DECEMBER 2014 EDITION

Dear Friends,

This newsletter will not follow the usual format. For one thing, it will be brief and, hopefully, to the point. I would like to thank each one of you for your friendship and support.  Many of you have stood with Net Work Ministries since its inception in 1992. Actually, some of you have been a partner in ministry with me since I began in 1976. Your friendship and partnership in ministry has been an incredible gift to me! It has been both a blessing and encouragement. It is a rare gift to have friends like you.

As we enter this Christmas Season, as I treasure your gift of friendship, my thoughts turn to the greatest gift of all. That gift is the gift of eternal life. It is a gift in the truest sense of the word. It costs us nothing but it cost our Heavenly Father everything. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever would believe on Him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16. Those are not just words on a page,

but an actual reality. Those words are as true as "two plus two equals four."

There is, however, a catch. Like any gift, it is not complete until it is received and opened to be enjoyed by the person for whom it was meant.

In addition, it would be a good thing to do to thank the giver! What a concept! However, a present can be received and then put on a shelf unopened. Who would do that with a gift? Some of us may have, at one time in our lives, professed to have received the gift of eternal life through faith in Christ, but then we put it on a shelf in the back of our closet but got busy and forgot about it. Oh, occasionally, we see it back there and say to ourselves, "I have got to remember to do something about that gift. Oh well, I'll get to it later when I finish college or when my work slows down or when the kids are gone." Sometimes we pick it up and admire the wrapping paper and remember the Christmas we received it, but the we remember there was something we forgot to do that demands immediate attention and we put it back on the shelf.  In "The Parable of the Sower in Luke 8, it says, "The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature." The seed is the gift.

At this Christmas Season and into the New Year, let us remember the gift, truly appropriate its meaning, begin to enjoy it, fully in awe what it cost the Giver and begin a life of gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts.

Have a Christ-filled Christmas and a truly blessed 2015!