Fulfill God’s Purpose for Your Life

Dear Friend,

In just a few days, I’ll be celebrating my birthday. 

Today as I was looking back at my life, I remembered the only dream I had when I was a boy…to live to be 20. I didn’t think I would make it that long.

I had a speech impediment. I had an ulcer. I was afraid of everything. My dad abused me horribly. I didn’t see any hope for the future. My classmates at school laughed at me when I said that my dream was to be 20, but I meant it…I just never thought it would come true.

I was 11 years old the night I tried to defend my mother from my father’s abuse. In response, he strangled me and left me for dead. 

That was the night everything changed in my life…that was the night I saw the Lord face to face.

I saw those amazing eyes, smiling, with every color of the rainbow in them. And I could see eternity through those eyes. I saw the nail scars — not in the palms, but high in the wrist.

And I heard the most amazing words I had never heard in my life before. The first one was, “Son.” My father never called me that. The second one was, “I love you.” My father never told me that. And the third one was, “I have a great plan for your life.”

From that moment on I have dreamed, not of surviving, but of fulfilling God’s purpose for my life. 

And I want you to know how grateful I am to Him for bringing you into my life and for you being part of the amazing work to defend Israel that is the Jerusalem Prayer Team.

You are my family. I don’t know if you truly realize how much I mean that, but I do with all my heart. Everything God has done through me and this ministry, He has done also through you, my beloved partner.

Today God has directed me to speak His Word over your life regarding your dreams. 

I’ve got a jar of mustard seeds on my desk right now that came from Israel. Mustard seeds are amazing…really small…and Jesus said that just that tiny amount of faith would be able to move mountains.

What are you dreaming about today? Does the world tell you your dream is impossible? Do sincere friends tell you it can’t happen? Are you about to give up?

DON’T STOP DREAMING!

Nothing is impossible with God. 

No disease is incurable. No relationship is beyond healing. No financial need is insurmountable. No child or grandchild is beyond God’s deliverance. No dream that God places in your heart is over as long as you live.

I could fill a book with stories, but let me share just one with you to show you how God can bring dreams to reality.

Forty-five years ago next week, I met with Prime Minister Menachem Begin in his office in Jerusalem. The meeting itself was a miracle. There was no reason for the leader of the Jewish state to meet with an unknown Gospel minister from America. 

But God opened the door, and the meeting happened.

He asked me, “Why did you come?” three times in a half hour. I repeated the question instead of answering it. When he insisted, I finally said, “I don’t know. I know God sent me but He didn’t tell me why.” Mr. Begin laughed and said, “You’re an honest man. You believe God sent you but you don’t know why.  Shake my hand. I finally met an honest man. When God tells you why come back and tell me.” That was on my birthday, June 30, 1980.

By the time I left Israel to come home, I had met Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time on July 4th, 1980, told him that he would one day be Prime Minister of Israel (he laughed because he wasn’t in politics back then) and on July 5th, I asked Mr. Begin to give Benjamin Netanyahu his first position in the government, which he did.

That day I also told the Prime Minister that God wanted me to build a bridge between Bible-believing Christians and Jews and the world headquarters would be in Jerusalem…a place where true Christian love could be shown to the whole House of Israel in an unmistakable way. 

Many years passed, and though that dream never left my heart, it didn’t seem like it was getting any closer to becoming reality.

I never gave up on that dream. Jesus told me when I was 11, “I have a great plan for your life,” and I knew Israel was that plan. My call is to pastor the nation of Israel.

But God was working in his timing, and in 2012, He opened the door for us to purchase the building that is now home to the Friends of Zion Museum, and the first building on what became our Friends of Zion Center campus. 

This wonderful facility, located just 600 meters from the Temple Mount is a lighthouse of Christian love brighter than anything since the first century. It is an embassy where the nation of Israel and the nations of the world gather.

I knew that for the Friends of Zion Center to reach its full potential, we would need to establish credibility with the people of Israel. God laid it on my heart to reach out to Shimon Peres, the ninth president of Israel and ask him to serve as our international chairman.

