As we start a new year and a new decade, we want to send our love and greetings in the name of the Lord. And we want to thank you who have been so dear to us during our ministry here at Wycliffe. It continues to be our desire that our letters be a source of encouragement in the Lord to you who have graciously allowed us to share the deepest workings of His Spirit in our hearts. We rejoice that God has vitally knit us together in prayer for one another and we pray now for God's anointing as we share.

We have been hearing much about this new decade, about a great harvest that is expected. Many are rejoicing and rightly so, but there is another part to this story. God is speaking to our hearts that it is not enough to give, to send or even to go. We must be aware that not only can harvests be lost without laborers, but laborers can perish without prayer. There are strongholds that will not come down until we really mean business with God. For example, four Wycliffe teams have attempted to enter the Sherpa people of Nepal and all have been turned back. Most recently, the husband even lost his life. After a paralyzing accident did not turn him back, he died of cancer. I know of a missionary organization whose thrust is repentance in America. Their leaders' families are currently facing all sorts of physical attacks, and the head of the organization is dying of brain cancer. In the Church at large, the lists for healing grow and many are experiencing spiritual defeat. Why? Is there no longer any Great Physician and Deliverer? Yes, but we live in enemy territory. We are at war and there are very real casualties. And God stands amazed that we are not crying out day and night to the only One Who can save us!

I have seen so much in my spirit of God's desire and heart to bless, revive and heal His people, not so we will just enjoy His blessing but so we can be a vessel to contain His glory and take His light to a dying world. But as I look around, my heart weeps. Never was I more broken in heart than at the Christmas season. I thought perhaps my own personal pain was distorting my outlook, but I don't think so. I felt God's heart breaking while many of His people's greatest concerns were what gifts to give, what to wear to parties, and trying not to eat too much. How we must pray that God stamps eternity in our eyes. Only the Spirit can do that. It is not enough just to be saved. Our life here involves eternal gain or loss. This is not our home.

At one point during the holidays I was listening to a message on accepting what you cannot change and sought God if this was the source of my heart pain. The answer came quickly "no, a thousand times no." I cannot bring to pass the vision that burns in my heart but He can and He will, but I must perservere for it. The pain is His the fellowship of His suffering the only road to glory. God comforted me with the story of Hannah. She would not accept her barrenness which was a curse. I thought of how she must have appeared to others. While they were rejoicing and feasting, she was weeping and couldn't eat. The enemy taunted her. Her husband tried to tell her to be content with him to accept her state and give up her mourning, but Hannah could not. Even the priest misjudged her, thinking she was drunk. But she would not be denied and Samuel was conceived in her heart even before the physical event. What if she had listened to men, or sought her own ease? What eternal loss there would have been to us all.

God wants to conceive and bring to birth many things through us in the years ahead. He wants to send revival, healing and harvest. And He will surely accomplish His eternal purposes but we can miss them in our day. Today's harvest can be lost. Today's laborers can perish. Are we willing to stir ourselves up to lay hold of Him to have hearts like Hannah that His will may be done on earth in our generation? May God so move and show us the meaning of eternity, that we will embrace our citizenship in His kingdom more than that of this earth. May we recognize that we are at war and begin to endure hardness as good soldiers of our Lord. May we carry His heart in prayer into the 1990's and fellowship with Him in His suffering, and may we see His glory manifested in our day as never before. Amen and amen.

Thank you for letting us share with you. May God richly bless you in the year to come.