Seeing God through Hawaiian Culture
The aloha spirit in Hawaii is a love for others given by God. Watch Kanoe share how she sees God reflected in her Hawaiian heritage and how that inspired her to reconnect with her heritage, which ultimately gave her a fuller identity of who she is in Jesus.
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Discover how faith and culture beautifully come together through the spirit of aloha. In this inspiring message, a Native Hawaiian believer shares how embracing her Hawaiian, Japanese, and Chinese heritage has deepened—not diminished—her identity in Christ. She reflects on the warmth, hospitality, and love that define the aloha spirit, explaining how these qualities point to the heart of Jesus, who welcomes, serves, and values every person.
This video is an invitation to celebrate the unique ways God has created each of us. Whether through your culture, language, family, or community, God intentionally weaves every part of your story into His greater purpose. Be encouraged to see your identity in Christ not as separate from your cultural background, but enriched by it, as you glorify God through the person He created you to be.
God reflects who He is in our culture, in my islands that I live in, in the language that my people speak. And so it just creates such a fuller identity in Christ
People say that we have aloha spirit in Hawaii, and to me that means just being full of warmth, loving. In Hawaii, we'll talk to all the strangers or no one's strangers to us. No one's other. Everyone's auntie, everyone's uncle, everyone's, "Hey sis, you need help?" Or, "Yeah, let me get this door for you." And it's just like seeing everyone as ohana and family, and going out of the way to share love and joy with others.
And we just bring this energy, this warmth wherever we go. We carry this as people of Hawaii. And the aloha spirit really reflects Jesus and who Jesus is to others. He is love. He puts others before himself. He sees people that others don't see. And so I truly believe that aloha spirit is this God-given ability to love others, to bring joy to other people's lives.
And in Hawaii, it just comes easy. It's just who we are. This warmth and this love and aloha for others that I have never experienced anywhere else in the world. So I think that's where my journey of learning more about my culture and who God's created me to be started And how do I bridge together my identity in Christ with my cultural identity, and that one enhances the other and vice versa.
And so that's where I started to learn, okay, how can I lean into my native Hawaiian culture, learn about hula, lei making? How can I lean into my Japanese, my Chinese? This whole, mix of who I am enhances my identity in Christ. It doesn't oppose it, but it just makes it fuller of who He's created me to be and who He wants me to be, because He's chosen these cultural backgrounds for a reason.
And I just wanna encourage you to consider the different ways that the Lord has created you uniquely to be you. Whether that's your culture, where you're born and raised, the languages you speak, all of these things the Lord has chosen for a specific reason. And leaning into that is glorifying the Lord in the way that He's created you.
And for me, I just feel so proud to be Hawaiian, and we truly believe that the Lord has blessed our culture with this aloha spirit inside of us that I believe truly is from the Lord, and represents Him and His Holy Spirit, who He is in our culture, in my islands that I live in. And so it just creates such a fuller identity in Christ.
