A reading of the scene when Ethan meets Rose for the first time from my new movie “Ekklesia”
Continued…. A reading of the scene when Ethan meets Rose for the first time from my new movie “Ekklesia”
Spring Newsletter 2024
"When All is Lost"
By McKade Marshall
Want to know how many times I’ve had to start over? Hit the reset button on different parts of my life? A BUNCH. Ironically, I even forgot to save the opening paragraph to this newsletter when I was writing it, and I had to start over again. Ever been there? Not fun in the moment. When it seems all is lost it is important to remember that it’s always darkest before the dawn. Keeping the right perspective can help us endure and overcome some of life’s toughest battles. As the brilliant rays of sun begin to fall on the vast open skies of the ever-orbiting planet, the darkest part of the night we witness below begins to dissipate. A beautiful sunrise begins to morph from the great darkness. Proverbs 4:18-19 (ESV) says, “But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.”
It’s always darkest before the dawn.
The harsh reality about life is life can be harsh to anyone, righteous or unrighteous. Your spouse dies suddenly. Perhaps almost as devastating, your spouse cheats on you. Your child dies in a car accident. Your church gets into a feud, and there is a church split. The doctor diagnosis you or your loved one with terminal cancer. These are all extreme examples of horrible things that could happen, and most of us would not wish this on anyone. Dark times like these are when it feels like all is lost. When all is lost, or so it seems, sometimes the only thing you can do is look up.
The truth is this life is full of both good and evil. This life is not God’s finished product. This life is merely a go-between from birth to death. After that, that is when the true life, the eternal life, begins. Those who have Jesus Christ will go on forever in the Kingdom of God, while those who have rejected the gospel message God has sent from Heaven to be preached will bear the punishment of eternity in hell, separated from God’s presence forever. The good news today is when all is lost there is still hope. As long as you have Jesus, you are anchored to hope. If you have Jesus Christ, you already have it all.
Now you need to grow in the knowledge of who Christ is so that you will know who you are.
The Apostle Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:17-18 (ESV), “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” What does it mean to “grow in the knowledge” of Jesus? Jesus tells us in John 14:20-21 (NLT), “When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. Those who accept My commandments and obey them are the ones who love Me. And because they love Me, My Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal Myself to each of them.”
Friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, God’s will is to reveal Himself to you. He wants to be personal and intimate with you no matter what you are going through. He wants to not just be your eternal Savior. He wants to be the director of your life - the shepherd. Right now I am studying all things movie-making for my first screenplay. Before creating a movie you must have a script. Our lives are comparable to the process of movie-making. Just like there is Scripture for us to go and live by as God’s children, there is a movie script for the actors to go by and act out as the actors. The Scriptures are composed of living and active words that we apply to the life story we are creating on a daily basis. Scriptures in and of themselves are writings printed in pages of a really big book. Likewise, a movie script is paper with writing instructing the actors what to say and do.
However, just as an actor gets the privilege to act out how they feel they need to act in order to embody the character in a film, so we as believers get the privilege to act and live out the Scriptures we are studying and reading with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Just as a good movie script is filled with dramatic scenes, conflict, disappointments, hope, and resolution, so our Bibles are filled with all sorts of drama going all the way back to the first day of creation. There is nothing before, during, or after the script of time that God is not fully aware of. He is the Alpha and the Omega.
God knows the beginning, middle, and end of all times.
Maybe today you feel like you are at the part of the “movie” in your life that is full of disappointment and heartache. You have reached the crisis. You feel like all is lost. You just had a traumatic experience that has wounded your soul. I believe right now God is saying, “The dawn is coming. The sun is about to start rising.” The Lord tells us that His mercies are brand new every single morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). He promises to bind up our wounds and heal our broken heart (Psalm 147:3). When we come to God, there is nothing He cannot do. I remember years ago before I first start writing I had gone some personal trauma, and my heart was devastated. It was almost as if I could barely function.
One day I was out visiting a friend at a ranch, and she had a beautiful horse whose name was “Hope”. We got some great photography shots with Hope, and I remember my friend said to me that day, “McKade, God binds up the broken hearted.” When she said this, it’s like something supernatural happened on the inside. The anointing on those words she spoke immediately stuck with me. From that day forward, my heart began to reform and take new shape. It began to come back to life. A year later, I wrote my first book and stepped into a brand new level of my destiny.
Friends, God has great plans for you. It’s more than just one plan. It’s many.
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) tells us, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Notice in this verse that the word “plans” is plural. Furthermore, there is a triplicate use of the word. Plans is stated three times. Usually when God wants to speak totally and completely to communicate a message, He will speak it three times. (Consider the angels crying out holy, holy, holy three times in Revelation 4:8 and Isaiah 6:3.) In filmmaking there is the primary plot of the movie, but there are also several subplots that accompany the story line and add twists and turns to the drama. Likewise, our lives are full of plots and subplots much like that of a movie. When we entrust our lives and our hearts to the true Director, Almighty God, we are trusting that the plots and subplots are all a part of God’s plans.
The key to seeing and experiencing these good plans of the Lord come to fruition is by seeking Him first in all things. Jeremiah 29:12-13 (NIV) goes on to say, “Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” The moment your heart begins to turn back to the Lord, He is already there ready to receive you. When you call out to God, when you make it a priority to pray every day, the Lord is listening. He is telling us to trust in His triplicate nature. He is holy, holy, holy. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is the great I AM telling us in Jeremiah 33:3 (NASB), “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” Even the Scripture numbers referenced in Jeremiah “33:3” speaks of God’s divine power and complete unity (three in one).
