31 March 2023

“Devote Yourselves to Prayer” (But…)

Dear Friend,

This is Edvard Munch’s painting of me not dealing well with life in the midst of trials.¹

The Holy Spirit has been challenging me of late to be “devoted to prayer” (e.g., Colossians 4:2-4; Acts 6:4). Given what’s unfolding in our lives, that’s a critical and helpful leading, a necessary discipline. But such prayerful devotion needs the Spirit’s direction as well, because…

…it’s possible to be devoted to praying for the wrong thing! Back in 1987 we faced a serious crisis of faith. Little more than a year earlier we had moved from suburban Southern California to rural Georgia by the Lord’s leading, in order to work with a small missions organization based in a small town. All went amazingly well for the first year. In addition to the missions work (developing teaching material for third-world pastors), the Lord opened [continue reading…]

28 February 2023

Dear Friend,

Asbury, Tarrying, Shepherds, and Nets

Hearts prepared by God, working together…¹
Like almost all our Bible-teaching articles,
this is available for free on our website.
Or for a whopping 99¢ you can download it
to your Kindle reader.

Ah, timeliness! Weeks ago when I wrote the first draft of this newsletter, the “Asbury awakening” (awakening is what the wise school leaders there are calling it) had not yet begun. Whether Asbury is the start of an actual, nation-sweeping revival, or merely a foreshock of something to come remains to be seen. But…

On January 1st I heard a message from a dear pastor friend, Mark Sellers, which impelled me to transcribe, edit, and publish a Percy Gutteridge audio message. It took Denise and me six weeks of work, but that message — Why Revival Tarries — is now posted on our website. In it, Percy, my father in the Lord, proposed a challenging concept: Full revival tarries because there aren’t enough believers in the Church who are prepared by God to be used as His shepherds for all the newborn “sheep” who will enter the Kingdom — and the Church.

When the Holy Spirit moves in sweeping revival, multitudes come to Jesus. The relatively few pastors and spiritual leaders would be overwhelmed by the many souls who will come to Jesus in such a move of God. Without many individual, surrendered men and women disciplined and heart-prepared by the Lord to care for and disciple the converts, many of these new “sheep” could be lost.

I’d like to come at Pastor Gutteridge’s subject in a slightly different way. (In fact, [continue reading…]

21 January 2023

¹⁸“Do not remember the former things,
Nor consider the things of old.
¹⁹Behold, I will do a new thing,
Now it shall spring forth;
Shall you not know it?
I will even make a road in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert.”
– Isaiah 43:18-19 nkjv –

Dear Friend,

Things can get uncomfortable, but exciting, when God starts to do a “new thing”!¹

Once is a happenstance. Twice is probably a coincidence. But three times? Hmm. Receiving a word three times may mean that the Lord is trying to get our attention. In less than two weeks, from three different people (none of whom knows the other two, but all three have track records of hearing God) we have received this word — “I will do a new thing.”

I’m well aware that “I will do a new thing” is a stock phrase in well-meant, but uninspired, man-conceived prophecies. I also know it’s a favorite text for New Year’s messages, from both pulpit and page. This is different; this resonates. “By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established” (2 Corinthians 13:1b).

What does it mean for Denise and me here and now? I have [continue reading…]

29 November 2022

What a Bible Study in Daniel Taught Me

Dear Friend,

We research, we vote; perhaps we even campaign. But the results are in the hands of a sovereign God!

One of the most important things I’ve accepted about God’s sovereignty, I learned from teaching an extended Bible study on the book of Daniel forty-seven years ago. Nebuchadnezzar, a pagan, kingdom-swallowing dictator, a cruel, self-centered sovereign with terrible anger-management issues was at the pinnacle of success.

Then his lifestyle and world were overthrown. Three times in Daniel 4 he hears a heavenly refrain that shakes his soul. Initially, in a dream he hears heavenly beings speak an inescapable maxim to him (Daniel 4:17); next, in his throne room, he hears Daniel repeat it as he interprets the king’s dream (v. 25); and finally, in his heart, he hears those same heavenly beings carry out God’s divine judgment against him as they invoke this truth: [continue reading…]

18 October 2022

Years Spent with John, Months Spent with Elijah

Dear Friend,

We experience lows and highs.
Nevertheless, we’re sustained by the Most High!¹

Spending the last three full years of my life in the intimate company of John the Baptist while researching and writing The Exceptional Messenger has meant that I’ve also spent months in reflective fellowship with Elijah the Tishbite. (Some of you have commented on how much the book’s Squaring John with Elijah chapter has helped you.) One of the many things I’ve come to appreciate about Elijah is what James 5:17 says about him:

Elijah was a homoiopathēs man…

Homoio-who now? The King James probably comes the closest to the Greek here when it renders the word as a man subject to like passions. The homoi- prefix means like, similar, resembling. But once you know that the pathēs part of the adjective comes from the verb-cluster páthō / páschō / pénthō family which means suffer, feel, or vex, you pick up on James’ idea: Famous, powerful Elijah, the “super [continue reading…]

29 July 2022

Dear Friend,

3000 miles for new life in Christ…¹

One of the first things I ask a new Christian acquaintance is this: “How did you come to Jesus?”

My 54th spiritual birthday comes around on the last day of this month, so let me share how the Lord brought me to Himself.

Not “Bad Enough” (but No Apologies for That!)

