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Ep 35 Marlene – God is there

June 19, 2019 by FIX-141

Ep 35 Marlene – God is there
A Quiet Life

 
 
00:00 / 00:23:54
 
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Marlene is a new friend to me and as I say in the interview I fell in love with her voice when I heard her read the prayers at church. She has worked as a Speech and Drama teacher and we talk about that work, and about her love for the performing arts. We talk about how the poetry and plays that she works with relate to our everyday lives, and how we can learn from them.

Marlene is now retired, but she finds community wherever she can, and reaches out to people in many different ways – in her own community, in the church, in the local nursing home, and through teaching in U3A.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Sansom

https://www.amazon.com/Witnesses-Clive-Sansom/dp/0416083609

The writing group Marlene mentions is the Creative Space group that I lead on Tuesday afternoons. Feel free to send me an email at ruth@ruthamos.com.au for more details if you live in southern Tasmania.

Alpha is a great training tool for Christians and searchers alike.

 

Marlene Transcript

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Tagged With: Clive Sansom, Community, performing arts, prayer, speech and drama, Teaching, U3A

Ep 33 Margie – Very recent Old Testament stories

June 5, 2019 by FIX-141

Ep 33 Margie – Very recent Old Testament stories
A Quiet Life

 
 
00:00 / 00:37:35
 
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Margie has spent a lot of her life in missions in some quite scary places. We talk about a few of the stories where she’s seen God come through, in her own life, and in the lives of her friends in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We also talk about the importance of prayer, of knowing that God is right there and speaking with you.

Margie is amazingly pragmatic and straightforward. Her faith is strong because it has been tested. Not just overseas but also in her own battle with cancer. She has so many stories to share, and after hearing these few that we had time for, I hope that she writes a book to share more with us.

www.redcross.org.au

www.leprosymission.org.au

 

Margie Transcription

 

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Tagged With: Democratic Republic of Congo, faith, get uncomfortable, God's protection, leprosy mission, nurse, nursing, prayer, protection, Red Cross

Margie Transcription

June 5, 2019 by FIX-141

Today’s guest is Margie. Margie and I have known each other for quite some time, and she has the most incredible stories, so I’m very excited to be able to talk to you today, Margie, and hear your stories. We’ve been actually praying about which of the incredible stories we talk about today!

But we’ll start where we always start, which is: how did you become a Christian?

Well, I was born into a Christian family, and so I was brought up going to Sunday School, going to church, believing there was a God and seeing Him in the things around me, and the people around me. But then, there comes times when it’s like you take another step, another commitment to go deeper, and there were several of those during my life. Different people who have encouraged me, who have challenged me just to take that next step, and to become more and more Christ-centred.

As a teenager I drifted away a bit, but then I came back – I was drawn back. Through Billy Graham on the television, I think. I think that’s what it was. [laughs] Then other steps, by other people – real people sharing their faith with me, and challenging me.

Was there a specific time when you really said ‘Right, line in the sand here – from here on in, I’m with God’?

Not that I can remember, but you see it’s always been there, because when I was – I guess I was only about four, five, six, something around there – I don’t remember this, but my father told me about it. You know when people say ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ and [you say] ‘I’m going to be a princess’ or ‘I’m going to be a fairy’ or ‘I’m going to be’ goodness knows what – not me. I said ‘I’m going to be a nurse and look after little black children.’

Wow.

I know I always wanted to be a nurse.

Had you been reading books about famous missionaries?

I don’t know – possibly some missionary people came to church and talked about mission, or something like that. For one of my birthdays I wanted a little doll, and my gran took me to the shop to buy the little doll. We went to Woolies, and there was a black doll there. And she was horrified because I wanted the black doll. ‘It’s your birthday, you can have the black doll if you want the black doll’ – so I had the black doll. So right from early on, there was something in my heart that God had put there, that made me both want to be a nurse and look after little black children.

That’s so lovely. So you just went straight into nursing when you finished school?

With difficulty. We left England – I was born in England – and we came out to Tasmania right at the time when I’d done my school exams back there, and I didn’t do very well. I wasn’t very good at school; I had a rough time at school. When I got here, when I applied to be a nurse, they said ‘We don’t consider this to be an education certificate.’ My mother was horrified.

So they just didn’t recognise your education at all?

Something like that. It was very strange. So I ended up getting in through the back door – I did the government exam, which proved that I did have a brain, and it did work. I knew of the headmaster of our local school, and also an anaesthetist – a doctor who we’d got to know – and they both put in a word for me. And I was simply told ‘Well, you can do it, but the first exam you fail, you’ll be out.’ And I said ‘That’s alright, I won’t fail an exam.’ And I never did. So I got through that; it was hard, but I always wanted to be a nurse.

Why did your family come over here?

Opportunities, I think. My father was in work that was dead-end, in a factory, just piling more responsibility onto him but no more recognition of that extra work. I think dad could see that there were more opportunities elsewhere. We never regretted it. It was hard, very hard at first, but we never regret coming here.

Good. So, did you work for a while as nurse here in Tasmania?

I started off working in a chemist shop and got the sack after a week. I was just sixteen at this stage. I got the sack because I wouldn’t oblige the fifty-something-year-old man with something more than just serving behind a counter. So I got the sack. So that was okay. Then I worked in a dress shop – this was while I was trying to get into nursing, because you can’t get in at sixteen – and eventually I got into nursing. I did my training here, at The Royal [Hobart Hospital], and then I did midwifery in Sydney, and I did child health in Hobart, and then things were open.

