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Christmas and Hanukkah are on the same day!
From David Brickner
Read David Brickner’s take on Hope for a New Year.
Hope for a New Year by David Brickner
Read David Brickner’s take on Hope for a New Year.Hope for a New Year by David Brickner
As we start the year with fresh hope, it seems like the odds are stacked against us. According to a recent U.S. News & World Report study, eighty percent of New Year’s resolutions are bound to fail. Even in light of that number, I’m not a cynic—I’m an optimist. But my hope is grounded in something more trustworthy and permanent than my own strength or circumstances.We will soon be inaugurating our new president. You may be one of those who are dismayed by the results of the election, or someone who is hopeful for the possibility for change. Our hope is not found in a new administration or a politician’s promise. Our best hope is found in something that isn’t new at all. This month, you will find our Jews for Jesus staff and volunteers in Washington, DC, at the inauguration festivities talking to people about the hope found in Jesus, the One who always was, always is and always will be.
The prophet Jeremiah encouraged people who had experienced disappointment to live for God’s promises. Israel had been taken forcibly into exile. Jeremiah wrote the best possible advice for a people who had experienced complete and utter devastation. He told them, “And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace” (Jeremiah 29:7). We all are living in a type of exile because ultimately our truest home is with God. Yet God still wants us to live full of hope now and to live well, even in our exile, because ultimately we represent Him.
Our exile may feel like a real sense of loss. Eventually life delivers disappointment to us on many different levels. It may be that we experience dysfunction in relationships that we still carry with us, and we may struggle with loneliness and alienation. Maybe things haven’t turned out the way we hoped in terms of our career and we feel stuck. We have disappointed ourselves and others, and we have to fight a sense of being less than what we had hoped for ourselves.
We find God’s encouragement for us through the words of Jeremiah to Israel. The first word of hope is to live for today and don’t let regret rob you of the joys that are still to be had here and now. Engage with people, engage with our culture and pray for it, be a part of our world and experience the joy that life has to offer us in our exile.
The second word of hope is that we should live for His promises. James Hagerty, White House Press Secretary during Eisenhower’s administration said, “…cheer up, things could get worse. So I cheered up, and sure enough, they got worse.” This was Jeremiah’s experience. Despite Jeremiah’s faithfulness to proclaim a message of hope, he had to live to see the destruction of his own people and city and then was forcibly taken into captivity where he died. And yet in the midst of it all he was able to pen what are perhaps the most hopeful words in all of Scripture: “Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23).
Because we are in exile, we cannot avoid pain and brokenness; we can, however, live hope-filled lives because God has promised us a much better tomorrow. We were made for much more than just this life—we have eternity in our hearts. Life on earth is temporal and what we think will make it perfect here doesn’t satisfy us. It’s because we are made for a permanence that is in God’s presence, a love that only He can give and a joy that never fades. He is the only pleasure that is permanent; He is the only just, wise and loving ruler. As refugees and exiles, we are citizens of God’s kingdom. We look forward with hope to the day when there is no more death, no more tears and no more pain—only the pure, rich and ever-satisfying love of God. That is our resolve and hope for the New Year and for all time.
Find out more about David Brickner, his writings, speaking schedule and possible availability to speak at your church at j4j.co/david.
Watch David’s New Year’s greeting, including an update on this month’s campaigns plus a sneak peek at our inauguration outreach.<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4HPY0ef-Ftk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe
Top Stories
Peace on earth? How do missionaries address the question of suffering?
“Why do the Jews suffer?”This question had been haunting Terry* his entire life. He had grown up in Eastern Europe, where his parents were Jewish survivors of World War II. His family immigrated to Canada in 1968 looking for a better life, but Terry’s turmoil over what his family had gone through and his spiritual hunger would not go away.
Terry had first been introduced to Jews for Jesus during our 2015 Pan Am outreach in Toronto. Soon thereafter he started meeting with our Canada director, Andrew Barron. During one of their meetings Terry told Andrew what he believed to be the reason for all the suffering of the Jewish people across the centuries: Jesus. Like many Jewish people around the world, all Terry knew about Jesus was that he had failed to fulfill the expectation that Messiah would bring world peace. Instead, many people had been persecuted in his name.
