All posts by Gwenyth

I live on the outskirts of Whangarei, the northernmost city in New Zealand. I enjoy many things, ( writing amongst them), have been married to Keith for sixty-one years, have three married daughters, nine grandchildren and seventeen great- grandchildren who are scattered in various countries. No cats and no dogs as they would cramp our life-style.. We are obviously retired, but were farming further north before moving to the town over thirty-five years ago. We attend one of the local churches across the same side of town that we live.
Morning Musings

My Living Room.

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   I had invited Jesus Christ into my heart in all sincerity, and was so excited at the thought of  Him being with me all the time. Everything was going to be just wonderful now that He was with me every day! I couldn’t wait to show Him around. The first room we entered was the living room. Now my living room is my favourite room, depending on the time of the day it is! But it is the room where I can relax and be myself. It isn’t always particularly tidy, but it has a nice homey feeling. As Jesus looked around He said, “This is indeed a delightful room. Let’s come here every day and talk together”.

    Well, as a young Christian I was thrilled. I couldn’t think of anything I would rather do than have a few minutes with Christ every morning. He said, “I will be here early every morning. Meet me here, and we will start the day together.”

     So every morning, I would go downstairs to the living room. He would take a book of the Bible from the case, and we would read  it together. He would unfold to me God’s wonderful truths, and my heart sang as He shared the love and the grace He had toward me. These were wonderful times.

But after a while, this time began to be shortened. I began to miss days now and then. Urgent matters would crowd out the quiet times of conversation with Jesus.

    I remember one morning rushing downstairs, eager to be on my way. I passed the living room and noticed that the door was open. Looking in, I saw a fire in the fireplace and Jesus was sitting there. Suddenly in dismay I thought to myself,  “He is my guest. I invited Him into my heart! He has come as my Saviour and Friend, and yet I am neglecting Him.” I stopped, turned, and shame facedly went in. With downcast glance, I said, “Master, forgive me. Have You been here all these mornings?”

“Yes,” He said, “I told you I would be here every morning to meet with you. Remember, I love you. I have redeemed you at great cost, I value your fellowship. Even if you cannot keep the quiet time for your own sake, do it for mine,”

   The truth that Christ wanted my company hadn’t entered my head. I hadn’t realised  that He wanted me to be with Him and might be waiting for me! In fact, I had often wondered if my prayers were doing any good, and then I remembered how He has told us to always keep praying, and to never stop doing this ( 1 Thessalonians 5:17, 25).

    I realised then that the enemy of our souls does everything in his power to keep us too busy to have our prayer time, and he has even whispered in my ear, “You don’t pray very well, and it’s a waste of time doing it”. But God showed me the other side of the coin when He says, “My Spirit also helps you in your weaknesses. Even if you don’t know how to pray very well, He will make intercession for you with groanings which cannot be explained”  (Romans 8:28).  Once I realised that, I went ahead and prayed just the same, no matter how feeble it seemed. So now I make sure that I don’t leave Him alone in the living room of my heart, but to see that I give Him the first minutes of each day….this time with Him is infinitely worth  it!!

Morning Musings

My Heart is my House.

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      I came across this story the other day of our heart being like a home for God. It was written just as if Jesus  was walking through our heart with us as though it was a house. In fact, the Bible bears this thought out. In the book of 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 we read, “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? You have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s”.

    We tend to forget that what we do with our bodies is what reflects to those watching us….if we make even the smallest slip up, it gives them a chance to point the finger. There is no mercy for the believer who does wrong, and as it was said to David when he got Bathsheba pregnant, “You have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord  to blaspheme, and because of this, the child also that is born unto you shall surely die.” (2 Samuel 12:14)

     For a building to be strong, it must have a good foundation, as well as be properly built. These things don’t just happen, they have to be properly prepared, so we must see that our foundation is strong, stable and level. We have to see that it is built on what the Bible tells us…..

 In Ephesians 2:19-22, we read…..  “Now you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, and are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom you are also built together into a habitation of God through the Holy Spirit”.