The Lord’s desire is to become one with us (John 14:20). God reveals the mysteries of Heaven and His Kingdom to those who are continually seeking Him. The Lord delights in sharing these Kingdom mysteries with you (Luke 12:32). The Kingdom of God is upside down from this world (see Matthew 20:1-16). When we go low (humble ourselves), we go high (ascend in the Spirit). The Lord shows us things when we die to our carnal logic driven by the flesh and its desires. When we move out of the realm of walking by sight, we begin to see and walk by faith. This does not mean we don’t use sound judgment or exercise wisdom. On the contrary, it means we trust the Lord as He navigates us through His Word and by the Holy Spirit.
When all is lost, Christ is gained (Philippians 3:8).
Jesus talks about it being necessary to die in order to live a new, rich, full life. He says in John 12:24-25 (NKJV), “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Whenever we lose something we hold dear to us - whether it be an object, a relationship, a job, a home - there is a void that is created. I remember after my third book Finding Your Keys came out, it was like a series of deaths happened all around me. My aunt and my ex-stepdad died on the exact same day. A week later my sweet dog that slept with me every night died. Then a few months later Pastor Janet Chapman from Maranatha Fellowship died. These series of deaths happened all within a few short months of each other. There was a feeling that developed in me that someone else close to me was about to die. My life began to feel like an earthquake that was ready to go off again any minute.
However, I continued to minister. I continued to write, record weekly gospel videos, preach, and seek the Lord every day. I didn’t allow all of the loss to destroy me. Instead, it caused me to look into the eternal realm. I had so many dreams, visions, and revelations during this hour of tremendous grief. I began to understand the enigma of grief that year. I would be cleaning out my room and all of the sudden I was break down in to tears out of nowhere, grieving over my aunt, or grieving over Janet. It took many weeks before the grief began to subside… but it did. Today I know where all three of these people are. The Lord gave me the gift of seeing them in visions that they were with Him.
In one vision, I saw my aunt walking with Jesus above the earth. As she walked next to Him, she turned and said to Jesus, “Everything is just how You said it is.” Then in another vision, I saw my stepdad. I saw the Lord wash away all of the shame and guilt that had followed him like a cloud his whole life. He was in Heaven with Jesus, free from all of the shackles he could never shake in this earthly life. In yet another vision, I saw my beloved friend Janet in a beautiful blue dress. She was ascending into Heaven on golden stairs and looked back at me. She was headed home adorned in beauty. These visions were all so real that I could not have just made them up.
Friends, God speaks to us in the Spirit. He will send visions, dreams, other people, Scriptures, and angelic encounters to comfort our hearts. He spoke to all of His people from the book of Genesis all the way to the book of Revelation. Why in the world do we think He would not speak to us now in the same ways? We are just as valuable to God as the people we read about in the Bible. God spoke then, and He still speaks now. My message in this newsletter is this:
All is not lost. You have Jesus, and if you have Jesus, you got it all.
This spring God is speaking to His people in all sorts of ways. Over the past few weeks we have had revival breaking out at Maranatha Fellowship. We are staying after church for a couple of hours as the Holy Spirit moves. One Sunday the Holy Spirit was so present and working that we didn’t even have a sermon! People just began to speak, prophecy, and pray. We’ve had guests randomly drive the distance to attend service from various towns to see what God was up to in my small, hometown church.
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Thank you for your continual prayers and support, as my prayer team and I are praying for you every single day. The reason this ministry continues to exist and even grow - reaching people all over the world - is because of people like you. You have sown in time, money, and prayers, and we are seeing the harvest! A couple of years we launched an ongoing MLM Publishing Pledge Drive in order to garner monthly support so we can continue to expand this mass media ministry. If you would like to become an MLM Pledge, you can go to mlmpublishing.org, click the “donate” tab, and check the “Make this a monthly donation” box at checkout.
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We need you. We need your prayers. We need your love and support!
Since the beginning over nine years ago, I declared this ministry would be a global ministry. I have declared this would be a mass media ministry that reaches all 195 countries on earth. Today MLM Publishing is reaching people in 25 countries every single week via our emailing list. Our seasonal gospel newsletters are traveling across the globe to 15 different countries. These newsletters are mailed to people in all 50 states in the United States. When I first began writing gospel newsletters in 2014 only a handful of people received the first seasonal newsletter in Texas and California.
Since January 1, 2017, over 300 Sunday evening Word of the Week messages have been edited, uploaded, emailed, and shared with people all over the world. Weekly emails with a gospel message are sent to subscribers in all 50 US states, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales & England), Ireland, Israel, India, Italy, Nigeria, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ethiopia, France, Japan, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Trinidad & Tobago, and Puerto Rico. By faith I’m still calling in all 195 countries of the world, and I invite you to join me through prayer and giving in this divine quest to reach more souls with the gospel message of salvation and God’s goodness. If you know someone that is not signed up to receive these newsletters and weekly emails, or you are not signed up, I encourage you to go to mlmpublishing.org, or my personal website mckademarshall.com, and submit your information there.
I declare this spring God is speaking. God is speaking to you and those around you through the Bible. He is speaking through dreams, visions, worship music, signs, wonders, miracles, and everyday life. He is speaking through His creation and through His prophets. You are going to hear God clearly this spring like never before. As God speaks to you, you are being energized. Your zeal for life and passion to pursue His Kingdom is growing like a flame of fire. His Spirit is stirring in you like a whirlwind in this season. You are going to see new breakthroughs and new levels of increase, promotion, and success. God has commanded the blessing, and it cannot be reversed (Numbers 23:20). With God’s help, there is nothing you cannot achieve! I love you so much, and I am praying for you every single day.
He is Speaking,
McKade “Levi” Marshall
Author of "Why I Stand With Israel", “Finding Your Keys”, “BREATHE”, and “Tasting the Goodness of God”
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