The PASSION Blog

Have you ever thought about your life goals? I am not talking about specific things you want to do, but more the bigger picture things that you will perhaps be remembered for. I did that a little while ago and I thought I would share a few of them today.

• To live a life that reflects my deep faith and commitment to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
• To be the best husband and father I possibly can be.
  
• To lead people to Christ and to help them to become lifelong followers.
• To be a positive person who encourages those around me and makes a difference to their lives.
• To serve God faithfully until He calls me home.

Have you thought about this before? What are your big picture goals? What do you want to be remembered for?

Over the last few months I have been asked a lot of questions about my external Bible studies I am doing at Tabor Adelaide. Most of the questions have revolved around how do I manage to do it when my family is a homeschool family and we are together most of the time.

When I started external studies I wasn’t sure how it would go myself. One of my concerns was finding the time and space required to study at home. While there was some initial teething problems things seemed to settle within a couple of weeks and a routine started to fall into place.

Generally I start my studies somewhere between 9-10 am each morning. This works well as this is the same time Larissa and the kids start school. I start with my pre-reading for the subject I am doing for the day. As I am doing five subjects I just focus on one each day of the week. In a sense I treat it like my job.

Once my reading for the lecture is done I then listen to the course lecture. Each one goes for about two hours and has a short break about half way. I generally listen to the first half and take my notes and then have a coffee break with the girls as they are usually on a break too. Then I go back and listen to the second half and take more notes.

I listen to the lectures on my laptop as they are all contained on one CD Rom that is set up like a mini website. You just click on the week number according to the lecture notes and work your way through. In many ways it feels like you are in the class as you hear the lecturer and the other studies questions. The only thing is you have to ring or email the lecturer your questions, but they usually get back to you within 24 hours.

In the afternoons I might do some more reading for the subject of the day or if I have an assignment due I will do some planning or writing on that. Generally I am pretty disciplined and start planning my assignments out when I first get them. I don’t like to leave them until the last minute.

Another question I have been asked is about Austudy. Austudy is available for all courses at Tabor as long as you are doing the minimum amount of units/hours required for your course. For those overseas, Austudy is a small fortnightly payment by the Federal Government that helps support students through their courses.

So all in all the external studies have worked out quite well and fit nicely into our family life. As I said I try to treat it as my job and work during the week and take weekends off to be with my family. So far it has worked well. If things continue as they are I am prayerfully considering continuing on next year.

I have been thinking about the adoption process lately. This has been brought on by some of my friends who are going through this process at the moment.

It is amazing how much work goes into this process for the people wishing to adopt a child. There is seminars, study, lots of paperwork, processing fees and lots of in depth interviews. My friends had about seven interviews ranging from three to five hours. It looked at all aspects of their lives and was very intense for them.

When I thought about this I found it had a lot in common with the adoption process we go through as Christians. In the adoption process, the one being adopted doesn’t have to do much. They just receive the people as their new parents and are legally made part of the family. When they become part of that family, they are entitled to all the benefits of being part of the new family.

This is the same as it is when we come to Christ. The Bible tells us that we are adopted in to God’s eternal family in Ephesians 1:4-5. It says, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure”.

Ultimately, like an adopted child we didn’t have to do much to become part of God’s family. We just accepted what Jesus had done for us, confessed our sin and need for Him and invited Him to be a part of our lives. He did all the work so we could a part of His family. I don’t know about you, but to me that is great news!

If you would like to become part of God’s eternal family, please visit our “Peace with God” page.

I found this plugin yesterday for Wordpress that some people with blogs might find useful. If you enter a Bible verse reference in to a page, it automatically picks up on it and links it to BibleGateway.com.

Here’s an example to try. Place your mouse over this verse - John 3:16 (this probably won’t work if you are reading it via RSS feed). A box with the text displayed pops up and if you click on it, it will take you to the Bible Gateway website.

There is also another script that works for verses entered into a normal html page. If you know how to use templates you can add it to your main template and upload the pages of your site to your server and it will start working.

Here’s the link to reftagger where you can try it out - http://www.logos.com/reftagger

I was just over at BillyGraham.org and found an article about a young guy who was bullied at school and felt empty and alone. Another kid from his school invited him to a crusade and it changed his life forever.