     And so as we go through each room together, I suddenly see it as He sees it all, and I see what needs to be altered, things to be got rid of, and other things added that I had no idea of before. I find that as I begin to delight in Him and what He wants for me, so my desires  change to what He wants to give me, and I find that all that I want is what He gives me! (Psalm 37:4)

    So our house is built strongly on a good foundation, and we have been living in it for a while. Now we have invited the Lord to be with us in our home, so we will see just how this works out as time goes by…….the house is good and strong, but what have we put in it???? We will find out in the weeks to come.

Random Devotional Thoughts

Are You Keeping Up?

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           I was thinking the other day about how our telephone system has evolved during my lifetime. Mother-in-law was telling a story nearly thirty years ago about how she had stopped her boys talking too much on the phone when they were teenagers, and I had video-ed her doing this. She was waving her hands around to demonstrate how she took the lightning guards out to cut off the conversation. I got to wondering if our grandkids would know what she was talking about, let alone the great grand-kids!

      How many of you, our readers, know what the lightning guards were and what they were for? How many of you remember the old telephone boxes that were attached to the wall near where the telephone wires came into the house?  The lightning guards were to protect the listener being banged in the ear if there was a thunder storm while talking….the central fuse would break if the lightning struck them and the line would go dead. High up on the wall inside above the brown box was where the line came in from the outside of the house, and this was protected from any lightning strikes there might be by two long tubes that had fuses in them. The idea was that these fuses were what connected the voices to the line and the line was effectively cut off if they were taken out or blown for some reason.

    Back then, the phones were attached to the wall of the house, usually in the living room, in  a large brown box on the wall, and the hand piece that you talked into (and listened to)  was attached to the box, so you could never go into your room and have a private conversation. It meant that you had to stay by the phone to use it. Every house had its telephone connected by wires that went along the roadsides to each house, and there were about 8-10 people who shared the same telephone line….this was called a “party line”. It meant that everyone on that line could tap into your conversations merely by lifting their handpiece and listening.

    Each house had its own number just like now ….I remember ours was 28W . The 28 was the line number and the W was the morse code number of W which was the ring of short, long, long. So when ever we heard that ring come through, we knew that call was for us. If it was three shorts (S), we knew it was for the house down the road, and two longs was M, and it was the neighbour further along.

          It was a great day when these phones were replaced by ones that had the rotary dial for ringing, and those who shared the line were cut back to two or three. After that came the day when each household had its own line, but we were still attached to the wall for talking! Then there came the cordless phones….great, we could get on with our chores while Auntie was giving us the latest gossip!!

     Then came the “brick”, a great heavy handpiece on the first really mobile  phones. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine the modern smart phone that we have today, and that does so much!

    I couldn’t help thinking that God has enabled all these marvellous modern inventions, and how much do we give Him thanks for them? How much do we stop to think about Him at all? It isn’t man’s smartness that has thought of these things, look at how many hundreds of years mankind lived  without any of these things and did everything the hard way. No machinery, no technology to make life easier. Having to carry suitcases full of reference books when travelling to classes or a conference, and now they are all contained in our pocket in our smart phone! Truly we have much to be thankful to God for, let us make sure we give Him thanks as we use them!

Morning Musings

What Are You Building On?

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There is so much building going on around our town these days, we wonder where it is all going to end. New streets are  going in and whole new developments taking place, changing the landscape from rural to suburban.

      I was reading this morning about the work which we are each one building  as we go through life, and what we will take with us when we leave this life. For a building to be stable and firm, it must have a good foundation, and in this building of life, what are we depending on for our foundation? Is it a good education? A good career? What will stand us in good stead as we come to the end of our life? After all, what or Who determines our building standards?

       The Bible tells us that we must have the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ, otherwise our building will collapse. We read in 1 Corinthians 3:9-15  that without Him as our Foundation,  what we do with our life will either count for nothing or for something, in the life to come. It is not the amount of money in our bank balance or our possessions that will count, it is our character and relationships. The most important of these, is our relationship with our Maker, with God Himself. If we have a right relationship with God, then all other relationships will fall into the right place.