So you worked for a while in a normal setting – you didn’t go straight into missions at that point?

No, no no no, I worked in all sorts of things – casualties, and operating theatres, I was in charge of the burns unit, I worked in chest hospitals in England, and all sorts of things.

So how did your faith show in that sort of situation?

It’s hard to tell. I think there were some things like the not obliging the man at the chemist shop. I think those are the sorts of things that come through, but I think at that stage I was not an outgoing Christian. It was very much something in me, for me. And there’s a difference; it’s not until you get to the point where you realise that what you’ve got is precious and it can be everyone else’s that you think, ‘I should be sharing this. I shouldn’t just be holding onto it.’

So how did you get to that point?

Oh my goodness. I don’t know. I guess it’s just taking those steps further when you’re challenged, and realising that it’s not something you hide, it’s something that you share, and it’s something that you need to show every day. It’s not a Sunday thing, it’s not a, ‘Today I’m going to be a Christian,’ or ,‘in this circumstance I’m going to be a Christian, in this one we’ll just let that slide a little bit, it’s not bad.’ I guess it’s just building up – you get to a point that you want to live as a Christian, you want people to see that you’re a Christian, and you want to be bold enough to actually, at times, challenge what they’re saying or doing and why. I think it’s when you get to that point, that’s when you become an active Christian, that’s when you become a sharing, caring Christian. And people know, and they can see where it comes from. Otherwise they just think ‘Oh, she’s a bit of a goody-goody, she doesn’t do this or she doesn’t do that.’ If they don’t know where it comes from, then that’s how they see it. Whereas if they see that it comes from your belief, and from the way you want to live, that’s when it can be useful to them.

So I don’t know at what point I got to that point. I know that in the 1970s I went to Papua New Guinea – I was on a mission field there.

Which missionary organisation was that with?

Well, it was really interesting because I actually went with the Catholic church. I’m Anglican, but I went with the Catholic church – or, to a Catholic base – because they were the ones that were in that area. Papua New Guinea’s divided up – different denominations have different…

Territories?

Different areas, yes. So you get one whole area which is Catholic, you get one whole area which is Anglican, you get another whole area which is Presbyterian, something like that. I ended up there because I went up there with a doctor, and was offered jobs all the way through, and this was the one that seemed the right one to go to. It was furthest west, furthest north, and about the most primitive I think, of all the ones. So it seemed right.

I was going to ask if you did midwifery there – I’m guessing you did everything there.

Yes, except midwifery – they had their own local midwives, and only came to me when they had troubles, and luckily I didn’t have any too horrific things. But yes, challenging.

So that was your first missions experience, and you’ve been in other missionary organisations as well, so what mission things have you done?

I did go to Afghanistan – not really with a mission, but with Red Cross – so I was in Afghanistan for eight months with the Red Cross. That was a challenge. And then I went to Congo, in Africa, with the Leprosy Mission, and I was there for fifteen years … which was a … challenge. [laughs]

I guess it’s been challenging to come back here after that, as well?

It was extremely difficult. I came back and I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t settle back in, and why I was so … confused, I guess was the word. I went to a retreat, and I was spending time in prayer and reading the Bible and that, and we came together in small groups for prayer. And all of a sudden the Lord made it perfectly plain to me: I was so angry. I was so angry with Australia. The anger that I felt was because in Africa, where I’d been, the people there have nothing and they give the Lord thanks for everything. And here we’ve got everything, and we give the Lord thanks for nothing. That was what was really making me angry.

How did you deal with that?

I just gave it to the Lord and said ‘This isn’t of you.’ I can’t do anything about the whole situation here, but at least by identifying it, I knew where I was standing. ‘Yes, it’s exactly that, so what are you going to do about it? Well, you’d better do something about telling some of the people here who gives them all these good things. Where they come from.’

So how have you done that?

Ooh. Well. I tried getting back into nursing, but it didn’t really work, because by that stage I was starting to get a bit old. It was alright while the girl in charge of the clinics was of my vintage, but when she retired and a young one came along, she really didn’t want any older people working there. So sadly it was some not very nice kind of feelings, that – no. But we get that, because you’ve got the difference between the hospital-trained and the university-trained. So I didn’t go, and as far as I’m concerned it was probably the right thing to do, because I left work then. I was old enough to retire, past retirement age, so I retired. And then I could do what I wanted to do, and what I felt the Lord was showing me to do. And He got me a lot more involved in my local church. I try and do some work with the Leprosy Mission here in Tasmania as well, and all those kinds of things. Relationships. People that I hadn’t had time with a lot of the time I was in Africa, so catching up with them and showing them why I was over there. Even some of my own family, I had to explain to them why I was over there.

That’s fantastic. Do you have stories that you can share with us of your time there?

Oh, so many. So many. So many times when the Lord was so in what was happening you couldn’t miss Him. You really couldn’t. Hmm, some stories… well, there’s a story – I was over there, and while I was over there, there were three wars. I would go through the war, and then they would evacuate me out at the end of it. Which always seemed a bit strange, but that was how it worked. When I went back again – and people would say to me, ‘You’re not going back again, are you?’ and I’d say ‘Well, yes! God took me there, and He hasn’t told me to come home yet, so I’m still there.’ So I went back, and I would talk with the people that I knew, the ones that I’d been working with and those sorts of things, and just ask them, ‘What did God do for you during this time?’ Which has been so hard for them. And the stories were incredible.

