What a wonderful blessing to be able to come home for Christmas. Though the cost was high, we will trust God to provide. We are in desperate need of a spiritual refreshing, as well as a need for connection with loving people. We have been shunned, disconnected, and continually slandered, but it will be nice to come home to family and friends in the LORD!
I was given an email with the verse in Nehemiah that records his reply to his adversaries. Nehemiah 2:20 "I answered them by saying, "The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it."
We are here to build God's kingdom and cannot be worried or distracted by those who accuse us of wrong. They do not accuse others for benefit or for God's purpose. So we will perservere and pray, and meet, and grow in the way He leads us, knowing that our purpose is eternal and we have a share in the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven.
We will celebrate Christ's birth and the Father's glorious gift with many in the US. What a joy!! Here is another quote from Hudson Taylor, a major forerunner for the gospel in China many years ago,
"Envied by some, despised by many, hated by others, often blamed for things I never heard of or had nothing to do with...often perplexed in mind and embarrassed by circumstances--had not the Lord been specially gracious to me, had not my mind been sustained by the conviction that the work is His and that He is with me in the thick of the conflict, I would have fainted or broken down. But the battle is the Lord's and He will conquer. We may fail--do fail continually--but He never fails. Still, I need your prayers more than ever." J. Hudson Taylor
Now we need your prayers more than ever. We sincerely thank those who pray for us continually with a fervent heart before our God.
