January 11th, 2018
Dear Friends,
In the opening days of this New Year 2018, we send our best wishes of good health and joy to you and your families. As we put away the old calendars to hang the new, we pray that many blessings will fill the days ahead. Those who walk with Jesus enjoy the confidence of good things amidst uncertainty. In looking forward, you can be assured that Jesus will be with you and be all to you day by day. May His peace fill and surround you in this New Year.
Our family is well. Dan and I thank the Lord for the opportunities that He has brought to all of our children. Daniel and Grace press forward in their careers and it is wonderful to see how God directs their steps. We were delighted to celebrate with John his graduation from high school in June. He is working this year and looks forward to starting college in the autumn. Clark is in tenth grade; he enjoys writing and sharing his love of cars. He is growing way too fast as boys his age do. We look forward to enjoying the coming baseball season with him soon.
Dan took on a job at the automotive center where our sons work this past autumn to facilitate our financial needs. It turned into such a blessing as Dan could spend time with Daniel and John sharing work experiences with them, lending his expertise in different situations. He also had many opportunities to work with people in practical ways meeting needs and concerns with understanding. We are thankful for the multiplied blessings, which came from this seasonal opportunity.
With a deep sense of gratitude, we will celebrate the tenth year anniversary of Ceaseless Love Ministries in May 2018. Looking back over this past decade, there are beautiful memories of all that God has done both in our lives and those He sent us to walk with. Thank you for your prayers for this ministry.
Are you anticipating a good thing from the Lord this year? Has He given you a promise? God gave a promise once to an older priest in Israel, named Zacharias. He and his wife, Elizabeth lovingly served God in obedience. One day as Zacharias performed his role of bringing incense into the temple, representing the prayers for and of the nation; he was met at the altar by the angel Gabriel. The sight of this heavenly messenger terrified Zacharias, as it would any of us, but Gabriel assured him he had nothing to fear and told him that God had heard his prayer for a son. How the personal nature of this message must have touched him! You see, Zacharias and Elizabeth could never have children and here they were, an aging couple. Had Zacharias been praying for a son that day or was this an answer to the couple’s prayers earlier in life? Had they found comfort in the memory of Abraham and Sarah and how God had made them laugh in their old age with the arrival of Isaac? We do not know, but God had given them faith to pray for a child.
Gabriel brought the happy news that Zacharias and Elizabeth would have a son and they were to call him John. In addition, God had chosen to give them a son with a special calling and ministry. John the Baptist, a powerful prophet, was to prepare the way of the Lord Jesus by preaching repentance to the people of Israel. John was the only infant, besides Christ, who was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. God gave this special honor to this couple; they had waited so long. What was going through Zacharias’ mind as he listened to this news?
Unfortunately, like Zacharias, we doubt God’s good promises. At that moment when an angel from heaven should have confirmed in his mind the veracity of the promise, Zacharias questioned. Gabriel rebuked him and his ability to speak was taken away until John’s birth. It is interesting to see that God’s way with Zacharias’ doubt was to silence it. What was needed here was faith in the hearts of His servants. God would not have Zacharias speak doubting words to himself, or to Elizabeth, or to the people. What a mercy that God leads us into the way of faith despite our weakness!
What is beautiful in this account is to see how during those months of waiting for their son, John, God revealed to Zacharias the fact of the Messiah’s imminent arrival and the part which John would have in preparing the way before Him. God transformed the doubts and fears of Zacharias’ heart through a time of rich communion with Him while waiting for the promised blessing. This is God’s way with us. Do you long to see God’s promises fulfilled? Does doubt plague your mind? While you wait on God, let Him assure your spirit with His mighty Word. Let Him silence the skepticism of your mind towards what He says He will do. You will find that He gives you a deeper understanding of His ways; you will see Him, as He is – God Almighty with whom nothing is impossible.
I love to think about this precious man, serving in the temple during the Roman occupation of his small country. Yet in the middle of oppression, violence, poverty, and rebellion, God sends His angel messenger to him with such good news. Zacharias would bless his son at his birth with a beautiful declaration of faith in God’s call on John’s life and the arrival of Jesus Christ, likening the Messiah to the Sunrise, giving light to Israel and ushering in the way of peace with God.
In this New Year, we pray God will give you faith to wait on Him for the good things He has promised you. May doubts fly away and the Sunrise of Jesus Christ in your hearts continually lead you in the way of peace.
In the grace of Christ our Lord,
Dan and Marie Thomson
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, with which the Dayspring from on high has visited us; to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Luke 1: 76-79