Andrew understood where Terry was coming from. After all, he had once been very skeptical of the New Testament himself, thinking it wasn’t a book for Jewish people. Andrew thoughtfully responded: “Terry, I don’t excuse persons who caused our people to suffer in the name of Jesus. My concern at the moment is you. How do you know that your sins are forgiven?”
Andrew then opened the Bible and went through several passages to explain the gospel to Terry. He asked him if he believed that Jesus could be the Messiah, even in a broken world. Andrew explained that Jesus redeemed us through His death and resurrection, but that there would be a time when He would come and enforce peace.
“I asked Terry if he thought he could have personal redemption, even now. He told me he would have to think about it and we agreed to meet again,” said Andrew. “Personally, I find great comfort in knowing that we do not worship a God who is immune to pain. Jesus the Messiah came down from the bliss of heaven into our world of woe. He came as the spiritual solution, the reason to get up in the morning.”
Pray for Terry to come to know the Messiah who said, “My shalom I give you…do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” Read more of Andrew’s reflections on the question of suffering here.
*Not his real name
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Why talking about Passover in December was no mistake...
Passover in December? by Jews for Jesus
Passover in December? by Jews for Jesus
Co-Laborer Ron Neumann Mcdevitt and his crew prayed with five people to receive the Lord at the Cocoa Village arts and crafts bazaar in Cocoa, Florida. Among the new believers are a 19-year-old Jewish mom and her husband.Ron reported that his encounter with the young couple began when he offered her our gospel broadside, “Pharaoh wasn’t very nice.”
Curious about this choice of tract, we asked Ron if he’d run out of literature tailored to the Hanukkah/Christmas season. “No,” Ron answered. “The Passover tract was one of several we handed out. I like to use it all year round because it’s very easy to go from the story of the first Passover to the gospel of Jesus. In this case, a couple was hurrying past with their two-month-old baby in a stroller, and I sensed that the mom (Casey) was Jewish. As she took the broadside, I quickly asked her if she knew who Pharaoh was. She said, ‘Of course!’ and before long we were talking about Jesus.
“Casey was raised in a secular Jewish home, and the story of Passover is one of the few Bible narratives she knows. We talked for quite a while. After I presented the gospel to her and her husband and offered them the opportunity to pray with me to be saved, they both said ‘Yes’! It’s really amazing how the Lord works, because I was just getting ready to leave as they were walking by.
“Earlier that day I had gotten to pray with a young African-American couple to receive the Lord. They were also pushing strollers. The husband was reluctant at first, because he was afraid that following Jesus meant he’d have to live a perfect life, which he knew he could not do. But soon after he and his wife prayed, he saw another of our volunteers and stopped to tell her that he’d received Jesus. She said his countenance was glowing!
“Rich, another of our faithful volunteers, was witnessing to a woman when he noticed a man who’d stopped to listen. The man stayed to talk after the woman left, and Rich led him in a prayer to receive Jesus.”
The all-volunteer team of eight people distributed about 2,000 gospel broadsides and had lots of conversations about the Messiah. And who are we to complain if they were several months late (or early) for Passover? We’re just rejoicing that we have five new brothers and sisters in Jesus!
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See and pass along
The story of a man who stole a New Testament from the Israel Defense Forces and decided to follow Jesus.
Why Yoel stole a New Testament from the Israeli Defense Forces, and decided to follow Jesus.by Yoel Ben David
I was born in Israel and lived here for the first three years of my life. I lived in the Caribbean, England, Paris, England again, and then came back to Israel. My mother is a proud Moroccan Jew; my father is Scottish.
We were a traditional Jewish family rather than religious. We would sit down every Friday night, and because my dad was not Jewish and I was the elder son, I would say the kiddush, the blessing over the wine. We would eat our meal and then, like any other family, we’d go into the living room, turn on the television and watch whatever series or funny program was on. An Orthodox Jew, of course, would not use any electricity and certainly would not watch TV on Shabbat! Nevertheless, the fact that I was Jewish was impressed upon me.
