Warmest greetings in the Lord! Happy New Year!
Already I’m wondering . . . What next?
A longtime friend, a music minister, explained to me the mesmerizing fact that a musician always begins with one of only seven notes: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, and do. Yet having produced that first note, the musician may go in an endless number of directions:
Do-mi-mi . . . re-fa-do . . . la-ti-so . . . etc. . . . ad infinitum!
You and I are God’s musical works. In this new year, wherever we may have started
it . . . where will we go?
“Vaya con Dios.” Go with God. We typically think this is what we’re doing. It’s definitely our intention! But not all roads lead to Rome. Are we really going where we hope to be going?
I’ll give you a painful example. I’ve attempted to learn to golf. It’s the most humbling undertaking I have ever attempted. It’s embarrassing. That little ball is too little. It’s not as easy to hit as others make it appear. I had to learn to hit that ball. Not the ground! Not the air!
Then I discovered that although it sits on a tee, the ball can go in countless possible directions. There are “golf-ball flight laws” to learn! And what about the position of the golf club face addressing the ball? What about your wrist motion? Your body position too. There’s the issue of how high your tee is. And how tightly you gripped the club, or how loosely.
This is where golf veterans will say, “Why do you mention only those issues? What about this, or that, or such and such?” The possibilities are far more numerous than even an entire book could cover! (Or books!)
So how do we hit the target?
Amid my difficult learning process, at the start of a new game, the helpful golf course marshal greeted our party and then spoke as if sharing a secret: “The course is a bit complicated, and the wind is picking up, so your best strategy will be to hit into the middle of the fairway.” Thanks a lot! Like I haven’t been trying to do that all along!
But what is the answer? How do we stay in the middle of the fairway, with so many factors to be mastered? How do we achieve our objective? Our answer is simple: Grace.
In golf terminology, we might say . . . Mulligans!
Are you familiar with the mulligan? It’s a “second chance,” after a golfer hits a poor tee shot, a stroke replayed from the spot of the previous failed stroke, but without penalty. (Take a mulligan early in the morning, and it’s called a “breakfast ball.”) Some refer to it as a “shake-off”; the mulligan lets a player “shake off” a bad shot and increase their enjoyment of the game.
(Mulligans don’t happen in competition games. But they happen among friends and family. Grace is given of the Lord, but license is not.)
So how do we get from music—to golf—to our own desired New Year’s objective?
“Course Marshal” Solomon informs us. In Proverbs 19, he lays out our choices—and a possible source of frustration—and he points unequivocally to our best strategy for moving toward the target. “Many are the plans in a person’s heart,” he says in Proverbs 19:21, “but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
King Solomon wrote long ago that many of our frustrations in life are because we have no guarantee of enjoying the fruit of our labor. Plus, we don’t know what lies ahead. Our plans and hopes can be thwarted and frustrated.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, we repeatedly encounter the phrase “under the sun.” This phrase is the key to understanding the vexations described in this book of the Bible. Under the sun, we have a limited perspective, and life can be painfully disappointing. A merely horizontal perspective leads to painful disappointments, maybe even discouragement of such proportions as to make life unbearable.
But God can give us a winning perspective by helping us look beyond the sun. This is our sure hope, even in view of life’s uncertainties, even as we forge our best plans and intentions.
Solomon concludes that we can live joyfully and responsibly knowing that this earthly life has a “beyond the sun” conclusion . . . where God will bring about an accounting for all things accomplished in this life.
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth,” Ecclesiastes 12 begins. Make the most of your life’s energies while you have them, before the prime of life passes by, or the end of life arrives unexpectedly.
Solomon’s strategic conclusion: remember your Creator—walk with God, be about what He’s about—because we all have an appointment to give an accounting of what we did while we were under the sun.
So, what have we been about this past year?
It has been a wonderful and historic year!
The challenges were great indeed. Financial support was sometimes an issue. Many of our friends were distracted by political issues. But ministry went on—because “orders remain unchanged” for the bride of the Savior!
And we saw the results . . . especially in a global ministry gathering, a several months ago in Cuba. Led by Manny III, our leading partners and workers in harvest fields around the world came together for the first time ever to view the work of ministry in a panoramic way.
