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Eletter for Week of January 8, 2004 My dear friend, I pray that you had a wonderful New Year celebration and that the New Year brings you into a closer walk with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I am deeply grateful for your love, prayers, and financial support. You have blessed our ministry and you have blessed me! As we begin this year, I want to share with you more about our ministry and the direction we feel we are being lead. Let’s begin with a term that we have always used—Coming Clean. This same term is currently getting a lot of exposure in the secular media, especially in conjunction with Pete Rose’s new book Prison Without Bars. ‘Charlie Hustle’ says, “For the last 14 years, I’ve consistently heard the statement: If Pete Rose came clean, all would be forgiven. Well, I’ve done what you ask. The rest is up to the commissioner and the Big Umpire in the sky”. Then in his book he writes, “ I’m sure that I’m suppose to act sorry or sad or guilty now that I have accepted that I’ve done something wrong….but you see, I’m just not built that way. I refuse to beg your forgiveness like a TV preacher; I do not want your sympathy.” Press reports also state that Pete Rose blames all of his gambling problems on his accusers and a medical condition! How’s that for contrition!! I don’t know if Pete Rose is really coming clean or, as many suspect, this is his only hope of being reinstated in baseball, and a gimmick to benefit financially. One thing I do know is that we disagree on the meaning of coming clean! The day I gave my life to Christ, I knew that I had to come clean. I had to acknowledge my sins and I had to ask forgiveness from Christ and also from those people that I had hurt. The vision of Coming Clean Ministries is quite clear: “To know that all who are touched by Jesus Christ are committed to Coming Clean and Staying Clean”. But, what does coming clean mean to us as individuals seeking to be all, that God has created us to be? What does it mean to us as fathers and mothers seeking to lead our families toward righteous living in a non-righteous world? And, how can coming clean provide our kids with a “safe” environment to handle the enormous challenges they face in a society that is destroying their very lives? How we define “coming clean” for us individually, and how we go about the process of “coming clean” will be the focus of our next several messages. Please continue to pray for us. You are always in our prayers.
Love,
Jorge Valdes, Ph.D.
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