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Always Somebody with the Time to Love

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

“How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers”: Mother Theresa.

Adam is nearly two. He stretches out his hand to greet me at the door, quiet and serious, but happy to see a stranger. He gazes into my eyes, searching for a sign he can trust. His deep eyes sparkle, but the steady gaze hides ‘a knowing’ far, far older than his meagre months of life.
Adam’s life took a change when he was 15 months old, when he came into the care of an extraordinary family. He arrived withdrawn , barely able to sit, and able to eat only pureed food. He did not know how to cuddle.

Seven months on, Adam is happy and settled in his new world. He is learning to talk and toddles about confidently, breaking from his play every now and then to seek a cuddle from Janine or John or his new siblings. The couple have eight children of their own, and this close, loving family is the key to Adam’s transformation.
“It was Adam and children like him who made us decide that more could and should be done to prevent children being born into situations where so much damage could happen so early on,” says Janine. “If women can be given support from the time they become pregnant and after their babies are born, no child should have such a hard start in life. This couple are offering their home and their hearts to women considering an abortion or who feel they won’t be able to cope with a baby.
“So many women are under pressure to have an abortion. Far from it being their choice, they are pressured into it by people around them or by financial problems. Nobody should have to take the life of their baby because of money. The pain of being pushed into an abortion can remain for life.
“We started seeing a need when a friend had a mental problem and couldn’t cope. She knew she needed help and that she couldn’t look after her children, but didn’t want to have them taken away. We want women to know that they have a loving place for their children in emergencies until they are able to take over parenting again. We want people to spread the word, to notice where there is need and to tell them there is help available.We also want other families to make themselves available to support pregnant women. It’s a very lonely situation, very hush-hush, when women can’t cope with pregnancy or are considering an abortion.”
The John and Janine’s own children range in age from 21 to four, providing a ready-made family for other children on the lifestyle block that is also home to a multitude of pets, including a patient pony, dogs and a litter of chubby new puppies. John and Janine run a home based business, right at the centre of family life.
Fifteen year old Zoe taught Adam to walk by providing the motivation needed – tiny pieces of chocolate that were placed further and further away from his starting point, until he walked the length of the room – to rapturous clapping and cheering from the rest of the family. Then the encouragement started again – to show Adam there was nothing to fear about walking outside on the grass. The family’s home is a kid-paradise, with play areas, farm animals and lots of activity. The children are home schooled, so there is always someone around to play with. Always somebody with the time to love.
Other children to be taken into the warm glow of the Grant family have been quite the opposite of Adam – hyperactive and destructive. But the healing formula is the same.
Janine: “We are a big, busy, close family. Our own children are home schooled and one of my daughters has started childbirth education. All the children help with the young ones.. Adam was totally withdrawn when he arrived and he wouldn’t try anything. It was a matter of everyone taking a turn to encourage him and show him what he could do. They all connected with him in different ways. He has done well in a big family, with someone always there for him and I have big hopes for this little boy.
“There is a big gap in the system . Mother’s find they don’t know where to turn if they need support in keeping their baby.We have been shocked at NZ’s huge abortion rate and how much damage can happen to very young babies. If they know there is someone who will help them, then children can be looked after from babyhood. We offer support throughout the pregnancy and after the birth. We would also care for a baby longterm if that’s what’s needed. Janine’s plea: “Let us take care of your baby if you feel you can’t cope. If you are pregnant and are afraid you won’t be able to take care of your baby, before you choose an abortion – consider letting us help you or let us take your baby into a happy, loving environment. If you are pregnant and know your child will be born disabled, want the child to live but fear you won’t be able to cope– there is a solution. It is so much better for someone in that situation to be well supported. Our family is well supported by a very caring community and people from several churches.Our own church is willing to offer accomodation and other support. We can call out if we need any support. In the words of Mother Theresa: “How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.”

News Report from Taumarunui

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Here is a news report from Taumarunui of a course we have been a part of. Check it out:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/CampbellLive/tabid/367/articleID/65216/Default.aspx

The Challenge of the 18000

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Teresa said this
"Many people are concerned with children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is the greatest destroyer of peace today- abortion which brings people to such blindness." How blind we have become in New Zealand. The latest figures show nearly 18000 deaths are taking place every year in New Zealand. 18000 New Zealanders are dying at the hands of abortion. How Mother Teresa’s words are painfully true. Oh that Father would open our blind eyes.

Martin Luther said:
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that point which the world and devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proven, and to be steady on all the battlefronts besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. I do not want to flinch at the point where it hurts. The problem with unborn babies is they cannot speak. They cannot tell of their hopes and aspirations in life. Where they would like to be schooled? Their hopes of marriage and where they would like to live? The problem is our lives are just too noisy and busy and unborn life is just too quiet.

What are we to do about this? Pray for the ending of abortion in New Zealand? Sure, that is a good start! Have faith in God to change things? Of course! But remember ‘Faith without actually getting off your butt (my paraphrase) is stagnant and dead faith. If God really is a Father to the fatherless, is He not also a Father to the aborted who pass silently to the next world day in and day out on these shores? Surely the God of life who is the author of the gospel of life would want to arise in the face of a culture of death .
So exactly what should we do? Read another article and hope this one will go away? Shout at the government? Scream at ‘sinners’ to get our point across? Sign a petition? Have another sausage sizzle to raise funds and awareness of blood on our hands?

