Unleaded, Premium or Ultimate?

I had the choice but it was going to cost me. 

It was that time of the week again and I had to fill up my car with petrol but this time things could be different. There were three fuels that I could choose from – unleaded, premium or ultimate and the brochure attached to the number 7 pump told me that if I used ‘ultimate’ I would have ‘more power, more response and better fuel economy’…but it was going to cost me 10 cents per litre more.    

So I gave it a go… I thought that it might just be a bit of a gimmick or something for people who didn’t have anything better to do with their money but I was really surprised!   

Over the next week I could notice the difference… my car had more power, it was more responsive when I put my foot down and I got an extra 50 kilometres out of the tank. The only downside is that if I continue to use ultimate, it is going to cost me an extra $6 per week.  

This reminded me of a similar offer that Jesus made to anyone who would follow Him. 

He said… “I have come that you might have life and life more abundantly!” John 10:10

He is offering the ‘ultimate’ in fuel for your life and guarantees you more power, more enjoyment and a greater ability to function day by day.  

Best of all…it won’t cost you $6 per week…this is a ‘free offer’ to anyone who will take up the challenge.  So, how is your fuel tank going?

VCR’s on the way out

Many of us don’t want to admit it but the VCR is terminally ill and only has a very short time to live.  From 1976 the VCR revolutionised the way people watched television.  It gave them an opportunity to record one program whilst watching another or to go out to dinner with friends and still manage to keep up with what was happening on your favourite show.(It also caused a lot of arguments over who would have the control of the remote!) 

The problem with the VCR was that the copy you made was never as good as the original, and if you made a copy off of a copy then things went from bad to worse.  Another problem was that the tape that you used tended to deteriorate over time.  I know that I looked at our wedding video recently and it had really begun to suffer…white spots and lines that I don’t remember being there on the day (granted it was 20 years ago!). 

Thankfully we have moved into the ‘digital age’ where you can record on a disk or tape and copy it as many times as you like and it will be exactly the same as the original.   

We need to be careful that we don’t settle for a spiritual experience which has just been handed down to us from someone else.  This is a bit like the old VCR.  What is available is a direct link to the original; unchanged and powerful.  Don’t hang onto the old…“…behold, all things have become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 

The iPod

Last year I bought myself an iPod and joined the generation of people who walk around in their own little worlds, occasionally blurting out snatches of songs just like we were suffering tourette syndrome!     

For the uninitiated, an iPod is a small device which stores and plays any audio file you can think of.   The amazing thing about these little gadgets is just how many songs they will hold.  My device has 3771 songs loaded and ready to go.  This is enough music for me to sit and listen for 13 days straight!  

The choice you have is that you can fit even more songs on your iPod if you choose a lower quality of recording.  There is a sliding scale, and with each step the quality goes down but the overall capacity increases.  The problem is that you may, in fact, have every CD you ever owned loaded up but the quality is crackly and gives you a headache.  You have to work out where to draw the line and what you are happy to settle for.   

I think that people’s lives are beginning to reflect ipods…people have the capacity to fit so much in and then they squeeze hard and fit a little more.  The problem is, if we do this, every part of our life becomes ‘compressed’ and its quality quickly disappears.   

Jesus said “I have come that they may have life more abundantly.”  This doesn’t mean compressed and overwhelmed, it means full, fresh and free.  Make room for Him this Christmas and everything else will fit just right!

eBay

I know that I am slow and I hate to admit it but yesterday, for the first time, I made a bid for something on e-bay.  It is so interesting to scan through the pages and see what people are prepared to pay, sometimes for the most bizarre items.  The whole system is geared towards making you bid $1.00 higher than anyone else.  You see an ‘antique toast rack’ and 41 people who are prepared to pay $75 and the question arises “Are you willing to pay $76?” Some items sky-rocket in price and some remain a real bargain.  But the whole system is built upon the fact that people will pay something for just about anything.   

What do you have of value?  Can you put a price tag on everything you own?  What about your time…Do you have an hourly rate in mind? What about your opportunities, your freedom or your life as a whole?  What would you be worth if you put yourself up for auction on e-bay? How many people would bid?  Would you be a treasured jewel or an item on the throw out table?  Unfortunately many of us fail to see our real value. Your real value is based on what someone is prepared to pay to possess you.  “For you were bought at a price” 1 Cor 6:20  The price that Jesus was prepared to pay was everything He owned, everything He commanded and everything He would ever be.  

That is what He paid for you – and that makes you incredibly valuable!

MP3 players

It is a frightening admission to make but I used to own a ‘reel to reel’ tape player, I can still remember 8 track cartridges, I have lived long enough to see the rise and fall of cassettes, the introduction of CD’s and I now listen to most of my music on my MP3 player.This little gadget can fit an amazing number of albums and I can listen to them anywhere, at any time.

How it works is by compressing the digital information into a tiny little space. The trade off is that you loose a little bit of quality and depth in the sound because the compression effectively ‘leaves out’ bits of the message. If you compress it a little then you can’t really notice but if you compress it too much you are left with something that is lifeless and crackling.

God’s message to us is huge. Its fullness is found in both the Old and New Testaments – 66 individual books spaning 1700 years of authorship. It is a great message but it is a lot to take on. Thankfully, God has given it to us just like an MP3…“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

This is the compressed version; you can’t compress it any further. The Lord loves you, gave His Son for you and you have to make a response. You can’t leave any of these out; this is all you need to hear.

