Our Provider

 

The bible refers to God specifically as our Father and “Jehovah-Jireh” (our provider). Being our Father and provider is very special; traditionally fathers are the provider. Oh I know that the traditional roles in the family are sometimes reversed now, but when we talk of God, the question arises: is He really our provider? Well all I can say is that if we take away all the things He has provided, (which includes our planet), you and I would be floating in space without even our bodies! The book of Genesis clearly describes how God created everything there is and looking at what He created He saw that “it was very good” and so it is good! Everything we have was planned to perfection, whether we look through a telescope or use a microscope we see the same mathematical precision and ingenious designs. The Earth is just the right distance from the Sun, air just right for us to breathe, water is just right for our needs, gravity has just the right pull to hold things on our planet (including us). The Earth’s rotation around the sun is just right so we have seasons. Fertile soil is just right to grow crops and trees. There are cattle for milk and meat and the pastures to graze them and Sheep for meat & Wool to keep us warm. How about the varieties of meat, oysters, fish abalone, and fruit and grain like Quondongs and Nardoo, and the Emu eggs that God provided for the nomadic Aboriginal folk. (Each egg is the equivalent of 10 to 12 hen eggs). What a variety of crops and fruit God invented, just right to supply our needs; everything to make our mouths water and to sustain us. Yes, the Oceans and rivers are stocked with fish. Also all types of metals and oil and gas, just to name a few of these provisions. Interestingly, we had the lot handed to us on a plate and even then we “lost the plot,” like a child given a lump of play dough and 4 buttons and asked to make a toy car. Instead of doing the obvious he rubs the dough into the computer keyboard. Well we have repeatedly done the equivalent of that and God was left with the mess to clean up. Instead of giving up on us though, (because of His great love), He sent Jesus to pay the price of our sin and now all we have to do is believe on Him, say sorry, accept His kind offer of forgiveness and live the way He has instructed. In Australia this principle has been reasonably well practiced compared with other places because when our Constitution was drawn up the population was mostly Christian, therefore Christian ethics were automatically written into our laws. In a Christian country like this, we have a tendency to take all the good things we inherited for granted, things like: Equality for all, (whether male or female), education for all, freedom to work where we like, and dress as we choose, wages in line with the cost of living, unemployment relief, pensions for the aged or unwell, nursing homes, Medicare for all, meals on wheels, community transport, paid annual leave, and so on. All these are the automatic results of Christian love being put into practice and are not common in countries of other faiths; Think about it, do you hear of Australians paying a lot of money to People Smugglers to take them in a leaky boat to one of these other countries? No you don’t. Why not? It’s because we live in the world’s best country, that’s why not. How come? Well, together with what is mentioned above thousands of Australian Christians pray to God daily, and prayer is also repeated at the beginning of parliamentary sessions. One of the phrases in the Lord’s Prayer is: “Thy kingdom come, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread”. John points out that: “If we ask anything in accordance with His will then we know that He hears us, and if we know that He hears us then we know that we have the thing we asked for” and He has sure provided “our daily bread”. (1 John 5:14) many Aussies have stopped praying now and that is disastrous, so please accept Jesus offer of salvation, (if you haven’t done so already), and pray in faith for yourself, our Government and our country and its citizens. This matter is urgent if we want to maintain this way of life for future generations of Australians, and be blessed right now ourselves.    Best wishes, Tom.

Correct Perspective

 

The people in this car are probably not very excited about the surroundings where

they are at the moment, but would not worry too much about that because they have a lovely destination in mind in Sydney. They would appreciate that a lot of work went into constructing this highway to make their journey more pleasant. However, they also know that the road is not the “be all and end all” but is simply the way to get to their ultimate goal even though it has its challenges, such as, kangaroos, other traffic, driver fatigue, and the occasional pot hole, to name just a few.

Although our “road through life,” here on earth that God has planned for us,  is similar to that road above in many ways, God has given us an abundance of natural resources for us to use, and lovely things to see, and enjoy.  We must not look on it as the “be all and end all” though, but realise that it is merely the way God has planned for us to travel in order to reach our ultimate goal of eternal life in Heaven. Our “road” has its challenges too, which may be the equivalent of those kangaroos, other traffic, tiredness, and potholes, but this is all part of our journey to eternal life, and we must not become “side-tracked” by these distractions along the way to the extent that we forget, or lose interest in, our ultimate goal.

Recently, I wrote about what a very small part of our life is spent on earth compared with the length of time we will spend in eternity when we leave these bodies.

 To get some sort of perspective in all this I quoted a few statistics: The universe is immense: Light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second so in just one year it travels 9.5 Trillion kilometres (9,460,730,472,580.8 kilometres). But our nearest galaxy is seventy thousand times that far away. And our scientists can see no end to space it is “eternal,” in a sense. (in other words, it goes on for ever).

So what? Just this, our lives are Eternal too, and when we leave these bodies that we are in at present, our Souls (the real us) live on for ever. Which means that in 9.5 Trillion years from now (just to take a small part of eternity) you and I will still be enjoying life out there in Heaven. Or if we have chosen to ignore God’s offer of forgiveness for our sin, we will be out there in Hell’s darkness for the same length of time and then live, unhappily, ever after. It is up to us to make this simple choice that has either a wonderful, or dreadfully tragic outcome.

