A Generous God....

The one thing that is obvious to us when we look at these photos is the abundance of flowers. We have here a Wisteria vine growing over a Paperbark tree, then a Paperbark tree with its own flowers. Top right we have a climbing Rose, below it is a Jacaranda and then a Star Jasmine with a Wattle beside it. There are thousands of varieties around us all with their own distinctive features, colours, and perfume.

As we look at this we get a small insight into the wonderful mind of the God who designed them all. I guess the first question that arises in our minds is why is there such a profusion of flowers on each tree or vine? Well there are three reasons that come to mind immediately: Firstly if we observe the world around us we will realise that God just loves beautiful things and we were made in “The Image and Likeness of God” so we automatically appreciate what He appreciates and love beautiful things too. This brings us to the second reason for His creating so much beauty: He did it for us to enjoy! The third reason is that He is being true to His word where He said: “If you sow sparingly you will reap sparingly”. And this is one of His laws of life, you will remember Jesus parable of the sower where a sower went forth to sow and quite a lot of his seed was eaten by birds and some plants died because of the difficult conditions, and some were choked out by weeds. Therefore if he hadn’t sown his seed generously he would have ended up with a very poor crop. This principle of generosity follows through in all things as it is an integral part of the character of God as the scripture says: “give and it shall be given unto you; pressed down, shaken together and running over is how men shall give unto you” and this follows on automatically as we comply with Jesus first two commandments; “Love God, and Love your neighbour as you love yourself”. Jesus went even further by telling us to “love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake”. Therefore we must be generous with our forgiveness as well as our love.  He pointed out that even a cheating tax collector can love his friends but we (His followers) must follow Jesus example by hating the sin but loving the sinner, as He did when he said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” as He was nailed to the cross.

Unfortunately when people drift away from God they overlook those two commandments, I just mentioned, and selfishness takes over and then they make the love of money and possessions their God. As I write this the banks are raising their loan rates to squeeze more money out of their customers; the first of these banks to do this is already making a profit of 8 billion dollars and I believe their C.E.O. takes home a salary of 8 million. At the same time they are installing more and more automatic machines to eliminate as many tellers as they can. But this selfishness is everywhere; I even know of a case in a nursing home where last week they reduced a resident’s daily pad allocation by one to save $1 per day, (bad luck if that person has to sit in a wet chair). Both of these decisions are based on the same principle: loving money more than people.

Jesus said “you cannot serve two masters....God and Money”. He tells us to be content if we have food and clothing, but He means, of course, that we should have a close relationship with Him too, because that creates true contentment and helps us love others. The people who achieve this will go happily on to Eternal Life whilst those who worship money and possessions or stack it away will depart this life spiritually destitute and have Eternity to regret it.

Be generous with your smiles, be generous with your friendship, be generous with your compliments, be generous with your kindness, constantly tell, and show, your children that you care, show your husband that you care about him, show your wife that you care about her, (forget yourself) and be generous like God who made this Bogan Villa for your enjoyment “and my God shall supply all your need” (Philippians 4:19). Wow what a way to live! Best wishes, Tom.

 

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Sheep

 You probably don’t know these sheep by name, but I have it on good authority that the one on the left with the toothy grin is shorn. My wife and I spent a large part of our life looking after sheep. Don’t ever call them silly though because the bible reckons we are very much like them! For example Isaiah, in the 53^rd chapter of the book he wrote (with the inspiration of God) said “We all like sheep have gone astray and turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all”. (The highlighted words there refer to Jesus forgiveness of our sin if we believe in Him).

To fully understand what is wrong with “going astray”, we have to realise that the sheep he was talking about would have normally been under the guidance and protection of a Shepherd who would lead them to good pasture and cool water during the day and protect them from predators and keep them from swampy areas where they might pick up Liver Fluke or whatever. In the evening they would follow him back to a “fold”, or as we would say “a sheep yard”, where he would lock them in safely until morning. Now that sort of protection takes all the stress out of their lives, whereas if they had chosen to go astray and “do their own thing” they could be attacked by wolves or dingoes or wild dogs (depending on where they lived) and also be attacked by more subtle things like internal parasites such as worms, also blowflies, and grass seeds penetrating their skin, foot rot, lice, scabby mouth, and skin cancers (just to name a few). With no one there to help them.

