Pryer

P 2444 You can never have too much wrapping paper!

/ DVH

1 Peter 4:8-11 MSG “…Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright Presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and He’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!”

My precious mother-in-law used to love to hoard non-perishable items. As she has aged and become less mobile she can’t do that anymore – but boy did she have fun back way back when! She once opened up a cupboard up at her house so I could see inside it, and it was filled to the brim with large packets of toilet paper. There must have been at least 30 large packets stacked neatly inside. As there were only two people in the house at the time, I was kind of astonished. “It was on special,” she said, cheerfully … as if that explained everything!

At the same time she also collected enough Christmas wrapping paper to supply a major chain store … “It’s cheap after Christmas,” she said giggling. All of this hoarding was, of course, meant to be a big secret from my father-in-law … but I strongly suspect that he knew. We could not go to their house without collecting more toilet paper and Christmas wrapping paper than we could fit into our luggage on the return trip home! Somehow, the fact that she thought it was a secret that she successfully hid from her husband, made the whole thing so much more fun.

At the same time, my father-in-law’s favourite gift to his son was undies, and sometimes shoes. We have had some adventures with that stuff too. In the end my hubby had to tell his dad that he didn’t wear spiderman undies anymore – like the ones he wore when he was 10!  So his dad was wasting his money. That raised some eyebrows, because Chinese parents are extremely old fashioned in their taste and my hubby is not!  In the same vein, my father-in-law also occasionally sends hubby a pair of his own very expensive shoes, comfy ones, that he has only worn once or twice. I gather when you come through a war, as they had in Singapore, it makes you very frugal …

…Meanwhile, my own mother was always trying to give me her old clothes. That went on for years, because she was sick of them, but apparently they still had “wear” in them. I was sorely tempted to walk about saying ‘Lifeline’ and ‘St Vincent de Paul’ a lot! The fact that there is 20 years difference in our ages – and taste (!) didn’t seem to matter much to her. In the end, I had to go right past “I’m insulted” to “She’s just being generous and hates waste.” 😂 There could sometimes be a very very long journey between those two emotions, and those times were fraught with a whole lotta angst! 

Now let’s go back to my father-in-law’s almost new, hardly worn shoes.They started an adventure. The Lord told us to take this pair of very expensive shoes with us as we set out on one of our trips. … they were Rockports, BTW. So we stuffed them in the leg space under the back seat and wondered what God was up to now!  We asked Him to point out the new owner when we met them. It transpired that the Lord had His gracious loving eye on a very tall sparrow in a tiny place called Inglewood. In the end, would you believe, those shoes went to a man we briefly met at a cafe as we were passing through?

Incredibly, they were his favorite colour and his exact size! Plus he had prayed in desperation and asked God for a new pair of Rockport shoes for his work, just the night before, because his old ones were falling off his feet! Trust me, you can’t easily buy that kind of specialist shoe in outback Queensland! The man gave his life to the Lord on the spot – he was so excited to meet a God Who answers that kind of prayer. When we thought about it later, we gave almost new shoes that had been previously owned by a Chinese man in Melbourne, to a Middle Eastern man in outback Queensland!!  Go figure!

We will never know where generosity will take us or what it will teach us. Until I read the above verse today I had no idea that God actually approves of this kind of recycling of clothes and goods. All our individual parents were doing, apparently, was obeying the word of God. Who knew? NOT ME! They were just being God’s ‘hearty helpers.’ Then the Holy Spirit kissed the whole thing by leading someone else to Jesus.🙌

The semi-illicit Christmas wrapping paper and copious toilet paper rolls have long since run out, and we no longer get spiderman undies through the mail … praise the Lord! My father-in-law’s old shoes still occasionally turn up via the postman, but the last pair were just perfect for hubby’s very sore feet. 🙌  However the lessons learnt will not quickly fade. Our God loves us to share and be generous with whatever we have at hand. Meanwhile, maybe our parents aren’t trying to interfere. Maybe they too are just trying to be hearty helpers. Bye. 👋🏻

P 2384 Single-mindedness.