When I went back after the first lot of fighting, which was really, really horrible fighting, and I was out for nearly a year, and I went back. And I went through systematically with all the ones I’d worked with and said, ‘What happened?’ And there wasn’t one of them who didn’t tell me what God had done. One of the tricks the rebels used to do was if they found a family walking along the track, they would send the men one way and the women and children the other way, and often the men were not seen again. And they were going along, and this family got up to this thing, and the man said, ‘You’ – to the man, ‘you go that way, and you others you go that way.’ And as clear as anything, a voice was heard saying, ‘No, no, he goes with them.’ And they sort of looked around, but there wasn’t anyone there that they could see at all. And so the rebel just said ‘Oh, well. You’d better go with them then.’ And off he went with the family, and he was safe.

In another instance, the rebels had come into the town, and this family were in their home. Now their homes there are maybe two rooms, with a little kitchen outside. And they were huddled in the room praying for protection, because they could hear the rebels circling right round their house. They’re little mud brick houses with a window, and a door, maybe a second window. They’re there, and they’re praying like mad, and they thought, ‘They haven’t come in.’ And they could hear them saying, ‘Where’s the door? Is the door your side?’ ‘No, the door’s not over this side.’ ‘Well, it’s not over this side.’ And they were going round and round and round this little oblong house, and they couldn’t find the door. Guess who blinded them? Because the door was as obvious as anything.

It’s very Old Testament, isn’t it?

It’s incredible. Another time I was in Rwanda. We’d had to leave because the rebels were coming, and the local soldiers had gone up the hills because they realised if they stayed in the town and there was a big fight, a lot of the people would be hurt, and they didn’t want anyone hurt. So they went up the hills behind, and there was only maybe two thousand of them. And all these rebels come pouring in, you see, and start looking for the soldiers and they can’t find them anywhere. So they just took over the town with no fighting. And I’m sitting across the border in Rwanda, and I hear them say, ‘United Nations went to see where the Congolese army were’, because they knew they were up the hill. And they went to look, and they said, ‘They saw that there was about ten thousand Congolese soldiers who were preparing to come down onto the town.’ And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘No, there’s not ten thousand of them there.’ And no-one could have got there to help, to make ten thousand. There was only one, maybe two thousand. Anyhow, the rebels heard this and took off! They just ran and left. And some of the people from the town actually had to go up and say to the one or two thousand Congolese soldiers, ‘Uh, they’ve left, you can come back now.’ And that reminded me so much of the Old Testament story.

What do you think – and I haven’t given you any notice on this question – what do think it’s going to take for us to have those kinds of stories here in Australia?

Well, first of all, you have to actually expect them. Because, I’m sure many times they happen, but because you’re not expecting God to answer your prayer, or expecting God to act, you don’t see it!

You won’t see the thing as an act of God.

No, you go ‘Ooh, that was a coincidence, wasn’t it? Just as we were doing this, such and such happened.’ No, it doesn’t work like that. If you’re trusting God, then He will do something. And if you’ve got your eyes open, you will see it.

It’s like William Temple (former Archbishop of Canterbury) said, ‘When I pray, I see coincidences happen, and when I don’t pray, I don’t see them happen.’

That’s right. You’ve got to expect them, and when you pray you’ve got to expect God to answer. And it’s usually ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘not now’. In one way or another.

Do you have a story of your own life where God’s answered Yes, No, or Not Now?

I remember when I was about to go overseas, I was very comfortable here. I had a wonderful job that I loved, I was in charge of the burns unit at The Royal, I was doing a lot with children’s accident prevention, I had my own home, my own car… I was fine. And you always have to be careful when you’re fine and comfortable, because that’s when God suddenly says, ‘Now that you’re sitting comfortably and I’ve got your attention, I want you to go overseas.’ And I went, ‘Oh.’ So I madly started looking round: ‘Ooh, it’d be nice to work with children, ooh, what about this organisation, what about that one, they’re nice –‘

Comfortable.

Nice comfortable ones, yes. But the doors were all slammed shut. And I thought, ‘Hmm.’ And I can remember very easily praying one day. And I was like, ‘Lord, you’re telling me to go overseas but everywhere I’m trying, the doors are shut.’ The big word there was, ‘I am trying’, you see? Instead of saying, ‘Lord, where do you want me?’ I was looking for myself. And as clear as He was standing behind me, He says, ‘What about the one you’re involved in?’ And I went, ‘Oh! The Leprosy Mission! Now that’s novel.’ And I asked them, and everything flew open. It was so obvious that that’s where He wanted me. He was just waiting for me to ask Him.

So you worked with people who had leprosy, or is it wider than that?

Yes, there was leprosy, there was TB, and because of the TB there was some AIDS work there, and there was a thing called Buruli ulcer, which is a bit akin to tuberculosis.

So there’s quite some risk there for you – did you feel that you were going into a risky situation?

Well, I was going into Congo, so I was already in a risky situation!

Yes, stupid question, sorry. Daft.

[laughter]
Did you just trust God to protect you, or did you get to the point where you say ‘Whatever happens happens’?