Jesus is adamant that we are all in the same boat as those sheep, constantly being attacked one way or another: e.g. the drug pusher, isn’t he the equivalent of a wolf or dingo? And is being attacked by blowflies any better than the ad in the paper tempting some person to visit a brothel? Is being hooked on drugs any better than a sheep’s stomach worms? The answer is NO! And the list goes on, how about selfishness that ruins our relationships? And resentment that eats away our happiness? We desperately need Jesus (The Good Shepherd) to clean away all our sin. After all His prayer says “Deliver us from evil” and His saving grace does that, so that we can say with David, (the shepherd boy who became king), and wrote the 23^rd Psalm: “The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me to lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul, He leads me in the paths or righteousness for His names sake; even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows; Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever”. Let’s face it that is the way to go!

Proverbs 3:5&6 says to: “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths” Now that’s not a bad deal either! Is it? In Matthew 11:28 Jesus said “Come unto me all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. Most of us could do with that too!

The world is in a mess, God wants us to live in this world but not to participate in its shoddy degrading behaviour and not to be stressed out by fears and worries either; that is why Paul said in Philippians 4:7 “Don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth understanding will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus”. Now   that is the way to enjoy life. We don’t constantly worry about our house burning down do we? Because we have asked the Insurance Company to take care of that; well then God wants to be our Insurance Company and look after our lives. So relax then, ask His forgiveness, follow His directions and live above the circumstances like those sheep following their Good Shepherd; surely they aren’t smarter than we are! Are they?

Best wishes as you prove that you are as smart as them.  Regards, Tom.

Good Fuel

The road to the farm house next door to where I was staying passed within a 100 metres of us, so we could often see people coming and going. On the day in question, I knew the neighbours were not home so I took particular notice of a car that drove up toward their house and sheds. A short while later I observed it returning, well you couldn’t really miss it as the engine sounded like a chaff cutter and the car was completely enveloped in smoke. When they were adjacent to us they stopped and (although very embarrassed) asked for assistance to drain their petrol tank and also asked us to supply them with some petrol. You see the neighbour had an overhead fuel tank, so he could easily refuel his tractor, and these people thought they would top-up their car with petrol from it whilst he was away. Unfortunately for them though his fuel was diesel, not petrol, and they were lucky to be able to even make it back as far as our place. Vehicles require the fuel they were designed for and these people learned that the hard way!  I’ll come back to that in a minute.

You see this nice new car of mine? Well I always drove my previous car with my lights on during the day for safety reasons so naturally I did the same with this one and on the second day after I bought it, I parked it and left the lights on by mistake because it has a different system. Returning to it at 8.30pm I found the battery completely flat. (Very handy).

The two episodes above illustrate two very important principles that also apply to our lives: Firstly, cars, (like people), were designed to operate on a particular fuel and secondly they, (like us), also require their batteries to be re-charged on a regular basis: In the car if we want to use the headlights then we need to see to it that the Alternator is refilling the battery or the lights won’t last long and nothing else will work either. Likewise we were designed to be people who are loving, helpful, joyful, peaceful, patient, gentle and kind but without the Holy Spirit’s help we will never achieve that goal. Actually we are told to “pray without ceasing” as prayer connects us to God, the source of all life and power. Now if you haven’t been doing that it may sound a bit much, however just as the alternator never stops generating current for the battery whilst the engine is running, so we need to continually keep in touch with our power source who is our Heavenly Father as He has promised to guide and sustain us and give us wisdom. Furthermore if we commit our lives to Christ Jesus, God has assured us that His Holy Spirit will use our bodies as His temple, thus we don’t have to go far to find help. I’m not pushing some theory here but am writing from my own experience from following bible teaching.

