“I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel that it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third place, and teaching the fourth.”
James O. Fraser
Prayer is the heart of every Christian work. This has always been the case. People through whom God did great things have been always people of prayer. We have uncountable examples of revivals and spiritual breakthroughs in church history that were preceded by a long and persistent preparation in prayer.
Revival is always a gift and a work by God on the people’s hearts. In prayer I acknowledge my dependency on God and that I can’t do anything on my own that pleases Him. But at the same time I become part of the great deeds of the almighty God.
We long for a spiritual breakthrough for Japan! For this reason we want to pray extensively and passionately for this country and its inhabitants. We have collected some prayer points for Japan on this site and invite you to intercede with us for the people of Japan.
Besides this you also find also our personal prayer points and some for world mission in general.
Japan:
Prayer initiative! Pray for 200 workers for OMF Japan until 2020
Pray together with the team of OMF Japan for their prayer goal to have 200 workers until the year 2020. 150 of them should be full time and long term missionaries and 50 of them short termers (above 6 months) or so called “OMF friends”, i.e. committed, vibrant Christians who are working full- or part-time in Japan. Without being official OMF members they have a heart for reaching out to Japanese in their setting[1].
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Pray that God may use the OMF friends to penetrate parts of the Japanese population which would be hard to reach by full-time missionaries, e.g. Japan’s office workers and business people.
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Also pray for enough strength and resources to support and equip the new workers adequately.
Pray that Jesus becomes known in Japan.
Many Japanese have never heard the Gospel or even anything about Jesus. Only one in ten Japanese even knows a Christian who could tell him about Jesus. Often Christianity is associated with something foreign and sometimes scary, which has to do with old church buildings and religious motivated wars. Then again Christian traditions also are used to create a romantic atmosphere, like a date at Christmas Eve or a wedding in white in wedding chapel designed only for this purpose.
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Please pray that Jesus’ good news will spread in Japan and that the Japanese learn to distinguish between western traditions and genuine discipleship of Jesus. Pray that Christians and seekers meet in divine encounters and that Christians in Japan have the courage to talk freely about their faith.
Pray that the people in Japan understand that the living God of the Bible is also the God of Japan.
This may sound strange, but for many Japanese, Jesus is a God of the Americans or the Europeans. For them being Japanese is seen equal to being Buddhist or Shintoist, or religion is generally equated with something cultural which differs from country to country.
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Pray that the Japanese understand that God is the almighty creator of the whole universe and that He deserves to be worshiped by every single people group on earth. Pray that the Japanese can believe that Jesus has given His life also for them and that the access to God is free now also for them.
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Personal:
01.03.2020: Thank God for Julian’s successful PhD thesis.
Julian experienced God’s faithful and miraculous intervention throughout the whole process of writing his PhD thesis in mathematics, especially in the weeks before the final submission in October 2019 and the oral examination on February 27 in 2020.
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Praise God for this great gift in the midst of our studies at Bible College and preparations of becoming missionaries!
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Please pray that Julian can fully recover from that stressful time without much rest.
27.04.2020: Pray for our internship in Japan.
We are in the middle of our internship and already had many great opportunities to share Jesus in an English café run by OMF missionaries. Due to the corona crisis, however, we are leaf without much work at the moment, but still are able to use our time well making many valuable cultural and practical experiences, and learning much Japanese.
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Please pray for God’s guidance in these uncertain times and that we keep listening to His voice.
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Please pray that we find an affordable flight back for our original flight got canceled. It is most certain that we will stay at least three weeks longer than expected in Japan which is ok for us, but we should be back in Europe when our Bible School starts again with normal classes.
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Mission:
Pray that God sends more missionaries to the unreached.
In Luke 10:2 Jesus has instructed us to pray that the Lord of the harvest may send out laborers into His harvest. Even back then Jesus found that the harvest is plentiful, but there are only few workers. Not much has changed since then.
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In 2018 there were 440,000 foreign Missionaries worldwide (both Catholic and Protestant)[1]. When you look at this number, you have to take into consideration though that only one in 31 missionaries goes to an unreached people group[2]. The other 30 work among “reached” people groups, i.e. peoples that already have an indigenous community of believing Christians among them that is able to evangelize this people group without outside assistance[3]. With about 3,190,000,000 unreached people[4] this makes one missionary for 224,750 persons.
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Pray therefore that God touches the hearts of His children and that Christians are also willing to follow His call. Pray that Jesus’ followers receive a burden for the unreached again and that they ask God in an unbiased way if He wants to use them.
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