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WWW.CROSSEYEDMINISTRIES.COM
crosseyedmin@yahoo.com
NEWSLETTER # 6 (APRIL 2008)
Greetings My Cross-Eyed Friends!
I hope you are experiencing all the wonderful grace and blessings of our Lord and Savior as you face the crazy weather of Early Spring. This has been a surprising weather year. Well, maybe not surprising. I guess it can’t be surprising when everyone always tells you that you never know what the weather is going to do between February and April. I imagine that we should expect the unexpected. Yet, it does always seem to catch us off guard, doesn‘t it?
A few weeks back, we got three inches of snow that not one meteorologist on any of our local channels saw coming. We were shocked and totally unprepared. A few weeks later, we had hard rain, tornados and winds up to 75 miles an hour. We were warned that it was coming, but were still completely unprepared. It makes you wonder, are we ever really prepared? Probably not, but we can take great comfort in knowing that God is always prepared.
Someone once said something very eye opening to me. They said, “Has it ever occurred to you that NOTHING has ever occurred to God?” Wow, our God is never caught off guard! He knows everything. I am glad that He is prepared even when we aren’t! So, take comfort. He knows what’s going on in your life and knows what you need. Rest in His power and enjoy the life He has given you!
NEWS
The next two months are going to be very busy for our new ministry. God has shown Himself to be so faithful! He continues to open many doors of ministry and continues to confirm His calling for our lives. He also is making it clear that Crosseyed Ministries is going to continue to be a multifaceted ministry that includes Preaching, Teaching, and Christian Comedy. The doors that He has opened for March through June are pretty diverse:
- One Traditional Church Revival (Preaching)
- One Youth Revival (Preaching)
- Three Conferences (Comedy)
- Seven Church / Community Outreaches (Comedy / Preaching)
- Two Opportunities Hosting special events
One of my major questions when starting this new ministry was, “What exactly is God going to do?” I wondered what He was up to. Was He totally changing what my ministry had been for the past eleven years. Was He taking me down a path that I had never walked before? I guess the answer to that is: YES and NO. YES, it certainly is a different path. I am speaking at more conferences and definitely doing more Stand-UP as a springboard to reach people with the love of Jesus. But, NO. It has not completely changed. It is the same in many ways since He is still allowing me opportunities to continue to preach and teach. I never intended to stop doing that, but I was not sure how many opportunities I would get. God in His sovereignty has seen to it that I get to continue to teach His word also!
This is comforting to me because when I began to feel God leading me to a new avenue of reaching and encouraging people with the message of Jesus, I knew it was through comedy. Some will show up for that who will not come to a regular church service. Even though I knew this new avenue was what I was to do, I did not want to stop teaching and preaching all together. I am glad God continues to allow me to do that, albeit it may be in different places and not one church.
March was an exciting month for our new ministry. I got the opportunity to be a part of three really neat Outreaches:
March 1, I performed Christian Comedy at a conference in Virginia Beach, VA. The conference was called “Converge Your Faith.” It was a weekend outreach to help Christians learn to live out their faith instead of sit on their facts. I took the opportunity to use my “I’ve Got Issues” angle of comedy to encourage the audience to have the correct view of themselves. Basically, the message is that we will either identify ourselves by our failures and shortcomings, which will cause us to never be who God created us to be OR we will identify ourselves by the way God sees us.
March 15, I Co-hosted an awesome fundraiser for a ministry called RAK Productions, also in Virginia Beach VA. RAK stands for Random Acts of Kindness. This ministry is a three tiered focused ministry. Their vision is L-G-E (Local - Global - Eternal). Locally, they have a strong ministry to many recovery groups and actually use that avenue as an open door into the church! Globally, they have two ministries that reach out to foreign countries. And of course, Eternally, all they do is designed to introduce the lost to Jesus! The fundraiser was to help raise money for each of those areas.
The fundraiser brought in 18 different musical performers of differing genres and had them perform for nine hours on two different stages. I and fellow Christian Comedian, Side Splitting Steve, co-hosted the event together. He was a truly awesome guy that kept the show flowing! God really blessed, not only the raising of money, but He blessed all who were a part of it!
March 29, I performed Christian Comedy at the Crosswalk Café in Eden, NC. The Café is an outreach of the Eden Church Of God Of Prophecy. It was only there second time doing it and it didn’t take long before I could tell that God was all over it! The place filled up in spite of UNC playing their elite eight game! Again, I shared my “I’ve Got Issues” message. There was also a great band there named, Grace Reigns Down. They were wonderful and was used by God greatly to touch hearts.
