December Newsletter
Merry Christmas,
We hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday with wonderful friends and family. We had a great time in Mobile, AL with our family, and had the privilege to speak that Sunday in the church where Joe received Christ. This is our favorite time of year!
Every Tuesday night, we host a home group where we are discipling members of our church and young evangelists with the tools they will need for ministry. One of the young ladies in our group told us at the beginning of November that she had cancer. Our group unified in prayer that she would be healed. She went to the doctor the following day to determine the next steps for chemotherapy and found that her MRI came back negative. As expected, the doctor was puzzled and took three MRIs back-to-back and still could not detect the cancer any longer. Praise God!
During the weeks surrounding Halloween, I led many students, members of our church, and home team to one of the second largest homosexual areas in America. We only thought we had seen the most sinful place in America, but definitely had not. We had a huge wooden cross and a bullhorn with us. On the first weekend, we preached for around two solid hours. The crowd was massive in the entire area and we were able to preach, and then have others minister one-on-one to those listening. While the debauchery continued, the Gospel went forth like a doubled-edged sword. It was a powerful weekend of evangelism in a very dark area. Some of the people who went will never be the same, as they got a reality check of just how badly people need set free.
Among those people changed was my wife, Trisha. The following day we led a church to evangelize at the Nascar races. There was an adult club out advertising with their women handing out flyers to the men. The van pulled up next to where we were ministering, and I handed the bullhorn to my wife and told her to preach to those women. She was a bit nervous, but poured her heart out telling those women that nothing would satisfy them like Jesus. Our whole team was proud of her, and she was put on youtube. Immediately after we left the races, God began opening up more doors for Trisha to reach out to women lost in those sinful lifestyles.
I had the privilege to speak at an Indian conference in the Dallas area recently. It was powerful! Many were challenged to evangelize their communities and bring change to the world. The people did not want me to leave. The leader asked me at the end of services to speak at their once-a-year national conference in Atlanta, GA. in July 2009. He told me there would be around 25,000 people in attendance.
A few weeks back, I also had a wonderful opportunity to speak to all of the leadership in the North Texas District of the Assemblies of God. I was asked to stir the leaders and bring a fresh vision for evangelism. If you read our monthly newsletter regularly, you know that is one of our dreams - to mobilize entire regions to fulfill the great commission. It is beginning to happen.
After the meeting, the gentleman in charge of around 500 churches stood up with tears in his eyes and said how the message had touched his life. The door has swung open and different leaders want me to come in and mobilize their areas. This means tens of thousands will hear the Gospel message outside the walls of the church. We are putting together a fresh team of evangelists to invade America and Texas with the Blood-coated Seed of the Gospel!
As I’m sure you are aware, the Proposition 8 Amendment has stirred up the nation on homosexual marriages. We were recently highlighted on the local news as our team went out and preached the Gospel to all those who opposed the ban on same sex marriages. I feel God has called me to aggressively join the fight so our kids and grandchildren will not have to grow up with this in our society.
This is not a physical fight, but a spiritual one. Just as David did not relent against the Philistines until they were defeated, the church should do the same. This is not a day for the church to watch from the side lines; we must engage the battle! We are putting together a coalition of believers and church leaders to fight this spiritual battle until there is victory. I whole-heartedly encourage everyone to find out what is being done in your area through internet or from your pastor to fight this terrible onslaught and get involved today.
I am still looking and praying for the right place to hold an overseas crusade next year. One of the goals is to go Vensuelala. I was also invited to go to Kenya, India, and Thailand. So please join me in prayer for God’s will in ministry. We are committed to holding more crusades around the world since my visit to Africa.
Check out my new website: www.joeodenministries.com. I am still updating my schedule on the site, but it is up and running. You can also email me from the site as well. I would love to hear from you.
Thank you for all of your prayer and support this past year. Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Together in the harvest,
Joe Oden