Update from Japan: How You Can Pray from The Gospel Coalition Blog

Update from Japan: How You Can Pray

MTW prayer update for Japan

Prayer Updates

General requests:

• Containment of the nuclear crisis
  
• Wisdom for MTW staff and relief workers to know where help is needed most, and for safety and endurance as they minister to overwhelming needs.
  
• For grieving families to know the love and comfort of Christians
  
• That those trying to find each other get reconnected soon
  
• Safety from aftershocks, which are still quite strong
  
• Shelter for those whose homes are destroyed
  
• Restoration of power and communications
  

Pray for the spiritual needs of this region:

• The areas affected by the earthquake and tsunamis of Miyagi, Fukushima, and Ibaraki are some of the most spiritually needy places in Japan, with over 4.9 million people yet only about 9,000 active Christians (about 0.15%). Fukushima has the lowest average worship attendance with only 19 per church. There is one city and 44 towns still with no church. Pray God changes the spiritual situation. (Sources: CIS News 12/2012, JEMA Directory 2010)
  
• May the Japanese people come to thirst spiritually and seek Living Water (Isa. 55:1-2; John 4).
  
• May they flee to higher ground . . . to The High Rock (Ps. 61:2).
  
• May a tsunami of grace, wave after wave, flood Japan (Ezek. 47; John 1:16)
  

Pray for our ministry to the people there:

• That God will provide funds to purchase supplies and the trucks and gasoline necessary to deliver them (renting trucks in March is next to impossible because it is when most people move before the new school year begins in April)
  
• That church groups quickly obtain permission to access the expressway and get through to areas that desperately need these supplies
  
• For protection and stamina for these Christians who are caring for the people
  
• That we will have the opportunity to proclaim Jesus' name as we carry out mercy ministry--that God will fill the hearts of these laborers with His love, so it overflows to others, and that He will be glorified through this.
  
• The areas hit by the quake are the least evangelized areas in Japan. May the light of His love shine through!

A Church Planting Journey in Japan: Nagoya Relief Effort

A Church Planting Journey in Japan: Nagoya Relief Effort: "These are the scenes from yesterday...hundreds of donations, both money and things, dozens of people working, a beautiful picture of ..."

Heavenly Father, comfort these people

(Bits and pieces from an Associated Press article http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/13/japan-regions-scarce-water-power-food/.)

In Rikusentakata, a port city of over 20,000 virtually wiped out by the tsunami, Etsuko Koyama escaped the water rushing through the third flood of her home but lost her grip on her daughter's hand and has not found her. "I haven't given up hope yet," Koyama told public broadcaster NHK, wiping tears from her eyes. "I saved myself, but I couldn't save my daughter."

In a rare piece of good news, the Defense Ministry said a military vessel on Sunday rescued a 60-year-old man floating off the coast of Fukushima on the roof of his house after he and his wife were swept away in the tsunami. He was in good condition. His wife did not survive.

A young man described what ran through his mind before he escaped in a separate rescue. "I thought to myself, ah, this is how I will die," Tatsuro Ishikawa, his face bruised and cut, told NHK as he sat in striped hospital pajamas.

In the small town of Tagajo, also near Sendai, dazed residents roamed streets cluttered with smashed cars, broken homes and twisted metal.

24-year-old Ayumi Osuga, dug through the remains of her house, her white mittens covered by dark mud. Osuga said she had been practicing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into figures, with her three children when the quake stuck. She recalled her husband's shouted warning from outside: "'GET OUT OF THERE NOW!"' She gathered her children -- aged 2 to 6 -- and fled in her car to higher ground with her husband. They spent the night in a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away. "My family, my children. We are lucky to be alive," she said. "I have come to realize what is important in life," Osuga said, nervously flicking ashes from a cigarette onto the rubble at her feet as a giant column of black smoke billowed in the distance.

Pray for Japan!

Pray for comfort. Pray for healing. Pray for all of the physical needs of the people of Japan right now, but please don't forget to pray for their spiritual need! Less than 0.2% of Japanese people have the hope of eternal life found in Christ and the peace that can only come from knowing that God is in control of everything. We have a huge opportunity to pray for many to find comfort in the only true Comforter and for many to find peace in the Prince of Peace!

The Testimony of Eriko Suzuki

Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate

Convicting book by Jerry Bridges (The Navigators collegiate ministry).

Link to CBD description of Respectable Sins.


“Everyone should have the conviction that they’re doing what God wants them to do. God is the God of our everyday lives as well as the God of eternity.” Jerry Bridges