I think when He puts you somewhere, then He’s going to look after you. Because He wants you there. He’s put you there, He’s given you the skills to do what He wants you to do, even if He expects you to keep learning just to keep ahead of those you’re supposed to be teaching. Yes, I see it as I’m under His umbrella. He’s got me protected under His umbrella. It’s when I step outside of that and say, ‘No Lord, I’ve had enough of Congo. I’ve been evacuated twice now, that’s enough, I’m not going back’, I’ve stepped out from underneath His umbrella, underneath His protection. That’s when I’m at risk. Not when I’m under His umbrella. When He told me clearly to come home, I came home. And when I came home and had all my medical checks and things, I found I’d got breast cancer. Perfect timing! There was no way it was going to get diagnosed out there. He has our whole life in His hands, not just the edge bits.

So when do you feel close to God?

All the time, in many ways, because I always know He’s there. I’ve always had this vision where He’s just sitting behind my shoulder. And that I can whisper to Him any time, and He can whisper to me any time. He knows exactly what’s going on; in fact, He knows further than I do. So there’s times when you do feel a bit distant, you sort of feel, ‘Ah, what is it? I just don’t feel I’m close to Him at the moment.’ And I always say, ‘Well, guess who moved?’ You just focus again on Him and pray, and ask for forgiveness for what you think you might have done wrong, or stepping away or whatever, and just ask Him to come back and be very close. Because then you’ve got all your guidance you need, and – you hope – control of your tongue, and your actions, and those sorts of things when He’s really close.

What’s one thing about God or Christianity that you wish everyone knew?

Oh, I wish everyone would know that God loves them, and that He’s there for them. Because so many people are so anxious and so looking for the answers for everything, and it’s right there! If only they knew about it, if only they would accept it, but it seems to easy just to accept. It’s not too easy, that’s the way he’s made it, so that by accepting Him, knowing who He is and what He’s done for us, then He’s ours, and we’re His. And together we are His hands, His voice, His feet here on Earth. We’re the ones that are going to tell other people about him, and that sort of thing. So many people just spend their whole lives looking, looking, looking, ‘What have I got to do? I’ve got to do all these things so that I please God’, or, ‘do all these things so He doesn’t get angry with me.’ Whereas if you just accept Him and have a beautiful relationship with Him, like you do with a really special friend, then it’s a beautiful thing. And you don’t have to be anxious all the time.

We’re out of time, but I want to ask – what would you tell the Church? What do you want the Church to know?

Not to get too tied up in rules and regulations and divisions. It doesn’t matter which Christian denomination you are, we’re all one family, and we should just be enjoying that and being together like a family. Families have differences and things like that, but they still are a family.

That’s lovely. Thank you very much for sharing with us. I could talk to you for ages, but I probably should bring it to a close! So thank you so much for sharing with us today. It’s been a blessing.

You’re most welcome.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Democratic Republic of Congo, faith, getting uncomfortable, hearing God, nursing, Papua New Guinea, prayer, protection

Ep 26: John — Take the next step

April 16, 2019 by FIX-141

Ep 26: John — Take the next step
A Quiet Life

 
 
00:00 / 00:34:45
 
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John Zeckendorf shot to fame by being the first Tasmanian to climb Mt Everest. He has talked in many venues about his experiences, but I wanted to learn more about the rest of his life.

John tells us how breaking up your relationship with a non-Christian may just be the way to bring them to Christ.

We talk about witnessing to Jewish people, witnessing in the workplace, and praying those special conversations in to being. And we also talk about the many ways that mountain climbing is a metaphor for life.

Romans 7:19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

John Transcript

 

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Tagged With: Climb Mt Everest, discipleship, love is an act of the will, Messianic Jew, Mountain climbing, Mt Everest, prayer, witnessing

John Transcript

April 16, 2019 by FIX-141

Today’s guest is John, John became really famous here in Tasmania when he was the first Tasmanian to climb Mt Everest and all the seven peaks. So that was all he could talk about for the next year or so.

It was all anybody wanted to hear.

I think there’s more to you than that so I’m excited to hear more about your life. John and Jo have four children, one of whom recently got married.

Very exciting!

Amazing times.

So how did you become a Christian?

I grew up in a Jewish family. So I was actually raised, not a religious Jewish family, more a cultural Jewish family. So I did my Bah-mitzvah, went to Sunday school. We heard all about God, but really in the sense of ritual and history. There was no relevance to your life today other than a whole pile of rules and traditions.

But that was pretty empty for me, and I think for a lot of people. And so it didn’t really mean anything to me.

About when I was sixteen I met a wonderful girl who was a Christian. We started dating, I stalked her was probably a more appropriate description. For those of you who know her, this is about Jo. Some people often wonder.

And basically we’d argue, because I like to argue, and she thought she was witnessing to me. And that didn’t quite work out the way she’d planned, and after a number of years she decided, ‘This isn’t going to work out. I can’t marry you if you’re not a believer, therefore, goodbye.’

So that was kind of the slap across the face that I needed. I went to work. I complained to all my colleagues about this crazy Christian girl who dumped me because I’m not a Christian. And most of them said words to the effect of, ‘That’s OK, you’ll find someone else.’ And one of the managers I had a lot of respect for said, ‘She’s absolutely right, shut the door and let me tell you why.’

So basically he explained, not so much the gospel to me, but he explained why it was important. And he said, ‘Look, Jesus makes some outrageous claims. If they’re true, they’re important. If they’re not true, who cares? But if they’re true, they’re important.’

