 8 through 10. And this is Paul, you know, basically saying, I have all of these things I can brag about. I have all these, you know, accolades of following Jesus. I've been whipped how many times. I've been shipwrecked how many times? But he says, you know, rather than boasting about all the things that I've done good in, 2nd Corinthians 12, he talks about really boasting in his weakness. And this past summer, this chapter in the Bible really spoke out to me. But 2 Corinthians 12, 8, 10, let's read.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:14:29]:
Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, my grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me. That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults, the hardships, the persecutions and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. You know, we had some technical difficulties just right before this talk right here with worship and you know, in a lot of my self sufficiency that's kind of like my wheelhouse. Like I love Apple TV, I love AirPlay, I love making sure everything works.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:15:13]:
And just right before this talk right here with worship and you know, in a lot of my self sufficiency that's kind of like my TV everything. Don't worry. Here in your weaknesses and still in here in your Strengths. You know, 27 years later to the day, I got to go back to this very camp that I went to in 1998 and I got a chance to take a group of individuals from church from, you know, around the area, from kids who have know nothing about Jesus to kids who only have like this very surface level picture of Jesus. And we got to go into the, you know, mountains of the Jervis Inlet in 100 miles north of Vancouver, and we got to get on some wakeboards, we got to get on some electric bikes, we got to go to the top of the mountains and some for some play with snow for the first time and really just full circle to what God has allowed me to do when I really gave him my weakness. You know, I am an introvert by nature. So when I look at these pictures 27 years later, this is not the picture that I had when I gave my weaknesses to Christ. You know, when I think about the strengths that I've had in running specifically Young life adventures to the mainland, to international places, I developed kind of like Paul, a little self sufficiency, a little bit of confidence of I know what I'm doing.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:16:55]:
I've been doing it for the last 20 years, you know, even communicating with parents and students and making sure they're prepared, I felt, man, this is it. This is the year that I'm going to really have the amount of confidence to do what God wants me to do. And lo and behold, I had a fight with some medical issues on May 25, 2026 or 2025. I woke up with a severe toothache. And this was two weeks before we were about to set off for Malibu. And, man, this toothache was the most pain I've ever felt in my life. And dentist was closed Memorial Day. So I said, kim, find me a dentist that will take some X rays, see if anything's wrong.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:17:42]:
Went to this dentist in Ala Moana. They took X rays. They couldn't find anything. They came in, they gave me the strongest pain medicine that they could. I went home, didn't really work. Next day, I got an emergency appointment with my dentist. They X rayed, couldn't find anything. It's like, you know what? The endodontist has better knowledge of what's going on.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:18:03]:
I'm going to send you to the endodontist. So waited a couple hours, went to the endodontist. They slid me in. Really made some patients mad. I'm sorry if you were. That if you're listening. And I pushed your appointment back an hour and a half. But the endodontist couldn't find anything in the X rays.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:18:19]:
But she was like, you know what? It may be a cracked tooth pushing on a nerve. So I'm going to do this root canal. Anyway, so they dug out this hole in my tooth where the pain was. And for the 10 minutes that they numbed my mouth, it was the best 10 minutes I've had this whole summer. But as soon as that pain wore off, as soon as that numbness went away, the pain was 10 times greater that night. And I did not want to live, actually. I was like, this is all of me just wants to quit. Turns out I had a online appointment with my doctor, and he's like, it sounds like shingles.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:19:00]:
You're a little young to have shingles, but have you been stressed lately? Have you been. You know, it's something that happens to you when you're maybe 10, 15 years older. But this is a picture of the fifth cranial nerve. And he gave me this exact picture. And he pointed out, okay, it started in your jaw, and it's going to ascend to your head. And the whole left side of my face blistered up, started getting swollen, and it attacked every nerve in my fifth cranial nerve all the way from my tooth, where it started, all the way to my ear to the top of my head. And, you know, as I was literally in bed, just, man, I wanna. I wanna go home to Jesus.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:19:40]:
Like, at times I was really feeling, this is more pain than I could ever handle. You know, My wife was noticing I wasn't Even getting sleep. Every two hours, I would wake up, pain medicine would wear off. But I had some real connection, some real encounters with Jesus because I was, you know, really setting up, man, if this thing is what it is, I might not be able to go on this trip to Canada that I've planned, that I felt very confident in taking students on. And our second point is to seek real encounters with Jesus even in the worst times. You know, I'm making this long Google document just in case I need to hand off all of this paperwork to a leader that was basically second in command. If I went down, they would be able to handle everything. And, you know, as I got to think about this trip, I got to share about this woman that was bleeding for 12 years to these students that some, for the first time, you know, have heard about just even Bible stories.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:20:40]:
But this comes from Luke 8, 42, 44, you know, a little preface to this scripture. Jesus has had a long day, had a long night. The night before, he was, you know, casting out some demons and a man in a graveyard. And this next day, he comes over and a town leader named Jairus has a daughter that's really sick. And he's respected in the town. He runs to Jesus. Jesus tells him, okay, let's go. Go to your daughter's house.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:21:11]:
And they're on their way to the daughter's house. And this is where this scripture picks up in Luke 8. 42. As Jesus went with him, he was surrounded by the crowds. A woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding, and she could find no cure. Coming up from behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately the bleeding had stopped. You know, I was searching, and it was just for two days, searching for some answers to this pain.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:21:43]:
And after I got the diagnosis of shingles, the doctor literally told me, there's nothing you can do. You can just sit, you can pray, you can ride it out. But everything in me just wanted, you know, my. I bought every over the counter thing you could have to try to numb, and it made it worse. But I've kind of felt like this woman, I was searching, searching to find just some sort of relief. But this woman was going through for 12 years, you know, expending everything she had, giving, you know, everything from finances to trust to hope into different things. But she still pursued Jesus. She still sought out a real encounter with Jesus in the midst of her weakness, you know, bleeding for 12 years.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:22:31]:
In that culture, if you, you know, have kind of medical conditions, you're kind of outcasted you're kind of sent maybe to the outside of town, and nobody really wants to touch you, nobody really wants to be around you because you might infect them. But she gets up to Jesus robe, touches his robe, and immediately the bleeding stops. You know, I love that Jesus doesn't just keep walking because he knows, man, this woman has sought me out for some healing. So he stops. He asked his friends who touched me. And his friends are like, are you kidding me? Everyone's touching you. The whole crowd is around you. And he's like, no, I know someone touched me for a very specific reason.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:23:13]:
And the woman, finding out that she couldn't hide from him anymore, decided to come forward. And Jesus stands there, maybe even sits there with this woman, and the woman tells him her whole story, maybe every doctor visit that she went through, every failed promise, all of that, and went on her way to be healed. You know, by this time, Jairus finds out that his daughter has passed and the sickness has overcome her. She's no longer living. And I love the fact that Jesus takes care of the leader of town and the one being led out of town because of a sickness. And you know, just in short, Jesus goes to this leader's house, heals this girl that was 12 years old on the same time healing this woman that was bleeding for 12 years. For me, I had some miraculous healing just to even be on this trip. You know, I think it was a 10 day timeline of I find out I had shingles, I took the medicine, and the doctor's like, well, it's seven to 14 days is the contagion period.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:24:19]:
So I want you to come see me on the 6th, see if you can even go on this trip. And lo and behold, the sixth comes around. He's like, I really highly suggest my medical recommendation for you to stay home because it's going to be very painful. You're not going to be in a place where you can get medicine, and you're going to be in a place where there are no telephones. We're completely off the grid. But I, you know, through prayers from church, a lot of people just huddling around, I made my way onto this trip. And my last point before we end is to utilize your weakness and struggle to glorify God and to grow. You know, I really had to take a step back physically from this trip.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:25:00]:
Every free time I had, I was sleeping with pain medicine. Every opportunity that had to rest, I was resting. But it really gave me an opportunity to see the leaders that are brought and even the Second timers, the students that knew Christ a lot to really take advantage of the platform that they were given. You know, we have two scriptures before I share just about the last trip I took on this summer. Romans 5, 3, 5. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character. And character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:25:44]:
And this hope will not lead to disappointment, for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. You know, as we open up some time in prayer, some of you are going through some weakness, and some of you are going through some problems and trials. Some may be as small as some technical difficulties in our, you know, airplay tonight. Some might be medical, physical, mental. In James 1, verses 2 to 4. Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for your endurance is fully developed.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:26:34]:
You will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. You know, I think about that scripture. Consider it an opportunity for great joy. It doesn't mean we have to be joyful about every bad thing that's going on in our lives right now. You know, some of us, we've been going through some storms and some weaknesses and some struggles for a long time, but we've been struggling for Christ and we've been giving it to Christ. You know, as I go back to that one scripture with Paul, I forgot to mention the bold highlighted. That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. You know, there's a lot of times I suffer for my own pride or I'll suffer for my own selfishness, and I'll suffer for my own kind of sin and kind of disobedience to God.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:27:26]:
