An uncle of mine who never married, took over the family farm after his siblings left. He farmed well for 20 years but after my grandmother died, he began to experiment with alcohol. A few years later, he was addicted. Whenever we drove up to the farm, my uncle was standing in his tractor shed bottle in hand. Beer bottle lids littered the ground and empty cases were stacked up behind the tractor. He seemed happy enough and no doubt would have said that he felt free, but everybody else could see that he was losing touch with life and reality. A few years later he became ill and died with liver disease. My uncle never imagined that something he enjoyed initially, would kill him in the end.
NZer’s will be asked to vote soon, in a referendum on the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill. Marijuana is called by all, a psychoactive drug, which means it has the same mind-altering effects as alcohol.
My mother’s advice to me when I was a teenager was simple. " Don’t waste your money on beer or tobacco" Like a lot of teens, I tried them both. She went on to say “ but if you going to choose one, make it smoking because you will only kill yourself, but if you drink you could kill someone else as well”, referring to drinking then driving. If my Mum had thought I would encounter marijuana, it would have been on the list too!
In my teens, I had a friend who was a rich kid. We took his father's 24-foot Mason clipper out for the weekend to Mansion house. As he puffed his joints (I didn't partake because I heard my mother's voice in my head. Good on ya Mum) We arrived too late at night and drove too fast amongst the anchored boats, causing a lot of shouting from the other boats. Enjoying his high, he then got out his spear gun and shot it into the water amongst the boats. Really sensible behaviour! That was in the 70s but the new laws will proudly limit the THC content for smoking, at 15%, initially. Which is 5 times higher than it used to be in the 70s (Think Woodstock).
Under the proposed new laws, every person can grow 4 plants at home, which is enough for 33 joints per day, every day of the year. Plenty for all the family and maybe something new for family night! I don’t think this will help our poorer children break out of the poverty addiction cycle.
There may well be some beneficial use of THC for medical pain relief (This is a separate issue), but in countries where cannabis has been legalised like Canada, edible marijuana flooded the markets encouraging new users, especially young people. Great! A pillar of sickly smoke going up in the playground would be obvious but a lolly party under the jungle gym, not so much. Teens won’t need to worry about stained teeth or bad breath, they can have a lolly!
The Greens and those hoping to make money from the legalisation will tell us the benefits of making it normal, but I prefer to read what medical doctors say that have no vested interest. Web MD says smoking will give you a high relaxed feeling but also may leave you panicked, depressed and eventually even paranoid. (seeing and hearing things that aren't there).
One in six teenage users will become addicted and even more frightening, imaging tests on adolescents, show that marijuana can physically change the brain and reduce the number of neural connections. This makes it hard for them to think, remember and concentrate. Why would we even think about making that normal? Years ago, one drug-taking relative had a
meltdown - I led him to the Lord but in the morning he remembered nothing of it.
Doctors say it can heighten your senses, but it can damage your motor skills and impair your judgment when driving or working. And edible MJ lasts up to 6 hours in the body’s system. I would want to know that my dentist, pilot and co-road users, have not been on the weed. People may be given the right to mass-produce and consume dope, but as my long-gone Mum said, it will end up hurting others.
But doesn’t everybody want to experience some sort of transcendency? To be more; to feel like their life is bigger than themselves. Yes! Alcohol and substances that alter states of consciousness can do that. So can sports, hobbies, bungee jumping and being in love. They result in powerful hormones, like adrenaline, dopamine, and beta-endorphins. But true transcendence (experience beyond the physical level) must be a spiritual experience.
Jesus spoke to a woman from Samaria who was looking for some transcendence in her life. She tried to find it by filling the emptiness of her life, with men. And Jesus understood. Jesus has no problem with people looking for “more”, but with the places or things in which people look for it.
Like the woman at the well, some people don’t know how to find Life in all its fullness, so they look for “more” in all the wrong places. When the Samaritan woman had the spiritual understanding that Jesus was the Messiah, she left her vessel and left her men, because she finally had met the More!

