DON'T LOOK BACK...

Lot's wife did, and that didn't end well.  I have been given so much.  A little East Kansas farm girl, raised with fear of death, always on the alert for poisonous snakes and even more poisonous words about some kind of a god people swore to that caused me to cower in terror, my young face buried in my Grandma's lap.

I was nearly out of my teen years when a contractor I met in the town where I was working told me about Jesus. He claimed that Jesus could be trusted but I didn't really believe him. Mr. Nelson was on the board of a twenty-nine year old evangelist's ministry. That young man's name was Billy Graham. His best buddy's name was T.W. Wilson.  Mr. Nelson introduced both to me...but I didn't trust them either... until all three men offered me a year of free education at their Christian college in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You see, the word free had always had a hook in it. So did the word love. Nearly every boy I ever dated told me they loved me, but they all had an agenda.  Jesus has no "agenda" except to show us He loves us.  Isn't this, after all the simple message of the Gospel?  "But God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."  

As the dear-to-my-heart Thursday girls came into my living room this week I thought about how each one has needed to be shown that Jesus loves them just for themselves, and not for what they can do for Him. We ended our time together in prayer for Buddhist and Hindu relatives and loved ones trapped in a religion of fear.

This past week many of you Grandmothers and Grandfathers responded with tender, understanding compassion to a prayer request I wrote you about. Not one of your messages will be deleted and your written scriptures and letters are kept in notebooks for reading again and again.  I know that my Grandmother who left for Heaven when I was fourteen prayed for me. Five years later three men who had no agenda but to show me God's love were miraculously dropped into my life. I appeared to be "cool" at the time, but I was so scared. Nobody but Jesus knew how scared!

God judges nations.  All through past and present history millions of dissenting Christians are martyred as compromised absolutes morph into relativism.  Our Lord is casting a wider and wider net through technology as leaders are seducing multitudes into a Christ-less eternity. The Eternal Family is increasing as many of you are visualizing Him before attempting to verbalize about Him to people who are "whistling in the dark".  How else can they believe that Jesus came with no agenda unless we love them by serving them, just as He did?
                                          OLD HYMN: ONCE FOR ALL

Free from the law, O happy condition;  Jesus hath bled and there is remission.
Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall.  Grace hath redeemed us once for all!

Now are we free; there's no condemnation; Jesus provides a perfect salvation.
"Come unto Me", O hear His sweet call,  Come, and He saves us once for all.

ONCE FOR ALL, O SINNER, RECEIVE IT; ONCE FOR ALL, O BROTHER, BELIEVE IT
CLING TO THE CROSS;  THE BURDEN WILL FALL. 
CHRIST HATH REDEEMED US ONCE FOR ALL. 

Love, Jo