The other night I watched a program on 20/20 about some people in America who are serial competition junkies. All they do is enter competitions all day in every way they can, especially over the Internet, filling in entry forms and answering questions. They may spend up to $4000 of dollars on stamps and related materials each year and they try and enter the same competition over and over again to increase their chances of winning. One lady gets up every morning at 5.30am and enters in the on line entry forms on her computer and sends off around 2100 entry forms a week. She has won trips all over America and has won many TVs, home appliances, iPods, food parcels, clothes and money. They get unusual prizes like French fries for a year – Yuk. She says she has won over one million dollars since she began 50 years ago. These people are called ‘Sweepers’ and the most exciting time of their day is when they hear the Courier truck driving up the street. Some people say that they are just lucky but they are quick to point out that it’s not just luck but all the hours of effort that they put in every day. Some do it for up to 9 hours a day, sitting at a computer or sending off entry forms.
There are others who do another type of sweeping, and that is patrolling popular swimming beaches or ancient fields early every morning before people come with a metal detector. I recently read of a man that has been doing it now for 10 years with an old 2nd hand metal detector he brought at a Boot Sale. Nothing much was found until he unearthed the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found. Experts are now calculating its value—a process that could take more than a year because of its enormous size. Terry Herbert from Burntwood, Staffordshire, stumbled on the hoard in a private field with his trusty 14-year-old metal detector. Over five days in July, the 55-year-old dug up a fortune on the farmland near to his home. The find was declared as treasure by coroner, which means the cache will be offered for sale after it is valued. More than 1,500 pieces of treasure—including around 11lbs of gold and 5.5lbs of silver—has now been uncovered. Archaeologists believe the hoard dates back to the seventh century and may have belonged to Anglo-Saxon royalty. Among the riches are warfare paraphernalia, including sword pommel caps and hilt plates, often inlaid with precious stones. Terry was unemployed but he didn’t just sit back and moaned but persevered with his passion and was finally rewarded beyond his wildest dreams. It’s obvious that it wasn’t just his luck but hard work. Life can be like fishing; you can go out every day and not get a bite and then suddenly one day it’s all on. You wouldn’t have got the fish if you had stayed at home.
My wife Bernice always wanted to find a treasure like this, it has been her passion. She brought a Metal Detector when she first came to New Zealand to fulfil her dream and on the very first day she went out to Fitzroy Beach in New Plymouth and the detector went wild – off its head. What luck, the Mother Lode on the her very first day. She began digging furiously but found nothing there and soon realised that it was all the iron in the sand that the Beaches have on the West Coast of New Zealand – poor Bernice.
The Bible says that the Children of this world are wiser than many of us Christians.
"And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." Luke 16:8
As Christians we often moan that we don’t have enough money or talent and have had a bad break in life, yet do very little to change our situation. Hard times may have come our way and we may keep asking God to give us money or a job, but He wants us to do something ourselves as well. The book of proverbs has lots to say about sluggards (lazy people).
"The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied." Proverbs 13:4
"A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing." Proverbs 20:4
"The sluggard says, "There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!" Proverbs 26:13
What this last verse is saying is that a lazy person thinks up all sorts of excuses as to why something can’t be done or they can’t do it, so they stay home and do nothing.
When I was at School I used to go looking for golf balls over the many Golf Courses around New Plymouth and made a lot of pocket money. In those days golf balls were quite expensive and not so plentiful as they are today. I would go where no man had been before, crawling on my hands and knees through gorse and wading through freezing water in the middle of winter just to find my treasure.
I kept myself in cigarettes and sweets all through my High School days with all that money. I also used to go to the Bowl of Brooklands which is an outdoor theatre in New Plymouth. Every midnight after a show at the Bowl I would go there with a torch and look in the grass and between the seats for treasure. The Booty was half crowns, cigarettes, and sometimes pound notes and other strange things.
As I think back and see how I and other non-Christians could find ways of making money then, how much more should we as God’s Children apply ourselves now, for God gives wisdom to His children.
"To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Eccl 2:26
We need to remember that all the money the sinner makes with all his hard work just goes up in smoke, like all the cigarettes I lit in my youth. The Saxon Lord who buried all his treasure that he had worked so hard for was given to someone else. Something we Christians could do with a little of this wisdom is to sow into the Kingdom of God. Farmers sow seed and so can we do something by sowing seeds of time, money and blessings. God has promised that He will be no debtor to those who give and will reward them greatly. Look at this verse in Malachi.
"Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty. "But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’ "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. "But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ "In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty. Malachi 3:6-12
No matter how poor or uneducated you are you will always have something to sow. We need to just start small and slowly build up with our sowing and giving and remember that everything we give is a seed that will eventually grow into a harvest. If it’s not in this life it will definitely be in the next.
Keep in mind however that it's God's desire that you receive your blessing now! Jesus came so that you can have the life abundant not just in the world to come but in this world we live in now!
"Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: "He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever." Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God." 2 Corinthians 9:6-10
God has said that He will multiply our seed sown. Personally I find nothing more satisfying than being able to give, especially to the Household of Faith (Christians). Not just giving, but eventually building up to give extravagantly. I try to live a life of giving in all sorts of ways. Some people are very appreciative when they receive and others are downright unthankful, but it doesn’t matter really, for its God who brings the increase. The earth doesn’t say thank you when you place a seed in it, but it still produces fruit.
"Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." Galatians 6:10
Recently I got back quite a bit of tax money from Inland Revenue. I wanted to give some of it away as a seed and asked God who it should be. So often we eat all our seed and have no harvest in the future. It was over $1000 that I was to give and wondered how God would multiply this seed that I had sown. A week later the Stratford Press contacted me and asked me to do cartoons for them which I believe is the reward coming back to me, a multiplying of the seed that I had sown. In the long run it could end up far more than I sowed, but it doesn’t really matter for we should be living a life of giving anyway, God will always look after us. Cartooning is something that I find really easy to do as I think in cartoon language all the time and see funny situations all around me. Cartoonists need to be able to laugh at themselves.
On the line of the world being wiser than us Christians I have another testimony. I have developed a web site where I have all my sermons stored on line and I read somewhere that I will get more traffic back to my site if I write some reviews. Google likes to see that you are linking up with other websites and it increases your page ranking, writing a review on a website is a way to do this. I wondered how I could do it without spending too much time so I thought of movie reviews. I like watching movies and really enjoyed a Sci-Fi movie lately that alluded to the possibility that the heroine was an Angel. In my short review I made mention of this and gave a link back to my site with the sermon I recently did on Angels, from a biblical point of view. Within a day I was having 5 people coming to the site from those movie review sites to read my sermon. We need to remember that millions of people are watching films out there which they believe in and if we can steer them to the truth of God’s word it will be worthwhile.
Someone said once something like this. "Instead of crying against the darkness we need to turn on the light." http://graemehotter.blogspot.com
My name is Graeme Hotter and I am a Pastor living in New Zealand, married with 2 children. My email address is ghotter@live.com and my web address is http://ghotter.blogspot.com
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