Now you see these two young people? They are at the age when the “world is their Oyster”: Healthy young bodies and living in Australia where they have all the freedom and opportunities to achieve anything they wish. Then what is their problem? Well the girl may be just homeless due to Domestic Violence or such, but the boy has obviously chosen the wrong fuel for his body (like the people who drove their car to our neighbours place). It is so sad; he is surrounded by a world of lovely things and yet chose drugs. He may get help through “Life Line” and a period of rehab of course, but this situation should never have arisen. Nor should the girl be in that situation either.

If you are a parent or grandparent with the responsibility of bringing up young children and want them to avoid the situations illustrated above then you need to follow the instructions given by the one who designed them. Proverbs 22:6 says: “Bring up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he shall not depart from it” and thus they will learn to choose the right “fuel” and learn how to keep in touch with Jesus who said “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).  The first 5 or 6 years are the most important and we need to pray with them, read them bible stories, take them to church and introduce them to Christian youth groups, because Deuteronomy 11:19 says (when talking of God’s commandments) “Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting at home, when you are out walking, at bedtime, and before breakfast!....so as long as there is sky above the earth, you and your children will enjoy the good life awaiting you....”.

Moses was guided by God to write these instructions thousands of years ago and they cannot be improved.  Best wishes with that,  Tom.

 

Domestic Violence

 In response to the ever increasing Domestic Violence in our society the Australian Government has just allocated $100,000,000 to endeavour to combat that problem, however all the ideas they have suggested, although helpful, are just the equivalent of “Band Aids” and don’t address the root cause.

Band Aids are very handy of course, if we accidentally cut our finger or similar but it is far better if possible to remove any potential hazards before we do hurt ourselves. This applies equally to Domestic Violence so I would therefore like to mention problems in our society that need to be addressed:

The first and most influential is the concept being taught in our public schools, mainly through the theory of evolution where children are “brain washed” into believing that we humans, and all the marvels surrounding us, are the products of “chance” and there is no sign of “Intelligent Design” in the universe. This gross deception by those who write the curriculum is inexcusable; they are people who are either so anti- God that they would lie “like a pig in mud” in order to deceive others or else they are “brain washed” themselves, because the evidence of “Intelligent design” is everywhere! Believing there is no God is a foundation for Domestic Violence because we then have no one to answer to except ourselves. A person educated that way could look at others including their wife, husband, or partner and see nothing more than a descendent of a monkey, just an animal really, that has no Soul and is of no more value than the dog or cat and whose life ends at the grave.

On the other hand, a Christian (being a believer in God) looks at people and sees God’s greatest creation; human beings “created in the image and likeness of God”, people with Souls that have Eternal life, “Children of God” (and if these people believe in Jesus)...“heirs of God, and if an heir then a joint heir with Christ” (Romans 8:17). I see my wife like that so I know from experience (60 years of marriage) that there is no possible way that I could deliberately hurt her. Unless I was under the influence of alcohol (this can’t happen though because I don’t drink) however this is the excuse used by many people to justify their violence, and I am sure it is a legitimate problem because the police say that the consumption of alcohol impairs our judgement. Now this brings me to our next basic problem: The Government considered cigarettes to be bad for people’s health so stopped them being advertised and put them in plain packages with photos of the damage they do on the packet and hid them from public view. This didn’t deprive the people from having them, but it did decrease their sales by taking the temptation factor away. Now seeing that alcohol is a major problem in our society, and particularly in the Domestic Violence scene, isn’t it hypocritical to allow its manufacturers to spend millions of dollars advertising it everywhere in an effort to tempt people to drink? Logically it should be treated the way cigarettes are treated!

