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.

My Life

God’s Preservation

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     There are so many things that we can thank God for….things that others might call a “coincidence”. But how much better to see God’s preserving hand in these mishaps that we experience.

    I remember one time when I was setting off down the hill from our place, out onto the road and speeding up as the road opened up. The road was narrow and windy, and to take the corner at the bottom, I cut across the corner and then saw another car approaching.  
I automatically put my foot on the brake so I could navigate back to my own side of the road, when horrors! The car spun around about three times out of control, flew across a deep ditch and landed up against a large tree facing the way I had come, with a gentle thud. It had all happened so quickly that I hardly realised what had happened!

   The other car passed by (he must have seen it all happen), and backed up and asked if I was alright. By this time, I had felt around and decided that nothing was broken on me, and there were no obvious breakages on the car. The windows  were all intact, the  motor turned off, and the door opened. But outside was a different story….the wheels didn’t look right, and horrors, the tyres were torn off! So when the man asked if was alright, I asked if he could run me back up the hill so I could find my husband and tell him what had happened which he did. I never saw that man again, and often wondered if he came that way regularly!

    That was the end of my part in the story….the men folk got the car back across the ditch, and put new tyres on it and it was able to be driven home without a scratch on the body. Amazing!

    It often gave me the shivers thinking about what could have happened to me…I could have ended up in a wheelchair with a broken back, or been in the hospital for weeks recuperating from injuries, or even worse, could have been killed. Truly the Lord sent His angels to preserve me that day!!

    Needless to say, I never went too fast down that hill again! But what a way to learn a lesson I should have known anyway!

    There are many ways that God preserves His people, and we should never cease to give Him thanks for this every day….we have no idea how many times He keeps us safe from things that we don’t see coming.

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Teens

Who’s Driving your Car?

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   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 said, “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 Him 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)

Life Lessons

Storms of Life.

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When the disciples experienced the worst storm of their life, they had been sent across the lake by Jesus Christ. The disciples were experienced fishermen who could read the weather signs and knew how to handle these sudden storms that whipped up the lake surface into a frenzy. Jesus knew all this, but He knew a storm was coming up that would test them to the maximum.  They hadn’t made a mistake that brought this upon them, they were there for the purpose of seeing God’s protection and power..

    Remember this….Jesus Christ knows the storm we are in at any given time. He could have stopped the storm coming to the disciples, but He wanted to show them His power. He knows the storm that I may be in right now, but He wants me to go through it so He can show me His power and refine the dross out of my life and strengthen the faith I have in Him.

     The Lord speaks to us in these three ways ….

In the storm….He comes to us through the storm, walking on the water…”I will never leave you”, He says.

Through the storm… He reminds us that He is there with us…”don’t be afraid”, He says, “trust Me”.

The storm within you….often when these storms come, they attack us from the inside. We are all in a turmoil because of circumstances beyond our control, and wonder where we are going to turn next. We must not be afraid of being afraid….storms always have an end. There will be a period of calm when it is over and then another one may come but because we have proved our Lord’s help with the first one, we have confidence within the next one.

“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)”

      Then we were reminded of the two houses that were built….one on the rock and one on the sandy beach edge. When the first storm came, the one on the rock stood firm, but the one on the sand fell and was destroyed.  So it is with us in life’s storms….we cannot build our house during the storm, we must have it built before the storm comes!  Remember…Jesus Christ is the Rock we must build on……He is the Lord of all our storms. Anything else is like shifting sand!

Morning Musings

He Will Never Leave Us!

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      We have  here the account of a godly family living near Jerusalem …Martha (who seemed to run the house), Lazarus her brother, and her sister Mary. We don’t read of the parents so presumably they had died with the family continuing to live in their home.

    We first see them as opening their home to the Lord Jesus and presumably His disciples as well, and it was a convenient place for them to call in and rest. This particular day, Martha was bustling around getting a meal ready, but all Mary could do was to sit on a stool at Jesus’ feet listening to His every word. This bothered Martha and she went to Jesus saying, “Lord, tell Mary to come and help get the food ready! “

   But Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are fussing about too much….Mary has chosen the best thing by sitting down and listening to what I have to say!”  In other words, what you are doing will soon all be gone, but what Mary is doing will last as long as she lives! How often we fuss about things that don’t really matter, and forget the things that do! Let us take stock and make sure we do the things that matter first, and the other things afterwards!

    The next time we see the family, food was the last thing on their minds. Lazarus was very ill, and Martha sent a message to Jesus asking Him to come and see if He could do anything for her brother. She was sure that if anyone could he[p, He could. But to her utter dismay, He didn’t come straight away, and Lazarus died. How often our prayers don’t get answered the way we want straight away! But it was through this tardiness of His, that His power could be ultimately shown, and so it is with us too. We often learn more through our prayers being unanswered (as we think), than having our every whim granted. God is not a big Santa Claus in the sky….He always does what is best for us, even though we may not like it at the time. How else can we learn His grace and sufficiency in time of need? “ My grace is sufficient for you”, He says. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

   It was through this time of sorrow for the sisters, that they saw His power shown in bringing Lazarus back to life….the greatest miracle of their lives! This proved to both Martha and Mary that He really was, Who He said He was! So it is for us too! Hard times that happen to us during our life time, teach us that God is still there, and that He cares for us, and even though we may not able to make sense of what is happening around us, we can know that He is still with us as He said He would be.

