Carlos and Raydel in Washington DC for the EA Christmas and 10th Anniversary Party

We’re pleased to have Carlos and Raydel with us in Washington, D.C., for the EA Christmas and 10th Anniversary party this Sunday. (There’s still time to RSVP if you’d like to join us).

As we were catching up this morning, they both indicated that serving Christ’s church was a life-long calling, not simply a vocation.  

We’re blessed to have an entire team with a deep concern for Christ’s Church like that of the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 11:28), who labored and prayed that the churches would:

  • Be firmly rooted in Jesus Christ, not wavering from the faith (Eph. 1:16-17).
  • Experience all of the benefits of being a child of God: the wisdom, knowledge, and power available through the Spirit within them (Eph. 3:16-17).
  • Live up to their calling as Christians, producing good works so that Jesus would be honored (Col. 1:10).

Just a reminder, here are ways you can join us in celebrating EA’s 10th Anniversary:

  1. SUPPORTING OUR YEAR-END MATCHING CAMPAIGN

 A generous EA supporter is sponsoring a special Year-end General Fund Matching Campaign (up to a total amount of $80,000) until Dec 31st.

Click HERE to give.

  1. SUBMITTING A SHORT VIDEO

We are creating a celebration video which will be a great encouragement to all who have been a part of the Lord’s journey for EA over the past decade.

Click HERE to record your video.

  1. ATTENDING OUR CHRISTMAS AND ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Please join us on Sunday, December 11th for dinner, a time of worship and highlights from 10 years of ministry.

RSVP HERE for the party.

A Startling Fact to Ponder on Giving Tuesday

A surprising fact and a great opportunity on Giving Tuesday:

Fact – Evangelicals Favor Secular Charities

A 2022 survey revealed that while 84% of evangelicals stated that they preferred to support Christian organizations to non-Christian ones, only 46% of evangelical donors indicated a faith-based organization as their preferred charity. Furthermore, only 5% of evangelical donors donated exclusively to ministries, such as Empowering Action, engaged solely in Christian work of preaching, teaching, or missions.

It is true that through common grace God demonstrates that, without renewing the heart, He can exercise such influence that even the unsaved are enabled to perform good deeds toward their fellow man. However, surprisingly 12 of evangelicals’ top 19 organizations were also found in non-evangelicals’ top 20 organizations. And in some instances, evangelicals might be shocked by those entities’ values and activities, which are incongruent with a biblical worldview.

Opportunity – Year-End Matching Campaign

On this Giving Tuesday, Empowering Action reiterates our commitment to giving the truth of the Gospel and the life-changing precepts of Scripture. Our current Year-end General Fund Matching Campaign allows you to commemorate our 10th anniversary and partner with a ministry that strives for biblical fidelity in both belief and behavior.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. – 1 Cor. 2:16

 

Source:

The favorite charity: Evangelical giving priorities. Infinity Concepts & Grey Matter Research & Consulting (2022).

Happy Thanksgiving!

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday designated as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer,” let us find inspiration in the commentary of Charles Spurgeon below on Deuteronomy 8:3-6 regarding humanity’s propensity to forget God’s mercies:

We trace our joys in the sand, but we write our afflictions on marble.

 We forget the streams of mercy, never ceasing, which flow so continually parallel with our pathway.

 If we thus, ungratefully forget, it should cause us serious reflections when we see that God does not forget.

Here in this Book He brings to His people’s memories all the mercies they have received, because they were always present before His own mind.

 The child may forget the kindness of its mother, but the mother does not forget what she bore, and what she has sacrificed for her child.

 The friend may forget what he has received, but it is not likely that the benefactor will forget what he has bestowed.

 If God’s memory, therefore, records all that He has given me, let me be ashamed to let my memory suffer these things to slip.

 What God counts worthy of His Divine recollection let me record on the pages of my memory, and often let me peruse the record.

Let us give thanks to the LORD for His faithful love and His wonderful works for all humanity! (Psalm 107:31)

Ways to Celebrate EA’s 10th Anniversary

Above is one of the earliest pictures of Empowering Action. By God’s grace, next month marks the completion of our 10th year of ministry. Over the years, we have often found inspiration in the life of George Muller, an amazing man of God, who cared for 10,000 orphans in the 1800s. At the end of his life, when asked if when he first began the work he had any idea how it would grow, he responded,

“I only knew that God was in it and was leading His child into untried and untrodden paths. The assurance of His presence was my stay.”

Similarly, as we look back over the past decade, we recognize and celebrate God’s sustaining presence and provision as well as the privilege of serving Christ’s Church.

Please consider joining us in celebrating EA’s 10th Anniversary by participating in the following:

  1. SUPPORTING OUR YEAR-END MATCHING CAMPAIGN

 A generous EA supporter is sponsoring a special Year-end General Fund Matching Campaign (up to a total amount of $80,000) until Dec 31st.

Click HERE to give.

  1. SUBMITTING A SHORT VIDEO

We are creating a celebration video which will be a great encouragement to all who have been a part of the Lord’s journey for EA over the past decade.

Click HERE to record your video.

  1. ATTENDING OUR CHRISTMAS AND ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Please join us on Sunday, December 11th for dinner, a time of worship and highlights from 10 years of ministry.

RSVP HERE for the party.

Theology Matters

This year’s State of Theology survey revealed that 71% of U.S. adults and 65% of evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God.”

Commenting on the finding, Ligonier Ministries explained:

  • When God created the world, everything He made was good (Gen. 1:10, 21, 25, 31). Yet through Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden, humankind became corrupted. The Bible teaches the concept of original sin, which means that since the Fall, every human being inherits a sin nature from the time of their conception (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12). In other words, we are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners.
  • It is unsurprising that most U.S. adults believe that humans are born innocent, given the influence of humanistic philosophies and worldviews that teach self-determinism and a view of humankind as basically good.