The next basic problem is the availability of violent D.V.D.s. To-day whilst walking past the shop that sells them in the Mall there was a rack out the front where people walk, put there to attract everybody’s attention, containing twenty-one D.V.D.s; 20 of them were rated MA15+and stated that they contained “nude scenes, violence, strong horror, blood and gore, coarse language, drug use and sex scenes”. The 21st one was rated R18+. Woolworths & others display them too. Now if this is the best our censorship board can do they should all be sacked! Because allowing such rubbish to be placed where it will tempt people is tantamount to saying O.K. to domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment. I hold the members of Government who are supposed to represent us, as responsible for failing in their “Duty of Care”. Add the three of these together:  Atheism, Alcohol and D.V.Ds with that content, and you have the perfect recipe for Domestic Violence. The Government has laws to protect the Quoll, rehabilitate the Tasmanian devil and protect the Green tree frog and yet allows our young people to be surrounded by all the rubbish I have mentioned above that will ruin their relationships and promote violence. There are plenty of private member’s bills to protect the environment or to change the constitution to allow same sex marriage or similar but aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves by not first putting forward a bill to reform our education system to include the biblical creation view point, and to ban the advertising of alcohol and unacceptable D.V.Ds? All of which are creating an environment that is causing at least one murder in the home each week, not to mention the abuse that doesn’t end in death but just ruins lives!  If you care, please email, (or copy and post,) this letter to your local member using your name or mine.              Best wishes Tom.

 

Broad or Narrow

A friend of mine brought my attention to this arrangement of shops in the Mall; you will note that there is a very broad “walkway” with shops on either side. On the left, a short distance down, there is also a relatively narrow escalator rising to the next level, and at the end of the broad walkway there is a shop called “The Reject Shop”. If you look closely you will see the name.

This whole arrangement reminded my friend of Jesus words when He said as recorded in Matthew 7 verses 13 & 14 “broad is the way, that leads to destruction and many there be which go in there at.....narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”.

In the Mall the crowds of people going down that “broad way” are so taken up with the interesting things in all those shops that many of them probably don’t even notice the escalator (“the narrow way” on the left). This is a parable of life because many people are so busy with their every day affairs of feeding, clothing, educating and entertaining themselves and their families that they by-pass the “Narrow Way” that leads to Eternal Life for their Souls. Whilst some just feed their Souls occasionally by taking themselves to church at Christmas and Easter, but two feeds per year are scarcely adequate to overcome “Spiritual Malnutrition”.

We see situations like in Syria and other places where millions of people are homeless and starving with thousands of children in great distress and we shudder in horror to think of such a disaster. However if you consider Jesus words that state clearly that the majority of the world’s people don’t find the “narrow way” that leads to life but instead go the “broad way” that leads to destruction (and realise that He is talking of the destruction of their Souls), and at the same time realise that this neglect of Souls has been happening for 2,000 years since He spoke; we then find that we are talking about a calamity of astronomic proportions involving billions of people. In comparison the current Syrian catastrophe is a tiny speck beside a mountain. Not that it isn’t serious it certainly is, and we should address it by trying to find an answer. However this “broad way” problem is like an epidemic and is very subtle. According to Jesus statement most people don’t realise the absolute necessity of entering that “narrow way” and accepting God’s forgiveness for sin that was purchased by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Therefore unless they get the message and take the matter seriously they will find themselves to have worked hard all their lives and be Spiritual “Rejects” when they come to the end of the “Broad Way” and leave their earthly body. This rejection is the greatest calamity that they could ever encounter. A calamity that could have been avoided completely by “believeing” on the Lord Jesus and repenting.

That is why I write these articles; I do so in the hope that some person, who has never realised the seriousness of the situation that is confronting them, will understand and adjust their life to incorporate God’s forgiveness whilst they can still think clearly enough to do so.

Jesus, our “Good Shepherd” is always aware when one of us (His “sheep”) has strayed, and He is very keen to bring us back and look after us and guide us down the “Narrow Way” to Eternal Life.  Come to think of it, that sheep being carried to safety by its good shepherd looks remarkably   like   Ewe.

Best wishes, Tom.