Entries from
September 2004
September 2004 Newsleter
Wednesday, September 01, 2004 :: 312 Views :: Newsletter
Ablaze with the Gospel in 2004!
By Alan Butterworth
Will you interrupt your life this week and spend some time with the Lord praying about this question? However you answer, pray that you will see clearly your reasons. Pray for those you care about who do not yet have faith in Jesus. Thru the Ablaze initiative, the LCMS seeks to provide 100 million people with an opportunity to respond to the Gospel by 2017. To paraphrase Paul, how will your unbelieving friends hear the Gospel if you don’t share with them? As you study the Bible this week, and hear God’s Word, pray about how God wants you to tell others about Jesus and what priority this should have in your life.
Are you having trouble with where to start, or how to overcome your fears, or other obstacles? We want to help you, and your congregation, share the Gospel with the unbelievers you care about, whether they are Jewish or Gentile.
Our two week Summer Outreach in St. Louis is our best training. A few weeks ago 18 people participated: some for the entire two weeks, others for a week or less. People just like you! People with fear, with much to learn, and with little or no experience. We did share a passion for sharing the Gospel with lost people. That passion burned brightest for our friends and family. But for these two weeks, our passion burned bright for every person we met!
We have the best possible teacher during our Outreach! The Holy Spirit! We began our days with music and devotions and prayer and some training. Then, as we went out with joy, the real teacher took over: the Holy Spirit! You learn very quickly that it’s not about us. It’s about hurting people, desperate for hope, drawn to the Gospel we share not by our skill, but by the Holy Spirit.
Shalom from the Timms in New York!
Dawn, Caleb and I thank and praise God for you! We can’t thank you enough for your thoughts and prayers for the Apple of His Eye in the New York area.
Pastor Pekari and I have been making the rounds again in Kew Gardens Hills. For those who aren’t familiar with this area, it’s a very Orthodox Jewish area of Queens, NY. We don’t stand on street corners like I typically do in Forest Hills or Rego Park. Here it would be too dangerous. So we keep moving up and down Main Street. We hand out a few Gospel tracts along the way and try talking to people.
We did meet a Christian lady sitting in front of a Kosher Bakery. She was excited to receive a Gospel tract and find out that we were talking to people about Jesus. We in-turn encouraged her to share her faith with all those who knows.
The few people who would talk with us told us they were Jewish, but that they didn’t believe in the Bible, let alone Jesus.
The Message by Steve Cohen
It was an intense time of ministry. We had just completed a week-long LCMS missionary conference where all the missionaries from the various world areas and their families had gathered in St. Louis. Our summer outreach had begun, we had our national Apple of His Eye gathering an hour north of St. Louis for 3 days and I had just finished serving as a delegate to the 6 days of the 62nd LCMS national convention. All of this happened in a three week period back to back to back and I was ready for a short nap as I headed home.
Just as I was settling in, I checked my messages on my cel phone. Alan Butterworth had called, “Steve, we need a new broadside, NOW! The bus in Haifa that was blown up by a suicide bomber with a number of school-age children on it is being displayed here tomorrow and the next day and we should be there.”
I agreed and switched from napping mode to creative mode asking the Lord’s help for the right words for this sensitive subject. As I prayed, it became clear that what we had to offer to this situation were words of hopeÖ the only hope for peace in the Middle East is found in the Prince of Peace, Y’shua. A new broadside was born called L’Chaim: TO LIFE! [If you would like a copy of this broadside, please let us know and we will send one right away!]
I presumed that this event was not going to be like the concerts, ball games or parades where thousands gather. This was going to be an intimate, contemplative gathering. So... instead of printing thousands of broadsides, we only printed and folded 500.
The next two days, Phil Diesling from Vermont and I and followed “The Bus” to three different venues. It was an eye-opening experience for Phil, to say the least.
The only hope for peace in the Middle East is through the Prince of Peace -
Jesus the Messiah!
No sooner had we arrived at the first site, and started our distribution, then one of the volunteers assisting with the bus sought to interfere and have us removed. She called the police and tried to use them to shoo us away. Still many others took an interest in what we had to say. One student at a California college was traveling with the bus to do a video documentary. He came right up to me, turned on the camera and asked why I was there. It was a wonderful opportunity to give personal testimony to the saving grace of our Messiah. It turns out that the student is Jewish and a few days later he “coincidentally” ran into Phil at the airport as they were departing St. Louis and Phil took the initiative to further give testimony on camera!
Many of the Jewish people who came were stunned at the damage done to the bus (it was intact just as it was after the explosion). The mangled metal frame and the displacement of the seats from their mooring bore testimony to the size of the explosion and the horror left in its wake in the form of human carnage. The bus made a dramatic impact on all who came to see it, Jews and gentiles alike.
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