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.
Grandma's Stories

Who’s Driving Your Car?

Hitchhiker 2  Sarah was sitting in church one Sunday morning with her mind only half on what the speaker was saying. ….

“I’m going to tell you a modern day parable to illustrate what I’m trying to get across to you”, he was saying, “We hear people talk about being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit, and allowing Him to control you’. The Apostle Paul tells us that we are to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us….we are not to be controlled by strong drink like a drunk person, but we are to allow God  to control us in the same way….”

Sarah suddenly sat up when she heard the preacher say….”It’s like this. Imagine you are driving your car along the road of life, and you see a hitch-hiker with his thumb up asking for a ride. You somehow know that this is the Lord Jesus asking to come into your life. You have the choice of either going straight past Him or stopping and giving Him a lift. Most people will just go straight past Him and not give Him a thought. But perhaps you think you would like to ask Him into the car with you.

You stop and let Him in….but where are you going to put Him? In the luggage compartment? No, you are not that mean. In the back seat then? Well, no, you would like to talk to Him a bit on the trip. What if He asked for the keys of the car? No way, you think, I’m driving this car and I want to go here or there where I please.

This is just what we all do with the Lord Jesus…we might let Him drive a short distance after we’ve been to camp and got a spiritual lift, or after hearing a good speaker at church. But then you simply HAVE to make a stop along the way, and when you get back into the car, you are back behind the wheel again!”

Sarah sighed. Why did preachers always have to put you on the spot? She knew very well that there were times when she did wrong things and went to wrong places or looked at wrong things, and that Jesus certainly wasn’t driving her car at those times.

The preacher finished his talk, but the things that he said stuck in Sarah’s mind, and as she got older she always thought of this little parable whenever she was tempted to do something she knew wouldn’t please the Lord.

She really DID want to let Him drive her “car” but it wasn’t always easy. After all what was it the Lord Jesus said to His disciples? “If any person will follow Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me”. (Luke 9:23)

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Littlies

Why Clean the Shower?

CHLD348   Bobby and Betty were playing ball outside on a winter’s day. The ground was quite wet and it wasn’t long before the ball was covered in mud. The next shower came and they went inside for a drink.

“Bobby!” exclaimed Mum, “Just look at your hands and your clothes! You are covered in mud!!”

“That’s alright, Mum”, Bobby said, “It’ll wash off!” and he reached out for the drink that Mum had ready.

“Bobby!” Mum said sternly, “That’s no way to talk! Don’t you know how much work it takes to get your clothes clean?”

Betty came bounding into the kitchen just then.

“Betty!” Mum exclaimed, “Whatever have you been doing? You’re so grubby!”

“I’ve been playing ball with Bobby!” Betty said (as though Mum couldn’t tell!)

“Well, you’d better both go and have a shower and put clean clothes on as soon as you’ve finished your drinks”, Mum said.

“I’m going first!” Bobby said, as he gulped down the last of his drink and went off to the bathroom.

“You make sure you wipe the shower box out with the spray cleaner when you’ve finished”, Mum called after him.

“Why do we have to wash the shower box out?” Betty asked, “It’s clean water”.

“Well”, Mum said, “there’s the dirt that comes off you, and the soap has a certain amount of grease in it, so the splashes inside the shower get thicker and thicker until it looks like a greasy scum over the whole thing. That is VERY hard to get off. It’s much easier to keep it clean all the time”.

“That’s right”, said Dad as he came into the kitchen catching the last bit of conversation. “You know it’s just like the little bad things that we do and say every day. If we don’t keep telling God that we are sorry for these things and ask Him to help us do better next time, we end up being mean and nasty all the time. It’s not a good idea to be like that! It’s much better to do it every day.”

 

Random Devotional Thoughts

How Much is your Soul Worth?

100_3589a   Every now and then we get a pamphlet in the mail asking if we are thinking of selling our house. They say that they have clients wanting to buy in our area! They will come and give us a free appraisal of our property, they say, hoping we will take them up on it.

They say that it is every young married couple’s dream to own their own home, but we all have something that worth much more than any house. How much is your house worth? Only as much as someone will pay for it! How much is your soul valued at? What is it worth?

We say we own this or that. But whatever we own, really owns us! If we have a car we have to service it regularly. If we own a house we have to keep it maintained or it loses its value. If we buy a lawn mower, we have to use it or the place soon looks untidy.

Maybe we only own something small like a mobile phone. It has to used responsibly or else it controls us! How many people do we see walking down the street not watching where they are going because their fingers are busily going on their gadget. They feel lost without having it in their pocket or hand. We don’t own these things, they own us!

The Bible asks the question….”What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” Nothing in this world, whether it be a house or a car; a mower or a phone is to be compared with a person’s soul. These “things” only last a short while….they either break down or become out-dated, but our soul will last forever! Let’s make sure that we take the time to think these things through and make the right decision about what we put first in our life.

Random Devotional Thoughts

What Does Your Past Show?

car crash  A well known sportsman was killed in a car crash, along with his wife….both young people with still many years ahead of them. A great outpouring of grief followed this event and the news people followed the funeral in detail. Many eulogies spoke of his past events, but one snippet on the news item brought back memories of some distant demeanors that had once made the news in the past. A video clip dragged up from the past showed this in detail.

It brings to mind how our past has a way of catching up with us, sometimes when we least want it to. Another case of this was when a young woman traced her birth father, and knocked on his door one day announcing she was his daughter! His wife and family had no idea of this young woman’s existence, and the shock was great. We can only imagine how they must have all felt!