/ DVH

I was awake at 3.00am the other day, thinking about Joshua. What an incredible man! Later, as I read about him, I discovered he is often featured as a great example of how to be a leader. Actually, I’m not interested in that angle – I’m pretty sure loads of other people have covered that better than I can – I only have 10 paragraphs or less! Today I’m interested in Joshua as a person who loved God. He’s a great example of someone who decided to follow the Lord, no matter where it led him. 

I want to talk about him because he was incredibly singleminded. That’s a quality we can all use! Some people might call that dedicated. The first thing I asked myself was why did Joshua remain behind in the tent of meeting when Moses left? Here’s what I think, I think this man fell in love with God Himself, after spending so much time in His Presence. This attitude is not something that can be taught, nor can it be enforced. But Joshua shows us that living a life dedicated to the Lord, and valuing His Presence above everything else, is a real, valid, productive way to live. 

It is way too easy today, to think that living a life devoted to our Lord Jesus is a bit too hard. There are just so many forces about trying to drag us away, so it almost seems like ” … it is kind of OK… to just do your best and live as good a life as you can.” Just so long as we go to church, read our bible and pray, then surely that’s OK? Personally, I think that we have an extraordinary God Who deserves our best and I really like the way Joshua thought, and lived. Soaking in God’s Presence produced so much wisdom in this man. It made him humble, reverent and teachable and strong in the Lord. You can read about him here – Exodus 17, 24, 32, 33; Numbers, Deuteronomy, the book of Joshua.

In Joshua’s time he was surrounded by people who preferred EASE. It seems to me that the Israelites expected God to prove Himself by spoon-feeding them whatever they wanted, to win them over. They had been in captivity for hundreds of years, and although their captivity was evil, murderous and dire – it actually actively taught them to be HELPLESS. Does that sound at all familiar??? This God-chosen nation kind of proves, that you can take a man out of Egypt, but getting Egypt out of a man is a whole other ballgame! 

Let’s just kind of pause and look at the words – God-chosen first of all. Yes, God chose us first, yes we are now HIS people, but as you can see from the stories of Exodus, Deuteronomy and Numbers etc. being chosen does not give us a licence to live this life however we want. Being chosen has responsibilities. We do people a grave disservice if we teach them that following Jesus is an all-you-can-eat-or-want buffet! Joshua made some very hard choices and decisions in his life. However, I think deliberately choosing to live in God’s Presence gave this man the tenacity, wisdom and the character he needed. Personally I don’t think these skills can be taught, I think they come as a result of a carefully cultivated relationship with Him. They produce devotion, dedication and single-mindedness. 

The thing is, it is easy to think that leaders are meant to be better Christians than we are. We expect so much from them, while we excuse our own lackadaisical attitudes as “it’s really tough to live in the real world.” (It seems that Joshua also had a family – yet he put God first.  Our first responsibility is to Jesus, and if that isn’t our POV, then what are we teaching our families? When I was a child my mum had an expression, when I hung around a door, often listening in to the grownups. “Come in if you are going to, or go out if you are not – but don’t hover.”  Sadly, today, we seem to have a plethora of drones … people who hover… but never seem to engage.

To me, Joshua is the epitome of “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you!” He sought God’s wisdom and His ways by spending time with Him. In my opinion, you and I can do that through prayer, reading the bible and our obedience to what the Lord said. The interesting thing about those three things is that nobody else can do them for you. Even though teaching, exhortation, or experiences can make you and I want to apply ourselves. I want to offer up a thought that may be a bit offensive to some – postponement of application is actually saying NO! 

There is only one answer to the call of God on each of our lives: “…here I am Lord send me.”  The bible shows us that people like Joshua did that, they lived singleminded lives and they found a whole new way to live. 👋🏻

1 Corinthians 10:11-13: “The things that happened to those people are examples. They were written down to teach us, because we live in a time when all these things of the past have reached their goal. If you think you are strong, you should be careful not to fall.”