Aussie

P 2956 A little tiny glimpse into history.

/ DVH

Today I want to briefly talk about what life was like for me as a child. Mainly because there have been huge changes to the world since I was born. As a small child, in an inner city suburb, bread came in a van, and the iceman came in his horse-drawn waggon. NO! Not the one in that awful movie —the actual iceman who brought very real ice for our very real icebox! Milk, by the way, also arrived on our doorstep, every morning, from a little car that chugged up and down the street. 

At my house there were things that were expected from me. I could cook by the time I was 7 or 8, it was my job to get the dinner veggies on. They were always peeled and boiled veggies – even the memory of those still makes me shudder! Plus I had to set and clear the table, make my bed and tidy my own room – I was a total DUD at that last one. For fun I was allowed to listen to the radio, but only if my behaviour was acceptable! My very favourite things were reading, drawing, or knitting. I knitted my mother a whole jumper around the age of 12 or 13. TV eventually arrived on the scene, but we couldn’t afford one.

I walked about a kilometre to school and back home again, by myself, every day from Grade 2. It was obviously much safer for children back then! Kids were very strongly governed, they were to be seen and not heard!  Adults were respected or you got a clip ‘round the ear-hole or the strap. When I listen to kids today having an opinion on everything under the sun, interrupting adults when they are speaking, I feel like Alice walking through the Looking Glass. I can’t help it – it’s culture shock! 

Back in the ark, everybody in my blended family worked, so it was tough luck for me … I had to get myself to school, make my own lunch, and come home to an empty house, the door key was hidden carefully outside the house. I was alone every week day for at least two hours – I had no help with homework that was my responsibility. Note to our dear friends in Canada … I had Vegemite sandwiches for lunch every day, whether I liked it or not – I did not … but Vegemite on a bit of buttered toast is pretty good! There was no cling wrap or foil so it was pretty festy by lunchtime!

I had no morning tea or play-lunch, instead we had a free small bottle of milk. And there wasn’t the incredible variety of food, fruit, vegetable choices that we have today — only people from other countries ate that stuff! The average Aussie worked hard, and drank him or herself under the table for leisure – their kids watched and pinched beer when the adults weren’t looking. I wasn’t one of them by the way.

You were’t anybody if you didn’t barrack for a footie team and follow the cricket. The news came in a newspaper. The only fast food was fish and chips and they were wrapped up in … yesterday’s newspaper. We weren’t very multi-cultural back then. Our home phone was black and it sat on a little shelf in the hallway. I still remember the number. 😆 The changes over those 70 years are totally huge … 

Now I have a phone that I carry on me, and I can use it wherever I am, even in a lift or the loo … ‘nice polite’ girls would never do that in the past. I can find out what is happening all over the world at the press of a button. I can also tell my house what to do! Today, I don’t even have to vacuum. In the ark, we had a carpet sweeper, until electrolux cleaners came on the market. Rich people had those.

Now we have a little bot that trundles out of its hidey-hole and does all the vacuuming. Plus all our washing, and dishes, go into machines. The refrigerator talks to its owner and tells them what they will run out of in the near future. My bible is on my phone! If I want to take a walk I have a walking machine. If I want to go rowing, I have a rowing machine … I don’t, by the way, have a rowing machine, or one of those groovy bots and my refrigerator is quite silent, I must have I offended it!

Back then, Almighty God was SomeOne Who would not be bothered with the likes of me. I was expected to be a good girl and do what I was told or the wrath of somebody or other, would fall on my head — and probably on my backside as well! God was a silent ever-present threat Who was always watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake, then someone else would punish me on His behalf. I was terrified of Him.

He was good and holy and I knew I was not. I’d heard about Jesus but it seemed He didn’t like little girls much either. My religious life was filled with bells and smells and fear of hell and very little love. If God loved me He sure had a funny way of showing it. Being whacked with something hard and nasty was punctuated with: “This is for your own good.” 