I’ll never forget what he told me. “Mike, my staff didn’t want me to work with you, so they investigated you. One of the things they found out is that you were named after your great-grandfather, Rabbi Michael Katz-Nelson. But here’s what you don’t know. My hero in everything, in everything I did in my life was my grandfather, Rabbi Metzner. He was my Talmud teacher before we moved to Israel.

“He was my hero…but he also had a hero — and it was your great-grandfather! He was the cantor in the synagogue where your great-grandfather was the rabbi. Both of them were burnt to death with 2,000 other Jews locked in the wooden synagogue in Vishnef, Belarus. You and I are family. We both go back to that wooden synagogue. We are partners.”

I had the privilege of working with President Peres until he passed away. 

That was a miracle that could only have happened because God scripted it and made it happen. And He did that so that the dream He had placed in my heart decades before could come to life. Twenty-five world leaders have now received the Friends of Zion Award that Shimon Peres commissioned, including President Trump when I presented it to him in the Oval Office.

So today I’m asking: what is your dream? What has God spoken to you in the silence that you’re almost afraid for anyone to hear because it seems impossible? What are you longing and praying for right now?

I want you to share that dream with me so that I can join you in prayer. There’s a place below where you can send it to me. Don’t give up on that dream!

And God has given us a new dream for this ministry. 

  We are launching the Ambassador Program as a vital wall of defense against the evil tide of anti-Semitism that is rising across our nation and around the world. This program is aimed directly at young people, fighting the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation.

I have been an ambassador to the nation of Israel now for a half a century, and I am your ambassador…but God has told me to raise up a whole generation of ambassadors. We have a partnership with the state of Israel in which the Prime Minister will commission 1,000 pastors and youth pastors to become ambassadors this year, and 10,000 next year.

Imagine that! This is a huge miracle. Your ministry is a 100-year plan…that’s what God told me, so it is going to go on for decades after you and I are in heaven. 

This work will echo into eternity and will change the world through you, my beloved partner.

As the first step in this program, we are recruiting pastors and leaders to become ambassadors and be trained and equipped to share the message of support for Israel effectively. 

This is a massive undertaking, but God has given us an amazing miracle.

The government of Israel is so on board with this program that they have agreed to match what we spend! That’s right. When you send your gift today, the state of Israel will match it as you partner not just with us but with them to reach the next generation — the leaders of tomorrow — before it is too late.

We have to launch a massive global campaign to recruit these pastors.

It’s going to cost over five million dollars, but Israel is going to pay for half of it, so they’ll be matching your gift dollar for dollar.

In addition, Israel is going to pay all expenses for the pastors to come from all over the world to be commissioned as ambassadors…the flights, hotels, all expenses! 

I am estimating they will spend over $30 million to commission the first 10,000 ambassadors. But first we must act.

Will you send your special matching fund partnership gift today? You will be helping recruit new ambassadors to stand in the gap for Israel. You will be impacting the lives of young people who are being subjected to a campaign of lies designed to turn them against Israel. 

And you will be meeting the urgent needs of suffering Jewish people who have endured so much during the war that began with the deadly Hamas invasion on October 7, 2023.

Never in your life has your gift been matched by the nation of Israel but it will be now! God says truly, “I will bless them that bless thee,” so be as generous as humanly possible. 

If God has given you funds that you’ve been saving, why not invest them now in this incredible opportunity that will have eternal dividends?

This is a prophetic moment. As I often say, the opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity. 

This is our “such a time as this,” and we must act before it is too late. 

I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

P.S. We’re finalizing a contract for a major television push to recruit ambassadors. It will take $5 million to purchase the airtime. The state of Israel will pay half of that cost if we raise the rest. Will you do something truly great for God today and help make this dream in defense of Israel a reality? I pray that your answer will be yes.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to share your dream with me. There is great power when God’s people join together in prayer, and I promise I will take your need before the throne of grace in agreement with you. I can’t wait to see what God is going to do in your life.

P.P.P.S. The key to happiness is to dedicate yourself to a cause greater than yourself. You have that cause before you today.