Expensive Good friend,
Warmest Christian greetings to you for a contented and blessed new 12 months.
Thanks in your beneficiant response to our year-end attraction. Your prayerful and monetary partnership has made it attainable for us to start 2026 in good coronary heart. Collectively, we are able to all enter the brand new 12 months inspired by Peter’s phrases to the scattered believers of his day:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In accordance with his nice mercy, he has precipitated us to be born once more to a residing hope by way of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the useless, to an inheritance that’s imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, stored in heaven for you, who by God’s energy are being guarded by way of religion for a salvation able to be revealed within the final time (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Ours is a hope that’s anchored up to now as a result of Jesus rose, it stays within the current as a result of Jesus lives, and will probably be accomplished sooner or later as a result of Jesus is coming!
This is without doubt one of the distinguishing options of real, residing, Christian religion. Paul reminded his readers that till they’d been “made … alive along with Christ” (Eph. 2:5), they have been “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and with out God on this planet” (v. 12).
Infrequently, somebody’s life offers a putting however unhappy illustration of a way of unqualified hopelessness. Ninety-year-old award-winning photojournalist Don McCullin gave an interview to The Instances of London not too long ago wherein he informed of how most of the photographs he took of the Vietnam Conflict proceed to hang-out him. Any hopes he could have had that his pictures would make a distinction have been metaphorically buried in Gaza and Ukraine, leaving him with “no religion in humanity” and viewing his life’s work as “a waste of time.”
The writer of Ecclesiastes makes it clear that such purposelessness just isn’t distinctive to the twenty-first century. Writing in an historical time, he observes how any try and make sense of the world and one’s place inside it whereas denying God’s existence and disobeying His instructions is futile and meaningless, like chasing the wind.
Our verse-by-verse Bible research by way of the ebook of Ecclesiastes, newly launched this month, will information you and a pal, colleague, or your Bible research group to think about what Scripture has to say alongside these strains. Our potential to take action presupposes that we learn our Bibles every day. If that’s not the case, our different ebook choice this month will present a well timed kickstart.
The time is all the time now to affirm with the apostle Paul that we’re not ashamed of the Gospel, as a result of it’s the energy of God for the salvation of everybody who believes. We’re vastly inspired by your enthusiastic need to share the Gospel by the use of the 134,000 copies of The Man on the Center Cross and 50,000 copies of our new Gospel tract distributed within the closing months of the 12 months! We pray that these sources will lead many who have been as soon as far off to be introduced close to by the blood of Christ.
Maybe you’ll recall the scene in 2 Kings 7 when the 4 males discovered the treasure. Tempted as they have been to maintain it to themselves, they determined that might not be proper as a result of it was “a day of fine information” that must be shared. 2026 opens earlier than us, and the treasure of the Gospel has been entrusted to us—outdated clay pots. So allow us to resolve to dwell by the ability of God, that by our lives and our lips we would put the excellent news on show and, by God’s grace, see others come to belief in Christ. Then will probably be a pleased new 12 months!
With my love within the Lord Jesus,
Alistair
