Westy's Weekly Blog

Here at the Gold Coast where we now live, a sporting club recently got itself in trouble with some patrons.   Located near the beach, the place is popular for its contribution to the ‘hospitality industry’.   It’s well patronised at meal times – and there‘s always a goodly crowd of people enjoying their lattes, cappuccinos and smoothies, complete with snacks. So why the fracas?   Well, the club decided that women wearing just thong bikinis were no longer welcome.   Some accused the club of being out of date and appealed for them to lift the ban. Our family spent some ten years in the relative isolation of regional New South Wales and I must confess that coming back to the coast was a bit of a culture shock – particularly at the beach when it came to what is euphemistically called, ‘women’s swimwear’.   It seemed to me as if something in the water caused swimming costumes to shrink. So what’s the problem?   A number of things. First, consider the Bib...

My wife, Merle, and I mark correspondence course Bible lessons for prisoners through an organisation called Crossroad Prison Ministries.   It’s a wonderful program where we often see amazing results.   But mentoring prisoners can also be a little confronting and students do often ask perceptive but difficult questions. A recent lesson from Roy was a good case in point.   Roy’s lesson included a study of Psalm 139.   This Psalm of David begins by highlighting that God knows us intimately and He is everywhere.   David makes clear that we cannot hide from God; nor can we hide anything from God, because, as David puts it, “Before a word is on my tongue, You, Lord, know it completely.”   Psalm 139 also has some beautiful images of God forming us in our Mother’s womb and it reminds us that God ordained all our days for us before one of them even came to be.   Psalm 139 is a favourite with many Bible-readers. However, the closing section of that psalm of...

The young Mum was shocked by a phone call that came out of the blue.   The woman caller said to her, “I have reason to believe you may be my sister by another mother.”   In denial about that possibility she protested the caller must have rung the wrong number.   But the caller was persistent and began describing her Dad in some detail, then pleaded for them to meet over coffee in town to talk further.   By the time Shelly (not her real name) came to talk to me she was in quite a state – not wanting to believe what she’d heard but finding certain pieces of life’s jig-saw puzzle suddenly coming together.   Her father had a demanding job with a big company.   For most of her life he’d been absent at weekends.   He had a shack somewhere out in bush and everyone knew he was a keen fisherman and hunter.   He claimed that his stressful job required him to have weekends alone to hunt and fish so as to enable him to cope with his work.   I met Shelley...

  I wonder whether accountants have a special love for the Bible.   Why do I ask that?   Well, because there are lots and lots of numbers in the Bible.   There’s even a Bible book with that title. The fourth book of the Bible is the book, Numbers.   Amongst other things that book gives us lots of numbers for a census of the people of Israel, tribe by tribe.   That census was conducted just after the Israelites left Egypt.   And then it also gives all the figures for a second census, conducted at the end of their journey as they are about the cross the Jordan River. I once had a Christian work colleague who had become obsessed by the numbers in the Bible.   He was into what is sometimes called Numerology.   He would take numbers from a certain text in the Bible, add them to other numbers, or perhaps multiply them, and then use the result to support some unusual claim he would make about the Bible and especially about bible prophecy.   N...

I wonder if you are happy and contented with your life.   I know that many people are not.   Sadly, there are times when people are so unhappy with their life that they no longer see a way out.   Too many people reach that depth of despair where they then take their own life.   The tragedy is that it doesn’t need to end that way.   There is hope... always... and many people have experienced that.   They have come back from the brink. The Bible offers despairing people the hope of new life through faith in Jesus Christ.   The Bible pictures that in terms of quite a radical change.   The apostle Paul spoke of it as someone being a new person... that the old had gone and the new had come.   I recall reading the story of s a dramatic example of such a change.   Let me share the story with you. It was this month 28 years ago that Karla Faye Tucker died.   But she didn’t die taking her own life – although she perhaps had good reason t...

If you ever doubt God’s willingness or ability to forgive and restore you when you’ve pathetically failed, just read your Bible a little more carefully.   Sure, God expects us to live upright and moral lives.   We are supposed to be people of integrity, reliability and love.   But the Bible is also brutally honest when it tells us that we do fail… that if we say we’ve not sinned we lie and the truth is not in us.   So when you’ve failed badly how certain are you of God’s forgiveness and restoration? Perhaps you readily accept that God converts even the hardest sinners, forgives them and brings them into relationship with Himself.   Examples..?   Well, for starters there’s the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His Kingdom.   And what does Jesus say?   “Today you’ll be with me in Paradise!”   Words spoken to a man being executed for his crimes against God and humanity… to a man who had not been baptised… who...