And I don't take joy in any of those. I actually, you know, ask for forgiveness in those. But God is saying, when you suffer for me, my power is actually made perfect in weakness. You know, just a couple weeks ago, I got a chance to take students off the grid. We call it the. The Malibu of the islands. And we got to take students, local kids, to a local spot in the state. And, you know, we had an opportunity to really see God work in the most minimum of resources.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:27:59]:
And, you know, this property that we got to go to, you know, our students woke up before me. A lot of the Times and I was, you know, trying to get my rest. But man students were up, they're reading their Bible, they're sharing devotions over breakfast. They would wake up after that or after that, they'd get into their work clothes, long pants, long sleeve gloves, and they would work the land. They would be burning rubbish, breaking apart the old so the new could be rebuilt. The last three days of this just discipleship camp, we got to take a mile swim. And it's not a swim we do often. It's not a swim that we do with every group.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:28:37]:
But the group that we took really showed some perseverance. They really showed some endurance that we tell them we're going to pray hard, we're going to work hard, then we're going to play hard, then we're going to go to sleep. And every night by 10:30, every student and leader were lights out so they could be ready for the next day. And this is day five. We did this mile long swim. We were seven days on this property. The next day we did a hike to the same waterfall. The next day was the day that we left.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:29:10]:
And we told students we don't normally do a sunrise hike on the day that we leave this property because we got a lot of stuff to do. But when you wake up back at home, there's going to be some struggles for you to wake up with God. And we want to make sure you have the endurance to wake up with God back at home. So we went on a mile and a half hike straight up the mountain to this lookout point. And we got to spend, you know, where I think Jesus would spend time with his Father when he goes and resides to the mountain. And we got to reside and, you know, pray, we got to worship, we got to journal. Then we came back and there was still more work to be done, but we got to take a family picture here on this property. And the joy that I saw in students that were physically exhausted, they were physically maybe at their limit and we had a lot more of the day left.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:30:05]:
They really taught me a lot this summer about resting in the Lord and really helping his strength to be able to be perfected. In my weakness, we're going to go to some reflection questions. We're going to give you some time to pray and some time to hurry up together if you need prayer. God is full of grace. You know, grace is undeserved favor. I love when God says, my power is made perfect in weakness. So give me your weakness, give me your struggles. What are areas of weakness and Struggles that you might have been too prideful to let go of, too self sufficient to say, I can do it on my own, that we need to say, Jesus, can you take this weakness and make it give you glory? Endurance through struggle grows our character.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:30:52]:
Like we read in Hope, what are areas that God has grown hope in you? It might have something, it might have been something that you struggled with in your 20s and 30s, but now maybe in your 40s and 50s, you are thankful that you got to go through that and you got to really endure that and God's really given you hope and you know, a filling of the Holy Spirit. And last but not least, can you help those around you persevere in their areas of weakness? You know, when I, when I'm, I'm still dealing with shingles now actually I still have numbness in my face and pain in my jaw. But there was a lot of people that gathered around me to help me this summer complete the task that I was asked to complete to keep students safe on the two big adventures that we got to take this summer. So we're going to close this time in prayer and then if you have any prayer requests, 808-793-5655, we're going to open up day three prayer with the Lord. Dear Jesus, we thank you so much that you are are strong and your power is made perfect in our weakness. Thank you for those that are tuning in tonight in person, online, people that are connecting with you and people that want your strength, they want your victory, they want your peace. Thank you so much that you've allowed me to overcome my weakness of maybe people skills and social skills. And you've turned the path in 1998 to direct me to be an engineer of teenage ministry, to be an engineer of next generation hearts.

Pastor Mitch Okamura [00:32:31]:
Thank you for breaking my heart this summer, Lord, just for a moment where I couldn't stop crying for the generation that was before me, all the things that they were dealing with and that they were sharing. Thank you that we got to witness some of these students for the first time seek you and receive your peace, receive your joy, receive your balance. That they got to lay down their insecurity, just their low self esteem and they got to really pick up man what it means to be loved by you and what it means to be in a community of believers. We pray for those in house and those online that their prayers would be real tonight, that you would utilize our weaknesses to grow us in character, in faith and in hope that you would allow us to encounter you in the midst of our worst situations, in the situations that we just have a hard time bearing. We thank you that you are there. Thank you for this time. Your name, we pray. Amen.