Dear Friends,
What an unusual adventure this year has been, filled with life's inevitable roller-coaster of highs and lows. We've learned---along with many of you---that the journey is through the highs and lows and not around them, for to be where God is working is to be among the best and harshest of this culture's places. Because we were created to be in relationship with Him, the joy of His presence gives our journey meaning, and infuses our labors with holy purpose.
Randy's Health. The big news for 2012 was Randy's return to better health. After years of pain without relief, doctors prescribed a medication to help Randy cope with the depressive effects of chronic pain. What doctors learned later was that the medication ALSO provided pain relief for nerve damage. Not only did he experience his first relief in almost eight years, but it was the first medication without adverse effects, some of which had included severe allergic reactions.
With the first pain relief in nearly eight years, Randy seemed ready to add speaking and traveling back into his schedule. But God & Essex County's Jury System had different plans: For eight hours a day, three days a week from Jan. 3 to April 1, Randy was called to serve on the Essex County Grand Jury, hearing evidence in every felony committed during that period.
On a more somber note, we also were reminded just how broken this world is, watching as every type of major crime, each with its alleged victims and the accused, far too often involving children as direct victims, or as victims of the broken families resulting from these crimes.
Coupled with Cheryl's work volunteering in community organizations serving the area's poorest families, these experiences helped us to hear God's call to pay attention to the people right in front of us, and to work to introduce the love of God to even those who believe God and society have discarded interest in helping them.
A New Home--Desired Haven. Some of the more amazing stories of God's hand at work at DHM are contained in a category we call hospitality and discipleship. For several years now, we've talked about Desired Haven as an actual place, but who could guess He would use friends to provide a Narnia-like home where hands-on ministry fit neatly alongside the perfect place for Randy to write. Here's how Randy wrote about it in the November, 2012 Our Daily Bread:
"After 10 years of renting in a charming location, we discovered that our landlord suddenly needed to sell the house. I asked God to change the circumstances and make it possible for my wife and me to stay in this place we'd made home, where we'd watched our children grow up. But God said no.
When it comes to my needs, I worry that I'm asking for the wrong thing or that I'm not worthy of the request I'm making. But God's â??no' doesn't need to shake our faith when we're grounded---surrounded I like to say---in His love. In Ephesians 3, Paul understood that those who know the love of Christ intimately (vv.16-17) can trust God to have a loving reason for saying no.
Shortly after hearing "noâ? from God about my request, friends from church offered to rent us a home they were vacating. Our new location, with new appliances, new plumbing, new electrical wiring, and an extra bedroom, sits on the ocean, an idyllic scene of ships, sails, and sounds that daily remind us that God is bigger than any issue we face. Our loving Father used loving friends to give more than we asked.
Whether God gives us more than we imagined or far less than we desired, we can trust that His plans are much better than ours."
And, in one of God's delightful twists, the home brought with it its own small group---a group that gives as much love and affection and service as it receives. The family who owns the home---and who invited us to live there long term---had already started a life community group (small group) as part of our common church home. As members of that group, Cheryl attended leadership training and we inherited leadership of the group from our friends and fellow church members. The group, which now numbers well over 20, includes mostly twenty and thirty-somethings to go with four or five of us older than that. Food and fellowship built the bonds of affection that soon gave way to acts of service as generous as packing/moving help, celebrations of births and marriages, being present and serving during times of loss, as well as ministering to families in the group facing serious surgeries for newborns. Determined to be more than social led us to serve each other, and serving each other led us to wanting to know how God would have us do these things, which led us to study books like Tim Keller's The Prodigal God, and the life/group-changing book A Life Together by pastor and Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Even before Bonhoeffer's study, the group was reaching out beyond its' ministry to each other, involved in ministries as diverse as reaching out to women working in "men's clubs" and working with those seeking to address slavery's insidious inroads into this area. In short, we were not only loving and teaching these group members, but being loved and served by them---while learning as much from them and their hunger to matter as they were learning from us. What a gift God gave us as we pressed ahead with his other calls on our life and ministry.