First things first. Perhaps before we attempt to see a nation cleansed of sin, we ourselves need to be cleansed of sin. Maybe we need to clean house as the judgment begins in the house of God .
Since the introduction of abortion to the mainstream conscience of New Zealand in the 1970’s the Church has been slowly lulled to sleep. Gradually, little by little we have become anaesthised to the horror of child murder in the land. Remember the Scriptures:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.....My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body…... How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” Psalms 139:13-17, NIV.

Each life is created and precious to God. Each life is His. Look what God said to a young, budding prophet Jeremiah:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” (Jeremiah 1:4, 5, NIV.)

What a concept, before we were even conceived, God knew us. Life matters to God. Our life matters to God.
But who’s way of thinking has changed whom in the past 30 years years in New Zealand? Has the Church gloriously and victoriously changed the world? Or has the world’s way of thinking and operating changed the Church? Most of us would agree the Church has become more and more like the world. The sins of the world are now the sins of the Church. The sins dominating the youth culture also dominate the local Church youth culture. The TV shows of the world entertain the people of God. Worldly movie stars, possessions, sports have become our idols as well as the world’s. Interestingly the abortion rate is also creeping in among the evangelical community. Check out these statistics from the US:

“One out of every six abortions are performed on woman who identify themselves as “born again” Christians. With some 1.5 million women submitting to abortion each year, this equals 250,000 evangelically oriented Christians aborting annually”

Maybe instead of wagging our little religiously wired fingers at the world we need to ask Father for His heart for the fatherless of our community, Church and land: the unwanted and the unborn.

Hear the challenge of Mother Teresa again:

I will tell you something beautiful. We are fighting abortion by adoption - by care of the mother and adoption for her baby. We have saved thousands of lives. We have sent word to the clinics, to the hospitals and police. When I read those words ‘fight abortion with adoption’ God began to place a seed in my heart. The seed grew and one day whilst enjoying a weekend off with my wife in Taupo, the Lord communicated to my heart in an internal vision .

I saw a meal table with my family sat all around it. At present I have six small children all under the age of twelve. Whilst my wife (Emma) and I have six small children, in the vision these children were older and there were more than six! God showed me in my ‘mind’s eye’ that this was my family in the future. All grown up and gangly! There were children in our family who were delivered and rescued from abortion. My family was to be filled with the unwanted children of the earth. The Lord showed me that they would become the historical preachers to their generation about the abortion holocaust of New Zealand. But how would we rescue them from abortion?

During this time I also took a drive from our home in King Country to Auckland. I am no fan of graffiti. However, on my journey my eyes wandered from the road (momentarily) to some graffiti on a white piece of concrete traveling north to Auckland. It read “ABORTION. NZ’s holocaust”. The words penetrated my heart as I cried out to the Lord for the unborn of the land of Aotearoa. It was as if all creation was groaning with me as I cried for these unborn sons and daughters to be revealed.
Then came the crunch. He told me to place an advert in the local newspapers where we live. The advert was to read:

PREGNANT?
Unsure what to do?
Please do not abort
please consider an open adoption of your child to a local, loving family who want more children.
We are CYFS approved and will pay all legal expenses. It took a little while and couple of ‘flat whites’ to get my head around the concept of advertising in the classified section of our newspaper for ‘children’. It took more than coffee to actually place the adverts. But place them we did.
The box adverts appear weekly in two local papers in the Ruapehu district. With funding we will place them all over the country. We also printed business cards and placed them with health professionals and doctors. Secular doctors have commended us for standing up for what we believe and helping mothers and babies at an otherwise awkward time. We are prepared to take every child presented to us. That includes children conceived by rape and incest and with disability.

So would anyone call? What if hundreds call? These thoughts among thousands of others swarmed around our minds and hearts and we waited for the advert to come out.

Within two hours of publication of the first advert we received a text message from a women on the way to having an abortion. We meet with her twice and on the second meeting she decided to have the baby inside of her and give the baby up for adoption to us. We have since dealt with several other cases and phone messages.

In a sense we are trying to offer a genuine ‘choice’ for mothers. At present if a woman falls pregnant there is very little advice of the options available to her. Most women are under incredible pressure and fast tracked to the abortion clinic. This is not ‘pro –choice’ This is ‘pro-abortion’.
It is becoming easier and easier to abort in our land with or without parental consent. Is it not time to stand and speak up? To actually do something? I refused to switch off the inner cry rising within me. It is the voice of the Holy Spirit communing with my spirit saying ‘arise, let the heroic deliverers arise!’ why not reject the tall poppy cutters all around you waiting with sharpened blades to chop you down. Say no to the voices around you saying ‘I can’t do that’. Reject your self-hatred and say yes to voice of the Father in heaven speaking to you on behalf of the unwanted and unborn. Dare we ignore the voice of God in the cry of the unwanted and the unborn?
Maybe it is time for an army of deliverers’ to arise in New Zealand. Maybe in this, the most urgent hour in New Zealand history it is time for government agencies to be flooded with our unconditional help for abused and neglected children of our land. Maybe there is something heroic that God has called you to do. Something radical. Something that will change society.
If 18000 of God’s people rose up and adopted the 18000 aborted we could change society in one generation!