So I kind of wrestled through that for a long time. And then decided, ‘OK, I’d better find out whether they are true.’ So I wrestled with mostly Old Testament prophecies. How do we know what the Messiah will look like? Because God started telling people about that hundreds and thousands of years before Jesus came. So what does that look like? What do we know about him? What’s his job description? All of those sorts of things.

So about six months of wrestling through the Old Testament and I became a believer in my head. I decided that Jesus was who God said. He fitted the job description. And in a way that pretty much nobody else can.

So that was where I first decided to become a believer.

And then a few months later, I don’t know how long we’ve got, but if we’ve got hours I’ll tell you the whole story.

So that’s when I became a believer in my head. Sometime after that I became a believer in my heart, when basically I was abseiling down a waterfall, in the middle of winter, with no wetsuit, on a flooded river, just outside Canberra. So what could possibly go wrong in that scenario?

And as I was at the bottom of the waterfall I nearly drowned. And I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to drown, I’m under the water, I’m not going to get back up, I’m trapped here.’ And I thought, ‘Oh well, there’s that Jesus thing, maybe he can help.’

So it wasn’t like a ‘Jesus, help!’ It was just as calm as, ‘Oh well, if you’re around, then maybe now would probably be a good time for you to intervene.’ It was very calm.

And I got spat out of the waterfall that I was pinned under, and managed to come back up to the surface and take a breath. And I realised that God isn’t just true in history. It’s not just something that happened and so what? I realised at that moment that he actually wants a real relationship with us, right here, right now in our lives. And that changed absolutely everything. So I would say that was the moment I got filled with the Holy Spirt if you what to use ‘charo [charismatic] talk’. Or that was when I really discovered, not just about God, but who he is. And we could start building a relationship then.

I have many questions. I think it’s interesting and wanted to comment on, there’s so many girls, but also guys I think, who go out with someone who is not a Christian, and who think that by going out with them, they can make them a Christian. What I find interesting about your story is, hey everybody, by dumping them that may be just the thing that you need to do.

When did you and Jo get back together in that process? Was it after you had made the ‘head decision’? I really wonder what she was going through while you were doing your searching?

She was pretty skeptical, I mean she knew I was searching because she was attending a Messianic Jewish group, like a synagogue, at the time. So she knew I was searching because I was talking with the Rabbi there, and a few other people from there, plus a whole bunch of other people.

And I think over probably a 6-month or 8-month period, she could see the nature of my questions was changing from just arguing for the point of arguing (which I still do) to actually he really wants to find out the answer here, and he’s wrestling.

So I think her prayers were changing from vague, ‘Lord, one day, please get him saved’ type stuff to ‘Lord, now he needs to see you, now he needs to find this, and he needs to understand this, and he needs to see your plan and how it unfolds over history.’ So she was very much part of that journey. We weren’t dating again, but she was very much part of that journey. And we probably had the same discussions we’d had a hundred times earlier, it was just that this time I was listening.

And how did your parents cope?

Look I handled that really well. So I was about 18 or 19 at the time.

I’m laughing because of the expression on John’s face.

[laughter]

For the benefit of the camera (laughs).

So I told them pretty much in the same sentence that I’d become a Christian and that Jo and I were engaged. So none of this easing in gently-type stuff. It was literally both barrels, straight away. So yeah they took it about as you can imagine.

When your little baby child suddenly says they’re getting married, it’s like that scene out of Father of the Bride, where they hear you and see you as a five year old still. And look, they had all sorts of reservations about it. They thought, two young people, it’s never going to work. And my sister was actually going through a divorce at the time, and if it didn’t work for her, it’s not going to work for you …

So Jo and I have now been married for 28 years. My sister’s marriage was about 13 or so. So we’re well past that. And even now, my parents begrudgingly have to accept that Jo was actually a really good choice.

Grandchildren help.

So yeah, they didn’t take it well.

They haven’t come to the Lord?

No. So we’d better hurry, Dad’s 96 now, and Mum’s nearly 86. So we’re still praying. It’s only been 30 years for them so that’s still early days.

Well, considering the amount of time before that. Yes.

And sadly, there’s a bit of history there too. God says to Isaiah in Isaiah 6, go and tell the people, but guess what? They’re not going to listen. And it will be right in front of them and they won’t see it, and they’ll hear it but they won’t understand. And sadly that veil that he talks about is still around.

So if anyone listening to this is witnessing to Jewish people. It takes a lot longer than it does for most other people groups, and it is really hard work, and it does require, I think, God to lift that veil. And I’ve heard Rabbis talk about the Messiah and they’re talking about what he’ll look like and you’re just like, ‘How are you missing this? You’re describing stuff, you’re literally describing Jesus, and nobody else. And how could you possibly miss that?’ It’s like the pantomimes—‘It’s behind you!’

[laughter]

Cool. What do you do for a job?

Oh yeah.

So I overheard Nathaniel, our son, talking to his friends when he was about 16 and the usual question of, ‘What does your dad do?’ And Nathaniel said, ‘I’m not sure, but he seems to swan around the world  having cups of coffee with people in hotel lobbies. Which, upon reflection, was remarkably accurate.

A few years later I took him on a road trip with me and he actually came around and saw what I did, and I asked him afterwards, ‘was that good?’ And he said, ‘Oh it’s awesome, it’s awesome, I got so much a better idea of what you do.’ I said, ‘Oh so what is it you think I do?’, ‘I still have no idea.’