On the National program this week, Siouxsie Wiles was talking about misinformation around coronavirus. Apparently, YouTube decided to research the most popular searches about Covid-19 and found 67 YouTube videos that contained misinformation. They had been viewed 250 million times and Facebook and You-tube decided to delete some of this "misinformation".
Siouxsie, a spokesperson for our government, went on to define misinformation, as all information that is contrary to the World Health Organisation. So, currently, any different perspective, given by even qualified experts and doctors, on any matters of health, viruses or vaccines, are classified as misinformation.
In the UK recently, David Icke a man who questions the global narrative, had his YouTube channel deleted. A vaccine specialist Dr Judy Mikovits has her million-view video deleted by You tube. A businessman in the UK, Brian Rose, had the biggest YouTube livestream in history, (over a million people) but with prospect of being deleted by Google, has had to form his own channel called LondonReal.tv. So, what Facebook and YouTube do not agree with, they delete.
Alternative viewpoints are not necessarily right, but if we only have access to the permitted viewpoints, we may never know the full truth about anything. Without free access to information, someone else decides what is true and what is false for us. This is the thin edge of the wedge, for freedom of speech on those platforms. Eventually they may decide that the message of salvation through Christ alone, is misinformation or harmful speech.
As private companies, YouTube and Google are free to ban everything they don’t like but the Church does not need them, to get the job done - Paul and the Apostles didn’t.
With or without You Tube, the freedom to share ideas, ideals, and ideology, is critical to human progress and social good. Society can only progress in technology and understandings generally, by the free flow of information. If Copernicus ideas had been successfully shut down by the rulers of the day, we would still believe that the earth is the centre of the universe. If Wilberforce had been silenced by the godless masses, who knows how much longer, black people would have been taken as slaves from Africa.
Free speech is necessary to challenge the dominant culture (political or religious), which often assumes its own correctness. As people did in Poland in the late 80s. Without it, we have only the beliefs of past teachers, parents, or governments to follow. Muslims must be free to share their religious thoughts and Christians must be free to share theirs as well.
Even the United Nations say that every person has the right to investigate religions and philosophies and convert. If there's a God more amazing than Jesus, (who fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, who walked on water, raised the dead and then rose from the dead himself, declaring that he had defeated death and reconciled us to God), I would want to be able to hear about it.
Thankfully in New Zealand, we have the Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Of course we do not need the government to give us the right to speak - we have a divinely given right and responsibility to speak. Our heavenly Bill of Rights is Mark 16, where Jesus told us to go into all the world, preach the gospel, cast out devils, heal the sick, and tell everybody that the Kingdom of Heaven (His loving rule) is available.
Jesus assumed free and responsible speech. For Him, free speech means speech free from lies and unkindness. It also means freely sharing the good news with the world, in a manner that represents Him and His kingdom. Jesus spoke freely of His kingdom and exposed false kingdoms and He risked offending people to tell them the truth. As the God of Truth, He wants no person to suffer from false hopes, based on false gods and false beliefs.
We are blessed in NZ however one threat looms: To protect minorities from feeling offended, the Human Rights Commission is soon to introduce a new bill to criminalise disharmonious speech against minority religions. Although the Hon. Andrew Little said recently, “We already have laws to protect against "hate speech," …he thinks sanctions against the incitement of disharmony should now be extended to the area of religious faith.” While we all agree no one should be intentionally harmed by words, the law could easily morph into criminalising any comparison of Christ with Muhammad, Buddha or Moses, yet comparison of religions should be encouraged for all thinking people. It also could mean that a person could be criminalised just for making a person of another faith, feel bad. That the harm of ones speech is determined only by the subjective feelings of another. This could easily be abused.
People even took offense at Jesus' wise and perfect speech. Sometimes when we are told we are wrong in our beliefs or actions; we may take offense. Being made aware of the truth may be embarrassing but it is not harmful and always better in the end. I once drove up a one-way street in France the wrong way and had the locals shout at me. It was embarrassing to me, but I was grateful in the end. The truth sets us free!
Let us be clear-Jesus came as King of the universe, not to be King and Saviour of the Jews or the Christians but of all people, whether Christians, Muslim, Buddhist, Jews, or atheists. Therefore, all people deserve to hear that there is life beyond the grave, and that they can receive His gift of eternal life. All people need to know that Jesus died to gain their forgiveness and all people deserve the dignity, of being allowed to decide for themselves, whether they will accept Him or reject Him.

