First Level: The Path to Re-Encounter

First Level is the Gospel story carefully woven to speak to the Japanese heart. The loving relationship with the Creator - initiated, broken and restored - is emphasized throughout the material. From God's perspective, coming to know Him is 're-encountering', because He has always been our origin, and He created us with purpose. While we've tried to live our life with our own power apart from knowing God, He desired to bring us back to the relationship that we were originally meant to have with Him. All of our paths, even before we were born, are known by God. When we return to the Creator who made us, we are able to walk the path that the Creator originally intended for us to walk. Jesus is the Path to 'Re-encounter' God. This material is meant to be used in a relationship based Bible study, either one-on-one or in a group setting. During the study, Christians can share their personal experience of each of the five topics. Our hope is that through this study each Japanese person will re-encounter our Creator and develop a closer relationship with Him. This material was written from a Japanese perspective, and this English version is a translation of what is in the Japanese version. There may be some cultural and linguistic confusion for those who do not have much experience with Japanese culture. However, rather than reworking ideas in such a way as to make this material clear to English speakers, we have decided to merely translate the ideas so that you will know what the Japanese readers are seeing. We have included some cultural notes occasionally within the English text only, which are contained in parentheses and marked as "Translation Note: ".