To not make the right choice though, is ludicrous: To muck around with booze, drugs, immoral behaviour, greedy wealth, or building mansions whilst others die of starvation, and so on is the equivalent of those motorists pictured above, messing about lighting fires or collecting dead animals etc. and getting side-tracked to the extent that they never arrive at their destination. Which would be ridiculous. Therefore, we need to ask God for forgiveness and invite Him to become an intimate and integral part of our life right now.

The scriptures assure us that “If anyone be in Christ they are new creatures, old things have passed away, behold all things have become new”. We then need to talk to God in prayer, fellowship with Christians at church, and read the New Testament (which is the instruction book for living the way we should). Thus if we “Trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not unto our own understanding, and in all our ways acknowledge Him, He shall direct our paths.” This is the way God wanted us to behave when He created us, so that we could all enjoy this wonderful world in His company. But through unbridled selfishness, greed, lust, and a desire to do our own thing whilst ignoring God’s directions, societies have been created where there is poverty, unhappiness, and want, but this is not God’s plan. Psalm 34 verse 9 expresses God’s desire when it says: “O fear the Lord you his people: for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing”, and again in Philippians chapter 4 verse 19 Paul writes “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus”, and Psalm 34 verse 8 says: “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man (person) that trusts in him”. Now to conclude let me quote the Prophet Isaiah chapter 55 verse 6: “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon”. God has gone to great lengths to make the wonderful offers that I have quoted on this page, so to not take up these offers is to throw away our inheritance of a better life here and now, and eternal life in Heaven for ever. To do that, just, doesn’t, make, sense to me. I do hope you have claimed your inheritance. Regards, Tom.

Relative Values

 

We live in a very big Universe. Our minds just cannot conceive how large it is. For example, light travels at three hundred thousand kilometres per second, so if you want to know how far away our nearest Galaxy is in Kilometres, you have to work out how many seconds there are in twelve months and multiply that figure by three hundred thousand in order to calculate one light year. Then multiply that by Seventy thousand and you will have your answer, because our nearest Galaxy is Seventy thousand light years away.  But that still doesn’t tell you how big the universe is because Scientists tell us that it apparently goes on forever. Now that is BIG. O.K then, look at this measuring tape, it is graded in Millimetres. If I decided to use it to measure the length of the Universe, just how many Millimetres of tape would I need?

In the final analysis, you will see that one millimetre on an “endless” tape measure is insignificant. Likewise, our average lifespan of 79 years is also insignificant when we consider that it is such a tiny length of time in our “endless” eternal life. You can see then why God was so distressed to see that in such a relatively short time that we spend here on earth we make ourselves ineligible to enter Heaven by not showing love to Him and our neighbours and being selfish, unforgiving, resentful, cruel and so on. Because, all, or any, of these attitudes, (which amount to sin), place us on the “broad way that leads to destruction” (Matthew chapter 7 verse 13) which in effect means eternal separation from God in Hell. (What a dreadful, and unnecessary outcome that would be). As a loving Father he couldn’t stand by and let that happen without intervening, so he sent Jesus to sacrifice his life so that we could have our sins “deleted” by repenting, and accepting the forgiveness earned for us by Jesus, so we could then inherit that eternal (forever) life in Heaven. Having arranged this situation for us where we can (if we wish), be reinstated as “Children of God”, Jesus then said that “in my Father’s house are many mansions…. I go to prepare a place for you, ….and I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John chapter 14 verse 2). It’s a ‘done deal’. How good is that?

Many people to-day are worrying themselves sick to pay off a house and save enough money to retire on, without giving a thought to the fact that they already have a great inheritance in Heaven, and thus they don’t even claim that inheritance. And talk about worry: “Worry” has been described as being in a rocking chair where you feel as if you are doing something but are really getting nowhere. We need to work on this too as 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 7 says we should be “Casting all our care upon Him for He cares for us”. Check it out, it is what he says, and it does work!

Oh dear friend, you are my brother or sister and I do want us to all get it right, so we can be content here on earth and together in Heaven.  I probably have the advantage of some of you, as I became a Christian when I was 17 and have studied this subject practically, and in depth for 68 years. Jesus wants us to “allow Him” to be involved in our lives. Just consider what He says, as recorded in John Chapter 15 verses 4 and 5: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abides in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abides in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing”. And so on. And in verse 11 he says “These things have I spoken unto you, that my Joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full”. The one who said these things wasn’t joking: He gave His life so that you and I could have “a more abundant life”, both now and forever in eternity. This is a serious matter; our eternal future depends on our decision. Accepting His great love is our only hope. So if you have been casual about these things in the past, then please stop now and check it out, don’t put it off: tomorrow might be too late. Remember Jesus said in John chapter 3 verse 16, in the New Testament, “that God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, shall not perish but inherit eternal life” so why not ask Him into your heart right now? If you haven’t already done so.     Best wishes, Tom.