Years ago there was a haunting song that became quite popular, “I want to know what love is ... I want to you show me..”  That is the cry of every man and women, and even every Christian.   Even people that know the Lord, can still be desperate to feel love.  Bono from the band U2 sung “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” yet he was a believer.   There are some believers who know the Lord but still never found what they were looking for in the church, among Gods people.   Everyone is looking for love; believers come to church expecting to find it not just from God, but from His people too.   Bonding is something that happens in families and it is a powerful bond that usually lasts for a lifetime. If a child is able to attach to others and begin to trust others like parents, they develop normally. Every emotional problem from addiction to depression has alienation or isolation as its root.   Even church-going will not fix it.  If all we get is religious exercises and not life, we don’t get better.   Life comes from our relationship with our Father and from life-giving relationships with people. What is not found in natural families is meant to be experienced in our new family the church.  The Bible calls it, the bond of perfection.  (Col 3.14)  It is a special kind of love; its Gods love found in and among Gods family. As we develop relationships with others in the body of Christ we are built up and built together by the joints or the bonds between us.

Friend, no alcoholic recovers on his own and if you allow your heart to be cut off from people and from relationships where there is real love, it will develop a hunger for a deceitful lust or desire in your life. Maybe for substances, sex, food or other addictions.  The empty-ness must be filled and it is designed to be filled with a relationship with God and others who are filled with God.

The sun was setting as Gideon returned from spying out the Midianites.   He found enough trumpets among the people to put one in every soldier’s hand. The Shofar was the trumpet used for sounding the alarm for war. Every man needed a trumpet for the battle. “Then he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet into every man’s hand, with empty pitchers, and torches inside the pitchers” ( Jdg 7:16 ) Have you got a “Shofar” to make the sound of war? Have you a trumpet set to your mouth?  Can others hear it when you talk?   When Moses came down from the mountaintop, he thought he heard the sound of war but as he got closer, he realized it was the sound of partying.   What sound we are making?

If there is no Shofar in our mouth there be no victory in our life.  The sound of the Shofar means you’ve seen the enemy and you are ready for the battle.  You have seen the attack coming or noticed the inroads of the enemy into your thinking and your behavior and you’re not happy.  There needs to be a battle cry in our heart. David said “I come in the name of the Lord. Caleb said “Let’s go up and take the country, they are bread for us”.   Enemies are bread when our appetite is right.

I know you want victory. But my question is how badly do you want it?  Because if you don’t hate your habit or while you’re still enjoy your enemy – you’ll never beat your foe.  I personally have not been able to break free of things until I made up my mind and saw it as the enemy to my destiny. Right now think of your enemy and ask God to give you a hatred for it.   Decide you will not let a small enemy ruin a great future.  The stronghold of the strongman will be broken by the Stronger One. It is ours to decide -it is His to do.  Your enemy could be smoking, greed, insecurity, fear, or lust but if you decide to beat it – you can.  Repentance starts with a quality decision.

Friend, the minute you absolutely decide NO, the thing that has a hold you, has to let you go.  Grab your Shofar and let’s go to war. Both your Father and the enemy know you can win.

The Camino de Santiago, known in English as the Way of Saint James is a walk in the northwest of Spain, leading to where tradition has it, the shrine of the apostle Saint James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. It’s a long walk of possibly 800 kms. Retirees and walking enthusiasts tackle it after much
planning. My friends John and Julie have walked much of it over a few weeks.  It makes me think of the Apostle Paul and Timothy.

As Paul leaned back on the walls of the prison, somehow smooth from the large number of prisoners that had rubbed their back along the wall, he thought about the people in the church at Philippi.  Were they still following Christ and strong enough to resist the social pressure exerted by Roman loyalists?  Paul wrote a concerned but encouraging letter from a Roman jail to his friends at Philippi telling them that he would try to send Timothy to see them in person.

Paul said that the proof of timothy’s character was that he gave himself to Paul as a son would to a father. In ancient times a son had no purpose or expectations independent of his father and indeed lived to fulfil the wishes and will of his father. Timothy had chosen to be as a son to his spiritual leader. He would do whatever was needed.  He was available to Paul. He was able to be sent to Philippi.

