Category Archives: Life Lessons

Life Lessons

Are we Feeling Flat?

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We were down the street yesterday and when I got back to where my husband was patiently waiting, and he went to start the car, all it would do was give a flat sounding “brrrrrrr” sound. So he said, “We’ll have to get someone to come with jumper leads to start it and I’ll have to get a new battery!” And that is what happened.

    But it reminded me of how we can’t function properly as far as God is concerned without a good battery either.  We have to keep ourselves with a full battery by reading God’s Word .  Otherwise, we will go nowhere, and be good for nothing as far as He is concerned.

     It  is  like our prayer life too. There are many times when we feel as though God is far away and not hearing our prayers. But the trouble is that we have a flat battery or a loose connection between us and God, and it is not until we join the connection that the power of God flows back into our life. Let’s look at some of these things that can cut our fellowship with God.

    One of these is having a right relationship with our spouse or other members of our families. This is one of the main causes of a flat battery, and we are told that husbands in particular, are to treat their wives right or their prayers will be hindered  (1 Peter 3:7).

      Another one is having a bad attitude towards others, and unconfessed sin….King David said, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me!” (Psalm 66:18)

    Wrong attitude to our money….it is not our own, but only what God has given us, so it is only reasonable to give Him His share of it.

   Habitual and continual disobedience will block our communion with God, as will a cherished sin in our hearts…..are we doing  something that we know displeases the Lord but we don’t want to give it up? This is a loose connection that causes a flat battery that will cut the communication between us and God, and we will go nowhere. The prophet Isaiah said, “Your sins have come between you and God like a thick cloud!”   (Isaiah 52:1)

   So after thinking about these things, let’s fix these loose connections in our life, get a new battery and have our communion with God restored again.

Life Lessons

Fellowship!

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We may not have thought much about fellowship before, but since it was taken away from us by the covid threats, it has been much more precious. We now realise what we have been missing all these weeks that we have been shut away from each other. In fact, fellowship is one of the ways that we are made in God’s image! Have you ever stopped to think how much God values fellowship with His people?   In fact, that is why He made man,  to have fellowship with Him!

      Look at what we are told about the first man and how God would come to earth to walk with him in the cool of each day, after man’s work was done. Then how the animals were brought to Adam to name, but they didn’t give him the fellowship he yearned for, so God made a woman to help and complement him….this is true fellowship. But it was not the ultimate fellowship….that was completed when man (and woman ) could have fellowship; with their Maker. This was a complete fellowship such as nothing else could give.

     Let’s read the account given in the Bible in Genesis, chapters 2-3…. There was one criteria to this….for this fellowship to remain unbroken, there must be absolute obedience to what God said. God gave them both just one rule…  “you can eat of any of the fruit in the garden,” He said, “But do NOT touch the fruit of the tree in the centre, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!”

    Surely one rule would be easy enough to keep!  It was, until the tempter came along, determined to break this fellowship between God and man. We all know the story of how Eve was tempted and how she gave in and then caused Adam to disobey God’s rule as well…they both ate the forbidden fruit! They knew immediately that their fellowship with God was gone!. First, they tried to cover their nakedness which was a dismal failure, and then they tried to hide when God came to have fellowship with them that evening. They didn’t want to see Him!

    But God has a way of catching up with us. He knew what Adam and Eve had done….he knows all that WE do too! There was only one way to rectify their disobedience, and that was for the blood of an animal to be shed, and its skin taken to make a permanent covering for Adam and Eve. Then once more they could face God, but they had to take the consequences of their disobedience in taking away the fellowship that they had become familiar with, and had taken for granted. For Adam, it was having to work hard to grow his food; for Eve it was having to bear children in pain, and to look to her husband for protection. For them both, there was only one way to restore that precious fellowship that they had known with God before, and that was through the death of a lamb as a sacrifice. They clearly understood this and told their sons about it when they became old enough to understand. We read about this in Genesis chapter four, verses 1-6.

   You might ask how we can have this same fellowship with God today. We don’t have animal sacrifices today, because God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to live a sinless life and yet wicked men took Him and killed Him with a vicious death. His  sinless death covers ALL our sins and disobediences  if  we  will  only  believe  it  for ourselves….. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses me from ALL sin” we read in 1 John 1:7. So because of this, we can each experience true fellowship with God as He intended it to be!

Life Lessons

Stand Off!