  Finally we see the family gathered together with others, and once more it is centred around food, and again Martha is serving and seeing to the meal. But this time Mary is the one who is concerned with giving back to the Lord something of what she has been learning at His feet. She brings out this jar of sweet smelling ointment and rubs it into His feet, weeping while she does it. The disciples watched this with mixed emotions….they had no idea why Mary was doing this, and Judas in particular scornfully said, “What a waste!!”. But the Lord knew Mary’s heart. and He knew that she understood far more than the others, and He knew the real reason for her action. She was sorrowing for the things that were going to happen to Him, and for the pain that lay ahead for all of them.

    We can be thankful that He DOES know our motives when others don’t, and He can see the reason we do things for Him when others don’t understand.

Morning Musings

What Do You See?

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       As we were driving along a beach frontage one beautiful sunny day I noticed three teenage girls sitting on the edge of the beach beside the road. The blue sea and white sand made a lovely picture.  But their backs were to the superb view and their eyes were glued to the smart phones they were each holding.

    I thought of the story in Pilgrim’s Progress about the man confined in a room playing around in the rubbish at his feet while an angel was hovering above him holding a crown. Alas, he never looked up to see the glories above, but just kept on with the worthless stuff around his feet.  

   What a pity that these three girls were missing the beauties of the great creation that God has given us to enjoy!  It costs us nothing to enjoy a good day at the beach….these other things will still be there later on to use. Let’s make sure that we focus on the worthwhile things of life while we can!

    When those times have gone and it is too late to recover them, we will regret all the missed opportunities that we once had. Let’s do what we can, while we can because as time moves on these times will pass away for ever! Where we once had unlimited time to look ahead, the time may come when our future is down to a few years at the best. This is all the more reason to make the most of the here and now, remembering that only what is done for the Lord is all that we can take with us when we leave this world.

Life Lessons

Danger Ahead!

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        Our speaker in church yesterday was talking about the foolishness of refusing to hear God’s voice, and what will happen if we consistently shut it up. Every time we have that little niggle about doing something about that apology we should make, or fix up a problem there is between you and another person, is the prompting of God, and should not be ignored. It reminded me of the following story that happened many years ago….

   A man we knew had been taken to the Sunday night services where the Gospel was being preached regularly. But his wife wasn’t keen on him going and she tried to block him by asking the local school teacher for the evening meal on Sunday nights. In the end, he said to not ask him any more as he wasn’t able to go.

    Years passed by, and he never went back to those services again. One day he met his Uncle who knew him very well, and said, “You know Unc, I had a dream the other night. I dreamed that I could see God in heaven, and while I was watching, a big black blind came down between us, and I know now that I couldn’t come to Him even if I wanted to!”

   His uncle didn’t know what to say to this, but it proved to be true. That man never did turn to God, and he died without Him just as he had lived without Him. How sad we were when we heard this! But it serves as a warning that when we consistently block our minds to the truth of these things God says, ”OK, if that’s how you want it, that’s how it will be”. He says in the Bile that His Spirit will not always strive with man (Genesis 6:3) …He gives us our chance and we must take it as we never know when we might go beyond the point of no return!

Stories for Teens

The Four “D”s.

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    Sarah came in from school one afternoon feeling a little grumpy.

“I wish I was a bit taller,” she announced to no-one in particular as she put her bag down.

“Oh hullo Uncle Jeff”, she added, “I didn’t see you there. We haven’t seen you for a while!”

“No I’ve been busy,” he said, “But I thought I would come over and catch up with what you young ones are up to. Anyway,” he went on, “What’s this bit about wishing you were taller?”

“I always have trouble getting my bag down off the rack on the school bus,” she said, “The taller boys always seem to push it further back than I can reach.”

“That’s too bad,” said Uncle Jeff, “I can think of another person who had trouble because he was too short, and he lived a long time ago in another country….let me tell you about him…

” The story comes from the Bible and this man’s name was Zaccheus. I heard a person the other day tell the story like this. He said that the story of Zaccheus has four ‘D’s in it and if you can remember them it might be a help when things go wrong “.

Sarah settled herself down on the couch and said, “Go on Uncle Jeff. I always like hearing your stories. What was the first ‘D’?”

“He had this great ‘Desire’ to see Jesus as he had heard so much about Him. But when he saw the huge crowd that was crowded around Him, he knew that there was no way he could even get a glimpse of Him because he was only a short little man. But he was ‘Determined’ he was going to see what He was like, From this determination, came the impetus to ‘DO’ something about it, so he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed up into a large leafy tree he knew was growing there. From there he could look down on the people as they went by, and they couldn’t see him perched up there.

   The noisy crowd came closer and he could see Jesus in the middle. Then to everyone’s surprise, Jesus stopped right under the tree and looked up into it. “Zaccheus, come down!’ He called out, ‘I want to eat at your place today.’

    There was a scuffle up in the tree, and the little man clambered down, and went ahead to his house. Jesus followed and the crowd waited outside for a couple of hours until both Jesus and Zaccheus came out again. Jesus held up His hand and said, ‘Today salvation has come to this house….you tell them Zaccheus…’

  ‘ I’ve told the Teacher that I’ve done wrong”, Zaccheus said, “and I’ve also told Him that I’m going to pay any of you back four times what I took from you wrongly’.

  “ He was a ‘Different’  man after that,” Uncle Jeff went on, “He was a happy chappy now, and he was honest with his money deals. It’s like that for us too when we tell Jesus about our grumpiness, and ask Him to help us….first of all we need to have the Desire to change and then be
Determined to DO something about it. It’s only then that we can become Different in the way we feel and act!”  

 “I guess that’s right, “ Sarah said slowly, “We have to DO something about what we need,  before God can change how we feel and act”.

“That’s right, my girl”,  said Uncle Jeff, “Now let’s get this drink and you’ll feel even better!”

See what God has to say to YOU.