Theologians contend that Genesis chapter 3 is arguably the most important chapter in the Bible, explaining,

“Those who do not understand the Fall cannot diagnose properly the human dilemma…It is impossible to understand man’s behavior if you do not understand that it is all a product of sin. And all sin in the world is a result of what happened in Genesis 3.”

Perhaps that is why it is so encouraging to listen to Dominican Pastor Roberto Araujo King of Iglesia Bíblica Bautista Mi Esperanza, after ten months of study in the Genesis Family Life Program, explain the vital importance a proper understanding of sin and theology play in the spiritual transformation of the mind (Romans 12:2).

Update from Cuba in aftermath of Hurricane Ian

I just wanted to pass along an encouraging photo and note from Raydel Riquelme below regarding ministry in Cuba amid unrest and rolling power outages throughout the country in the wake of recent hurricanes.

The simplicity and fervor communicated by the image reflects the words of Charles Spurgeon:

 The Devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. Providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the Church. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt that is sets men afire.

 What a privilege we have to be a part of biblical training that leads to individuals and churches equipped and aflame for Christ!

 The Lord promises in Isaiah 55:10-11,

 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

Prayer for those impacted by Hurricane Ian

As we pray for those in the path of Hurricane Ian as it makes landfall in Florida today, we also ask that you remember those in Cuba amid the storm’s aftermath. We have five regional facilitators in Cuba overseeing our efforts there, including Pastor Yalexis in the province of Pinal del Rio, who reported that while he and his family are doing well, there is significant damage in his area as seen in the pictures below.

Sinclair Ferguson provides guidance regarding how to pray during such natural disasters,

 The most important prayer is that whatever the providences of God may be, He will use them to turn people to Christ. It is wholly appropriate that we should pray that God would turn back natural disasters, but beyond that, our concern is for God’s glory. If that means people are going to be awakened to think about eternal things when they have been consumed with the things of this world, then we pray that God will use them in such a manner.

 We believe that God will use these things to make people think about what really matters and what really lasts. In fact, it is often at such times that you will hear people say in response to what they have lost that it has made them treasure the things that are really important.

 Please join us in praying fervently but trusting wholly in the character and providence of God. 

Hurricane Fiona Update

As we observe the following pictures, we get a sense of the damage and suffering caused by Hurricane Fiona for more than 8,000 families living on the east coastline of the Dominican Republic.

As in many other occasions, situations like this offer an opportunity for individuals to consider their lives and what is their personal relationship with their Creator and the Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as they face the fragility of their earthy existence.

We thank the Lord that in the mist of these recent events we have seen the generosity of the people of the Dominican Republic in helping out as well we observed the rapid emergency response from our government authorities. This has been essential in preserving human life and material possessions and securing and restoring vital infrastructure.

We praise our Lord for the rapid response and care from our brethren from various local church bodies looking to serve and love their neighbors.

Our pastor network has reported that more that 2,000 homes in their area have been severely damaged, and the families have lost all their basic possessions. Also, reports show that all agriculture in the batey communities and plantain farms have been lost. We, as the EA family, are looking to coordinate with these churches to provide support to cover basic needs such as: roof repairs, temporary food provision, and health and hygiene necessities for the coming 3 months as families recover and go through the rehabilitation phase after a natural disaster such as this. Of course, we continue to offer our four foundational programs whose content serves in the immediate response and prepares Christ’s Church for such challenges in the future.

We cherish and request your continued prayer and financial support, which has enabled us to serve and glorify Christ in such a time as this (Esther 4:14).

Unity in the Gospel

Paul writes to the church in Philippi,

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. (Philippians 1:5)

James Montgomery Boice asserts that we do not know much about this church, but it would seem that there was little to bind them together by worldly standards. However, it was the fellowship of the gospel that unified them.

Boice states,

This must always be the bond between Christians. If you unite with other Christians on the basis of affluence, you will exclude the poor. If you unite along social issues, you will exclude those outside your own level of society, be it high or low. If you unite intellectually, you will exclude either the simple or the intelligent.  However, you do it, the witness of the church will suffer.  How thankful we must be that God did not establish the fellowship of his children along these lines.  Our fellowship is in the gospel of God.

This is a timely reminder as the toxic, divisive ideology of the world has crept into Christ’s church, professing to offer unity that is counter to Scripture.

Our fellowship is in the gospel.

The gospel that Paul so clearly defined for us,

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you–unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-4)

Octavius and Audrey

I was reading this past week through the book of Colossians where Paul described the Preeminence of Christ (Col 1:15-23), in response to a heresy threatening the church by denying the deity of Christ.

In the forefront of my mind were two things: the seemingly increasingly chaotic world around us, and the impending, emotional departure of our oldest child Audrey for college.

In studying the passage I ran across this quote from 19th century theologian Octavius Winslow, which I found extremely encouraging:

Living in a world of imperfection and change, we must expect nothing perfect, nothing stable, in what we are, in what we do, or in what we enjoy. But amid the dissolving views of the world that “passes away,” let us take firm hold of the unchangeableness of God. The wheels may revolve, but the axle on which they turn is immoveable. Such is our covenant God. Events may vary, providences may change, friends may die, feelings may fluctuate, but God in Christ will know “no variableness, neither the shadow of a turning.”

So amid the chaos and instability of our lives, look to Christ who is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, before all things, and in whom all things hold together” and who will “reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

We covet your continued prayers for our EA ministry family, as well as the Husted family during this time of transition and growth.