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Home Newsletters September 2009 Ten Years of Ministry

The confession affirms that the church is charged to call the Jews to repentance and to baptize the believers in the name of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. The refusal to evangelize the Jews "for cultural or political reasons" is disobedience. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bethel Confession, 1933)

Ten Years of Ministry PDF Print E-mail
Looking Back and Praying for the Future

As this opening newsletter article is being written, I (Amy Downey) am about to conclude my 10th year in Jewish evangelism.  I consider the date that I boarded a plane to interview for a missionary position with Chosen People Ministries as the beginning date of my missionary beginnings.  It has been an interesting ten years of ministry – some good, some bad, some heartbreaking, some thrilling!
And despite more than a few more gray hairs (see picture to the right!), I would not change the last ten years for anything in the world!  Well,… there is one thing I would change.  And I will share that “wish change” with you at the conclusion of the article.

And in honor of my tenth year of missionary work, I celebrated the occasion by moving … yet again!  In the move, I found a journal begun ten years ago as I was preparing to board the plane for the interview in New York City.  I read through some of the entries related to the move to NYC and then the move back to Texas and was stunned by not how I changed but how God changed me.  For more details, go check out the ministry blog.

When I first traveled to New York City for the interview, I was confused as to what was to be the focus of the ministry.  I naïvely assumed the work of evangelism was up to me.  How wrong I was in 1999!  The work of Jewish evangelism is solely up to God himself.  If the work of salvation was up to me or any of you, “Isaac”, “Gene”, “Joan”, “Mary”, “Klaudia”, “Daniel”, “James” and countless other Jewish souls would now have their eternal passport to heaven already secured.  The Jewish people are His people and God only wants us to be willing conduits for His Gospel message.  However, many never share the Gospel with a Jewish person because they think it is their job to be a “Soul Winner”.  Nope!  Our task is to be seed planters and allow Jesus to reap the harvest of souls.  He is a much better farmer than we will ever be!

The second way that God has changed me over the last ten years is to prune and shape me to be more fearless for the Gospel.  Ten years ago I would never have had the courage to look at someone I cared deeply about and tell them there is no other way to heaven but through Messiah Jesus.  Well oday I have discovered not only the courage to share this truth but have looked dear Jewish friends straight in the eye and told them this eternal truth.  And you might be surprised to discover that I am still friends with them!  The awkward reality of hell did not end our friendship.  Actually the truth often made the friendship stronger because they knew the depths of my love for them … deep enough to warn them of the reality of an eternity apart from Jesus.

Now for the one thing I would change … “Isaac”.  I have written about him before for he was my dear friend and Holocaust survivor who died without Messiah Jesus.  I begged and pleaded the last night I saw him alive to receive Jesus as Messiah.  The horrors of the Holocaust and a number of other factors prevented him from making this decision for heaven and today my wonderful Isaac has spent another day in hell.  I would change “Isaac” in a heartbeat; however, I cannot and that reality haunts me.

So that brings me to a journal entry I posted on the blog regarding my September 11 and missionary thoughts ten years after the final surrender.  I can write nothing else about ten years of ministry because for once I think I truly wrote it all.  Shalom!

(September 11, 2009)  Today was another day of service for the Lord through the work of Jewish evangelism.  I still struggle with spiritual exhaustion.  How much more can I beg and plead for Christian churches to join the fight for the salvation of the Jewish people?  What will we as the church of God say when we have to answer for our apathy at best and antipathy at worst?  How will God respond to those who claim to serve Him but fail to share the Gospel with His Chosen Ones? 

I must continue the work even when and if some of my own family and friends do not understand my obsessive passion of Jewish missions.  There is nothing else I can do with my life.  There is nothing else I want to do with my life.
 

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