A Spiritual Oasis – by Greg Albrecht
Friend and Partner Letter from October 2025:
He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle (Psalm 107:35-36).
In “Bible times” an oasis was a green, fertile safe place in a vast wasteland of a hopeless, death- dealing wilderness. Arriving at an oasis after a long journey through the desert was cause for unbounded joy, as the basic elements of water and food could be found, refreshing and relieving hunger and thirst. The desert was a place of blazing and blistering sun, a dangerous place where life hung in the balance, while an oasis was a shelter, a safe place of shade and rest, refreshment and replenishment.
Spiritually, a desert is a dry and parched wilderness of death. A spiritual oasis is where Jesus, the Living Water and the Bread of Life, heals, helps and feeds, not with just physical life in the here and now, but with spiritual life for eternity.
We all walk in a valley of the shadow of death. We journey through a life of danger – the wilderness of this world in which we walk is filled with predators, robbers and thieves, both physical and spiritual. It’s a world of greed and corruption, of peril and death, in which our souls cry out for safety, security, rescue and deliverance.
In one sense, God has allowed you and me to work for him in a spiritual oasis called PTM. We are not the only spiritual oasis in this world – thank God for that! But we are, by his grace, a safe place of shelter, shade, peace and rest in Christ. Our CWR/PTM mission is to serve lost, wandering souls who have given up hope—to help parched and hungry people who have been used and abused. PTM is, by God’s grace, a spiritual oasis.
God graciously allows you and me to be involved, as his hands and feet, in the ongoing work of PTM. This is God’s work of grace, one we are well served to remember that is providing life-giving, and life-saving (all by God’s grace) to people all over this world.
Here is a long excerpt of a letter we received which is but one of so many testimonies and stories from those whom you and I have been privileged and blessed to serve, pointing them toward Jesus. This lady tells us a bit of her own story in the desert, and how she came to a spiritual oasis of grace, rest and healing, finding Jesus to be her Living Water and her Bread of Life:
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Dear PTM,
After high school, because my parents insisted, I went to a Bible college (the one my parents picked out for me). My parents lived my life. We had lots of rules in our home. My parents would automatically follow whatever programs and prohibitions their rules-happy pastor preached. When I graduated from high school, I really thought, even though I was going to a Bible college, that I would finally get away from all the guilt and control, the shaming and “do whatever I say or else!” of my home and church. I couldn’t wait to leave home. Was I ever in for a shock! Life at my Bible college turned out to be an even worse experience than living at home and attending an extremely overbearing and oppressive church!
I fell in love with a guy who had grown up much like I had. We were both so sick of religion that we ran away from college and got married. We just had to get out of the religious cave we grew up in and we were still in at the Bible college. We were both nineteen, and to say we were immature is an overstatement. After I give birth to two children it seemed my husband no longer found me attractive. He started running around and cheating on me. I was devastated, rejected, angry… and I made some more bad decisions.
I was desperate – I was in pain – I was confused, and so like an idiot I abandoned my husband and my children. I told no one where I was going… I found a job as a waitress and lived alone in a big city. My husband’s lawyers found me and I discovered he was divorcing me and taking the kids with him because I was “unfit.” Turns out he was right, but all of that sent me deeper into the hell of my own making.
I started looked for friends in all the wrong places. I started to walk on the wild side, and while I knew my authoritarian, regulated past was not the answer, I now started to learn, painfully, that the “other side” of do-whatever-makes-you-feel-good-at-the-time permissiveness is just as bad – it’s the opposite ditch. I know that now, and I am so ashamed of how low my life went.
I lived on the streets for a while. I was homeless. I begged for money and used it to buy chemicals to temporarily relieve my pain. I didn’t have many friends, but two people from high school who really were friends took the effort to find me and intervene in my life. They allowed me to live in their house, temporarily, rent free. They helped me get a low paying job. They had no religious agenda, but suggested that I might consider finding spiritual answers for my problems.
That’s how I found you. I met some other friends at my new job, and one of them they told me about your ministry. I borrowed my friend’s laptop and found out about your ministry. In fact, I started to borrow it every day, for a few hours. I could not believe what I was reading and hearing. Through all that had happened to me, and through all of my horrible decisions and actions, I still thought of myself as a Christian. BUT, at the same time I was sure God was mad as hell at me, and that one day I would experience all of his wrath that I so richly deserved, and that I would probably be condemned to hell.
Then PTM came along and told me God loved me just as much at that very moment that he ever had or ever would. That blew my mind! PTM told me I had hope, because God cared. PTM told me that religion is not the answer, but that Jesus is.
Because of my friends, and because of PTM, I am now in a training college. I have started the long process of reconciling with my children, who are now teenagers. That isn’t going well, so far, but I will not quit or give up. I ask for your prayers. My husband has moved on, and that may prove to be a blessing in disguise. He wasn’t the right person for me, and I certainly wasn’t the right person, at the time, for him.
Because of PTM, I firmly believe God is not finished with me yet – and I know that I am one of his “projects.” He will, as I yield to him, make me into the new creation he wants me to be and I can be of use to him and others. That’s what I want to do now. I want to, in time, when I am more prepared to do so, serve others in the name of Jesus. Maybe I will become a nurse, and in some small way, find my place in life, helping and serving others.
PTM is a huge part in helping me turn my life around because you have shined the light on Jesus, and he is now my life, all of it. My Lord and Savior is my focus and my hope. Thanks so very much! I will remain connected with all the resources you provide, and when I can, I will help you financially, so that others like me can also be helped.
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What a joy, a privilege, an honor … for all of us at PTM, our staff, our friends and partners (that would be YOU!) to be part of an oasis of hope and inspiration. What a blessing it is to be able to point people toward Jesus, who is our life-giving Living Water and our Bread of Life!
Our message is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our encouragement is to reject Christless religion and embrace Jesus. Our service is to reach out, with welcoming arms, in the name of Jesus, to all those who are lost, beaten down, abused, in despair and in pain, overwhelmed by the death-dealing desert of our world, and offer them, by the grace of God, a Jesus Oasis.
Jesus did not stand on a street corner, or televise hell-fire-and-damnation tirades, yelling and fulminating, threatening people with eternal conscious torment in hell if they did not straighten up and “fly right.” He proclaimed, preached and embodied the love, mercy and grace of God.
Jesus did not sit on an airplane, bus or train and ask people who happened to sit next to him if they had given him their heart yet. He did not build huge cathedrals or megachurches.
Jesus offered healing and help, compassion and comfort. Still does. Jesus included all, and excluded no one. Jesus was (and IS) the Bread of Life – the Living Water – the Light of the World – the Way and the Truth and the Life.
Thank you for helping us – thank you for being on our team and for helping and supporting the PTM Oasis so that we can continue to be available and “open for business” to all who are weary, oppressed, hurting, sick and in grave danger of one kind or another.
We proclaim ALL JESUS ALL THE TIME! By God’s grace, as he enables and empowers us, we will continue, together, as friends and partners, to serve as many as we can in the name of Jesus.
With gratitude for you, with thanksgiving for this wonderful work in which we cooperate and work together, with praise to God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Because of Jesus,
Greg Albrecht
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Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