Through these three opportunities, God continues to reassure me of His calling. I am amazed at His faithfulness. I am astounded at His grace. I am surprised that He lets me join Him in His work!
UPCOMING Appearances:
April 4 - Men’s Retreat. Parks Springs Campground, Caswell, NC
April 15 - Hope Fest, Beverly Hills Baptist Church, Rockingham, NC
April 17-19 - Youth Revival, Old Lea Bethel, Leasburg, NC
April 20-23 - Beaver Island Baptist Church, Mayodan, NC
April 26 - Caswell Senior Citizen Assistance Pastor’s Breakfast, Caswell, NC
April 27 - Strawberry Jam Youth Outreach, Franklin, VA
May 2 - The Encouraging Cup, Fletcher, NC
May 16 - The Art Gallery At Bear Creek, Saluda, NC
May 24 - Lee County Community Outreach, Lee County Fairgrounds, NC
June 1-3 - Christian Comedians Association Conference, Anaheim, NC
June 6-7 - Hosting Lindsay’s Dance Studio Recital, NC
DEVOTION
"Smile, God is in the storms!"
A little boy walked to and from school daily. On one particular morning, the weather was questionable as clouds were forming and the sky was gray. Yet, as usual the little boy made his daily trek to the elementary school anyway.
As the afternoon progressed, the winds whipped up and the thunder and lightning began to roll. The mother of the little boy was concerned that her son would be frightened as he walked home from school and feared that the electrical storm might harm her child.
Worried, the mother got into her car and drove along the route to her child's school. Upon finding her son, she noticed her little boy was walking along just fine, but at each flash of lightning, the child would stop, look up and smile. More lightning followed and with each one the little boy would look at the streak of light and smile.
The mother approached him in her car, lowered the window and asked him, "What are you doing?"
The child answered, "I am trying to look nice, God keeps taking my picture."
We all face storms in our lives. There is nothing that we can do to keep them from happening, but we can do something about how we handle those storms. We have two choices. One, we can allow the storms to fill us with fear, anxiety, and despair. Or, we can keep on smiling because we know that God is still in control, even in the storms.
We have a wonderful promise from God that says, “..I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we may boldly say: "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?"(Hebrews 13:5-6). The key to really understanding this verse is understanding what “forsake” means. It means to abandon, desert or to leave helpless. It is often times used to mean “to drop.”
With that in mind, re-read that verse. God is promising you that if you come to Him by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, He will never abandon or desert you even in the worst of life’s storms. He will never leave you helpless in your time of need. And even better, through Jesus Christ you can always know that you are safe in the hands of God and He will never, ever drop you! So, smile. God is even in the storms!
Verse To Meditate On:
“Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in Him, Because we have trusted in His holy name.” Psalm 33:20-21
PRAYER REQUEST:
1. Continue to Pray for my family. God has done many miracles in restoring and healing some of the struggles that Satan has brought on us. To God goes all glory and praise. That does not mean that Satan is finished fighting. I am sure that he will turn the heat up again. Continue to pray that we use the spiritual battles to draw us closer as a family and closer to our Lord!
2. Pray for safety and graces as I begin traveling more in this ministry.
3. Pray that God would provide enough opportunities to support my family.
4. Pray that God would either provide us with trustworthy transportation OR do as He did with the children of Israel. He kept their shoes from wearing out during their 40 year trek through the wilderness! He can keep my old car and our struggling van from collapsing if He chooses!
5. Pray for my Health. I need to get more serious and focused on my battle with diabetes. I say battle, but honestly, I have not been fighting too hard. It’s time to start fighting back and get it under control.
6. Pray that God will lead me to a Godly group of people to help me form the Board of Directors for Crosseyed Ministries. This is an important process in what God has called me to do. I have to handle it properly.
7. As I mentioned before, I am really struggling to balance my secular job, Pastoring Shiloh Baptist, AND the new ministry. Things at church are going wonderful, but with my travel schedule, I am not as available for our members as I need to be. I usually am available for most of my “preaching duties”, but there is sooo much more to being a Pastor than just showing up to preach. Those other areas are where I am falling short. Of course, there has been no complaints and amazingly they are very supportive, BUT me not being there is not very healthy for our church. The schedule of my secular job is also making traveling a little more difficult. My boss is WAY understanding, but soon I will be asking off for too much time, too often. He will go along with it, but it’s not fair to him. Pray for wisdom as I sort through it all!
Well, I guess I have taken enough of your time. Please visit our website and email me sometime. I NEED THE ENCOURAGEMENT! God Bless you and thank you for spending time with me!
Ronnie Wyatt
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