Does anyone remember these “Cross & Crown” Sunday School attendance pins? I can’t recall, but I might have had as many as seven “shingles.”²

I don’t have a “lost in depraved sin” kind of testimony, but I make no apology for that. Those of us who didn’t have to “hit bottom” before giving ourselves to Jesus can consider our testimonies to include a blessèd dollop of the prevenient grace of God, which kept us from such traps and ensnarements. But we may have had the opposite problem: thinking we were “too good” to need Jesus. After all, weren’t we Christians just because we’ve been good church-go-ers?

I was taken to church every Sunday of my childhood life, from the day I was infant-baptized. As soon as I was old enough for Sunday school, that got added to the never-miss weekly list, as were the dangle of perfect-attendance pins. Junior high brought along the additional weekly attendance at youth group. When I was old enough, I earned my God & Country medal in Boy Scouts even before I earned my Eagle medal.

There was just one small problem. I had no way to know that [continue reading…]

27 June 2022

Caleb: “Giants? So Much the Better!”

Yes, giants, fortresses and all!¹

• “As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in. ¹²Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said.”
• Joshua 14:11-12 nkjv

We returned to our COVID-interrupted tradition of celebrating my birthday during the pastors' retreat in Guatemala.
It seemed like nearly every pastor wanted a photo with me.²

Dear Friend,

I awoke the last day of ESUM in “Reu” (Retalhuleu), Guatemala at 5 AM. The teaching had been exceedingly well received so far for two straight days. This day, May 28th, was the last day of the conference and the last day of [continue reading…]

16 May 2022

Dear Friend,

Jesus is still doing good!¹

April flew by, May is accelerating, and I have a plane to catch early this Friday, May 20th, for my teaching trip to Guatemala (May 20-31). Let me take a break for a few minutes, sit down, and share with you some of April’s highlights.

I’m reminded of a line from Peter’s sermon at Cornelius’ house. Speaking of the Lord’s earthly life, Peter said, “God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power… He went about doing good and healing…”

What a down-to-earth description of the Lord’s ministry! Jesus is [continue reading…]

5 April 2022

Answered Prayer for the Honduras Trip!

Dear Friend,

The La Joya church-plant worship band warming up on Sunday evening, 13 March¹

Consider this communique a praise report! While you were praying for last month’s Honduras trip, God was answering and blessing. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been Covid-restricted in my travel for two years, but it really seems like this trip took the prize for the number of God-timed and God-ordained arrangements.

Plus, the Lord kept me in the best of health, and He preserved us on the road — we witnessed (but didn’t participate in!) two head-on collisions. All thanks to God and many thanks to you all for your prayers.

I fired off many pages of narrative to my wife Denise while I was gone — way too much to condense here.

Perhaps the story can best be [continue reading…]

6 March 2022

¡Buen Viaje!

Dear Friend,

One nice thing about returning to Honduras annually is nurturing relationships. Here’s a pre-birthday-party dinner to which I was invited in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (The honoree is the young lady in polka dots at the far corner of the table, a youth leader in the church.) The folks were sheepish about asking me to the actual party afterwards, but were very pleased when I accepted the invitation.¹

Buen viaje is the Spanish equivalent of bon voyage. The clock is ticking down to my “o’dark thirty” departure on Thursday this week (3/10/22). Destination: Honduras! When I last left Honduras, almost exactly two years ago, the borders were closed just a few days later because of COVID restrictions. This is my first going “anywhere” outside the States since those lockdown measures went into effect.

I mentioned in the last newsletter that Denise and I had just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. It’s a happy, heavenly “coincidence,” then, that the requested subject of the pastors’ teaching seminars (three in two places) will be the challenges of husband-wife ministry.

We certainly aren’t the [continue reading…]

9 February 2022

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing
And obtaineth favor from the Lord.
—Proverb 18:22—

50 Years and Counting!

Dear Friend,

Yes, Mike took most of the shots on our Big Day, but this shot (and its Photoshop restoration) was courtesy of Steve Bryson. Click the photo above for a larger version of the image.¹

At the end of January we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. Due to unusual weather here in southeast Virginia, we were snowed and iced in, but we had a great time for all that. We enjoyed the day snuggling, discussing some interesting points of scripture, sharing a special meal, talking with each of our three daughters by phone, and working through our 50-year-old wedding-picture negatives with a view towards finally creating our wedding album! Thank you, Mike Ollila for your photography that day!

Someday soon we will [continue reading…]

16 December 2021

Christmas Crunch Time

Dear friend,

This will be a short ‘n’ sweet newsletter,
because we’re all busy this time of year!¹

In the weeks leading up to Christmas it seems especially true that “there aren’t enough hours in the day.” My usual habit is to arise between 4 AM and 5 AM in order to study and write. During the last several weeks, in those “wee hours,” I have been meditating on and “Greeking out” in the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary in Luke 1:26-38. My heart’s desire has been to gain a deeper understanding of the Holy Spirit’s role in true New Birth.

I have come away awed at the “newness” of an “old thought” — the Logos Himself became a partaker of our human nature (Hebrews 2:14) so that we might become partakers of His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). There’s been no need for an alarm clock to [continue reading…]

A joyous Christmas to all!¹

Every year the number of our Finest of the Wheat Christmas-related posts grows. Here, all in one place, is a quick list of what is available on our site at the moment.

Our resources consist primarily of Bible studies focused on various aspects of the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, as well as poems, hymns, and carols celebrating Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

Christmas Bible Studies

by Percy Gutteridge

• Holiness: Preparation for His Coming
• This Shall Be a Sign unto You

by Jim Kerwin

from the manuscript of
The Curious [continue reading…]