It was an amazing experience!
I find myself constantly “hearing” our worldwide ministry as a kind of symphony, a beautiful heavenly melody, in my own head and heart. But you and many others among our friends may not see the big picture. As a pastor friend told me: “I don’t think people really have a comprehensive understanding of the work you do around the world.”
But here it was, finally . . . not just in my own imagination—in reality. Team members came together from the host nation of Cuba, as well as Venezuela, Spain, Asia, and beyond. Looking at a world map, it’s clear that the “tracks” of the ministry reach as far as the east is from the west—and far north and south!
Having the actual field directors from different parts of the world was astounding—a powerful expression of the far-flung impact you’re making, through your prayers and giving!
Those who attended the gathering found it exhilarating. It was instantly clear to them: God is in this! The Son is building His church just like He said He would! It’s real! And we are thrilled to be in this with Him!
It was a bit of heaven. It was a taste of what it will be like when we’re all in one place, from every corner of the world, celebrating the ONE who made us ONE . . . the One who worked in us and through us to create such a beautiful family, to form such a beautiful tapestry.
Seeing our Asian brothers—flesh and blood brothers, who lead the work—seeing them “materialized” in Cuba, with their bright smiles—it was hard to believe. They were there from such a vastly different and remote place . . .
From everyone’s grins, and all the rejoicing, it was obvious we were all in a sort of “hard to believe” mode. You literally wanted to touch them to make sure you weren’t dreaming. Everyone seemed out of place. They weren’t in the place where I normally see them. But now, as surreal as it seemed, we were all in the SAME PLACE.
- Imagine what heaven will be like! EVERY ONE of us will be out of our normal place but in a powerful NEW PLACE, the RIGHT PLACE! That is what we are working for!
Think about it. In our gathering, people we know and love in the U.S. were meeting people we know and love—and support—in faraway places. When they first stood in front of each other, in that instant, they didn’t know who they were meeting. But the moment someone offered his name and home location, the great smiles of joy broke out, along with warm, loving words. This is a foretaste of our heavenly meetings!
I wish you would have been there. My words can’t do it justice. I echo the words of the Queen of Sheba from 1 Kings 10, after she experienced the golden kingdom of Solomon firsthand:
“The report I heard in my own country was true. Nevertheless, I did not believe it, until I came, and my eyes had seen it. And now I think I had not been told the half of it . . . Blessed be the Lord your God!”
Over the years, when we’ve hosted visitors in the harvest fields, they’ve expressed similar sentiments. And when they see the reality, they want to do more! I believe when we see the realities of heaven, we may all have this same feeling: we’ll wish we had done more. We won’t be able to shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, I didn’t know.” That won’t be enough to erase the “loss of gain” at the Bema seat of Christ.
I can imagine you and me, standing next to each other in heaven, with you turning to me and saying, “You should have done a better job telling us!” Maybe so. I give you a snapshot of the ministry as often as possible—I try to limit my reports to once a month, but I could actually show you the impact of your support every day! Every hour!
To see for yourself, I say, “Come and see!” Visit the harvest field with me, or one of our teams. See it for yourself, and then decide how you should live the rest of your year, the rest of your life! I think witnessing the realities will infuse you with faith and vision!
But until you can personally visit Cuba, or Asia, or some far-off mission field, let me simply encourage you to see the whitened harvest fields by faith, and exercise your faith in prayer and in giving.
Bloom where you’re planted. Keep doing your best, according to the resources that God has entrusted to you.
If we are doing our best, then we can face eternity with eager anticipation. Someday we’ll see the realities of heaven and we will know: We did our best!
Let’s launch 2025 that way. We have a clean slate. A new opportunity, a new year. A new month, 12 times every year. I invite you to give today. I invite you to give every month!
Whatever you feel led to give, however you’re led to participate in the harvest work around the world, I thank you in advance! God bless you!
Sincerely in word and deed,
Dr. Manny Fernandez
P.S. New grace every day, new mercies every single day! Let’s do our best at pursuing God’s agenda: “Just do it.” I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you again!