Now if the Pastor told me to visit a life group across town or the city it would be only a half hour or at most a two-hour return journey by car but Timothy was going to have to walk.  If I had to walk 20 kilometres it would 4 hours walking one way. If I left at 10:00pm I would be home by 2:00 am.  I’m not sure I’d be too excited; or likeminded or available. But we’re not talking 20 miles were talking 1000 km on foot.  Timothy had to cross the Italian countryside then the Ionian Sea between Italy and Croatia then traverse the mountains and walk the whole country down to Turkey. That’s a whole new level of availability!

And it was not to pick up a large million drachma missions offering or represent at a global conference of apostles but just to bring back news that would encourage the heart of his older father in the faith. For the simple reason that Paul his father, would be encouraged.

Sons have a deep availability and willingness towards the father in ways that church attendees or even servants could never understand. Sons have a passion in their hearts towards the house of God, the people of the house and particularly towards the father of the house.

Friend how is the proof of your character going? Are you a son or daughter to your local church leadership, or still just a member?

Horror movies seek to frighten with images of things long dead coming back to haunt peoples lives.  As believers, we have no fear of spirits or ghosts attending our house but there is a way that the past can still reach out to hurt us - Regret. Regret is a funny word with serious consequences.  Regret comes from an old French word “regreter” which means “bewailing the dead.”   Today regret is sorrow over something we can’t change.  Something that is long dead reaches out to ensnare our emotions or our will.  In a way, regret stretches out its deathly fingers from the grave of the past to grip our life in the present. Whether the past holds the memory of our failures or sins or just lost opportunities that we think will never come again, regret must be kept in the grave.

We have all failed, as its part of being human, but godly sorrow results in joy and gratitude for the wonderful grace of God. Being merely sad about your past without repentance puts us in grave danger of regret and spiritual death.  Don't let regret haunt you or hold you back with shame but let Gods forgiveness and grace fill you with wonder and gladness.  Our Father can bring something clean out of an unclean thing and can bring a great future out of a past failure.  After Aaron the High Priests spectacular “golden calf” failure, he was a more empathetic mediator. Peter’s failure gave him the humility to care for a fledgling church.  The restored Corinthian’s were filled with acceptance and grace for a city churning with sinners.  Repentance is the guillotine that severs the skinny arm of regret and frees you into God's effective future.

But maybe what lies in the grave of your past is not sin but many years of thankless and difficult ministry that are forgotten by everyone but you and Jesus. Don’t let the fingers of regret lubricated with self-pity, slip around your neck. The eyes of Jesus sparkle with delight at the thought of His planned future with you.  His strong hand rests on your shoulder and He assures you "Your labour in the Lord is not in vain".  Billy Borden was an heir to dairy empire in the 1900's.  He was a millionaire before he left high school. On his first trip around the world, he wrote to his parents “I’m going to serve God” He could not be persuaded out of it and wrote, “No reserve” in his Bible. At Yale he had many converts, ending up with 1000 people in Bible studies. When he graduated, he turned down big jobs and wrote in his Bible “No retreat”. He then went to Egypt to learn Arabic so he could reach the Muslims.  While he was there he contracted meningitis and was dead in a month just 25 years old.  While the news headline that swept around the world was “What a waste!” Billy Borden had written in his Bible before he died, “No regrets!”

Friend whether you have wasted part of your life in sin or spent your life in sacrifice for the gospel, don’t let the clammy hands of regret get anywhere near your throat. Were not bewailing things that are dead and long gone but praising Him who is alive and still coming. “And his reward is with him” (Revelation 22.12).

In the movie “Chocolat,” set in a traditional catholic French village in which everything and everybody is under the mayors control, a lady “Chocolatier” arrives in town.  She opens a chocolate shop but the Mayor sets up a crusade against the evils of chocolate.  He tells the priest she is the enemy and instructs him to preach against her.  He was fighting to control his repressed but “perfect” town, but many of the town’s people actually find the chocolatier a friendly confident.   Finally one day the Mayor in desperation to rid his town of the evil, decides he will break into the shop and destroy the chocolate. In his mad flurry of destruction he accidentally tastes a small piece of chocolate. As soon as he tastes it, he falls into eating as much chocolate as he could. In the morning he was caught, embarrassed, humbled and changed!   The mayor was over his denial and self-righteous efforts to control and now free to explore a new exciting life.