[laughter]

So my daughters are convinced I’m a spy because I travel a lot at short notice.

What I actually do is, we run a bunch of different businesses. So some of those businesses, we own and operate regional hotels. So that’s what’s currently getting me travelling around. We used to do real estate development in India. We’ve got an IT company and we do a whole bunch of other weird stuff.

Just international man of mystery is the call sign.

I remember when I was a kid I had this real desire to know what happened in an office. And I’d ask people. And that’s the response I’d get, ‘Ah, don’t worry about it.’ I’d be like, ‘this mystery thing that my dad goes and does.’ Robin Legg was his secretary and I’m just like, ‘Tell me what happens!’ I’m getting the idea now.

It must be good because you spend so much time doing it.

I can’t actually stand an office and I’m not very good at paperwork, despite being an accountant. I’m an accountant by training but I’ve never actually worked as an accountant.

So it’s more people management?

Situation management. So all my early days I was actually doing insolvency in the late ‘80s early ‘90s. So that was a fun time to do insolvency. A lot of the corporate work we do at the moment is crisis management. But not, ‘My IT system burnt down.’ It’s more, ‘Oh dear, my banking system burnt down.’ So a lot of our specialism is in finance and things that we haven’t really needed in Australia for some time, but we may do one day.

So how does your faith show in that kind of work?

I think a lot of people tend to split faith [and say] I have my secular life and I have my sacred life. And they’ve taken the instruction, well, it wasn’t really an instruction, I think they’ve misunderstood the separation of church and state. The idea of that wasn’t to stop the church polluting the state, it was to stop the state polluting the church. And I think these days we understand it the other way around and we try to interpret it in that way and it just doesn’t work.

Jesus doesn’t say, ‘Give me your Sundays and maybe Wednesday nights or maybe Friday nights.’ What he says is, ‘I want everything.’

So everything we are belongs to him and he’s paid the price for that and he’s entitled to it. And it’s a gift we give, it’s the only thing we can give, willingly back to him.

I think a lot of people try to split those things and for me there’s no separation in that. Being in the secular world allows me to access people that professional ministers could never go near. Because they have to deal with me, that’s part of the business, they either work for me, in which case they really have to deal with me, put up with me, or they’re our suppliers or people we have relationships with. So that gives me an ability to access those people in a very natural way and be able to bring Jesus to them.

Because they’re probably never going to walk into a church of their own free will. That’s most of Australia these days. An incredible number of people don’t know anyone who knows Jesus anymore. It used to be true but I don’t think it’s true now. On the census more than half of Australians ticked the box saying, ‘Yes, I’m a Christian’ but what they mean by that is radically different to what I mean when I say, ‘I’m a follower of Jesus.’

So I think it’s really important to be in the secular world. When we think our ministers are called to full-time ministry, the answer is, ‘No. We’re all called to full-time ministry’. They just serve in a different way. I think that’s true for all of us. That’s our job.

So do you find that you have deeper conversations with people?

Sometimes. I think it’s like anyone, you end up with a spectrum of responses and that changes over time depending on what they’re going through in their life.

I love climbing mountains, and one of the things I’ve discovered is the best time to talk to people about Jesus is on the way back down. Because they’re a lot more relaxed. They’ve finished with it. If you try to get them on the way up …

And I think that’s true in every part of life. You’ve got to find the right moments where the Spirit has opened a softening in their hearts and they’re ready to hear. I think if you get that wrong it’s ‘pearls before swine’ and you can give the best Gospel presentation you’ve ever given, and it goes absolutely nowhere because the timing’s not right.

And that’s why you can’t set up a cup of coffee and say, ‘Let me tell you about Jesus.’ It takes quite some time to get to the point where you might be able to do that.

It’s the building of relationship, it’s the showing of integrity in your work practices, and all that.

If we’re doing it right, and I frequently don’t, but if we’re doing it right then we should be shining Jesus’ light, a lot like the manager that was in the right place at the right time to have the right word to me when I was ready to hear it. He probably said fifty other things that I’d completely missed before that. It was when he was in the right place at the right time.

One great story on that, we had a friend and I were both fairly full-on Christians, we were working in a big accounting firm, and our department had 34 people on the internal telephone list. We were just a small department in a much bigger company.

Once a week we would sit down and pray for everybody on that list for opportunities. And within three years, by the time my friend went off to Bible college, three had become Christians, we’d had meaningful conversations with all of them except the Head Honcho and he was really hard work. We’d both tried and he was hard to access and we were too far down the food chain for him to pay any attention.

And then, I think it was when his wife had just died, my friend had gone to Bible college, and I was sitting on an airplane coming back from a meeting with him, and he said to me, ‘You knew Craig pretty well.’ Craig was the other guy.

I said, ‘yeah.’

He said, ‘I just don’t get why he left a promising career to go and join the church and become a minister.’

So we got our opportunity in.

About six months later I called up Craig and said, ‘We got him.’ The last one on the list.

Awesome.

So he didn’t become a believer but he was ready to hear the word at that time.

And I think what’s so cool about that story is the prayer that went into it beforehand. Because I just see that all the time, if you’re not praying, it can’t happen. You’ve got to pray in, first. And then be listening.

Absolutely. There’s stuff we can do and we’re told to do. And there’s stuff we can’t do and we’re told we can’t do. And understanding the difference will save you a lot of frustration. So if you’re trying to force it in your own timing, or when the person’s not open to it, it is literally going to be, at best the seed will be scattered, but it’s most likely to be pearls before swine.

