Praise to Jesus! Just today I published a general ministry newsletter (if you’re not receiving these newsletters and would like to, please email me at info@newjesusmovie.com!) and already we’re receiving such strong response, such dramatic response, that I thought to share it here also.
You know, the amazing thing of this walk of life in Jesus (among the countless amazing things about it!) is that no matter who we might be, no matter our position or vocation, no matter if we are the biggest name in Christian circles or a prisoner who just got saved yesterday… we are all, literally, walking the exact same path…
And that is a path of getting closer to Jesus, of increasing freedom from our “self” unto a greater fullness of HIM, of the renewing of our minds unto his, of the healing of our hearts unto his original hope for our lives, unto freedom from slavery to unholy whatever unto greater righteousness in our lives and ways…
Truly, whether you may be Mr. Mighty Man of God who is speaking to thousands and writing books and whatever, or Mr. Sitting in the Back Row of Church Struggling to Understand… or Mr. Trying to Make a Jesus Movie to Save the World (that would be me, hee hee!) we are literally all exactly the same – “sinners saved by grace.” Sinners who need our minds renewed and our ways corrected. Sinners but for God’s grace, needing more of him more than anything else, and much, much, MUCH… less of ourselves. Glory to Jesus!
All that having been said, you who are familiar with my newsletters or writing, you know that I tend to be extremely open in sharing my struggles and the fact that I’m faaaaaaaar from perfect and just a guy doing everything I know to step into what I feel he has before me (and probably messing up more than anything else, yikes!).
So I often receive responses along the lines of “Your words spoke straight into what’s going on with me,” “I thought I was the only one but I’m so liberated to know I’m not,” “Your words gave me the strength to continue in my calling as well”…
Even today, based on my latest newsletter, this is a part of what I received…. Here I was today in the middle of a trust lapse. Giving up my calling and opting for an easy life really looked good and the enemy of my soul was making it look REALLY GOOD… the raw emotion of discouragement and fear was tempting me to try to control my situation and not to trust God…. and then I received your newsletter.
I tell you, I praise Jesus for these kinds of reports – I promise you, a lot of times it is all that keeps me going. Even yesterday I ran into an old friend and he asked me why I continued in spite of the challenges, etc. I said, “It’s the testimonies that keep me going. At the end of the day, the Lord is meeting people through it all, touching lives…” So again, I can only praise Jesus!
So below, may I reprint for you a portion of my latest newsletter. To give you some background, the last couple weeks have been extremely challenging. May was a very challenging month, and there are times in all our lives when we look around and think “Why am I putting myself through all this?”
And in the middle of that all sorts of “other voices” begin to go off in your head. Some hang the list of mistakes in front of your face, some tell you to abandon what you feel the Lord has led you to do and re-write the entire plan, some tell you that you’ve blown it long ago so you may as well give up now.
And then there are the voices that come from outside your head. Heeeeeey, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it seems that everyone knows what’s best for you and what you should be doing. For me, in this JESUS NGL pursuit, there are countless “experts” telling me to do everything from staging some sort of attention-getting stunt, to going to the studios for funding, to forsaking the Word for Word and writing an original screenplay, to (I’m not making this up) shooting the film in Bulgaria and Michigan instead of Israel…
And I’ll tell you, when the road gets long and longer, when the trek feels like you’re walking across the Sahara, when you see everyone around you firing up their boats and going on summer vacations… those voices can get VERY loud! Glory to the name of Jesus! So the last couple weeks have been kind of like that, those kinds of thoughts and voices banging on my every door, so to speak.
Am I so alone in that? Something tells me I’m not. Something tells me there’s a guy reading these words, and he’s not trying to make a Jesus movie, but he is trying to hold his marriage/family together, and the voices are telling him it’s not worth all the headache and he should just go make himself happy and let the chips fall where they may.
Something tells me there is a woman reading these words who isn’t trying to save the world, but has health issues before her that look so impossible that there’s a “voice” saying, ”Why even try?” Something tells me there’s a young girl or guy struggling to not give in to having sex with the boyfriend/girlfriend, and it’s just getting so exhausting to keep fighting it, and it seems like everything in you (and maybe around you) is shouting, “Just go for it, what’s the big deal!”…
Be strong, my friend. God has a plan and he has his ways – and even more, deep inside you know what he wants you to do and how to proceed – and you know that you know…
And he has given you/me everything we need to successfully negotiate the seas of real life unto his greatest and best for us, both inside and out. In our weakness his strength is perfected. In our sin his grace is abundant. In our mistakes his redemption is a promise. In our depression, he reaches his righteous right hand to say, “This is the way, take my hand and just follow.”