From the youngest possible age, I knew that God existed, and I believed that he had something he wanted me to do. Where did Israel figure? Israel was where I was born. Israel was my country. Israel was the land my mum fought for—she was part of the Israeli Defense Force during the Yom Kippur struggle.
In my teenage years I wanted to find out more about God, so I started reading. I went to the vicar at the school in England and asked him to give me some books about God, including the Koran and some Hindu writings. The real shock for me was that he didn’t try to dissuade me or tell me the gospel. As I was reading the Koran on my bed, I remember putting the book down, and the thought came to me that if God exists, I shouldn’t really need to read these books. Rather, he should just show up.
So I said, “God, if you’re real, show up.” And before me I saw the face of Jesus! I looked at it and I felt a presence in my room; and I felt afraid. I saw a clear vision of God—and ignored it. I decided it was a figment of my imagination.
When I came to Israel and met my future wife, Adel, we started discussing and philosophizing about God. We now realize we knew nothing, but at the time we were very intense and really searching to find the truth. Eventually, we decided that if we believed in God, we were being hypocritical if we didn’t do something about it. I suppose it started out as a sort of experiment. We began observing Shabbat. I would study the Torah and other writings through the night. We became more Haredi (Orthodox). We left the language school. We were living together, so gradually the idea of doing that and not being married seemed wrong. We were therefore faced with a choice: separate or get married. We knew we were right for each other, so why wait?
We began to approach the Hassidic Breslov movement, but I still prayed in a Chabad (Lubavitch) synagogue, where I began attending lessons with the local rabbi on Talmud. I wore a big kippah (skull cap) and tsitsit (prayer tassels) and grew the peot (earlocks).
We decided, as my enrollment into the army was coming up, that we would move to Jerusalem. The atmosphere was more religious there than in Tel Aviv, so we thought we would feel more at home.
We engaged in the mystical side of Hassidic Judaism through the writings of the founder of the Breslov movement, Rabbi Nachman.
Then I started reading Isaiah and for the first time became aware of biblical prophecy. At first I found Isaiah in Hebrew difficult to understand, because it’s written in high poetic language. So I started reading it in English and still found it difficult to understand. It felt like a labor of love, and I didn’t feel I was getting much out of it until I read Isaiah chapter 6.
This chapter jumped out and slapped me in the face. Because all of a sudden God told Isaiah to go and tell this people, “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.’’1 And all of a sudden, without anybody telling me, I realized the Jewish people are veiled and there’s a problem. And I asked myself the question, “Am I veiled? Am I blind? Am I deaf? Is there something that I’m not seeing?”
I kept reading Isaiah until I reached chapter 53. I didn’t understand that chapter; I was blind to its meaning. So I went to see Judy. We didn’t know it then, but she’d been praying for nine months for an opportunity to speak with us about Jesus. She’d asked God to give her a sign. So on the day when I knocked on her door and asked her to explain Isaiah 53, she knew this was the sign she’d been praying for.
My initial reaction was to think I’d been deceived. Judy kept talking, and as she talked I started to sense what I now know to be the presence of God. I recognized his presence because I had begun to notice it when I was praying in the synagogue on my own. Judy kept on speaking. I fluctuated between feeling deceived and sensing the presence of God. Then gradually the presence of God increased and I knew in my heart that, yes, this was it. This was what I’d been looking for all those years.
I said in my mind, You know what, God? If this is true, then I’m going to go with my heart—I will believe. And at that moment, as Judy was still speaking to me, I saw the same vision that I had seen three years before, sitting on my bed in England with the Koran next to me. I saw the face of Jesus. And then I knew, and I told Judy I was ready to believe.
When I saw Adel crying after reading the Gospel of Matthew, I realized that despite both of us living in Europe, where churches are found all over the place, no one had told us about a relationship with Yeshua. I’ve decided I don’t want to let others wonder why I never told them the most important thing ever—Jesus has died for our sins and risen.
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