Making the Time

Lessons from the #Dreamjob

Back in college I decided that I would never grow fond of using two phrases: "I'm busy" and "I don't have time"...no matter how true they might seem. I saw my friends get fond of those phrases and it just didn't come across well.

Because the reality is we're never too busy and we never "don't have time". We just CHOOSE different priorities. And along with those choices, we consequently choose different CONSEQUENCES. And we ALWAYS have a choice of consequences. Sometimes it's the severity of consequences that gives us the impression that we "don't have a choice". Choosing that severe consequence is also an option.

You choose the consequence of a successful career when you give all your time to it. The consequences could include a stressed out family that misses you. Or you could choose the consequences of being a dedicated family man; and suffer the loss of an opportunity for a promotion, a raise or some business opportunity. The economists call it "opportunity cost".

When you say "I'm busy" you're actually choosing that thing which makes you "busy" over that which now seeks your attention.

So next time your kid asks you to hang out with him, think carefully before you tell him "I'm busy" or "I don't have time".

Food for thought.

Heavenise weekend!

G

Lessons from the #Dreamjob

By GDW on Facebook

I'm a dad now. So apart from my "tokstrets", expect the usual totally biased, boastful and proud opinions about my kid, and the irrational partisan self-promoting evaluations about my performance as a parent, and the domination of baby pics on my wall.

I used to wonder why fb parent friends posted constantly about their kids. Now I have one and I totally get it. Everything else in life fades in comparison to being a parent. The thrill of being completely relied on for life itself, the smile of contentment when they lie in your arms, or fall asleep safely on your chest, beats riding the best roller-coasters or enjoying the best sights in the world (and I've been to some).

This is the greatest wonder of the world. And though I may thrive to be good at many things, I pray I may perform this job so well that my kid can confidently say that I make a great dad.

For every other vocation fades in significance, and no other can be as important in this bankrupt world, as being a father.

Heavenise night.

Ganjiki

Reshaping Culture to Accept Degenerate Concepts

On Glee

(With respect to any gay friend)

This "Glee" show on EMTV is sick!

Who the heck is is sponsoring it? The themes are not PNG-relevant. It's a show thats made by Americans, for Americans, of Americans.

But of course this is exactly how modern thought (amoral/post modern worldview) has enslaved the world; through drama, song and entertainment. Reshape the mindset and you reshape culture.

The themes are sickening, notice:

- free love and sex in the teen years
- the "beautification", normalization, and glorification of homosexual relations
- a short-sighted purposeless life that seeks meaning in temporary pleasures, iow VANITY.

I know theres a lot of crap on EMTV but the show is an insult. What's next, "Modern Family" and "Queer as Folk"? We're on a vicious spiral of moral degradation and we're making it worse by airing shows with these themes on prime time TV,where the kids, who are already lost because of absent parents and who are still forming an identity, are watching. They're still collecting ideas about what's ok and what's not.

Glee is sick. And even though this may be a vain call:

I say it pull it off the air.

God Bless PNG.

On Soldier Brutality

On Soldier Brutality
By Ganjiki

So soldiers from Taurama blame medical students for instigating the weekend incident (per today's papers). And they do it through a statement passed through colleagues to the press.

They would win substantial respect if the men involved on both side came out straight out and said "I did it". Don't pass a note to the press. Rock up in front of the cameras and say "this is what happened last Friday....and I'm sorry for my part in it." 

Be the better man.

But regardless of what happened on Friday, what happened on Saturday and Sunday is ALL on those soldiers. And it is completely inexcusable.

Medical students didn't drag those soldiers from Taurama to 3mile. The students didn't go over and fill the truck tanks and supply the guns to the soldiers, order them into the vehicles and send them to MedSchool. That was all those rogues in uniform. 

The soldiers CHOSE to do what they did on Saturday and Sunday. No one held their hand. No one invaded their dreams like in "The Inception" and plant a thought to do it (well no human being anyway). In their conscious mind they decided to go on the rampage. Those rogues did it.

[Just like they did on Manu Service Station, Malaoro Market, Aviat Club in Lae, and dare I say when they escorted Belden Namah when he stormed the Supreme Court. It was all on them.]

They cannot escape the responsibility for their actions. What they did on the weekend was instigated and incited—in the purest sense of those words—by themselves. With independent freely-functioning minds.