Despite today’s theories about giving our kids a wonderful childhood — most people have a wonky past! Many of them have been treated badly one way or another, and, sadly, they have no idea of Who God is and how much He loves each one of us. That’s why we’ve been called to be witnesses. Today we can go wherever we want to go, to tell others what we have seen, heard and learnt, personally. To let them know that human love may let you down … but God will not.

There is no perfection in this life, because they are no perfect people! Can we please … as the Body of Christ … get over ourselves and get on with fulfilling our very real mission? Nobody needs to go to hell unless they choose to – that’s the message. Bye. 👋

P 2919 Go to the Source.

/ DVH

“And if anyone longs to be wise, ask God for wisdom and He will give it! He won’t see your lack of wisdom as an opportunity to scold you over your failures but He will overwhelm your failures with His generous grace.” James 1:5 TPT. Around about this time in our mission (day 6 of 12 days), Hubby and I have learnt that we can end up on a huge down-a-later…  right before our Heavenly Father is about to do something that will blow our socks off … again!

To be honest with you, I’m not sure we would choose to go on these trips purely for the people the Lord sets us up to met – although they are often fantastic people. But I strongly suspect we both do this because we can’t wait to see what He IS going to do next. He is always surprising us – He literally never does what we might imagine at all – nothing looks like you think it will! 

I think the reason that many Christians don’t often see the Holy Spirit working around them is because they won’t want take any risks. People who lay down their lives to follow Jesus, end up taking risks. Like walking on water, or feeding thousands of people with some kid’s lunch. Or waiting for the Holy Spirit to come – when no-one has any idea what that looks like!  We need to stop thinking He’s only present when we see miracles –  because the Lord promised never to leave us or forsake us. He will go with us, wherever we go in His Name, and He always keeps His promises.

However in those times when it seems as if hubby and I have run out of enthusiasm for moving around from one place to another, and we are slowly getting toward empty — then He just simply takes over, particularly when we confess that we are hopeless without Him and we need His wisdom …like brother James suggested in his book. That’s when wisdom flows everywhere, and we just stand back and watch Him move. I  love those times, they are the best. 

One of those fantastic times happened at the beginning of our journey, when we first arrived in Victoria, utterly exhausted. Hubby gave away a half a dozen bookmarks, and a block of chocolate to the cleaners. Their leader was so overjoyed she raced off to our cabin and hugged me – she said this: “Nobody ever thinks about the cleaners!” Hey guess what lady?? Jesus always does!! 

Another one happened because the TV and DVD in our cabin didn’t work. So two guys came to fix it and then one of them suggested we all watch some porn to see if it was working now. I laughed and said: “Boy, are you going to feel bad when you find out what WE do!” Then we told him, and we all laughed together! You just never know who the Lord is going to bring along next, like two rough Aussie blokes and 2 weak wobbly little missionaries.

Only a few days ago, hubby took bibles and bookmarks into yet another caravan park office, and after a few minutes talking, he gave the lady behind the desk, a bookmark. She burst into tears and started sobbing: “You just don’t know what this means to me,” she said through her tears. You know, that book mark was not that good, trust me! It’s the Lord!! Jesus wants people to know He loves them, and He’s not dead – He’s alive!

So far, and we are on day 6, we have given away nearly all our bibles, 341 things in 6 days and 3 of those days were hard travel days. And we, Mr and Mrs We-haven’t-got-a-clue, are simply doing whatever He tells us to do. We were able to give that sobbing receptionist one of our books that talks about knowing Jesus, as well as a heap of bibles for that park. Then somebody else came in, which kind of terminated the conversation and changed the atmosphere. The window of opportunity may be very small, but Hubby is brilliant he jumps right through it!

Travelling around by car is difficult, the roads aren’t great to start with! And it means we don’t see a lot of people in a day, as we have to cover a lot of ground between towns … where there are only emus, kangaroos, and deer – would you believe?  Australia is a land with lots of space, so that means a lot of driving. We have driven about 1500 kms, to places that often don’t even have churches. Places where faith is not a part of any conversation, so if you bring up Jesus it usually takes people by surprise. 

