I heard a sermon recently that reminded me of Brandon Murray, who shares his life story in this month’s newsletter.

The sermon was from Matthew 18:10-14, and it was contrasted with Luke 19:10, when Jesus says He came to seek and save the lost. By way of contrast, the story Jesus shares in Matthew does not address “the lost” (i.e., those that don’t already have a relationship with God), but instead talks about “lost sheep” (i.e., ones who have relationships with God already but are wandering away from Him).

In the Matthew passage Jesus says that God, our Good Shepherd, will gladly leave 99 sheep who haven’t wandered from Him, to bring back the one who has wandered off and gotten  lost. Even more amazing is the great celebration over the return of the one who was lost.

This sermon was like Brandon’s story. He was raised in a Christian home. He strayed and became consumed by addiction. He then found healing and new life at the Rescue Mission four years ago. But then (as you can read in his life story), he fell back into addiction, despair, and homelessness.

Brandon’s story should have had a sad ending, if not for the Good Shepherd. When His people are unfaithful to Him, God is always faithful to us and comes after us. He finds His people in their darkest times and brings them back to Him, like a shepherd brings a lost sheep back to the flock.

Jesus will never leave nor forsake His people and I am convinced that Brandon is one of His. It is amazing that God will always bring us back to Himself. He brings us back to not only restore joy and happiness but to help us become the person He has create us to be, to the praise and honor of His glory.

In fact, God’s desire to seek and save the lost is why the Rescue Mission started our Seek and Rescue Outreach. We go out to the homeless and hurting living on our streets to take life-saving basics (like cold water) to hurting people and encourage them to come (or come back) to the Rescue Mission.

Thank you for supporting this amazing ministry that God uses to save so many lives and rescue people from homeless and addiction. Brandon’s story helps us see that God’s grace is big enough to help through the pains and sufferings of this life, even when we are weak and fall back into sin and addiction at times.

Please pray that lives would be turned around this summer and people would return to Jesus or come to Him for the first time.

God bless you,

Chris D. Croswhite

Executive Director

P.S. Thank you for reading our combined June/July newsletter. Given summer vacations and the cost of printing, we are testing the idea of combining the June and July newsletter into one “summer” edition. We will continue to share monthly newsletters as normal for other months. Let me know what you think about this change by emailing me at chris@rescuesaltlake.org.