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     The protest in our capital city shows no sign of abating, with both sides determined not to give in. The protestors are being very vocal, determined to make their presence noticed, while the other side is equally determined to not allow their adversaries the satisfaction of seeing them face to face. The general  media did its best to keep out of the fray, reporting only the bare minimum, but this did not stop the protestors the full use of social media online, and comments were flying up on this non stop.

     More and more people were making their way to support the hecklers, and still other groups were forming in smaller centres around the country, all determined to make their voices and feelings heard and seen. Both sides wanted the freedom to make their own choices regarding the way to tackle the current pandemic.

      It seemed obvious that if this were the case, then free choice brings responsibility for the consequences of this. It brought to mind, that the inevitability of choice is consequences. If we choose to drive on the wrong side of the road, there will be a car crash sooner or later. If we jump off the top of a cliff, there will be broken bones, or worse still, a dead body at the bottom! Any foolish action incurs the risk of a dangerous end. Yet, even in knowing this, people want to be free to make these choices for themselves.

    We might not realise this, but this desire for freedom is a God-given thing. Choice is something we all have had given to us, right from the time we were born. We can choose to do the right thing, what we are told to do, and be safe, or we can choose to disobey, and suffer the consequences!

     This is just as plain in spiritual things as it is in physical things. The only difference is that spiritual things go on for eternity, while physical things come to an end in this life. The problem that most people don’t seem to realise, is that whether we like to face it or not, we ALL have a spiritual side to our life, a dimension that goes on for eternity. This is where the biggest choice we have to make comes in….do we want to face this or not??? We cannot sit on the fence in this matter, we have to make the choice between light and darkness, between life and death. Let’s be brave and face up to this choice now!

Life Lessons, Uncategorized

How Do we Take the Heat?

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      As we go forward into the year of 2022, we are finding that things are not really improving at all. The restrictions that we suffered from the previous year are still there, and in fact in some cases are even more onerous than last year. The hopes that we had, that things would improve and that we would get more freedoms, have already gone down the drain. Yes, some of the rules have relaxed with promises of others to follow, but it is the small things that people are finding so trying.

    As this is being written, there is a group of protestors sitting on the front lawn of the Parliament Buildings in our capital city, chanting and making a nuisance of themselves simply to get the government’s attention. People are getting exasperated with all the small details of the rules that seem to them to be unnecessary. On top of all that, the weather is typical February weather of hot steamy temperatures which is trying enough in itself without any other annoyances.

    But let us stop and think about all these things for a minute. How are we allowing these fires and trials affect us? We can allow them to either make us better or to make us bitter! Remember the boiling water in the pot will make the potato soft while it makes an egg go hard….which are we going to allow ourselves to be? The choice is ours. Our outward circumstances may be the same, but the inward results can be very different depending on  how we respond.

     If we read and take notice of what God says, we will have the strength  to stand firm in spite of these annoyances….the Bible says, “ Your Word I have hidden in my heart so I will not sin against You!”     (Psalm 119:11). If we do this, we will have a message to pass on to others from our own experiences, and this will carry far  more weight than merely telling other people what they should do!!

Life Lessons

How to Do It!

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       Our sermon this week followed on from the previous week. It’s one thing to know what we should do, but the question remains, how do we go about it? In the passage of Scripture (Ephesians 6:14-18)  that this talk was based on, we are given a blow by blow account of the WHOLE armour and weapons at our disposal and how to use them. 

    Firstly, there is the belt of truth, and we see this belt is missing in so many of our leaders today….we simply can’t take any notice of what they say! Yes, they may be sincere and think they mean what they say, but it could be a different story to putting it into practice…they simply didn’t know enough about the situation of the things they were promising! We must always make sure before we make a promise that we have gone into it thoroughly first, and KNOW what we are talking about!

    The truth of any matter is the foundation that our words are built on, and without that our statements and promises are valueless!

   Next we must be wearing the boots of something solid….in this case, the Gospel of Peace. We must KNOW that what we base our statements on is solid! Boots are no good if they don’t fit properly, and our feet slide around in them….they let us down in the end and we have to take them off with having blisters and sore feet.

   Then we must pick up and use the shield of faith. This is the basis of all that we believe in…without faith we don’t have stability, and waver from side to side. We are told that we cannot please our General (God) without having this shield with us (Hebrews 11:6)….we have to know the One we believe in, and we cannot believe in Him without having faith that He exists. The shield of faith also helps us to fight off the fiery darts of unbelief and doubt that our enemy shoots at us….it gives us the confidence to face him and stand firm. We are told by James to resist the devil and he will flee from us (James 4:7)

    We are to be wearing the helmet of salvation to protect our head…..our thoughts and our mind….what a person thinks about is what they do and how they act. Not only that but we are to take up the sword of the Spirit with us to fight with. We might ask how we can do  that…. we are told that the Bible, is not only God’s Word to us, but is also the Sword of the Spirit! We need to know it thoroughly to use it effectively.

