Midsummer greetings to each of you. Wherever you are, I pray that you are prospering in the Lord’s work.
I enjoyed doing a Zoom study with the Fortune Road congregation in Kissimmee, Florida last Sunday. It was good to work again with the Christians there. Chris Jones and Mark Copeland are the elders, and Caleb Lungstrum works with the congregation as an evangelist.
As you know, at the first of this year I began recording my reading of each page in the book Obeying the Gospel. This has proved to be a bigger task than I anticipated, but as we reach the halfway point in the year, I am happy to report that good progress has been made. I have completed 208 of the 366 tracks that will comprise the whole work.
The response has been gratifying. There have been 3,816 listens to the tracks via the podcast. In addition to the podcast, there have been many more listens on my website, YouTube, etc. The tracks are available through so many different channels, it is impossible to know the total reach of all of them, but it is clear that many people are listening.
Perhaps the most gratifying thing to me personally has been the number of husbands and wives who have told me that they listen to these tracks together, usually at breakfast. For one thing, it is joyful news anytime I hear of couples spending devotional time together each day. In the busy times we live in, great good comes from the discipline necessary to maintain this practice. Of course, good would come from husbands and wives having a daily devotional time even if they did it individually and separately, but when couples study and pray together each day, the blessings that grow out of that are almost incalculable. And when couples tell me that they have, in effect, given me a seat at the table during their breakfast devotional, and are listening as I read to them the Obeying the Gospel pages, well, it just doesn’t get any better than that for a writer. What a privilege!
I do hope that at least some of the couples who began this will stick it out and finish the year without giving up. It may be tempting to say at some point, “We’ve done this enough by now; let’s not do it anymore.” But the pages in the second half of the book are essential to the work as whole. I hope that those who are listening to the tracks each day will persevere and listen to the pages that are yet to come this year.
Several have asked if they could get a disc with all of the tracks on it, once the entire year is done. I’ll be happy to do that. Just let me know if you’d like one of these discs (free of charge).
I was going to wait until the beginning of 2022 to begin writing the next book, called Walking in Christ, but I have not been able to resist the temptation to start writing again. This work has become such a part of my life, I’m really not very happy when I’m not writing — so I’ve written a few of the early pages in Walking in Christ, just to dip my toes in the water, so to speak. I believe it’s going to be a good book, and it certainly feels good to be back at the writing desk!
I hope each of you knows how grateful I am that you are willing to support me in the work I am attempting to complete before I die. I can hear the clock ticking, and with so much left to do, I need to work as hard as I can each day. Thank you for the special love that you extend to me, and for the gracious words of encouragement you send to me.
Gary Henry — WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com
