Dr Paul Allen

The most important prayer is that whatever the providences of God may be, He will use them to turn people to Christ. It’s wholly appropriate that we should pray that God would turn back the fires, but beyond that, our concern is for God’s glory.  If that means people are going to be awakened to think about eternal things when they’ve been consumed with the things of this world, then we pray that God will use them in such a manner. We believe that God will use these things to make people think about what really matters and what really lasts. In fact, it’s often at such times that you’ll hear people say in response to what they have lost that it’s made them treasure the things that are really important.

In 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and a resulting tsunami took nearly 19,000 lives and destroyed 230,000 homes in the region northeast of Tokyo . In its aftermath, The Nozomi Project, named for the Japanese word for “hope,” was born to provide sustainable income, community, dignity, and hope in a God who provides. Nozomi women sift through the rubble of homes and furnishings to discover broken china shards that they sand and insert into fittings to form jewelry. The jewelry is sold around the world, providing a livelihood for the women while sharing symbols of their faith in Christ . In New Testament times, it was customary to hide valuables in the unlikely vessels of simple clay pots. Paul describes how the treasure of the gospel is contained in the human frailty of followers of Christ : jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7). He suggests that the meager—and even at times broken—vessels of our lives actually can reveal God’s power in contrast to our imperfections. When God inh...