May Newsletter 2021
Oh, To Be Like Oswald
This morning, as is customary for most mornings, the Lord woke me around 3:30 a.m. “Get up,” He said. This is usually how it goes. If I linger in bed, He just repeats himself, “Get up.” He will repeat Himself until I get up. His voice is not harsh or commanding. It is gentle, yet firm. I am glad He persists because these times in the morning are sweet, my favorite time of the day, by far.
Then I go outside to get some fresh air and wake up a bit. It is usually here that He speaks to me right away, and the first thing He says is important, because it usually sets the tone for the day.
When He speaks to me outside, I immediately write it all down in my journal, because His words are precious to me, like fine gold.
You might say that by His grace I have accomplished some big things in my life, like reaching more than 40,000 people through events in a five-year period. Yet these accomplishments pale in the light of being with Him. This morning I thanked Him that I could be His friend. I love to sit with Him and just listen, and then talk to Him and hear His reply. This is by far the greatest treasure I have in life. My wife and children come closely behind that.
Don’t be deluded by thinking accomplishing great things in life will satisfy your hunger for personal fulfillment. Fulfilling the dreams God gives you are important, and you should render every ounce of strength you have to do just that. But in the end, if you pursue your destiny and never quit, you will find that He and He alone is the greatest treasure in life. When it is all said and done, if you have done it right, you will treasure His friendship above all else, and always . . . always sitting with Jesus will satisfy your soul like nothing else. It is no mistake. God designed us to have fellowship with Him and this relationship is the only thing that will fill the God-shaped vacuum inside.
Recently, in a conversation with a friend, I was telling him some things about Oswald Chambers that he didn’t know. Maybe you don’t know about Oswald Chambers. I first heard his name when I was introduced to his most popular book, the devotional, My Utmost For His Highest.
When I first heard the name, Oswald Chambers, I pictured an older man, a professor type with a thick mustache, full beard, rumpled hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
Oswald was quite the opposite. He was a very slender young man, almost skinny. His personal life was very devout to the point that many young men admired him and followed his examples. For a period in his life, Oswald had terrible struggles with self-doubt. He felt dry and parched inside and couldn’t seem to connect with God as he wanted to. He felt terrible that he was perhaps deceiving these young men who thought he was so spiritual.
Billy Graham had the same spells of intense self-doubt and at times he worried incessantly about almost everything he was doing.
Surprise you? Well, some of our most admired heroes of the faith are those who have the most intense inward struggles with who they are. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily, because these kinds of struggles produce brokenness and brokenness produces great effectiveness for God, because it is then “No longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20 ESV).”
So how did My Utmost For His Highest get published? Oswald died prematurely at the age of 43 due to complications from a ruptured appendix. After he died his widow, Biddy, was quite broke and had no good way to make a living for herself and their young daughter, Kathleen. She scratched out a living by hiring out as a housekeeper.
But during Oswald’s life she had recorded his many lectures through her excellent skills in shorthand. So, she dug up Oswald’s writings and began working on My Utmost For His Highest. It took her three years to edit and prepare the work, which was published in 1727, ten years after Oswald’s death. Here is a case of a man whose life became far more impactful after his death than while he was living.
My Utmost For His Highest has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide in 39 different languages and is still today one of the most popular devotionals available.
In conclusion, I urge you to get My Utmost For His Highest. I promise you it will bless you deeply!
Fire In Michigan
Lorraine and I just returned from a ministry trip in Ramsay, Michigan, just east of Bessemer.
Pastor Todd Winkler put us first in the service. We performed two numbers and received enthusiastic applause.
I first met Todd and his wife, Robin, about 15 years ago when I went to the area to do an outreach event. The event never happened but we did place Jesse Smith, the Hip Hop dancer in the school for an assembly. The school later called him back for another assembly. I spent three or four days in the area in prayer and at one point joined Pastor Todd, Robin and a handful of parishioners for a long prayer time at their church. Their church was about 30 people then, but you should see it now!
Todd related to us that there came a time when they had to decide if they were going to have an exclusive club, or if they were going to follow the command of Jesus to make disciples. They chose to make disciples.
You should see it now! Wow! Our friends Dale and Jean Davidson drove from Northern Wisconsin to the service. Jean said it was the liveliest service she has ever been in and gave it a 10. The church was quite full, about 130.
Across the parking lot is the youth building where about 80 young people meet every week. Across the street is the rehab house, that is home to a young woman who has now gone 17 months without a drop of alcohol. Downtown, the church owns an office building that rents to two businesses and helps to fund the ministry. Then, they own a 40-acre farm, also for ministry. The barn is converted into a sort of banquet hall, and they have 12 weddings scheduled for the summer.
Male and female he created them (Gen 5:2 ESV).
Pastor Todd told us about an alarming thing going on in their local grade school. A teacher told him she is not allowed to call the students boys and girls. She now has to call them friends.
What is this? It is Joe Biden’s outrageous policy of “gender neutral.” We are not male or female, we are gender neutral.
This stuff the left preaches is right out of the pit of hell, and they are seeking to brainwash our kids, from grade school right on up through college age.
We can’t coast through life anymore, believing everything will turn out all right. In a town in Arizona, the parents marched down to the school and told them they don’t want this garbage WOKE curriculum taught to their kids. We have to stand up and make our voices known.
WAKE UP! IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP!
In His Service,
George and Lorraine Halama
Photos designed and taken by Lorraine