PLEASE VOTE

PRAYERFULLY. WHILE WE CAN.  BUT for the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is no hope for our nation. There never was.

Meanwhile: GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS
Oh, God my Father.
There is no shadow of turning with Thee.
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not.
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above.
Join with all nature in manifold witness,
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide.
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. 
Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside!

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS; GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS
MORNING BY MORNING, NEW MERCIES I SEE.
ALL I HAVE NEEDED THY HAND HAS PROVIDED.
GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS, LORD UNTO ME.

Love,  Jo

PLEASE VOTE.

PRAYERFULLY. WHILE WE CAN. BUT for the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is no hope for our nation. There never was.

Meanwhile: GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS
Oh, God my Father.
There is no shadow of turning with Thee.
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not.
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above.
Join with all nature in manifold witness,
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide.
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. 
Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside!

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS; GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS
MORNING BY MORNING, NEW MERCIES I SEE.
ALL I HAVE NEEDED THY HAND HAS PROVIDED.
GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS, LORD UNTO ME.

Love,  Jo

It Only Takes a Spark

It was the late 60's. Our nation was reeling from Watergate.  The  political Viet Nam war had disillusioned an entire generation. Moral absolutes were rapidly being compromised. Homosexuality, pornography, legalized abortion, and divorce  were becoming the norm. The survival of our nation seemed hopeless ...  and then, the Wind of the Spirit began to pick up and increased to gale force  In our little city of  Bakersfield, California the revival began with the Youth, as it did in cities and towns across America.  We were overwhelmed with the numbers of young people coming to Christ, along with their families, businesses,  neighborhoods ... all the way up to our City Council and down to the homeless on the streets.  The avalanche of new believers seemed like dominoes falling before Him in repentance. Our church launched many young evangelists to the uttermost parts of  the world: Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, Kenya, East Africa, business owners in places of influence and to university ministries across America. That fruit remains and continues to bear more fruit that remains. All across our thirsty land, this song was being sung by young and old:

                                     
IT ONLY TAKES A SPARK TO GET A FIRE GOING;
And soon all those around can warm up to its glowing.
That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it.
You spread His love to everyone;
YOU WANT TO PASS IT ON.

I wish for you, my friend the happiness that I've found
You can depend on Him; it matters not where you're bound.
I'll shout it from the mountaintops;
 I want the world to know the Lord of love has come to me
I WANT TO PASS IT ON!

Father, do you have any more young Josephs, Daniels, Nehemiahs  or Esthers?  Maybe You have another Paul who again and again, like the young warriors before him,  dared to raise their voice,  declaring, "If I perish, I perish."

This week the two candidates were rockin' along pretty good before they kicked it up a notch and slung boulders instead of mud. We'd have to be some kind of stupid not to conclude that we're hurtling toward  the ultimate deception;  "...and this is that spirit of antichrist of which you have heard that it should come, and is even now already in the world." 

Father, as David confessed his sin of fear then turned to You, so do I. So do we.  "What time I am afraid, I WILL trust in Thee!"

Love,  Jo

The Remedy of Revival

Nothing I can say can equal the power and credibility of David Jeremiah's above named message. I encourage you to listen to or read it. So, about this disturbing election: Do we vote? Of course! Thirty to fifty million (Give or take ten or twenty million.) evangelicals did not vote in the last election.

Do we settle for a woman who insists upon the rights of a woman to take the life of her baby? --for a woman who hugs her husband on camera but scoffs at the exclusivity of male/female marriage? Hillary is a bitter woman. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Are you praying for our other option to humble himself in the sight of the Lord so He can be lifted up?  The Lord has placed some warriors for the Gospel in Donald's corner.  Will he listen? He has been a vulgar man, but he doesn't sugarcoat the reality of our accumulated crises.

Another Malcolm Muggeridge quote: "The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment."

Oh, my dear Family-in-Christ, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."                                                                                                                                                                        
From Val, in Houston,  Texas comes this request for "Jesus, I Come". 

Out of my bondage, sorrow and night,  JESUS, I COME. JESUS, I COME.
Into Thy freedom, gladness and Light,  Jesus, I come to Thee.
Out of my sickness, into Thy health,  out of my want, and into Thy wealth.
Out of my sin, and into Thy Self,  Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of my shameful failure of loss, JESUS, I COME. JESUS I COME.
Into the glorious gain of Thy Cross. Jesus, I come to Thee..
Out of earth's sorrows, into Thy balm, JESUS, I COME; JESUS, I COME
Out of distress to jubilant Psalm,  Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of unrest and arrogant pride. JESUS I COME. JESUS I COME
Into Thy blessed will to abide, Jesus, I come to Thee.
Out of myself to dwell in Thy love, into despair and raptures above.
Upward for aye on wings of a dove,  Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of the fear and dread of the tomb,  JESUS I COME;. JESUS I COME.
Into the joy and Light of Thy home,  Jesus, I come to Thee.
Out of the depths of ruin untold,  Into the peace of Thy sheltering fold.
Ever Thy glorious face to behold, Jesus I come to Thee.

