My plea for help...

Dear Friends,

I'm writing to you tonight to ask for your help.  If I were to be completely transparent with you, that's not an easy task for me.  The fear of man is a real struggle in my life.  My mind is constantly battling the thoughts of what others may think of me, or who I will inconvenience by my request?  I don't want to bother people, and often times, I think I can do things on my own.  However, the more I walk with the Lord, the more I realize that I can't.

Lately, I have been reuniting with some of the men I used to minister to at our homeless ministry in Norfolk, VA.  The other day, I had lunch with one of those friends.  I first met him in the streets in 2011.  As I met with him the other day, I realized just how much he has changed, since the first time I met him that chilly November night.  He's not just a homeless man that crossed my path, he's my friend.  He's someone I desire to spend time with, someone I learn from, someone who encourages me and someone who blesses my life.

After I dropped him off on Friday, I received a call from him later that night.  He was with another man, who was also homeless at one time.  They wanted to ask me some questions about the bible.  After I finished the call, I realized something...

I realized just how much these two men were impacted by the ministry that started a little over four years ago.  I realized how faithful God was to not only start the ministry, but to call others to work within the ministry and even carry the torch of this ministry, while our family moved to upstate NY.  These men have been impacted by so many faithful people.  People who were willing to sacrifice a Saturday night, spend their money to make sure they were fed, gather clothes for them, give them rides, and just listen to them.  

I thought about how different their lives may look without these faithful people responding to the call of God.  It's staggering to think about, really.  I know these men are not the only ones who have been positively impacted.  

I asked myself what were the things that changed these two men?  Why was I having lunch with one of them earlier that day, and why was I on the phone answering their questions about the bible on a Friday night?  

Here's what I came up with:

It was because people responded to the call of the Lord.  Not a special group of people, not a most holy group of people, not a more anointed group of people, but people who just wanted to say, "yes" to Jesus.  People who just wanted to fulfill the two greatest commands - to love God and to love people.

By now, most of you know that I have a fire burning in my heart to win souls.  I fully understand the cry of the great man of prayer - John Hyde - when he prayed, "Oh God, give me souls or I die!"  Once you see lives change because of the gospel, something happens deep within every fiber of your being.  A lost world saved, becomes your life's mission statement.  Your heart will be overcome with the burden of the Lord for those who are still wandering far from home.  

Many times, I've said to myself, "I've just got to take a break from ministry, I've got to take a year off, " but I'm not sure it's possible.  When the great commission stamps you, when it marks you, you'll never see the world the same.  When you see the hurt and pain in people, you just can't turn a blind eye.  It's not a light switch that turns on and off - we must continue.

With that said, on January 29th & 30th at 7 pm, we will be hosting two nights of worship in the inner city of Norfolk.  The focus of the two nights will be to reach the lost and hurting in that city.  New Life Church in Ghent has given permission to use the building, those two nights.  I have invited a very anointed worshiper from Charlotte, NC to come and minister through song and the gospel will be preached with power.  I believe with all my heart that we will see the power of God for salvation, healing and deliverance.  I just returned from Africa and I saw it there and I believe it can happen here too. 

This event is an evangelistic event meant for reaching those that wouldn't typically come into a normal Sunday Church service.  We want them to be refreshed in the Presence of the Lord and to hear the gospel!  

I need your help!  Can you help with the following:

1. We need people to invade the city of Norfolk with invitations to the residents there.  (Knocking on doors, going to the mall, walking through the streets, announcing it at ODU, NSU, etc.)  We want to invite as many people as possible.  Over two nights, we have an opportunity to reach 600 people.  Let's do that!
2. We need those with the gift of exhortation, those that can encourage those who come
3. We need those with the prophetic gift who can give the word of the Lord
4. We need those with the gift of healing to pray for the sick
5. We need those with the gift of hospitality
6. We need the intercessors waging war in the Spirit
7. We need the administrators who can help with organization
8. We need the body to be the body...we need the gifts to come together as one...