   We read of wealthy men who have all that heart could wish for, and yet they do not know or acknowledge God….the building of their life is on shaky ground indeed! Then there are others who have very little of this world’s goods, and yet they have peace of mind and heart because they know God as their Heavenly Father. This is not to say that a person’s possessions or lack of them determines their  standing with God… it is what their heart and mind is fixed on that determines this. It pays for each one of us to search these things out now, and not to put our heads in the sand thinking another day will do! It just might get to be too late!

Morning Musings

Global Warming.

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                                                    Global Warming.    (30th  June 2022)

        We hear a lot about global warming and climate change these days, and while we cannot deny that things HAVE changed somewhat, we don’t need to worry or to think that things are out of control altogether due to what man does or doesn’t do. True, the weather does change, but it always has and it always will. That is the way it has been decreed, by the Maker of all things. When the tides were put in place due to the pull of the sun and moon, God said, “Thus far you shall come, and no further” and He reminded  the man called Job of this, saying “The proud waves shall come no further!” (Job 38:11)

   Then again, we hear that the ice cap is melting and this will make the sea rise to swamp all the lowland areas. Have you ever looked at a bottle of water that is frozen? It expands in the middle when it is frozen and when it thaws out, the water level is still exactly the same as  before it was frozen!! This can give us confidence that even if the sea DOES melt around the icecaps, the sea level can’t rise any more than before it was frozen. In many areas of the earth  where the sea freezes over, we don’t hear of the water level rising when the thaw comes. Yes, there may be floods at that time, but everything levels out again once it is all over. There is truly a wonderful Creator who has put everything in place and decreed that this is how it will stay until the end of time.

     People say, “Well, look at the Pacific Islands that are being covered by the sea now, and how much worse it will be in the years to come!”  We can’t deny that in some places, the sea is covering what used to be dry land in the past. But stop and think a moment, these islands are formed from many deposits of coral that over the years is slowly breaking down, so in actual fact, the islands are slowly sinking rather than the tide over-all getting higher!

    So take heart, there is no need to be afraid of what is being said by those who think they know. Instead, look into these things from the point of view of the Creator of all things, who looked at His Creation in the beginning when it was completed, and said, “These things are VERY good!”

Random Devotional Thoughts

Near Enough??

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    We were working on a project together, and I was thinking it  was time we were finished. “Well, that’s near enough”, I said as I put my gear down. My brother looked at it, and said, “Near enough is not good enough, Sis, you’ll have to spend a bit more time on it!” Those words have stuck with me for over fifty years, and whenever I am tempted to think “Near enough”, they come back to haunt me.

    It reminded me of a talk we heard once about King Solomon in the Bible….when King Solomon first became king, God appeared to him in a vision and told him to ask whatever he wanted and He would give it to him!  What a gift!!  Solomon asked to be given wisdom to rule his people well and wisely;  he chose what was good, but it was not the best.     We would normally think that the fact that he asked for this, was a good thing to ask for, but in his older age he stopped trusting the Lord for safety, and used his human reasoning instead. He figured that if he married princesses from the surrounding nations, that their fathers would not attack the land their daughter was in!

     But there seemed to be more and more of these princesses, and he ended up with “seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. And likewise did he for all his foreign wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. (1 Kings 11:3,4,8)”. Not only this, but he built temples for them!

    What a warning this is for us! No-one could have had a better start than Solomon did and yet he allowed himself to be swayed by the opinions of others rather than what God had told him. We have to be so careful that we continue to read what God’s Word has to say to us, and to follow what it tells us. Those who we associate with closely, have a greater influence over us than we think.

    We all know the dangers there are in our teenagers keeping company with the wrong crowd, but here was a mature man, and supposedly a very wise man, being swayed by the opinions of his many wives. Instead of him being the leader of his house, he was being led by the women of his household. He could have said his thoughts and actions were “near enough” as far as God was concerned, but they weren’t enough to keep him safe from turning away from the things of God.       So you can see that we need to be so awake to the dangers around us and not allow ourselves to be swayed by anything that will take all our thoughts….any game, club, or interest that takes all our time or thoughts needs to be pruned out of our minds!