What hymn words would you like me to print?

Love,  Jo

The Farmer's Wife

Colonel Blair from Kentucky, city man- turned- Kansas- homesteader sacrificed for his only daughter's education in music at a Wichita college. Zema, my mother, now a  trained singer, won contests across the state. Contests over, she had to go home. To the farm. Not to be defeated,  she got on her horse and set out to be a circuit-riding voice and piano teacher for the folk in the community. My Grandfather Harlan and a bearded old saint named "Brother Henry" started a Methodist church in a little town named "Wilsey", three country miles from the farm. This was Mother's spin about that church:  "I didn't want to, but I went to a revival. A loud evangelist was preaching.  He came down off the platform, took me by the arm and tried to force me to go to the altar and repent.  I ran". Remember this part of her story. It will affect mine forty years later.

Zema met and eloped with Garnett, my Irish father, a railroader in the nearby Santa Fe Trail town of Council Grove. Oh! Good! Now she could turn her horse out to pasture, escape from the farm, dress up and be a lady!  Unexpectedly Grandfather Harlan died!  My parents had no choice but to move to the farm, work to save it from foreclosure and take care of Etta, my grandmother.  My brothers,  Blair and Bob were born a year apart. Ten years later when Mother was forty-one years old she birthed me. There were many of us menopause babies in those days..

Grandma died a long, painful death. Mother and Dad took patient and exhausting care of her, One day Grandma slipped away. She had been the only Light in our home. A quiet Light, but a Light, nonetheless. Dad began to drink. My people-loving mother started clubs for sewing, bridge and quilting.  In an upstairs bedroom is a raggedy quilt with the personally embroidered names of many of those club women. Also in that room,  hanging on a wall is my farm family's first electric light fixture that was on the ceiling of the bedroom in which I was born.

Mother launched yet another gathering that included husbands. She called it the "N.I.P." club,  which stood for "Nothing in Particular". One of the couples in that club also birthed a "menopause baby" Her name was "Janet". Nineteen years later, at a Christian gathering at Kansas State University she introduced me to a man named T.W. Wilson. His best friend was a young North Carolina evangelist named Billy Graham. They led me to Christ and invited me to Northwestern Bible College where for three years, Billy was Interim President. My mother was not happy that I had become a Christian and was following an evangelist to faraway Minneapolis, Minnesota. She did not, nor could she understand. I left her on the farm in Kansas, my heart torn in two..

Pick up the thread of  last week's blog: "My Dad, the Farmer". Would you share the thrill I feel all these years later?  In Palo Alto, California my mother finally understood that salvation is a grace gift from God. Not of works, lest any person should boast. Mother, a hard working farm wife probably hoped that she could work her way into Heaven. If anyone could have,  it would have been my mother.  At seventy years of age she left behind the heavy burdens of raising chickens, fighting a losing battle with farm dust, carrying armloads of logs from the woodpile that fed the hungry cooking and heating stove and lugging countless buckets of cold water from the hundred- foot- deep well to wash endless loads of clothes. She hung them to whip dry in the hot or cold prairie winds. As I write, that one hundred thirty- year- old pump, now motorized, pours a merry little stream of water into my garden pool at my front entryway. Our two sons, Doug and Jeff brought it to me from the abandoned farm. Wasn't that dear of them?

If the Lord beckons me Home before I get to continue this beautiful story of redemption,, my dear parents will have met me at The Gate. Grandfather Harlan will be there too. I have never met him. WHAT A DAY OF REJOICING THAT WILL BE!

But this is today.  Brilliant Malcolm Muggeridge left us with many quotables.  Here is one: "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream." After listening to yet another political debate,  this hymn of Truth thrums through my mind.

                                        THE SOLID ROCK

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but only trust in Jesus' Name. 

When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest in His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. 

His oath, His covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound I know in Him I shall be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone , faultless I stand before His throne. 

ON CHRIST, THE SOLID ROCK I STAND; 
ALL OTHER GROUND IS SINKING SAND.
ALL OTHER GROUND IS SINKING SAND. 

Love, Jo