I believe as we become one, with our aim set on winning souls, God will meet us in a powerful way.  I believe that the story of the two men above can be someone else's story.  I believe God can use us and wants to use us.  Will you help?

If you can and are interested please email me at jimmy@acwow.org.  Thanks for considering.  God bless you all!

Jimmy

Happy New Year 2016

For the past couple of weeks, the words "Happy New Year" have been heard across the globe.  The celebration has been building, as the world anticipates the hope of a New Year.  Really, what people are excited about, is a fresh start, a new beginning, another chance to get it right.  The resolutions have been decided, the commitments have been made, but there's one sad fact that won't escape my mind...that in one or two months from now, many of those commitments will be broken.

Millions of people will fall back into the same patterns of life, that they've lived for decades.  This false hope will become another disappointment for many.  I write this, not to condemn anyone, because I am in the line of the guilty!  What I have described above, is my sad story too.  Your commitments have been my commitments and just the same I have failed.  Rather, I write this with another thought in mind.  A thought that will bring you true hope and real victory.  The hope that comes from not just settling for a new year, but I want you to have a new life!

Yesterday, I was working out at the gym.  I noticed many new people were there, filling out their new member applications, taking their tour of the gym, etc.  They have a hope that in 2016 they will get fit, they will lose weight, they will get stronger and they will change.  I noticed several posts on Facebook, where people were declaring what they were going to change, in 2016.  I also noticed several post that said, 2016 was going to be a better year than 2015.  I hope that statement is true, as much as anyone.  However, I realize that just because the clock strikes midnight and the annual calendar changes, that nothing will magically happen!  The New Year isn't a genie bottle, granting our every wish!

I left the gym with a sadness in my heart.  Usually, when that happens the Lord is trying to speak something to me.  I began to pray on my car ride home and the Lord spoke to me.  He said, "I don't want to just give a New Year, I want to give a NEW LIFE!"  He said, I don't want to just make people fit or take away a lifelong, bad habit, I want to make ALL THINGS NEW!  I want people to put their hope in me, not in the calendar changing!  I want people to rejoice in Salvation, not in the clock striking midnight!

I remember the day like yesterday...It was January 17, 1997.  The day that I found myself at the end of my rope.  I had just went through the New Year tradition a few days prior.  My expectations were high!  I was sure that 1997 would be the best year ever!  I wasn't sure why, but I just knew it would be.  Like everyone else, I had hope in the new year!  I knew that the previous trials and pain of life had to go away, eventually.  It couldn't possibly get any worse, it had to get better!  Isn't that really what the world thinks, every New Year's Eve?

Then, seventeen days later it happened....things got worse, things got much worse.  I was in and out of jail, strung out on drugs and alcohol, practically homeless, couldn't keep a job, couldn't pay my bills, etc.  At just 19 years old, I was at my lowest point in life.  I lost all ambition to go on another day.  I accepted the fact that I was destined for failure.  I would never make anything of my life and I would always be this way.  As much as I wanted to deny this, it was a reality in my life that my mind couldn't escape.

Then one day, as I sat on a cot in the county jail, a man came to visit me.  He was a local pastor in the area.  His name was Pete Cittadino and he was the local chaplain for the county jail.  Pete has since went on to be with the Lord, but week after week, he would wheel his wheel chair into that county jail and share the gospel with me.  I wonder what Pete is thinking now, as he looks down from Heaven.  I wonder if he got a crown for this once lost sinner, who he led to the Lord.  I sure hope so...

I was just hoping to get out of the "block" and talk to someone who might understand my problems.  I wanted hope.  I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me it would all be okay.  I didn't want to live like this, but addiction had me.  It wouldn't let go, as hard as I tried to escape its merciless grasp.  It had such a grip on me.  I wanted to hear someone tell me that I would make it, so I went to the church service, there in the jail.