What’s your top speed?

Top speed 49.9km/hr, trip distance 7.71km, total trip time 18min 25 sec… My new bicycle computer gives me a readout of all these useful pieces of information and more, but doesn’t make the hills any easier to climb!

I reckon that it would be great to have a set of gauges which tell you how your week is going. A gauge for how well you are doing your job, a gauge for how your relationships are travelling, a gauge for how much sleep you really need, and one for when you are allowed to have another chocolate bar!You might incorporate some warning lights as well, things like a light for when you have done something wrong that you don’t know about, or a light for when you are being used and abused by someone, or a light for when you’re running critically low on reserves and need to take a step back.

How do you judge how things are going? Against what or whom do you rate yourself?It seems that if we look around we can always find someone who is not doing as well as us but then I can also always find someone who is doing better (just like the ‘thin’ people that pass me as I ride my bike!).

I had to calibrate my bike computer to give a true reading and my life needs to be calibrated to be in alignment with God. The only true gauge of who we are is what the Lord thinks of us. How does He rate your life?

i wl B w8ng 4 U @HrsB CU@5 outsd MCDs

People love sending text messages and they love receiving them, it has become one of the most common forms of communication. But with the advent of SMS a whole new language has emerged that we are all trying to get our heads around.

You see, sending an SMS has become quite an art form, where people try to communicate a complex message with as few keystrokes as possible. This is, of course, all part of the game. The Melbourne Age reported that eight out of 12 secondary schools said that students were increasingly using SMS-style English in their class assignments. For instance, some students now spell the word ‘before’ as ‘b4’, ‘night’ as ‘nite’, ‘great’ as ‘gr8’ and ‘with’ as ‘wif’.

We can complain as loudly and as long as we like about the change and degradation of our language but the fact is that in the future we will not know what people are writing about unless we seek to understand them. With a little effort we can keep in touch.

One of the major problems I observe is that people are out of touch, not just with each other, but with God. The way He speaks and expresses Himself has become foreign and His important messages seem like the most garbled SMS.

The Lord has a lot that He wants to say to you. RU redd?

“Give ear and hear my voice, Listen and hear my speech.”

Isaiah 28:23

Computer virus

I didn’t have a high temperature, I didn’t have a runny nose and I wasn’t feeling sick at all.  But the prognosis was clear…I had a virus.

 This was not a virus that could be treated with chicken soup and antibiotics but a virus that had attached itself to my computer.   

My anti-virus software had leaped into action and strangled the beast before it could do what it was designed to do and multiply itself throughout my system and then send itself to unsuspecting members of my email contacts list. 

Viruses are designed to rob you of your personal information (like your credit card number), corrupt important operating files, or in serious cases, completely erase your system.  They arrive unseen and unsolicited; they are the unwelcome companions of subscribing to the “email generation”.   It is important to have some method in place to head off the infection and deal with attacks as they arrive.  

The Bible says that the Devil comes “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” (John 10:10) In our lives he is the ultimate computer virus!  He wants to have influence over you and he can because you are part of the generation that has fallen under the power of ‘sin’.    

Thankfully there is an antidote and His name is Jesus.  He alone has the power to stop the work of sin in your life.  If you fail to let Him work then everything you do, everything you touch, will become infected.  Have you invited Jesus to free you from the virus of sin?

Slower, smaller, simpler

Last week a mate of mine bought a new computer and, of course it was faster, bigger and more complicated than mine.

It was amazing to sit down and watch it do things so much quicker than I had seen before, it was incredible to think about the overwhelming capacity it held and it was staggering to watch the way that it dealt with complicated programs and functions.

The trend in computer technology has always been towards “faster, bigger and more complicated” and I have found that much of our lives seem to get on the same bus. My life is faster than it has ever been, things I have to deal with are bigger than ever before and the issues that I have to wrestle with are more complicated than ever.

When a friend gets a new computer I always feel like I want to go out and get one as well but I stopped this week and asked myself the question. Do I need “faster, bigger and more complicated”?

Is this what your life needs or is it possible that something else might be more beneficial?Slower – “be still and know that I am God” Psa 46:10Smaller – “One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD All the days of my life” Psalms 27:4 Simpler – “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding” Proverbs 3:5

Getting plugged in

Last week I was involved in an outdoors video shoot for a project we have just commenced. On the technical side of things we needed to have access to a portable power source and so we purchased a piece of equipment that we thought would do the job. The problem was that when we put it all together things worked OK but the device just couldn’t provide us with the power we needed. We could run half the equipment but not all of it. We had to tip-toe our way through the day trying not to overload the inverter.

So this week I had a few technical things that I needed to fix up but for me, the most important one was ensuring that I identified and connected to a greater source of power. I needed something that was up to the task and would not let us down.

What power source are you connected to? Is it something greater than yourself or are you just surviving on what remains in your batteries? Maybe you rely on other people, but are they really capable to provide all the support, all the assistance and all the encouragement that we need to get through our lives?

What we need is a strong, consistent and easy to access power source. A power source that has been present ever since the beginning and has never failed and never suffered a black-out!

That power source is the Lord Jesus Christ—are you plugged in?