Today is the day we remember Jesus’ birth. He came to set captive sinners free from the tyranny of death and sin.

As you celebrate today with friends and family, exchanging gifts, hugs, smiles, laughter, food, music, and more, please take time to pray for:

People around the world who sadly have no reprieve from their pain, such as:

- Pfc Bowe Bergdahl, held captive by the Taliban since June 30 (pictured)
- Christians who suffer loss and persecution in hostile lands like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, various parts of North Africa, China, and elsewhere
- Christians who are imprisoned around the world simply because of their unwavering commitment to Jesus
- Those who ache with physical hunger and starve in spiritual hunger
- Those who have lost loved ones this year, whether through accidents, crimes, or war

People who have offered up their lives for the spread of the Gospel, such as:

- Street evangelists who daily receive insults, jeers, and taunts as they preach Christ crucified
- Missionaries working in lands as translators, church planters, computer specialists, managers, mechanics, school teachers, etc.
- Itinerant preachers who still circuit travel to exhort, rebuke, teach, and challenge churches full of believers to greater commitment to and intimacy with Jesus Christ
- The few and rare godly pastors who hold fast to Biblical truth and sound doctrine

And, of course, people who continue, even today, to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”; adamantly refusing to repent and believe.

I’m sure I’m missing many people, but you get the idea.
Of all the gifts we could give today, the gifts of your time and prayers for these people are priceless.

Merry Christmas,
Anthony

Posted: December 25th, 2009 under Announcements, Current Events, Persecuted Church, Prayer, State of the Church, The Church, World Events, World Missions.
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“Salvation is not a cafeteria where you take what you want and leave the rest. You cannot take Christ as Saviour and refuse Him as Lord and be saved.” – Vance Havner, 20th Century Baptist Preacher

Posted: December 2nd, 2009 under Quotations, The Church.
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Do you know what the terms “SQL Join Statement”, “Subnet Mask”, or “VPN Tunnel” mean? If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and can answer “Yes” to one or more of the above, do you know that the Lord is looking for YOU to work in His fields using your God-given IT skills?! Check it out:

Check out http://www.itwow.org or http://www.checkitout.org for more information.

Posted: July 29th, 2009 under The Church, World Missions.
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“Hailing from a tiny farming community in western Pennsylvania, his conversion was as a teenager in Akron, Ohio. While on his way home from work at a tire company, he overheard a street preacher say: “If you don’t know how to be saved… just call on God.”  Upon returning home, he climbed into the attic and heeded the preacher’s advice…In 1919, five years after his conversion, and without formal theological training, [he] accepted an offer to pastor his first church. This began 44 years of ministry” (Wikipedia)

…for the author of yesterday’s quote, Aiden Wilson Tozer, better known simply as A.W. Tozer.

“The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless.  Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego.  Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver.  The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God…Everything is made to enter upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls.”

- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (1948)

What amazed me was that the above was written 61 years ago, and yet they didn’t have rock concerts for worship services, Emergent churches, Relevant churches, 30 day “sex challenges” (literally) ad nauseam.  The Christianity that the world sees and jokes and feels comfortable (if not annoyed) with–what passes today as the Gospel in so many churches and the lives of so many church goers–is the end product of “mechanical and spiritless” conversion.  Don’t take my word for, or Tozer’s, Spurgeon’s, Moody’s, Begg’s, Piper’s, Washer’s…search the Scriptures themselves and then ask the Lord what He would have your response be.

Hope you enjoyed the little quotation challenge.  God bless you today and thanks for visiting this little blog.

Posted: June 16th, 2009 under Quotations, The Church.
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On May 21st the International Mission Board (IMB) trustees officially agreed to suspend most (if not all) new missions appointments in 2009. Additionally, Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President Johnny Hunt said: “We will have a significant reduction in 2010…”

Let’s look at some numbers from the SBC website: In the SBC there are an estimated 16,000,000 members in more than 42,000 churches. To give you an idea of the enormity of those numbers, the total SBC membership is approximately 5-to-6 larger than the entire United States armed forces! Obviously, not every SBC “member” attends or gives, and not all the money that is given funnels up to the Convention.

In total, the SBC supports 5,000 international missionaries and another 5,000 in the collective area of the U.S., Canada, Guam, and the Caribbean. Statistically, for every 1 SBC full-time missionary there are 1,600 people at home. Subtract the total SBC population of full-time missionaries from the total SBC membership and that leaves approximately 15,990,000–a drop in the SBC bucket.

By comparison, the Christian & Missionary Alliance, which is about 40 times smaller than the SBC, (about 417,000 members in just 2,000 churches) supports 900 missionaries, or a statistical average of 1 CMA missionary for every 463.3 CMA members.

My beloved SBC brothers and sisters in Christ, something seems not-quite-right.

Out of 16 Million people, why are there only 10,000 in full-time missionary service? I’ve double-checked my math for what I’m about to say and it came up the same both times, so here goes: If we apply the CMA statistical average (463:1) to the SBC’s numbers, the SBC would have 16 Million members supporting 34,557 full-time missionaries to the world!

Dear SBC IMB Trustees and SBC Board Members, now is not the time to be cutting missions! What messages does this send to the world? To those serving out on the field, needing more help? To the enemy who delights in your press release? The world is unraveling! Abandon your new buildings, lighting systems, sound systems, etc. Throw whatever needs to be thrown overboard to free up the resources! God’s portfolio has not suffered the slightest hit from the economy! While the world hobbles expand the missions program, don’t contract it!

“…The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38)

Posted: June 4th, 2009 under Challenge, Current Events, State of the Church, The Church, World Missions.
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94 cents.  That’s all it costs to mail a standard single-page letter envelope from the United States to many parts of the world.  That may not seem like much at all, but what if a stranger on the other side of the planet thought enough to write, print, and mail you a letter of encouragement while you were alone in jail for being a Christian?

Would you be that stranger to someone today?

PrisonerAlert.com, a ministry of Voice of the Martyrs, is a website that enables you to create letters to imprisoned believers around the world.  After first reading the process and precautions, you pick the person, then select the sentences you would like to include in your note, print it, and mail it.  In less than 10 minutes you can offer a cup of cold water, as it were, to a brother or sister in jail on the other side of the world.

One way you can make your letter “your own” is to use as your paper’s background an encouraging, inspiring landscape photo you have taken. I figure they may not get to see much, so pasting the letter text into a Microsoft Word document with a neutral, serene image background is a quick way to enhance the letter to make it personal and special.

Imagine if you received not just one letter–but literally almost 10,000 such letters from Christians all around the world! You can bless someone else like that by taking time to send an encouraging word to them.  I can’t think of a better use of a postage stamp…can you?

Posted: January 21st, 2009 under Challenge, Persecuted Church, The Church.
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