September 2025

Dear Friend:

A few weeks ago, the bad news just kept coming and coming. Devastating medical news. Financial drought. Multiplied relational issues and disputes that needed to be resolved. Both Susanne and I were battling weariness daily, and we were crying out to God for healing, provision, strength, wisdom, and peace. During that time, I found a time and place to get still in God’s presence, to listen to His quiet voice.

What His Holy Spirit said to me was not what I expected or even wanted. “Now is the time to sow,” I heard Him say. “Sow your way out of lack.” To my natural mind, that made no sense.  Hoarding and scrapping seemed the wiser course. However, at the newly minted age of 62, I have slowly learned that God knows what He’s doing, He’s a good Father, and I need to pay attention to His Word … and follow it.

“Where do you want me to sow,” I asked Him. I mean, I know of so many needs that friends, other ministries, and churches have right now. And then the simple answer came: “Wait. I will show you.” And He has. More on that later.

I actually believe God speaks to us today in many ways: His Holy Word, the Bible; the leading of His Holy Spirit; trusted pastors, mentors, and friends; in the fellowship of other believers; even in a song, sunrise, or sunset. Let me emphatically say, the Bible has the final Word. If what we are hearing or sensing is from the Holy Spirit, it will not conflict with the Bible. God is the Author of Scripture, not the author of confusion.

The kingdom of God is often referred to as “the upside-down Kingdom” because it works according to the mind and ways of One Whose thoughts are high above us, beyond our natural comprehension.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

We see this clearly in the earthly life of Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. In our earthly struggle for power and dominance, we fight for position, money, access, influence, rulership, and advantage. But in the kingdom of God, Jesus teaches us that the way to greatness is found in servanthood, life is found in the Cross, victory is found in surrender, strength is found in weakness, wealth is found in giving. It is the humble who hear, and the humble who are exalted by the Lord in due time (see Psalm 34 and 1 Peter 5).

This teaching from Jesus shakes our foundations of Westernized Christianism, just as it shook the understanding of His earthly contemporaries. God’s economy does not function according to the rules of our economy. What God calls a good investment may seem like foolishness to us, and what we consider treasures, God may consider dust and dung.

What we must consider now is whether to choose an attractive temporary counterfeit or a challenging, but eternally life-giving authentic walk with Jesus. Western nations, particularly America, have been religionized for centuries. But history, including recent years, has taught us that the way of the Cross is deeply offensive to many church pew-warmers. There is a preference for personal prosperity and popularity above the basics of faithful living:

Love God above all else

Love your neighbor as yourself

Do justice

Love mercy

Walk humbly with God

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

One of Jesus’ most beloved parable stories is “The Good Samaritan.” Jesus often told stories where Samaritans were portrayed positively.  This was radical, because the Samaritan people were often despised and belittled by the Jewish population of Judea for both religious and racist reasons. This is perhaps the most radical and scandalous story of all.

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”

So the lawyer answered and said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’”  And Jesus said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.” But the lawyer, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side.  But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when the Samaritan saw him, he had compassion. So the Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when the Samaritan departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”

And the lawyer said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:25-37).

The Good Samaritan didn’t just feel pity; he showed mercy. Jesus uses this story to illustrate what it means to “love your neighbor.” A lawyer back in that day would not have recognized any Samaritan as a neighbor, nor would he have expected a Samaritan to recognize him as a neighbor. But in the “upside down Kingdom,” our understanding becomes clearer, our perspective becomes larger, and our minds are renewed to become more like Jesus.

When I was a little boy in Sunday School at Bayview Heights Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, in the 1960s, this parable profoundly touched my heart and shaped my view of the world and the people in it. Take a moment to ponder why this was significant in that time and place. It seems like Americanized Christians would do well to sit with the story in 2025.

STRANGERS

Have you ever noticed that Jesus isn’t interested in confirming our biases? Jesus isn’t trapped in our echo chambers or culture wars. Making us more comfortable with our own thoughts and ways just doesn’t seem to be on His list of priorities. I’m getting older; I like my routines.  I get set in my ways and opinions.  And then, along comes Jesus and He flips over some of my tables.

But this is where the adventure happens; I am jolted by the Holy Spirit out of my complacency and back into Kingdom action; out of my own assumptions and into total trust in the leading of the Holy Spirit. To paraphrase humorist Finley Peter Dunne from 1902, sometimes you have to afflict the comfortable before you can comfort the afflicted.

Recently, the Holy Spirit reminded me of this admonition from the writer of Hebrews:

Let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.  Remember the prisoners as if chained with them—those who are mistreated—since you yourselves are in the body also” (Hebrews 13:1-3).

A few days ago, I started dialysis due to kidney failure.  I had hoped I could get a kidney transplant before I had to take this serious step, but it wasn’t to be. On day two of the treatment, I was feeling rotten. I was exhausted, achy, dizzy … but I had to race across town after dialysis to get an ultrasound on my carotid arteries. When it rains, it pours, which, of course, in Mobile, also takes on a literal meaning.

Following the ultrasound, I was walking in the rain across the parking lot to my car, when I got a text from one of my best friends. I sat in my car, drying off, trying to catch my breath, and I read his message.  A friend of his from California was stranded in Mobile with RV troubles and needed a hand.  His friend knew absolutely no one in our area. And no mechanic could fix the problem with his vehicle. He had been sleeping in the broken-down vehicle for three nights with no power or water, stranded in a Wal-Mart parking lot in the Alabama August heat.

When my buddy told me this, something immediately stirred in my heart. I recalled the word the Lord had given me regarding sowing. I recalled the story of Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman, when he was tired and hungry, but the Holy Spirit worked through Him to change this woman’s life— and she, in turn, took the Gospel to her whole village (see John 4). Jesus told His disciples, “I have food you don’t even know about! Doing My Father’s will is my food!”

I got my new friend, Mike, settled into a hotel with actual power, water, and air conditioning. Glory to God! Over the course of the next week, the Lord worked through Mike to lead me into several key “Divine Appointments” which will have a life-changing effect for me. God is a great multi-tasker … He’s working on everybody, everywhere, all at once, and causing all things to work together for our good and His glory.

Pastor Dwayne Higgason (Grace Temple, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and International Outreach Ministries) says this: “If we lead with our weaknesses, we build relationships. If we lead with our strengths, we build competitors.”  

The Apostle Paul told the church in Corinth that in our weakness, God’s strength is made perfect in us and revealed through us (see 2 Corinthians 12).

My Dad used to always say, “People are doorways into a whole new world of relationships.” All of this to say, I found renewed strength, healing, purpose, and hope when I took a step of faith —even in my great weakness.  God worked in and through me right in the middle of my own brokenness. Selah.

Looking at natural circumstances, CSM is very weak and vulnerable right now. But the Spirit calls us onward and outward. I’ll just ask you to pray for us, and if the Lord leads you, please send a special gift to support the work of the ministry.  We are simultaneously preserving my Dad’s ministry and resources while also developing new resources for a new generation and working in new fields. Thank you!

In Jesus,

Stephen Simpson

President