But when they’re ready to hear it, it’s totally different. So what changes that? The Lord does. And that’s really the Holy Spirit. And if you can pray that into people, say, ‘Lord I want those opportunities. I don’t have to give them ten points of the Gospel all at once, I just have to get one thing across to them.’

Quite often I think we go for the slam dunk, and we’re looking for the close, but our focus then becomes on trying to convert people, rather than disciple them. What we’re really trying to do is disciple people. And that’s maybe a distinction we forget sometimes.

So you mentioned mountains. What do you enjoy about climbing mountains?

Mountains are awesome. First of all, up until recently, no mobile phones or internet connection on them. So it was actually a really great way of getting away and getting some really good quality thinking time.

When I was climbing in Alaska we were there for about four weeks. I read through about two thirds of the Bible. Didn’t have time to finish it off. And I was praying for about six to eight hours a day. I just don’t get that at home, and I don’t get that in my normal life. I don’t think most of us do. So I love that bit about it.

I love the physical challenge of it.

I love being out in God’s amazing creation. That can be the back garden, but in the back garden we don’t get the ice crystals that you can see up on the mountain. You don’t get the staggering beauty that comes in the mountains.

I can get that in mountains, I can get it in rivers, it doesn’t matter where, but I do like high places.

You like the challenge as well?

I love the physical challenge of it. A lot of people think, ‘I couldn’t possibly do that.’ And the answer is, ‘You probably could, it’s just it’s a lot of hard work.’

A lot of that comes down to, are you prepared to put in the work? How well do you plan? I like that. I’ve got a seven-year goal, rather than I’m trying to work out what I’m doing tomorrow. So it’s nice to actually work towards a bigger goal. And then think, ‘Gee I don’t know if I can actually do that, but let me find out.’

Most people already assume that they can’t do it so they stay on the couch and they never actually give it a go.

Despite all the pain I’ve put my body through, I’ve never had my body fail yet. So I’m still well back from the edge of what I can physically do.

Actually, that’s not quite true, I got sick on my last climb and had to stay in bed. But apart from that.

Yeah that was a shame.

Well it was yes, but that’s OK. It was still pretty beautiful up there and still a great experience.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I always tell people that Moses went up the mountain to talk to God, and Jesus went up the mountain to be alone with God, and therefore I’m going up the mountain to be with God. To some extent that’s true. You discover things about yourself and about depending on the Lord in a high-stress situation that you probably won’t in regular life. But for some people, their high stress situation is their regular life. There are plenty of people who have climbed much bigger mountains than I have, just not physical ones.

When did you start climbing?

Actually climbing, about seven years ago, or eight years ago.

So it’s not a childhood thing?

Well I’ve done outdoor stuff all my life. I grew up in Scouts and learnt all the ropes (haha). I learnt about climbing and did a lot of abseiling, a lot of canyoning, a lot of quiet technical abseiling.

But we, my son and I were invited on a medical clinic in India, and we went three years in a row to help out some doctors, with crowd management, and entertaining the children in Nathaniel’s case. We went up into the Himalayas and did a series of medical clinics in remote villages as part of a trek into the base camp of Kangchenjunga (which is the third highest mountain).

And I’d heard about climbers, I’d seen the photos, and I’d never really got it. And we got to base camp at Kangchenjunga at the end of this valley that we’d been helping people up, and just stared up at the mountain. Just up. Wow. That’s big!

So that’s where we thought maybe we should give this a go.

So Killimanjaro seemed like a good idea, so we started with that. And then realised we’d now done two of the seven summits so we thought maybe we should have a hack at some others.

Cool.

So basically one big climb a year and occasionally one and a half.

Nice.

I think you’ve probably mentioned some already but I had my question written down so lessons about climbing, or lessons that you’ve learned from climbing, that we can apply to our lives if we’re not climbing.

I think everybody climbs. One of the questions I love interviewing people with, when we’re looking for senior staff (it doesn’t work so well with junior staff), you say, ‘When did you do something you thought you couldn’t do? And what happened when you got to the other side of what you thought you couldn’t do?’

And that’s a very true analogy for climbing. You think you can’t climb it, and then you realise it’s about just taking the next step, never mind the big picture, never mind the huge mountain in front of you, just keep taking the next step until there’s no more next steps to take, and you’re on top.

It sounds easy, but that’s an awesome metaphor for life.

Now some of those steps, as you step up, you slide back down. And that’s very true on mountains, they’re often slippery, they’re often covered in soft snow, or scree, or things like that. So you step up, slide back down, and sometimes you slide back down more than the step you just took.

I think that’s an awesome metaphor for life as well.

A lot of people really, we struggle in our faith, and some days we go, ‘Wow, that’s awesome, I’m on cloud nine, I’ve just had twenty minutes of awesome quiet time and I’ve read the Bible and all that sort of stuff.’ And that’s great, but not all days are like that.

And I think some days we disappoint ourselves. As Paul says, ‘We do what we know we ought not to do, and we don’t do what we know we should.’ And that’s like the sliding back down.

So I think there’s all these metaphors in climbing that are actually really good. And help you maybe understand a bit more about life, but also about your faith and where that’s coming from.

There’s a teamwork thing too, I’m guessing?

