All of Carol’s family living in Spain joined us for a long weekend at a nice hotel in Granada. We had a great time.
For unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given,
and the government shall be upon his shoulder.
And his name shall be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
—Isaiah 9:6
Basically if you can read this email you've probably come across this verse, oft it is shared in the Christmas season. But only the first two lines from this verse have come to pass. The government IS NOT on Jesus shoulders and his name is used as a CURSE most every where I turn my ear.
Nevertheless, the first two lines pave the way for the next four. Right now I have the option, opportunity, privilege, and pleasure to call Jesus wonderful counsellor, mighty God, eternal father, and prince of peace. But there is coming a day when the choice is made. The prophecy says that regardless of how blasphemous our tongue has been, it shall declare the authority of Christ and that Christ will govern.
Perfect justice is coming.
If anything, for me, this Christmas has sparked a sense of urgency in sharing the good news with those around me. The window of opportunity will close, we are right now in a period of grace. But what is the good news?
She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will sōzō* his people from their sins.”
—Matthew 1:21
‘And wherever he [Jesus] would go—into villages, towns, or countryside—they would place the sick in the marketplaces, and would ask him if they could just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were sōzō*.’
—Mark 6:56
*Sōzō
In Mark 6:56 Sōzō is translated healed, in Matthew 1:21 it’s translated saved. I’ve seen this word defined as: To save, deliver or protect. To heal or preserve. To do well. To bring safely. To make whole. To rescue.
What Jesus life brought was sōzō. Hebrews 13:8 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”, and Psalm 105:37 confirms that even the shadow of the new covenant brought sōzō, the psalmist described the exodus (and the first passover) as follows: “He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes”. The first passover sōzō-ed the entire nation of Israel.
The gospel message hinges on the fact that the world is broken and that declaring Jesus as Lord we can leave the broken world now and be restored with God. Jesus sōzō-ed me, and now I can excitedly and sincerely share with others that I am not of the broken world and that they don't have to be either.
I'll be honest, no one yet has been ready to declare Christ as Lord with me on the spot. One guy even immediately walked out. But many others have given the message hard thought and expressed interest in continuing the conversation.
A passage I've never heard preached on that has really stuck out to me this year is the humility of Ahab found in 1 Kings 21:20-29.
I'm confident that everyone reading this email is aware that King Ahab was a bad man. The scripture here says ‘But there were none compared to Ahab, who sold himself to evil deeds in the sight of the Lord’. This passage also wasn’t the first time Elijah brought King Ahab the word of God.
In verse 20 Ahab addresses Elijah as ‘my enemy’. And yet repented at this last presentation of God’s word.
The worst of the worst, the bad to the bone, may yet repent when presented the word of God one time more. Don’t give up on bringing God's word to the people around you, it might take a lifetime before God’s word achieves its purpose, but God’s word never returns void.
God will let each one choose for himself his own destiny, he’s asking you to help those around you make a good choice.
Followup
- Last newsletter we asked for prayer that our car leave the shop in a timely fashion, it did.
- I asked for prayer that medical claims reimbursement be a non-issue, reimbursements are now a non-issue.
- We have neighbour who was diagnosed with cancer whose health has been rough, I don't have more of an update for them.
- We had made a claim for government child support that was denied, we asked for prayer for justice. There as been no news.
- I spoke of deploying a new password manager for the team. Testing showed I wasn’t ready to deploy what I had, so I paid for another year of what we were using. The digital infrastructure has improved a lot since the last newsletter.
2025 TL;DR
- I didn’t get nearly as much office work done as I had hoped. There were too many fronts, my capacity has been sporadic for the last 5 years and lot of things have accumulated. The cleaning lady asked me if I my office was still under renovation or if I was working, lol. Selling/recycling old equipment is becoming a top priority.
- I’ve been told a lot of Spiritual growth has happened (and we’ve felt it).
- We lived in Canada and Spain, it's hard to believe that we’ve only been back on the ground here seven months.
- Carol and I got hands on evangelism training and we have been leveraging it. It’s become very straight-forward and part of many conversations. Most satisfying has been to model evangelism with perfect strangers for the kids. Sarah has even taken initiative with her classmates as a result.
2026
We have a lot of hopes and dreams for 2026 but very little nailed down. Currently on the agenda is:
- Installing a server storage upgrade. We are moving from about 60tb to 140tb. Apparently the team plans to produce a lot of footage in the new year. We have just started shooting an unscripted weekly podcast format.
- An Avant Conference in Switzerland the last week in June.
- We decided to do a donor mailing after the new year to make room for evangelising with the neighbours on our street this Christmas season.
Pray
- For hearts on our street to be open to hearing about what Jesus birth means for them. There are 48 other houses on our street and so far we’ve knocked on 14 doors and had 7 conversations.
- Wisdom, discernment, and blessing for projects in 2026. In faith I declare it’s going to end up being a big year.
Last Thoughts
There is a lot on my heart I would like to share; 2025 has been a pretty wild year. I’m grateful that God’s word proves true (Proverbs 30:5 ESV) and God has showed up:
- Sharing the Gospel with a friend, he asked a really good, challenging question and I wasn’t sure how I was going to answer it. But I opened my mouth and God gave me the best words I could have hoped for. I saw him mentally chewing on what was said.
- I remember one night where I got a solid 94 minutes of sleep. I was wiped. But as dawn broke I claimed Psalm 30:5 ‘sorrow may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning’. I let the sun rise and had a perfect day without any need for a nap.
- God even showed up in ways I hadn’t read about in the Bible and one morning he gave me a back rub. It was the best one I’ve ever had.
- And so many other ways.
I’ve almost given up on asking God for things. Psalm 23 in some translations says ‘the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.’ I want to live like that is true. I’ve mostly been memorising God’s promises, thanking him for them, and then proceeding as though God’s word proves true. It’s been very effective.
I haven’t done much extra-biblical reading this year, but the last thing I read was Sam Metcalf’s booklet ‘Engaging the Supernatural’ (40 pages). The last four pages describe the kind of Christian life I want to live.
Addendum: Sharing 101
There are at least 4 easy starts to talking about God:
- Pray for the person with the person
- Share a verse from the Bible. I’ve asked a lot of people on the job ‘the Bible says work is a blessing, do you feel that way?’
- A short gospel presentation. It takes about 10 minutes to learn ‘the four’ or the ‘three circles’ versions.
- A personal testimony. You just need four sentences:
- My life before Jesus
- Why I invited Jesus
- My life with Jesus
- An invitation
Addendum 2: Changes to formatting
This has taken me longer to get out because I'm changing how I build these. My passion has long been building websites, which is easily transferred into emails and PDF’s. Word Docs are not. The email and pdf are now generated from a single source that makes proofreading so much easier, but has taken time to build. Also, separating content from layout means I no long have to worry about content updates causing unexpected changes.
A little more technical detail is available on my about page.
