Harvest Offering Letter (2004)

September 13, 2004

Dear Family of Friends,

Let’s do something significant. Let’s do something that lasts forever. Sound like a good investment of your efforts? It is a perfect employment of your effort and money. There are two ways I want to emphasize that we can all do something that will help lost people come to know Jesus and to grow to maturity in Him. Just read this:

Bill Fay is coming back! By the time you get this letter Bill Fay will have come and gone. I know you were moved. The last time he was here was in 2002, and we simply had to stop and do business with God concerning the great opportunity we have to make a difference in our world of influence. Well, Bill is coming back September 26 to speak to us again. This time he will simply tell his story of amazing grace and salvation from a world of mafia mystery and bad choices. Bill is going to draw the net for salvation for those people we have prayed for and shared Jesus with and bring with us to that service. I am anticipating a wonderful gospel harvest of souls. Would you trust the Lord to give you the courage to share Jesus by inviting them to come hear Evangelist Bill Fay? Listen, you are the best person and the one strategically planted by God to zero in on the people that surround you through prayer, a witness and an invitation to hear a simple gospel message. But will you do it? Will you open up and be the Salt and Light that we are appointed to be. I know you can do it and will do it because you want your many relationships to come to Jesus. Pray for them using the 360 degree relationship survey we passed out at church. Approach them and invite them to come. God will move in response to your faith. I will pray for all of you in this wonderful effort.

Secondly, this Sunday we will give our annual Harvest offering. Sometimes we designate this offering to a particular project or need. Well, let me be perfectly honest with you--our need is to catch up. We are going into the prime time of the year for ministry and for reaping a harvest of souls and we need to simply be faithful to throw out the nets for a bountiful catch. We need to plant the seeds of the gospel for a wonderful harvest of new people coming to Jesus. We need to make sure we are not withholding the gospel message both here and around the world by being tight fisted with our material blessing. Let me share a verse or two with you:

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38)

Don’t get the idea that if you give you will have to do with less and less. No the Bible teaches that if you give it will come back to you so you can give again. God is not interested in making you a beggar by your giving. It is more probable that you will become impoverished by not trusting God with you finances than by giving too much.

Listen to this passage:

“Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. ⁸And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. …¹⁰Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. ¹¹You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. (2 Corinthians 9:7-11)

We want to throw out the lifeline and draw in the gospel nets this fall and we need your help. Notice that God’s grace is able to supply “all you need,” and “make you rich in every way.” He does that all the time. He has blessed all of us but not to spend it only on ourselves and to hoard it for ourselves. He wants us to be “generous on every occasion.”

Dear Brother and sister in Christ: please pray diligently about what the Lord would have you to do on this Sunday. A good starting place is a “double tithe.” But let God show you what to do. So let’s do something significant spiritually in September. Let’s bring in the searching soul and let’s bring in a bountiful offering. I’ll be praying for you and giving with you.

In Christ Where It Is Safe,

Phil Winfield