But this is nothing to how we will feel when faced with all our past unforgiven sins. The Bible tells us that “the wages of sin is death, while the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)”

For a gift to be enjoyed, it must be taken and opened….it is a two way thing. God has done His part in providing and presenting this gift; the least we can do is to take it and thank Him for it.

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Littlies

The Green Sheep.

Green SheepBobby was jumping up and down with excitement. Uncle Jeff had just pulled into their driveway, and he always had some story to tell. Uncle Jeff was a train driver, and if that were not exciting enough, he always saw the funny side of things that happened on the side of the railway line as he went by. It didn’t take as much concentration as driving on the road, so there was plenty of time to look around as the train chugged along the line.

After Uncle Jeff got settled down with a cup of tea in his hand, Bobby snuggled up to him and said, “How did your train driving go last week, Uncle Jeff?”

“Well”, said Uncle Jeff, “We had quite an eventful week last week. We saw lots of animals near the line in different places”.

“Oh”, said Bobby, “Do tell us about them! What were they? ”

“One day we went past this farm where there was a pond for drinking water at the bottom of the hill. The sheep were all in a mob up near the railway line, so I gave a loud toot on the train whistle as we went past. You know, those silly sheep took fright and went galloping down towards the pond. When they got to it, they split in half and some went one way around it while the others went the other way. But would you believe it, there was one sheep sillier than the rest because it kept going straight ahead and flipped straight into the water! It was so funny to watch”, and Uncle Jeff chuckled as he remembered it all over again.

“Can sheep swim?” Bobby asked.

“Well, we asked ourselves the same question”, Uncle Jeff said, “But you know they can!”

“How do you know?” Bobby asked.

“Well, when we came back, we saw the same mob up near the line again”, Uncle Jeff said, “And this time there was one wet green sheep with them! He hadn’t only gone into the pond, but it was full of green slime and weeds, and the sheep got covered in it all. So he came out a green sheep. Ha,ha”, and Uncle Jeff laughed again at the memory of it all.

“Oh, that WAS funny!” Bobby said, “ What are the other stories?”

“They will have to wait for another time”, Uncle Jeff said as he got up and took his mug out to the kitchen and began to talk to the grown-ups there.

There’s a moral to this story…..the Bible says we are all like sheep that have gone astray, we have all gone our own way and it’s only the Lord Jesus that can get us out of the mess we find ourselves in. Out of all those sheep that went running down the hill, most of them turned and kept out of trouble. All except for the one that went straight into the pond! That one is just like us when we follow the mob that is running into danger. We have to make sure that we use our head before we lose it, and be careful to keep away from friends who take us to wrong places.

Morning Musings

God’s Book

BIBLE2“That was a good deed that you did the other day”, Tim said as Bob met him down by the beach.

“Oh, I don’t know about that”, Bob said, “Anyone would have done it”.

“Yes, but it was pretty rough when you went in after that boy who was in trouble out in the sea”, Tim carried on.

“Oh well, that’s what the Good Book says…. to do to others as you would want them to do for you”, Bob said.

He was both right and wrong when he said that. Certainly it is what the Bible says. We should do to others as we would want them to do to us; the world would be a lot happier place if everyone looked out for everyone else instead of trying to beat them.

But the Bible is more than a just a “good book”; it is the Living Word of God. When you read it, it reads you. It tells you your needs and what to do about them. It is sharper than any double sided sword, and it cuts away all our excuses. It is like the hound of heaven that keeps on at us until we finally make the decision that each person must make….are we going to do as it says, or are we just going to push it to one side and forget about it? Let’s make sure that we at least look into it instead of just passing it off as a “good book”!

Random Devotional Thoughts

Where Are You Going?

2015-06-01 09.43.25“Hey, where are you off to?” Robin called out to Tim as he saw him walk past his gate.

“Oh, nowhere in particular”, said Tim sheepishly. He knew very well where he was intending to go, but Robin was the last person he wanted to know.

“I’ll come too”, Robin said as he ran inside to get his shoes on.

Are you going to places that you are ashamed of? Do you watch things that fill your mind with evil thoughts? What do you do with your fingers as you sit in front of the computer?

We have to take stock of ourselves every day if we want to please the Lord. It is no use saying one thing to others and then going and secretly doing the opposite. This leads to nothing but disaster….for others and ultimately for ourselves.

Random Devotional Thoughts

Clearing up the Rubbish.

     Des  We were staying on a friend’s property in our caravan recently. This place had high hedges around the paddock edges. Our friend had taken his hedge trimming machine into these paddocks to cut and trim back the tall trees, and this had only made a worse mess than ever. The branches and cut pieces of the trees all fell on the ground beneath as they were cut off. There was no way the grass would grow up fresh and sweet there.

We went home and came back the following week. By this time he had taken his tractor into the paddock again, and had pushed all the scraps and branches into large heaps ready for burning when the weather was right. It was surprising what a large area was now clear right up to the tree trunks, enabling the grass to grow there as extra feed for the cattle.

It made me think how this is a lot like our lives. We allow things to creep in and crowd out what is helpful to others. Our time is taken up with things of no real value, and we have no time for the things that matter. Sometimes the things that we do are creative and beautiful, but if we can’t give them away to someone who appreciates them, we are really just wasting our time. Other things are just frivolous time fillers just to keep us occupied.

These are the things that need to be cut off and let fall to the ground, and then pushed up into piles and burned. Let’s make sure that we clean up around the edges of our lives, and give ourselves more time and space to do things for others.

The Bible talks about building our lives with wood, hay and stubble, and how these things are easily burned, whereas if we build with valuable metals these only get refined if a fire goes through them  (1 Corinthians 3:11-15).