In all honesty, I never was much of a church person.  It wasn't that I didn't believe in God, but he just wasn't of interest to me.  I thought all church people were judgmental, hypocrites, and self righteous.  Honestly, I thought church was just plain weird.  But, I went to listen to this man anyway....

As I sat in the service, drifting off, bored out of my mind, I heard him say something.  Something that made my ears perk like antennas.  Something that I knew I needed to hear him say again.  Something that gave me HOPE!  He said these words, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away, behold, all things have become new!"  I'll never forget how those words pierced me.  I'll never forget the feeling that ran through every ounce of my body.  

I pulled him aside and I said to him, "Pastor Pete, is that verse you just shared really true?  If so, how can it be?  How do all things become new?  How do the old things pass away?  It sounds to good to be true, pastor."  He looked at me with full confidence and said, "I know it sounds to good to be true, Jimmy, but it's the word of God and it really is true."  I replied, "I want to be new, I'm sick of living like this.  I'm sick of drugs, I'm sick of jail, I'm sick of being hopeless.  How do I get this new life?"  He responded, "You must be born again, you must be IN CHRIST."

If I were to be honest, I had no clue what that meant, but as desperate as I was, I had nothing to lose.  I said, Pastor Pete, I want a new life.  I want to become NEW!  Please help me!  Right there, he grabbed my hands and prayed for me.  I invited Jesus into my heart that day and I asked him to forgive me.  I confessed my failures and my weaknesses.  I was truly sorry...I was truly repentant.  With hands up...I surrendered and crowned him as Lord.

For the next few days, something was happening to me.  I couldn't stop crying.  I literally cried for 3 days straight.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I would just cry in my cell.  I was being washed clean by the Spirit of God.  I was being made new!  The old was streaming out, down my cheeks.  Every hurt, every failure, every addiction, every generational curse, every broken dream, every act the enemy tried to destroy me with.  I was falling in love with Jesus, right there on that cot.  I felt such gratitude in my heart, I couldn't believe that this could be true.  I couldn't believe that I could start over.  I couldn't believe that he took the punishment for every one of my sins and I could go free.  Again, it didn't make sense, but I knew it was true.  I believed it in the very depth of my soul.  For the first time, I had real hope!

From that day forward, my life slowly began to change and I've never looked back.  I've hit some bumps along the way, I've fallen down, but thanks be to God, he gave me strength to get back up every time!  

Here I am today, almost 20 years later.  Once a drug addict, now a preacher!  Once a lonely man, now surrounded by the joyous sounds of a family.  Once a broken man, now like Pastor Pete, sharing the good news of salvation to the ends of the earth.  Once an unreliable, irresponsible employee, now the VP of a very successful business that funds our ministry.  How could this be?  How did this happen?  I don't understand even to this day, but I received NEW LIFE because of the grace of God!  I accept it, because he died so I could have it.  He died so you could have it...will you accept it tonight wherever you are? 

Here's my point...The New Year is just another day.  Let me encourage you to make a resolution that will stick.  A resolution that is the only real resolution.  Make a resolution today to surrender to Jesus.  Let him make you new!  Surrender the past, so he can begin to rebuild your life.  He longs for your response.  He's waiting and eager to give you eternal life.  He's eager to give you abundant life!  I'm a living example that he really does make ALL THINGS NEW!  Not some things, ALL THINGS!

So today, if you receive this, I want to wish you a Happy New Life!  2016 and beyond will be your best days.  Please understand, I'm not saying you won't still have problems.  But I can tell you this, with integrity...what the enemy uses for evil, God will use for good.  Although, trials don't feel good in the moment they are producing something in us that will reveal the glory of God.  He will burn away the dross and make us like pure gold.  Not for our sake, but for his ultimate glory!

God bless you all!  May the joy of the Lord visit you through salvation today!

Jesus says to you today, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."

Open the door now...

In Jesus name,

Jimmy