I pray these words are a blessing. I pray they are the Lord’s intervention on your behalf. I pray that you, this day, don’t lose heart in whatever it is, and lift your eyes to him, and rest in him, and know he is sovereign, and know his is awesome and faithful on your behalf…
And that you know that he loves you. He loves you in such depth and dynamic, and there is nothing you can do or not do to ever lessen that or make it go away. “Nothing can seperate you from the love of God,” his Word procalims. He just loves you. He loves you, he loves you… Jesus.
God bless you! Glory to the name of Jesus! Hre comes the newsletter…
Glory to Jesus! Before I turn everything over to Johnnie [our interecessory prayer leader], I wanted to jump in and say, “May the Lord totally bless you this weekend, with rest, fun, kingdom surprises and great manifestations of his care and faithfulness… May the coming weekend be a weekend you could only dream of!” Glory to Jesus!
It’s been a wild couple of weeks in terms of pressing forward, trying to sense God’s path through all the voices. As you can guess, there are a lot of voices, each one telling me everything I’m doing wrong and everything I should be doing to move forward into what we’re all believing is God’s purpose before us. And hey, probably the loudest of the voices is my own, which is always telling me I should be doing this/that, sometimes even getting very down on myself for what I perceive as a whole lot of mistakes along the way (as if God isn’t bigger than our mistakes!).
But through it all, comes the voice of the Lord! I’m very thankful to have “heard the Lord” through two specific emails that I received over the web site this past week, from two brothers I’ve never met, both saying the exact same thing, both out of nowhere, both of them addressing (and here’s the key…) through God’s Word (yes, that’s the ticket!) exactly where I was at and what I was trying to handle on my own.
Yes, my MarchMin friends, keep those emails coming because I read and cherish every single one! And these two emails in particular, without going into all the details… they were the hand of the Lord, lifting my face to meet his, scooping me up and clearing my head of all the voices that weren’t his… that I might be free and clear-sighted to press forward toward his purposes unto their fulfillment. Glory to Jesus!
So may I encourage you, keep your eyes and ears open – we all need these “scoops” of the Lord’s hand, and you don’t want to miss them. At the end of the day we are all weak at best, and within that, his strength is perfected, and we sure don’t want to go it alone. We sure don’t want to bow to the “other voices,” but only his! I tell you, he is constantly speaking, constantly whispering, constantly reaching, constantly shielding us… Glory to the name of Jesus!
Be blessed this weekend. Lean into his strength and leadership. He has totally promised to give you beauty for all the ashes of life. Rest in that and trust that. Let that be your confidence. “Know” that… and know him within it! God bless you! Glory to Jesus!
Bruce Marchiano
It’s been a wild couple of weeks in terms of pressing forward, trying to sense God’s path through all the voices. As you can guess, there are a lot of voices, each one telling me everything I’m doing wrong and everything I should be doing to move forward into what we’re all believing is God’s purpose before us. And hey, probably the loudest of the voices is my own, which is always telling me I should be doing this/that, sometimes even getting very down on myself for what I perceive as a whole lot of mistakes along the way (as if God isn’t bigger than our mistakes!).
But through it all, comes the voice of the Lord! I’m very thankful to have “heard the Lord” through two specific emails that I received over the web site this past week, from two brothers I’ve never met, both saying the exact same thing, both out of nowhere, both of them addressing (and here’s the key…) through God’s Word (yes, that’s the ticket!) exactly where I was at and what I was trying to handle on my own.
Yes, my MarchMin friends, keep those emails coming because I read and cherish every single one! And these two emails in particular, without going into all the details… they were the hand of the Lord, lifting my face to meet his, scooping me up and clearing my head of all the voices that weren’t his… that I might be free and clear-sighted to press forward toward his purposes unto their fulfillment. Glory to Jesus!
So may I encourage you, keep your eyes and ears open – we all need these “scoops” of the Lord’s hand, and you don’t want to miss them. At the end of the day we are all weak at best, and within that, his strength is perfected, and we sure don’t want to go it alone. We sure don’t want to bow to the “other voices,” but only his! I tell you, he is constantly speaking, constantly whispering, constantly reaching, constantly shielding us… Glory to the name of Jesus!
Be blessed this weekend. Lean into his strength and leadership. He has totally promised to give you beauty for all the ashes of life. Rest in that and trust that. Let that be your confidence. “Know” that… and know him within it! God bless you! Glory to Jesus!
Bruce Marchiano
2 Comments
Bruce, we honour you, we love you, we pray for you and we know our Lord will supply beyond our hopes.
So…
You who know your God, be strong, and carry out your great exploit.
Yes Bruce, we all love you. Keep the faith! for our sake if no other, I know we depend on
you so much to show us God. You are our mentor!