(or… where have we been?)

November 2021 Newsletter

Amish Country Theater, Berlin Square, Round Lake Christian Camp, Rosco Village Methodist Church, Nazareth Man House in Goshen, Indiana, Logger’s Cook Off Church, Wayne County Fair, Plain City Annual Fund Raiser Concert, Fredericksburg Homecoming, CGM Annual Banquet, Smithville Ruritans, Changed Lives Ministries Banquet, Hochstetler Reunion, Berea Church Picnic, Longenecker Church, Crafter’s Fair in Shipshewana… and that was September!

Prisons are still closed to outside groups except for regular weekly Bible Study volunteers, and then only one or two people at at time may enter, but we are keeping busy with other events as you can see in the preceeding paragraph. This week I will again email as many prisons as I can to hint around that we are available. Chaplains have been overwhelmed and overworked for the last year and a half, so even if/when they open up, we want to keep our name on their front burner. Pray for the chaplains, the inmates and the outside groups that are ready and willing to go in.

---

The following thought, “The Hope of the World,” is from Dennis Kinlaw’s devotional, This Day With The Master, pg. Sept 24. Dr. Kinlaw was president of Asbury College when I attended there (in the last century). I thought of this because in our current world situation, I am tempted to look to the wrong places for help. Dr. Kinlaw reminds us that our only hope is in Jesus:

THE HOPE OF THE WORLD

The hope of the world is not in power, position, or wisdom, and it is especially not in money. The hope of the world is in those people who are clean.

Isaiah 52:11 says,

Depart! Depart!…
Touch no unclean thing;
Go out from the midst of her,
Be clean,
You who bear the vessels of the LORD.

If you are to be the witness for Christ that He asks you to be, if you are to have a future with Him, you must be clean. The future and the hope of the world is wherever God is, and God dwells with and in His people when they are clean. He can get rid of our sins and take care of our failures and create in us a place in which He would feel comfortable living. Once we allow Him to do that, there is no end to what the Spirit can do with our lives.

You may be trying to possess Him. You may be trying to have Christ and keep some pollution in your heart. It will not work. If the future is to be realized, you must let Him cleanse you so you are clean, pure, and holy. He wants possession of every area of our lives, and if you surrender your life to Him, you will find yourself with a future.

What Christ receives He cleanses, and what He cleanses He fills, and what He fills He uses. The hope of the world lies in the people who give themselves to Him for cleansing and filling.