   The turning point was the Mayors fall into temptation, where it seems that his failure became his salvation.  How often has the failure of someone worked a work of grace in a person’s life to such a degree, that their usefulness to man and God is taken to levels which could never have been possible before the fall. 

God plans for the failure of our self efforts as much as He plans for our success in Christ. God put Adam into the Garden knowing he would fail. Sometimes more is accomplished by our failure than our victory. Pride and self-confidence can be dealt with by God and failure often opens a person up the possibility of help from others. Failure worked in Peter life after his three denials, to rid him of his self-confidence and thrust him upon the Lord.

Friend, we all hate to fail, but our failures can give us a better perspective of our weakness and our dependence upon Him and that’s the greatest lesson.

Jesus walked along the crowded street on the way out of Jericho. One man called Bartimaeus had been sitting on the side of the road near the town for years. He was blind and begged for a living. He wanted to be healed and he cried out loudly to be heard above the rabble. Jesus heard the cry of faith and stopped to give him his sight back. Immediately upon receiving his sight he followed Jesus along the road. A new life and a new direction! All Jesus had to do for Bartimaeus, to deliver him from being stationary, broke and hopeless on the side of life’s road, was to give him vision. The greatest need we have is to see. When Jesus gives us spiritual sight, He enables us to see who He is and who we are.

The people of Israel stood at the border of the Promised Land and listened to the report of the 10 spies.  Although the land was exceedingly good, there were also giants there. The fearful spies saw themselves as grasshoppers in the face of the giants, and refused to go in (Numbers 13.28-31). It is not what you see in the promised land but what you see in side of you that will determine whether you enter in to all God has planned for you. If we view ourselves as grasshoppers it is unlikely we will defeat giants.  If you see ourselves as a chicken we will never soar as an eagle. A postman goes to deliver mail each day because he knows he is  a postman not a policeman.  If you know you are a son you act like one too. Most often we act beneath our dignity because we have forgotten who we are. A prince or princess with amnesia!

Jesus said He came down from above. He knew where He came from. When the Seed was placed in Mary, a son was born. When we were regenerated, the seed of the Word comes down from Father and like Jesus, your spirit man is born from above. We know ourselves after the flesh and off course identify with our natural father but the real eternal you, came down from your Father in heaven. We are literally new creatures and Father wants us to see ourselves as His own children. Although he calls us sheep, disciples, servants or even friends in the Gospel of John, his final description of us is sons.  After the resurrection Jesus calls us his brothers and like Jesus, all of Gods sons and daughters, are born from above by incorruptible seed.

Friend, our self-identity is formed by how we see Jesus and ourselves. As the 10 spies proved, how we see ourselves is critical because what we believe to be true is more powerful in our lives that the actual facts. Fact: You are truly, actually and absolutely Gods son or daughter. Do you see that?

This week it was pointed out to me by a close friend that I had made a theological error in one of my books. It was a bit embarrassing because my passion for preaching and writing is to understand, to help others understand!

If we learn any theology in Genesis, it is that imperfection and failure run in the family.  Even “perfect” specimens, who never seem to blow up, may be filled with anger, pride or judgmental pettiness.  The fact is that we all fail and, if we don’t give ourselves and others room to fail, we can breed dishonesty.  People fearful of disapproval can’t admit their mistakes and choose to live in denial. Brothers or sisters may be struggling with an issue which could be common to all people, but are afraid to ask for help. They could sink into a sea of despair believing that weakness is unforgivable.  It’s great to have a triumphalist theology where every believer lives in glory and power without error or mistake, but that doesn’t help people in their genuine times of struggle and need.

When Adam and Eve failed in the garden, it was no surprise to God, and He covered their failure with skins by the shedding of blood. God obviously allowed them to sin for a reason. After they sinned, He could do the thing he wanted most: to reveal Himself more fully to them, not just as Creator but as Savior, as Redeemer and Deliverer. Up until his failure, Adam had no idea of the depth and the beauty of God’s love for him.  He felt perfect without need of forgiveness. He also felt no gratitude nor understood God’s mercy. In short, he had no sense of God’s love.

Friend, the next time you feel you have failed, admit your humanity and embrace the mercy of your un-condemning Father, who you can now love with even greater gratitude!