And the sad thing is: their superiors let them do it. And this is where PNGDF has failed. It has failed to instill true discipline in the deep crevices of the minds and hearts of these soldiers. True discipline is self-discipline—where it's neither the fear of punishment nor the anticipation of reward that makes one do the right thing. But it's the sense of self-respect and the awareness of one's own dignity that keeps him from doing anything that attracts the contempt of society. 

The PNGDF has failed in ensuring that ALL its soldiers are not just adult bodies containing a toddler's stamina and mindset—a mindset that seeks its own all the time. It failed to ensure that the emotional intelligence of ALL its members was high enough to withstand the urge to go on a rampage against innocent unarmed civilians, with high-powered rifles. It failed to deny those soldiers access to firearms in peacetime. It failed miserably to ensure that it recruited, trained and maintained men who have the highest regard for their uniform, the flag, the nation, and the civilians whom they swore to protect. Any man who does not have that high regard, nor the discipline to live up to that regard, deserves not the uniform that this nation gives to him. 

The PNGDF owes it to the People of PNG to ensure that ONLY respectable self-disciplined men and women occupy its ranks. It owes it to the People to expunge itself of the elements that are not worthy of its label—elements that bring disrepute and contempt to its name. Elements that seek to wear the uniform for all the wrong reasons.

This is where the true strength of PNGDF and its leaders is tested. In whether it is able to pick itself up and regain the trust of the People; or whether it continues to pay lip-service about discipline in an obviously "lack-of-discipline" force.  The people need to see the line being drawn and rogue soldiers court-martialled, criminally convicted and kicked out, and the rest continuously trained and disciplined so such behavior becomes less and less probable. 

Otherwise the People will be entitled to think little or nothing of the PNGDF.

Heavenise day!

GDW

EAT OF HIS FLESH!

By GDW 

Looking through Facebook and watching PNGeans debate matters with an attempt to interpret Biblical principles has made me realise how starved of real Biblical teaching and studying we are. Suddenly we're all self-styled theologians, but how wrong some of us are. I truly wonder whether we really have private Bible studies. Where we open the word and have a concordance and some trusty commentary at hand, and say a prayer for the Spirit of Truth to help us understand…truly understand. 

Christianity in PNG has become a feel-good thing. Prosperity gospel by popular preachers has made us treat God as a mere butler. People want to hear words that tickle their ears so they can shout "Amen!" Preachers aren't preaching about sin anymore because they want to keep their audiences. 

But I'd wish we'd also teach people about living right by the Word of God, and not just by the words of popular leadership and life-coaching gurus. I wish preachers would say more of those things that make people squirm in their chairs and quietly go "ouch!" Rather than jump up and down at every ticklish catchphrase of a charismatic speaker. Like when Jonathan Edwards preached monotnously about Hell and Sin and his congregation fled from the church because the words struck at the core of their beings and their realisation of sin became too much too bear. 

We're still babes of the faith, we love to have every itch scratched, and every soft-spot tickled and soiled diapers washed without participating in the cleaning. We want to be fed soft words that others have already chewed and churned. We'd like the adults to speak to us kindly and softly like a child longs for "goo goos" and "gah gahs".  We can't and don't want to handle the heavy stuff. It's too painful and difficult to chew. 

People want to use the Word to make an argument but not to convict our own hearts and change our evil ways. In fact we'd use it to avoid being judged. To avoid change. We'd rather Jesus' words of "judge not lest you be judged", than "no one comes to the Father except through Me". Because we'd rather He not be the ONLY Way. We like His kind words of love but not His ultimatums of living sacrifice "eating of my flesh". We'd rather His love for sinners than His hate for sin. 

And so we continue in sin, grieving his heart. Ignorant of His whole Truth and the wholeness of His message. In the words of Ravi Zacharias "Jesus didn't come to make bad people good, He came to make dead people live." 

I must add He didn't come to give us ammunition for our petty debates, He brought words of eternal life. That's an important note. We're ignoring His words of Eternal life while gobbling up His words for this life. Come eternity we may find we're bankrupt in the words that REALLY matter.

So please return to the Word. It has instructions for living, for salvation and sanctification and glorification. If you stop at instructions for "living", you might find yourself short of a whole eternal package.  Pastors preach HARD WORDS. You know! Words to REBUKE, CORRECT, AND INSTRUCT. Not just to uplift and encourage. And those "fans" of the Bible, get into it and read. Consume it so that it consumes you.

