Sabbatical year End of November 2022 – End of November 2023
On January 5 – 19, 2023, we spent time in the Sabbath Quarter on vacation, settling in and listening to God together. This resulted in:
1) “The hour is coming, and already is, for the true worshipers to worship God in spirit and truth. And the Father also seeks those who worship Him in this way. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth:” (John 4:23 and 24) We must take time to look at God and His nature and worship Him for who He is, praise Him for what He has done and is doing, and thank Him for all that He has given and is giving us.
2) Taking God seriously and facing the truth.
We live in a situation where the focus is on people and their well-being and goals. God is welcome where He contributes to our well-being, but words about God’s judgment are hardly taken seriously. The fact that, for example, the estimated 100,000 innocent children who are killed in the womb every year in Germany, and who over the decades have accumulated to an estimated 5 million deaths, lead to God’s judgment, plays practically no role at all in today’s thinking. Even when it comes to the question of how sexuality should be thought of and lived, people’s feelings are now regarded as a decisive criterion, while God’s view is largely seen as irrelevant. Reverence for the living God, from whom everything comes, who sustains everything in existence, towards whom everything runs and before whom everyone will have to answer as judge, has largely been lost, even in the Christian communities we know. When we sing hymns in worship, is it primarily about our mood, or is it about giving Almighty God the glory He deserves? How important is God to us when we do something for Him? Do we want God to bless our endeavors, or are we really ready to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and do what He really wants us to do? How many opportunities have been missed because Christians have not been willing to respond to God’s sometimes very quiet requests! We urgently need times when we are ready to let go of everything and be there for God without purpose.
3) Looking at what remains
We need to look at our eternal life and at the other blessings of God that Jesus has already acquired for us, but which will only become visible in the future. These include eternal close fellowship with God the Father, the fact that through Jesus we have already been given glory together with Jesus (Rom. 8:30) and that we are already sitting together with Jesus on His throne in heaven (Eph. 2:6). In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it becomes clear how important the prayers of the saints are even now for what God wants to do. Jesus went to the Father to prepare a place for all His disciples. (Joh. 14, 2 – 3) Our life here on earth is thus in a much more comprehensive and greater and better context than just our earthly life here. Our life here on earth is a place where we can learn to trust God and use all that God offers us as help. In this way, we practise trusting God and walking with God through thick and thin. But we are heading towards a future full of light, life, love and glory. We learn to let go of everything here on earth and receive the fullness of God precisely in this. So we walk with joy towards the day when we will leave our earthly life and finally see all that we have believed. We need the Holy Spirit to shape our lives deeply through the hope that is ours as Christians.
4) Christine is to paint the life-size stained glass stained glass picture “Jesus, the Risen Christ” paint.
5) We build a adoration chapel in the garden behind house 2. We started digging the excavation pit at the end of March. Consultation with the local authority revealed that we do not need planning permission for this on our plot. We planned the chapel of worship in consultation with an experienced builder. He, his employees and ours then built the entire chapel, Christine painted her stained glass picture for it and we had it installed. We consecrated the chapel on September 13, 2023.
In addition, during our sabbatical year:
6) Christ in us and through us
We see more and more that what we think we can do without God is only a poor copy of what God actually wants to give us and work through us. That is why we must stand before God empty-handed in all areas, and God then gives abundantly.
7) Sharing in the pain of Christ
Jesus Christ offered the perfect sacrifice that is completely sufficient for every need and guilt. But God consciously allows suffering in our lives so that we can be released from false attachments to people and things, rely more on Him and become ready to receive from Him so that we can better receive and radiate God’s glory and learn to live with His miracles. As Christians, we are members of a great organism, the body of Christ. This means that when one member suffers, all suffer with it. We share in the pain of all our persecuted brothers and sisters. And we share in God’s pain over the state of many Christians and churches and denominations, because so little of what Jesus has so dearly bought for us is accepted and used,
What else happened?
Christine continues to run her donation donation agency with receiving and forwarding donations and looking after donors and donation recipients. This keeps her very busy.
From the middle of April Reiner took care of our website. Previously, Holger Ranglack, Christine’s brother, had financed the website for us. Due to changes at the operator, the website was no longer working properly. We decided to take over the website and redesign it. This became Reiner’s main task in the period that followed. The website was designed to be simple and clear. The “We” section provides information about us, while the “God” section provides information about God and Christian life. The “World” section contains helpful information, e.g. about Darwinism and the Bible from a historical perspective.
Reiner sees it as part of his calling from God to provide helpful writings which are then published on our website and which other Christians can download. For example, he wrote a few things on the website about various gifts of the Holy Spirit and how to use them.
December 2023
In December 2023, we attended the meeting of CTTM pastors and missionaries at the
December 6 – 9, 2023 in Khon Kaen, which focused on CTTM’s prospects for the coming year. In particular, the Vision 50 of CTTM was presented, the vision that within the next 2 years until the 59th anniversary of CTTM, the number of CTTM churches will increase from 31 to 50 by founding new CTTM churches. We told the head of CTTM about our sabbatical year and he didn’t seem impressed.
Reiner wrote our info letter to our friends in which we reported on our sabbatical year and translated it into English, Dutch and Swedish. We sent out the new information letters.