The Lord wants to be so much a part of our lives that we talk about Him quite naturally. Like I said to the man when he wanted to play a porn DVD – that we didn’t have (!!!) – “Sorry mate, HE wouldn’t like it.” And I pointed to the ceiling. We need to defer to the Source, first, last and always. Bye 👋.

P 2771 The kingdom of God.

/ DVH

In Isaiah 55:8-9 the Lord said: “My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My plans than your plans.” That kind of clinches it eh? Because it can’t get any plainer than that! We have not got a clue how God operates, and without the Holy Spirit’s help we never will … He is far too complex for us to understand. Aren’t we blessed that He reaches down to us, and shares how He wants us to participate? The Lord has plans for everyone’s good – not just mine. His plan is to save the world … one person at a time … and He wants to use us to do it.

Sadly, at least half of Christianity, at this moment in time, are not even trying to participate in His plans. We pray for His kingdom to come, and then we go out into the world and try to further our own kingdom instead! It is impossible for someone to live in two kingdoms. We are either living for His, or living for ours. And the sad fact is this – we postpone participation in His kingdom, in favour of organising our own. BTW, age does not factor in this reality, Moses was 80 when he started living the life God planned for Him. 

It seems like Almighty God is looking for “Onward Christian soldiers” but most of us want: “The Happy Song.” So, what do we do with the fact that we seem to like “The Happy Song” better? Here’s what I think — I think we can have the Happy Song AND Onward Christian soldiers, when we have learnt to stop allowing this world be the source of our happiness. And we make Jesus, together with obedience, our source of inspiration and action, instead. How do people know I am an Aussie? When I open my mouth! Kingdom people have a different focus in their conversations.

The bible says in Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Seek His kingdom first. That’s not hard to understand! There are apparently 46 scriptures that point out a facet of what God’s kingdom is like. Obviously I can’t list them here, but looking those verses up is worthwhile. If we are going to aim at something it will help us to know what it looks like! We are told to seek His Kingdom first, after that comes the righteousness that only Christ’s death and resurrection can give us. And after that we use our faith and believe what His book says … and …we step out using our faith. Participation in that process means we will get our needs met. 

Most of the time, I have observed when we pray, we feature our own needs. That’s backward. Start with the Kingdom. Seek the kingdom first. Pray like this: ‘Your kingdom come in me,’ OR… ‘I‘present my body as a living sacrifice.’ OR …’Your will, Your way, Lord.’ When we start with His kingdom, a whole lot of unnecessary stuff falls off instantly. It means we’ve put down our little list of needs and wants, and started to focus on Him and what He wants. We need to remember Christ’s position before His Father is now our position. So we live this life, the only one we have, like His kingdom is more important than ours … because it is. Our needs are temporal, His kingdom is eternal.

Here are a few examples of what His kingdom looks like in action: a/ righteousness, peace and joy. We can have these 3 things in the here and now, because they are part of living our new life IN Christ. b/ Being spiritually helpless and ignorant doesn’t cancel His kingdom – it gives us access to it. c/ His kingdom is activated by faith, not knowledge or wealth. d/ It’s a treasure and it’s often hidden. e/ The kingdom of God starts out small but then it grows. f/ It blossoms in us as we embrace it. g/ In His kingdom HE is the ruler. h/ This kingdom is not just a place per se, like heaven! His kingdom comes in a ‘people’ wrapping. You and I, we are kingdom carriers. i/ Final one for me, the kingdom of God is a treasure – it must be sought, dug for, paid for by surrendering every bit of our lives to the King.

Remember, His kingdom is now within us but it needs to be released through us by our obedience to His word. The Holy Spirit is our Helper, He will teach us which way we should go, and how to serve the King. So if we go to school, or work, or to the shops, etc. He goes there with us.  We carry the kingdom of God – what a privilege! Jesus wants to be wherever we are, because He loves us and…He wants to reach the people all around us.. Seeking His kingdom is like seeking the King – the rewards are out of this world. They are priceless. Bye. 👑