BELIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE

"Where is your faith?"
LUKE 8:25

What is faith? Is it a spiritual force? Is it a creative power? Is
it a special gift from God, or something we have to develop on our
own? According to the Bible, faith is simply believing that God is
Who He says He is, and trusting that He will do what He says He
will do. When Jesus says, "Where is your faith?" He's saying,
"Don't you trust Me?"

I'm convinced that we have plenty of faith. The problem is we have
faith in all the wrong things. Where is your faith? In yourself? In
other people? Can you only trust what you see, hear, and
experience, or will you dare to trust Someone you can't see?
Believing the impossible makes the impossible possible.

MANIFESTING CHRIST

"What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.
Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the
loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain
Christ." PHILIPPIANS 3:7,8

The ones who have been sufficiently broken eventually manifest very
little of their self, and very much of Christ. God must work long
and hard with us to bring us to this place, but what a glorious day
it is when we are able to bow our heads and finally surrender
everything.

What joy it is to look back over all that the Lord has led us
through and realize His purpose in both the good times and the bad
times, to behold the goodness and the severity of God in His
dealings with us.

This is Discipleship This is Church

A FRESH START

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You
must be born again.'" JOHN 3:6,7

Jesus said that to see His Kingdom "you must be born-again." To
enter His Kingdom, He requires us to "become as little children"
(Matthew 18:3).

That is another way of saying, "You have to start all over again.
You cannot make any progress with Me so long as you cling to the
old way of thinking, perceiving, understanding, and interacting. I
cannot pour new wine into old wineskins because it would ruin both.
You need a new wineskin - a new heart, a new mind, a new
understanding of things in order to receive what I wish to give
you."

HAVING A FATHER'S HEART

"And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you;
though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved."
2 CORINTHIANS 12:15

Paul gave us an example to follow. Don't just look at his calling
and his gifting and his revelation. Look at his heart of love. He
gave all - not just for the Lord, but for the Lord's people. And
they were a most carnal, unappreciative bunch of people. Even so,
the heart of a father is demonstrated. That is the reason he had
authority. I tell you his authority was not in his title, his
position, or his status as having taught the believers there. His
authority was not in his calling, gift, or revelation. His
authority was in the abundant love he showed.

Make no mistake: I am not there yet. I still struggle with how to
be a good brother, much less a spiritual father with abundant love
for everyone. I obviously have a long way to go, but now I see the
missing ingredient and I am following after Love. How about you?

JANUARY FRIENDS LETTER

Greetings Friends
‎ "My name is Ania, I am 20 years old. Before coming to Christ, my life was a nightmare. Our mother was a drunk,& my sister Ira & I were given wine at 6 years at her parties. We often spent nights in basements and attics of apartment blocks. We drank & smoked marijuana. At age 11, my sister (she is elder) & I were raped in a beastly manner & after that we often thought about suicide. By 13 I was living with a drug addict who beat me & at 14 I had Umed, my baby boy. When my boyfriend went to jail & my sister & I had no money for food, we prostituted ourselves. Eventually we hit bottom & didnt want to live. It was only because of my son that I did not commit suicide. At the end of 2010 uncle Sergey came to us & started talking about Jesus. We repented & received Him & our lives have changed. We started learning to read & write & now we can read the Bible by ourselves. In the summer of 2011 we were water baptized & now we are serving girls who are like we were in the past. We gather girls and boys from the streets, hold fellowship with them & talk about Jesus. There are some who have received Him. Now we are praying for a home. We have been through a tragic life and understand them. Whoever reads my testimony, please pray over my sister and me, so that we would be able to lead many addicted girls and prostitutes to Christ. Blessings to you in the Lord, Ania and Ira"

Yes, Jesus changes lives and we have the privilege of partnering with our friends there as He does so. The story above is from Tajikistan. Will you pray with them for a home? Our friends in Kazakhstan have just started their second "Doma Mira" (House of Peace) residential community.

Friends in Pakistan want to translate "The Luke 10 Manual" into Urdu, Punjabi and Pashtu and give a copy to all the church leaders in Pakistan, Saqib "My soul has a great passion to change the mind set of all these brothers and sisters who are wasting their energies and resources trying to build western style Mega Churches." They can print for under $2.50 per copy and will start with 2,000 in Urdu. Will you pray about helping with this project? Western governments have spent billions combating terrorists. Let us help release a wave of Jesus followers.

A Burmese friend will publish 1,000 in Burmese and we need help with that project as well. Their cost is $2.00/copy. The Norwegian version came out last fall and one friend there said it was the most important book he has ever read! Not sure I would say that but it does pack a punch. Another Norwegian friend paid double for the book, "It was worth a double!" Need a Norwegian copy? Contact Inger at ingerjek@gmail.com

To order the English version of Luke 10 go to www.harvest-now.org and click on the book and Lulu will send you your order.

Opportunities are growing and so are the challenges.
We appreciate your friendship, prayers and partnership in putting the go in the gospel.
Steve & Marilyn

www.harvest-now.org
www.harvest-now.org

BEYOND BORN AGAIN

"God... Who desires all men
to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."
1 TIMOTHY 2:4

Here we see one will of God with two expressions - a gate and a
path. We enter the gate in a moment, but we walk the path over
time. We are saved in a moment, but we come to the full-knowledge
(epignosis) of Christ over time. So John 3:3 is not telling us
about our ending, but our beginning. Birth is the beginning of
Life, not the goal of Life. The goal in view here is not being
born-again, but entering the Kingdom.

Jesus does not just say, "You must be born again." If He did then
we might be correct in saying that is all there is to it. But Jesus
says, "Unless you are born again, you cannot see or enter into the
Kingdom of God." It is clear that the Kingdom is what we are trying
to gain entrance into, and while being born again is the gate, the
ultimate destination of the Kingdom of God is at the end of the
path.