It really shows the power that taking an interest in someone can have and how a simple invitation can change someone’s life for now and for all eternity.

If you are interested in reading the article you can find it here . Enjoy!

One of the things my wife Larissa and I have tried to do is involve our kids in our faith and ministry as much as we can. We have never pushed them to be involved as they are only young (10 & 8), but we have allowed them to be present in our prayer times and home groups if they were awake or if they come into the room.

We have done this so they can see what happens in a prayer meeting or home group. Sometimes they see tears, sometimes people are jumping for joy and sometimes the presence of God is so strong that all we can do is sit. Because we have allowed them to be present they see this sort of thing as normal.

One recent example of this is two of my friends were are our house praying (I mentioned this in my post a few days ago here). One of my girls was sitting on a chair listening and watching. She had a huge smile on her face and was soaking it up.

My other girl picked up what was happening and went to the computer and made a book mark with a picture of an Eagle on it. On one side it had Isaiah 40:31 where it talks about wings on eagles. One the other side it had a message from God which really impacted my friend. At the age of ten she ministered to a 40 year old man in a way that really spoke to him.

This happened because we have really tried to live out our faith in front of our kids. We have included them in our home groups and prayer meetings from when they were toddlers. Because of this they see these things as normal, not something weird, and it is natural for them to pull up a chair and get involved as they feel led.

Regular readers of this blog will know I am a person who deliberately takes time out of my days to be a lone with my thoughts and alone with God. I do this to have alone time with God to talk and so I can order my thoughts. To record these reflections I keep a daily journal.

Charles Swindoll has written about this in a short article on Christianity.com. He says this is solitude is vital if we are wanting to grow closer to God. It is worth a read if you have time!

Here’s the link - http://bible.christianity.com/11565368/. Enjoy!

I just had another round of golf. I noticed something interesting in about the guy who was playing on the hole in front of me. He loaded up his ball and tried to smash it all the way to the green every time. Most of the time it went about 150 metres and into the bush. It would then take him 7 or 8 shots to get it in the hole.

Compare this to my game. I hit within my limits and most times my drive landed in the middle of the fairway 170-180 metres down. My second shot was a long iron that either landed in chipping distance or I played another short iron. Most of time I got a par or bogey.

What I found interesting is that while I tried to play within my limits and as a result I scored well. The other guy tried to smash it to score well, but did poorly. I thought about this as I walked around and found that many people have this same approach to life. Some go like a bull at a gate and take life full on, only to stumble most of the time. While others take a measured approach and seem to do well.

Now I am not saying that either approach is better than the other as we are all wired differently, but for me I found both my golf and life seem to go smoother when I take a measured approach. If I rush in and go hammer and tongs things usually go awry, but if hold back and prayerfully consider things they usually turn out ok.

For me, a prayerful, measured, consistent approach to life seems to work best. How about you?

I had a great day yesterday. A couple of my great mates Steve and Big Kev came up from Perth to spend some time with us in Merredin. We played golf, had lunch, talked and prayed. It is the usual thing we do when they come up, but this time the prayer was really focussed.

We took the time to draw aside into God’s presence to pray for each others needs and really speak into each others lives. It was a real encouraging day and a day that left us all buzzing. We had real fellowship with each other and real fellowship with God.

I am so thankful to God that I have these guys in my life. It is a real blessing to know that you have people in your life that stand along side you in the good times and the bad. When things are going great you celebrate together. When things are not so good or a struggle, you pull along side and uphold each other in prayer.

As I type the words from Ecclesiastes 4:10 come to mind. “If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!”

It is amazing how rain can bring hope. Overnight we had 10mm of rain. That is more rain than we have had in one day all year. My wife went out to the local shops this morning and people were buzzing. One of my neighbours even called out across the road and said wasn’t the rain lovely.

It is amazing how much of a difference to people rain can make, especially in farming regions. When we lived in Perth rain was about the dams and keeping the garden green. In country areas it is about livelihoods, families and local businesses surviving. It certainly has changed my perspective on rain and the difference it makes.

Rain brings hope. Hope that crops will come, which means the banks can be paid, families stay on the land and local businesses survive. It really is a domino effect. One that I am only just starting to understand.

If you are a praying person, can you please pray for more rain in the Central Wheatbelt region of WA. Just like hope, many people need it.

God Bless,

Dave