There is. Who you go with is a massive, like a big rule for life, and a big rule for [climbing]. So if I hang around with the wrong people all the time, the odds are on, I’m not going to change them, they’re going to change me. So particularly we look at our kids and say, ‘You’ve got to watch who you’re hanging with because you think you’re having a positive influence on them, but more likely they’re just going to change your view and drag you away from the Lord.’

So there is a danger in that.

I have climbed with the wrong teams and I strongly suggest you don’t do that. We were both unsuccessful, and it wasn’t a fun trip.

We’ve had other trips where it was unsuccessful but it was still good.

We’ve had other trips where it would have only been possible because we had a great team.

One of my climbing friends said, ‘Some days you put into the group, and some days you need to take out from it.’ And it’s true. If you’re having a bad day then somebody else carries a bit of your luggage, that makes a big difference. Other days you’re feeling strong and they’re not so you carry a bit of theirs. That teamwork can make a huge difference.

Absolutely. So you’ve talked about praying for six hours on the mountain climbing. Are there other times apart from on mountains when you feel close to God?

Um … I’m too busy to, most of the time.

I think we often get overruled by our feelings and I think that can be quite dangerous. I think the love we’re called to have for Jesus is the same love I think we’re called to have in our marriages. And I think a lot of people have this idea of, ‘I have to feel in love’. The command is to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and so on and that’s actually an instruction, not a feeling. The Bible talks about different types of love and there’s three different Greek words for it, and one of the Greek words is agape, which is a committed love. It’s a love that is an act of will, not just a feeling. It’s not an emotion, it’s an act of will.

I think we often expect to feel on cloud nine all the time, and as somebody pointed out, there’d be no mountains without valleys. So you really need to put those two things together and say, ‘I may feel like I’m close to God, but that’s a feeling, I need to push in to God regardless of whether I feel like I’m close to him or not, and I need to make a conscious decision to do that.’

And sometimes that means overruling what the world says and not being like the rest of them. And sometimes that overrules how you’re feeling, ‘I don’t feel like it, I’m so tired.’ Yeah, that’s probably when you need God more.

And sometimes you come under spiritual attack as well. So I think all these things are screaming at you. ‘Go a different way.’ And that’s the time when you most need to press in to God. It doesn’t matter whether you feel like it. I think the feeling comes sometimes afterwards.

What’s one thing about God and Christianity that you wish everyone knew?

Jesus.

[laughter]

It’s the only thing.

I think that’s one of the Sunday School questions where every answer has to be Jesus.

It’s Christianity isn’t about what you do, it’s about what God has done. And you’re not reaching out to him, he’s reached out to you. And he’s made that possible through Jesus.

Great analogy of, I go to a restaurant, I eat a fantastic meal, but I’ve got no money, and Jesus comes along and picks up the tab. And that’s kind of what we do with our lives. We don’t follow God’s way, if God’s completely holy and he’s like the white sheet, and we come along as a black speck. We can’t be close to him because our black spec will make the white sheet not white anymore. And so the only way we can come close to him is if we’re basically bleached white and that’s pretty much what Jesus does.

So we think we’ve got to earn it. We can’t. The Bible makes that really clear.

We think we’re entitled to it. We’re not. What we’re entitled to is to be a black speck. And to continue that.

Jesus is absolutely the thing that changes it. What we do with it after that gets really tricky because I think we often aren’t very good at following Jesus. And we forget the basics and we don’t continue to grow and learn. And we just stagnate.

So seek Jesus always.

If you don’t know him, definitely seek Jesus.

If you do know him, keep growing that relationship. It’s like any relationship, if you don’t talk to your wife for six months, it’s probably not going to be a good relationship. So why do we expect any different with prayer?

Do we pray to God? Do we do that regularly? We’re told to do it without ceasing. That’s an awful lot. But do we do it really regularly?

I caught myself the other day and thought, ‘I need to pray before every meeting I go into’. And I’ve just been doing that in the last week or so. It’s amazing what a difference it makes!

Who’d have thought?

So it’s really basic stuff that we just forget to do. We think, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll deal with that on Sunday’ or ‘I’ll pray on Sunday’ or ‘I’ll go to Wednesday night prayer meeting’ or whatever. But it’s an all-the-time relationship, and if you don’t invest in that relationship, it’s probably not going to mean much.

That was a very long answer, sorry.

No, no. It was a great answer.

Well that’s the end of my questions.

Thank you very much for sharing with us John, that was great.

A pleasure.

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Filed Under: Podcast Transcription Tagged With: climbing, discipleship, discipling, Judaism, Messianic Jew, Mountain climbing, Mt Everest, prayer, witnessing

Ep9: Kerry – I’m where God wants me, in childcare

December 5, 2018 by FIX-141

Ep9: Kerry – I’m where God wants me, in childcare
A Quiet Life

 
 
00:00 / 00:33:57
 
1X
 

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Kerry shares with us a little of her life as a Family Day Carer. She shares how she sees the hand of God at work in her life and how she depends on God for all aspects of her life: looking after the children, and also in her personal life.

Kerry’s verse is 2 Samuel 22:33 ‘God is my strength and power and he makes my ways perfect.’ In my NIV it is ‘It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure.’

And her prayer is, ‘Lord I know you are my strength and power and you are going to make my way perfect.’

Transcription:

Ep9: Kerry Transcription

 

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Tagged With: answered prayer, Christmas, Easter, evangelism, Family day care, freedom, funny child stories, like a little child, prayer, Walk the dog

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