Newsletter for December, 2021 • Knowing God and His Ways

Merry Christmas! May this newsletter be my holy kiss to you (1 Thessalonians 5:26) for this happy season.

I’m looking forward to having all our family with us this year for a downtown Chicago Christmas.

Happenings

Since my last newsletter the biggest event for me and my family was the joyous marriage of my son Aaron to his fiancé Lucia. We will never forget how beautiful the wedding was and how blessed we were to have family, church members, and friends sharing this special time.

Aaron and Lucia have attended our church for years, but it was the virus lockdown that altered their schedules enough to where they got interested in each other and took time to do things together. In all things God works for the good!

The picture below is of my four sons, from the left: Brian, Aaron, Ben, and Mark (I do not yet have photos from the wedding of them with their wives and children).

Amplify Conference

Another important happening for me over the last six months was an evangelism conference I attended in October. It is an annual event sponsored by the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, called Amplify.

What made this important to me was its relationship

(a) to one of the driving passions in my life, which is leading others to faith in Christ,

(b) to the main thing for which I have been inquiring of the Lord for several years, which is how to do evangelism successfully, and

(c) to the topic I have been writing about on the blog since August: How to Get Wisdom for Everything That Matters to You.

Since finding wisdom for successful evangelism is a focus of my life, when I saw an ad for the conference, I said, I should go to that. Although I did not want to take two full days out of my schedule, it does not make sense to pray daily for wisdom on a subject and not pay attention to what others who have been successful at it are saying. God often answers our questions by speaking to us through other people and their content in books, videos, and so on.

The conference was outstanding, definitely worth my time. I came away with numerous resources that I am confident will help us. And I believe this was one piece of how God is answering my prayer for wisdom to successfully lead others to faith in Christ.

Fun stuff

We bought a bread machine, and I’m using it weekly. Cuisinart model CBK-110P1, where have you been all my life! I appreciate being able to control what ingredients are in my bread, the fresh-baked taste, and the smell of bread baking in the kitchen for hours.