Thursday, December 22, 2016

The Hope of Christmas and All Seasons

We recently returned from the annual Gathering of our Proclaim! International missionary community — over 40 of us who live and minister in six different countries.  Stuart McAllister of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries brought valuable teaching all week, lifting us to a higher perspective on the true biblical hope that is ours, and for which all the world is searching. The more deeply we experience that hope, the more peace we have in the realities of this life, and the more we have to offer to the hopeless and helpless in any society or culture.

We take this to heart as we end a full and busy year. There have been many things that have been fulfilling and rewarding, but we understand that our hope is not in the results of our efforts. There have also been failures from our perspective. But in those, our hope is in God’s sovereignty, his ultimate purpose, and unfailing love.

We are grateful and thankful for you who are part of God’s good purpose and provision in our life and ministry. We wish you a Merry Christmas and God’s blessings in the coming year.

May your unfailing love be with us, LORD, even as we put our Hope in you.    Psalm 33:22    

                                                                                          Christianity offers a living hope, and sufficient reason for it. It carries assurance that God is at once Lord of the future and Sovereign of the present. That is all the reason one really needs for confronting the very crumbling expectations of modernity with the enduring principles of Christianity. 
Carl F Henry

Hope is not blind, nor is it alone. It is rooted in who God is, what He has done, and what He will yet do.
Stuart McAllister 

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