Christianity in Japan

Another link.

Our church supports a family ministering in Japan, so I found this article particularly fascinating. Tough gig. But what an opportunity for the gospel. 

Praying for your church

We used to be in the habit of using the last couple of minutes of the drive to church, to pray for our church, the service and our parts in it. But we've recently lost the habit. 

I came across this post, '23 ways to pray for your church' this week. It uses the letters to the 7 churches in Revelation as prayer points. 

Planning to pop a copy in the glove box, and we'll aim to pray for one point on the way to church each Sunday. 

Initiate

I'm loving Wendy's Prayer Project. Sometimes it's so helpful to pray someone else's well thought out words. 

Here's the start of today's: 

Lord, help me to be someone who moves towards people with the gospel.  For people around me to hear of you – people at work, school, neighbours, my family – I need to move to them and talk to them.

Click on over to read the rest. 

Back

Moving house is done. 

Boxes are mostly unpacked, and things are feeling mostly sorted. I'm (trying to) enjoy taking my time, thinking about how to best make the house work for us. 

And SP turned 4 this week. Birthday party in the park yesterday. 

It's been a huge month. I'm feeling encouraged by the strength that God continues to give, and challenged to think about our commitments and see if there are ways we can cut back. A quiet-ish season would be a nice change. And I'll continue to work towards that, but also sit with these thoughts from Femina (that I only read today):

So here is the challenge – let’s pray that God would pour out His grace and energy on us, that He would equip us for the day that will be hard. That He will continue to push us and that we will continue to come to Him, not asking Him to stop, but asking Him for the grace to finish. We want to lean into the refining fire – because we want for all the dross to be burned out. Lean into the fire of God. Trust His purpose for you.

We want to be bought into the vision that God has for us. We want to look at our teething babies and our disobedient toddlers and our messy house and say, “Thank you God – I feel it burning, I know it is working. “