    We are fully provided for, and now it is up to us to use it all. The overall covering is that of prayer, both for ourselves and also for those we know. Just as there is full communication in a family, so there must be for us in the family of God…communication with Him as our Father and supplication for strength for each other, especially in the troubling times we find ourselves in these days.

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Life Lessons

Fragmented!

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    Our government has decided in its wisdom that gatherings in general (and churches in particular) are not to meet in numbers greater than twenty-five for unvaccinated people, and one hundred for those who are vaccinated. This means that for a lot of organisations, the people have had to look at how to divide their gatherings and yet keep the overall unity of the whole group together. This is no mean feat, as people tend to gravitate towards those they know best, and hesitate to join those who they don’t know so well.

   But we need to look at the wider picture, and think of some positives of such a move. Firstly, it gives us a chance to get to know other people better…there is nothing like a small group to activate conversation by asking questions and really listening to the answers. Then others who may irritate us somewhat, give us a chance to exercise Christian grace and patience, and to look beneath the surface of remarks we may not agree with. There is one thing to remember….always look at the half cup of drink in front of you as being half full and not half empty!!

    Then again, there is the prospect of road blocks facing those who travel over our holiday period, and the frustration this will generate….another time of exercising grace and patience!

So whatever our particular test will be, let us remember the wider picture and learn some benefit from it, rather than just grinning and bearing it ungraciously!!!

Life Lessons

What’s over the Hill?

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        We have been recently watching some documentaries of the early explorers of Australia, and how they wanted to explore this new continent that they had settled in. Sadly, some of them lost their lives in the process, and all because they went into the trip unprepared for the conditions that they found. They thought that by travelling with camels which were used to dry conditions that they would be safe enough. They made their way over the thousands of kilometers of trackless desert, only to lose their lives on the way back through the heat and lack of food and water.                               

Yet, if they had only known it, there was enough food in the desert if they had only known where to look for it. The river that they explored had an abundance of creatures in it that they could have eaten, but they weren’t aware of it.                                                                                                           

       It reminds me of how we flounder along in life at times hungering for the truth, and yet not able to find it because we are looking in the wrong places for it. Or maybe we aren’t prepared to search in the right direction because of some preconceived ideas that we have. The explorers didn’t fancy the idea of looking in the river for something to eat because they weren’t familiar with the things that lived in it. So even though they were desperate for food, they perished because of their lack of knowledge.

    So let’s make sure that we aren’t looking for spiritual satisfaction in the wrong places through ignorance or preconceived ideas. Jesus Christ said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that no one can come to the Father (God) except by Him. He is more than a mere name or word to be carelessly used, but is the source of all truth and life. Not only that, but He is able and willing to reveal Himself to all who sincerely look for Him.

Life Lessons

Uncertain Times

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There is no doubt about it, we live in uncertain times! We ourselves have just been packing our motorhome up to go to a rally for the weekend and then received a notice saying that it has been cancelled. Someone had come to our district and then tested positive with Covid, so in case the whole area might be closed down, the rally was cancelled. What to do now?

The van was packed with our clothes, (first things first!) ; food next with the frig packed for the weekend, then finally (which I had not yet completed) bag of gadgets….phone, laptop, tablet, to take as we leave the house….not forgetting the charging cords etc.

So it had to be a complete change of plans and mindset. Thus it has proved to be over the last few weeks. Plans made and then cancelled; other events put on hold until certainty returns. It has been said, that life as we once knew it, may never return. How thankful we are that we did the things that we did while we could. But we could never have envisaged that things would change so drastically or so quickly!

For those who are committed Christians, there is much to be thankful for. We have a sure and certain hope (confidence) that God sees and knows it all. We know the time we have left is getting shorter as the days go by. In fact, we can’t help wondering just what disaster is coming next. The very earth itself seems to be convulsing in birth pangs with earthquakes shaking, volcanoes erupting and floods sweeping things away, as well as hurricanes brewing in the various oceans around the world. We know that the Bible predicts these things will happen (Luke 21:25-28) and it is all there right before our eyes! So we know that things are not going to go back to how they once were, but will indeed become worse before they get better!

There is only one solution for us all, and that is to make our peace with our Maker while there is still time. Not a one of us knows when our time will be up, and then it will be too late to do anything about it.