Random Devotional Thoughts

How Clearly Can You See?

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This week I had an operation to remove cataracts that had been creeping insidiously over my eyes for some years now. I knew that my eyesight wasn’t as clear as it should have been, and when the optometrist told me  what the problem was, I knew something had to be done about it, so appointments were made and the operation done. What a difference it has made! My spectacles have been made redundant, and even for reading they are totally useless! Going down the hill into our town, I couldn’t believe how clear the trees were that covered the far hill….I can now see each individual tree! The horizon is clear cut too, and the colours brilliant!

      That is the plus of clear eyesight, but the negative side is all the cobwebs that festoon my living room that I didn’t know were there!

      It made me wonder just how clear our spiritual eyesight is…. there are many things that creep  in unawares, clouding our perceptions of things. Especially in this day and age when “every man believes what is right in his own eyes”. We are told that things we once believed implicitly, are now just “our opinion”, despite what God says about them. If that were really so, how would we know what is right and what is not just our wishful thinking?

   An old friend once had the following ditty stuck on the dashboard of his car….”God says it, I believe it, and THAT settles it!!” If we follow that saying, we will have peace of mind and heart.    If what I believe the Bible says, is NOT right, then I haven’t lost anything at all, but if my beliefs ARE right, then I have everything to gain, and my spiritual eyesight will be as clear as a sharply focused photo. It doesn’t pay to push these things into the background, but bring them out into the open and examine them thoroughly….is what God says right, or is my thinking right?

Stories for Littlies

Differences!

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I heard a sermon recently  concerning how all believers are part of the body of Christ, and as such, need to work together in unity…we are to concentrate on the things that unite us, and forget the things that are different. It reminded me of this children’s  story….

    Jack and his sister Sue were squabbling out in the yard. Jack was playing with his new toy truck, and Sue wanted to have a turn. She got very cross when Jack picked it up and ran inside. She followed him and tried to take it from him . “Leave it alone”, Jack shouted, “It’s a boy’s toy! Girls don’t play with trucks! They’re too dumb! They play with silly dolls and things!”   “Mum!” Sue wailed, “I’m  not dumb, am I?” Mum tried to keep the peace. “Of course not,” she said, “But you ARE different to Jack just the same, not silly or dumb, just different! You are both part of our family and we love you both the same. We need you both.”   Sue quietened down and left Jack to his truck while she ran to get her doll. “Not silly”, she thought, “My dolly is the best after all!”     Jack made loud engine noises, and ran his truck around among the cushions on the floor. “Silly girls!” he muttered.

    That night, after Jack had got into bed, he started thinking about what he would do with his truck the next day. His thoughts got fainter and fainter as he drifted into sleep. Suddenly he heard voices. Somehow he knew it was his head talking. It was saying to his feet….. “I don’t need you! I’m the important one! I’m at the top and you are only at the bottom end of Jack!”    “Don’t be silly”, said the feet, “Where would you go without me? But I’m a lot better than the hands, they are only halfway down Jack!”  The hands answered in a high crabby voice, “And what would put the socks and shoes on you if it weren’t for me? Besides, my fingers are a lot longer than your toes!!”    “My toes might be short, but they are just as important as your silly fingers! Remember when my little toe was sore last week? I had to hobble around to save it getting hurt worse!”      “Be quiet!” the head commanded in a loud voice, “I’m getting tired of listening to you fighting! You ALL need each other. And I need you all too. Who would put the food in my mouth if the hands didn’t work? And where would we all go if  the feet didn’t take us? It’s quite true that when one thing hurts, we all hurt with it. Why, I felt that sore toe too when it got hurt. So be quiet, and be satisfied with what you are. We are ALL important, we are just different, that’s all.  And we are all part of Jack!”

     Jack woke up with a start. It seemed so real. His different parts all arguing with each other? How silly could they be! As he snuggled down under the blankets again, he thought how glad he was that he had all those parts and that they all did different things for him. He still remembered that dream the next morning, and then thought how he and Sue had been fighting the day before. Of course they were different! She was a girl and he was a boy. But they were all part of the same family. Perhaps he could let Sue have a turn today.