EAT OF HIS FLESH. He said so Himself! He is the WORD. 

Heavenise day!

GDW

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Ganjiki

"INSPIRING PASSION"

 

http://ppngtokauttokstret.blogspot.com/ 

Risking Reputation to Reach the Lost

By Stephen Michael Leach (on Facebook)

 

Several years ago here in PNG I knew a lovely girl who was vibrant, intelligent, educated and well on her way to becoming a successful career woman. Occasionally she would come sit in the studio audience with her friends while I was on air at FM Morobe and I'd see her every day on lunch break on the steps of Vela Rumana.

 

She began a relationship with an older married man in Lae and I watched as her life began to fall apart... everyone talked about her... whenever I would greet her in Foodmart I could feel the ever present watchful eyes of suspicion and judgment....

 

One "intercessor" pulled me aside one day after witnessing me greeting the girl and gave me a tongue lashing about how inappropriate it was for a young single Reverend with my skin color and position to be seen publicly talking to someone she considered a glorified K2 meri (prostitute).

 

I listened to that woman out of fear of offending the Church and destroying my reputation. I stopped going out of my way to greet this girl... I was no longer openly friendly in public least someone accuse me of flirting with her. A few months later I was catching a PMV from Madang to Lae and as we went around Madang town and I hung my head out of window yelling, "LAE! LAE! LAE!" like a legit boss crew... I saw this girl walking towards the bus from the market carrying her bags. I thought to myself, "oh no...." she saw me and smiled and for a moment I saw the girl she used to be.

 

She sat beside me all day on the bumpy and dust filled ride back to Swit Rainy Lae... We talked some and she tried to engage me in conversation but I was so fearful of what other people on the bus would think about us that I engaged her politely but I never really talked about anything in depth. We dropped her off at her home in Lae and I said, "lukim yu bihain Wantok" as she walked away.

 

A few days later I heard that she had discovered that she was pregnant with the child of that married man and that she had hung herself in her bedroom.

 

I MOURNED HER DEATH AND THE DEATH OF HER CHILD. I cried out to God and begged Him to forgive me for bowing to the pressure of Religion and Culture and shunning her for the sake of my own reputation. I begged God to forgive me for wasting An ENTIRE DAY SITTING NEXT TO HER ON THE BUS FROM MADANG when I could have been speaking LIFE over her spirit. It was and IS one of the most shameful moments of my ministry.

 

But I share it with you today because I do not want YOU to make the same mistake that I did all those years ago. God had sent me 10,000 miles across the world to her nation. He had placed me in her life. He had made a White boy from Virginia an honorary Boss Crew on a Madang PMV so that He could place me RIGHT NEXT TO HER while she was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And I had bowed down to the religious spirits and the whispering tongues of gossip. In so doing I had betrayed my calling as a missionary.

 

For years I carried that all-consuming guilt and felt that the blood of her and her unborn child was on my "holy" white hands... When she died I fundamentally changed... I ceased caring what any of the judgmental religious people thought about me... I was going to reach and be friends with everyone whether they were approved by the Church or not.

 

Listen to me. Do not EVER shun a sinner just because RELIGION tells you to! Do not ever turn your back on a hurting soul just to keep your own name. Lift up JESUS and speak LIFE over the broken and the hurting... even if that means losing your reputation in the process.

 

This isn't about YOU it's all about JESUS.

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Ganjiki

"INSPIRING PASSION"

 

http://ppngtokauttokstret.blogspot.com/ 

Our deranged Modern World

In the old days, when parents arranged marriages, the marriages seemed to last forever. These days, we're free to choose our spouses, and the rate of separation and divorce is disgraceful. It shows a greater erosion in our current society: It seems the freer we get, the more insane we become. We're not restrained any more by timeless principles, but by rash emotions and hormonal dictates. 

We make more babies than families; have more passing lovers than lifelong spouses; have more sex but have less love; we lust more and love less.

The Dark Ages is nothing compared to this age. We deserve  fire and brimstone more than Sodom and Gomorrah; and the flood more than the days of Noah.

Thank God He promised not to punish us like that again.

Ganjiki

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Ganjiki

"INSPIRING PASSION"

 

http://ppngtokauttokstret.blogspot.com/