Happy New Year!

To the 1500-plus "unique" visitors to my blog: So many of you have meant so much to me and Win, especially this last year. We cherish your friendship, and the fellowship in Christ that we enjoy with so many of you as well.

2009 was at the same time a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, eye-opening, faith-stretching, hope-building, God-supplying, marriage-strengthening year for us. When it comes to the New Year, the saying may seem trite to some, but we embrace its truth: "We may not know WHAT the future holds, but we know WHO holds the future!"

As Win and I "count our blessings" of the past twelve months, many of you are personally numbered among them. (We don't know who all 1500 of you are. If we did, I am sure you all would be numbered among them!). Our hope and prayer for you is that the Lord Jesus would bless you abundantly in 2010. "May He grant you according to your heart's desire..." (Psalm 20:4).

My hope and prayer for this world is that Jesus would return soon. I long for His appearing. Maranatha! Even so, quickly come, Lord Jesus!

Grateful to God for you, and STILL amazed by His grace,
Joe & Win
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Psalm 37:4

December 25, 2009

Today we celebrate the birth of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, perhaps more than ever, the world still needs to hear the "good news" that was proclaimed by a heavenly messenger to a band of shepherds resting on a hillside just outside the tiny village of Bethlehem on that "holy night" some two thousand years ago. Today I would say it like this: "Good News! Jesus Christ graciously and irrevocably gives the gift of everlasting life to everyone who believes in Him for it, because of who He IS (the Son of God, the Messiah - God's appointed and anointed One), based on what He DID (His cruel death by crucifixion on our behalf, and His bodily resurrection three days later), and buttressed by what He SAID ("Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life" - John 6:47).

I am not ashamed to say that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I believed in Him for everlasting life in the late fall of 1957, while attending a "Good News" club in my hometown of North Plainfield, NJ, sponsored by a ministry to children called "Child Evangelism Fellowship." Sure, I was just a young boy. But I was old enough to know and understand that I was a sinner who needed a Savior. Today, some fifty-two years later, I am STILL amazed by HIS grace - now more than ever.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16