Randy's Writing Update. The three-month jury duty impacted the number of new devotions Randy prepped for 2012. Yet, amazingly,Randy's writing reached even wider audiences than ever before. How?
With 10 million copies of Our Daily Bread devotionals published, this means Randy's monthly (and sometimes bimonthly) appearance means his reach is expanded along with ODB. These readers often jump over to Our Daily Bread's Facebook page, where hundreds comment on the devotion and Facebook "likes" run from an average of 5,600 to a high of over 8,000, as well as driving many of those readers directly to Madetomatter's website. Our Daily Bread devotionals are posted online, printed and translated into 18 languages, as well as sent to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. They're also heard on Christian radio and podcasts, and hundreds of websites around the world re-post ODB devotions to their readers.
Here's an excerpt from Our Daily Bread's History and Core Values Document, which is eye-opening and humbling, when you consider fewer than 15 outside writers have been invited to be part of its' writers' team since it's founding in 1956.
"Writers. In 1956, Dr. M. R. DeHaan and Henry G. Bosch were the only writers featured in the booklet, each contributing about 15 articles per month. After Dr. DeHaan's death in 1965, past favorites from his writings were repeated. In 1966, Herbert Vander Lugt, Research Editor for Radio Bible Class, began contributing articles. Paul R. Van Gorder, Associate Teacher for the weekly broadcast, was added in 1969, and Richard DeHaan began writing later that year. During those early years, only RBC staff writers were included in the booklet. More than 15 others have been added since. Although many are not full-time staff members, they have some relationship to the ministry. This diversity of writers, their varied experiences, their distinctive writing styles, and their unique personalities, gives a broad perspective to the booklet and reaches a wide readership."
Our Daily Bread also released a new Bible featuring 365 favorite devotions, and Randy's devotions were included in this new Bible, also.
In addition to Our Daily Bread, Madetomatter's weekly devotional reached readers in over 100 nations in 2012, the fourth consecutive year we've reached the century mark. China remains the second largest audience, behind the United States. Ironically, Madetomatter reaches even into Muslim nations (though we advise readers there NOT to subscribe for their own safety), but we've had considerable difficulty breaking into South American countries.
Randy's book "Made to Matter: Devotions for Working Christians", went into its second printing this year, and was converted into e-book formats including Itunes. Discovery House Publishers also released a series of greeting cards based on the devotions in the book.
Worklife.org, an Atlanta-based ministry that provides work/faith services to large churches and individual Christians online, uses Madetomatter's Bible studies as their core curriculum, as well as posting Madetomatter devotions frequently in their twice-per-week devotional schedule. Worklife recently announced the spread of their work into Europe, taking Madetomatter's Bible studies into yet another new arena: Local churches on the European continent.
Keeping Resources Free. With the recession hitting donors hard, and with natural disasters here and overseas (like Hurricane Sandy), and the terrible and tragic shootings in Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado and Connecticut, people's giving budgets are threadbare, causing not-for-profits like Desired Haven to suffer drops in both donors and dollars donated. However, when our website ministry---Madetomatter.org---began to build a store to begin charging for the dozens of Bible studies and hundreds of other materials we make available to Christians, we just couldn't seem to get past the technical difficulties. Because it was taking so long, we decided to make our Bible studies free again on a temporary basis. 584 full sets of 36 studies each were downloaded in the first day! We knew then we couldn't go back to charging for what had always been free. Learn how God uses the sacrificial gifts of our donors to stretch to meet the needs of the ministry.
From day one, our mission has been to get people to see---and seriously consider---the great love of God. Love is our command and humble service is our assignment. We can never change the world by trying harder; but knowing Him more fully. As we spend time with Him, He changes us---and that's what changes the world. Thank you for the way God puts you in our path, and thank you to those whom God has asked to support us financially. Crowns for both groups---as well as the joy of seeing lives saved and lives changed---are gathering in heaven as your reward.
Merry Christmas, and God's Blessing,
Cheryl & Randy Kilgore