Steven Dunne is a Bible teacher and missionary. Originally from the UK He and his live Emma currently live just outside Taumarunui, New Zealand with their 8 children.

[url=http://www.fire.school.nz]www.fire.school.nz

The Pain of God

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

Many of us have heard messages on the grace and goodness of God and many churches in western society have presented seminars on his love and power. There's nothing wrong with that. Of all people we should be talking about God’s love, power, kindness, mercy and grace. But could our diet of spiritual truth be a little unbalanced? When was the last time you heard from the pulpit a message on God’s wrath, judgment and anger? Are we sometimes like children who want only ice cream instead of healthy, nutritious food?

Mind you, who could blame us for focusing on only one side of God's character? With all the wars and calamities bombarding our senses day after day, who wouldn’t want to hear an upbeat message from the pulpit to ease the soreness of living in our fractured world? But we must take care not to become like the people Paul warned Timothy about:

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear." (2 Tim2:3)

Everyone wants to hear something pleasant. It's the way we're wired. When I go to the doctor with chronic stomach pain I want him to tell me my ache is simply indigestion which will vanish with a glass of fizzy medicine. I don't want to be told I have stomach cancer or ulcers and need to go under the knife.

That's why, when the gospel of Jesus calls us to suffer, we'd rather sing. There's the imbalance. How might God feel about it when he beckons us to receive his burden and we cry for more blessing? In Isaiah 6 and Revelation 5 the angels sang "Holy holy holy" to the Lord God Almighty. Alas, some of us would rather sing "Happy happy happy" instead.

“We Christians have given Calvary to the communists," wrote George Failing. "They accept deprivation and death for their gospel, while we Christians reject any gospel that does not major on healing and happiness."

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting we glorify God by becoming morbid. Our evangelism is effective and powerful when delight in the Lord (see Psalm67:4-6). We also know the joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh 8:10), and that God gives us "an oil of joy for mourning" (Isaiah 61:3). But many of us also want to know more of the heart of God. And are we really ready to hear what he has to say?

Pain in God's Heart

It is hard to think of God as grieving and in pain. It seems almost to belittle his greatness. But whether we are prepared to engage with him on this level or not, God is still pained by a compromised, worldly church and sinning world.

The story of Noah and his ark and animals is popular with children. But Noah's story is for adults too. The Bible teaches that during the days of Noah the earth was hugely wicked (Gen 6:5). In fact the prophet Ezekiel tells us the people of that day had an easy lifestyle that led to apathy towards the oppressed and the poor. (Ezek 16:49). As God saw all this he was "grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." (Gen 6:6).

God actually grieves! What a concept for our self-obsessed generation. Paul warned the early believers not to quench the Spirit (1 Thess5:19) but also not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph 7:30 cf. Ps78:40). Hosea the prophet warned the people God would withdraw (like a hurt husband?) because of their arrogance (Hos 5:6). He even describes God’s heart as turning over because of the judgment he is bringing to his people. The Message puts it this way:

"But how can I give up on you, Ephraim? How can I turn you loose, Israel? How can I leave you to be ruined like Admah, devastated like luckless Zeboim? I can’t bear even to think such thoughts. My insides churn in protest." (Hosea 11:8 MSG)

God also expresses his disappointment over the backsliding of King Saul:

"I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions." Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night. (1 Sam15:11)

So God was grieved and the prophet was troubled. The NKJV says God was regretful and Samuel was grieved. Either way God was sad over the condition of Saul.

The prophet Ezekiel, who saw incredible visions in the early chapters of his book, ends up among the people of God. He writes: "I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Abib near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days—overwhelmed." (Ezek3:15).

Other versions tells us he was appalled and astonished.

Here Come the Weepers

So how does the pain of God relate to our experience? Nowhere in the Scriptures is God’s pain expressed more clearly than through the Hebrew prophets. His heart is laid bare among this motley crew of radical, God-possessed bunch of individuals. They were the ultimate God squad, called to bring God’s heart to an erring people.

Jeremiah was probably a teenager when God called him to be a prophet to the nations (Jer 1:5). His book is the longest in the Bible, and his ministry spanned some 40 years. Clearly Jeremiah was given something to say, and God saw fit to preserve it for us in Scripture. But look at the young prophet's reaction after receiving one message from the Lord:

"Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry." (Jer 4:19)

Elsewhere he writes: "The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved. Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people." (Jer 8:20 – 9:1)

Imagine weeping day and night because people were not saved! Paul said he had "unceasing anguish" in his heart because of such people. (Rom 9:1). So connection with God means connection, in some measure, with his anguish. The Psalmist cried out that tears had been his food day and night as he hungered and thirsted for God (Psalm 42:3). Even his bed was wet from his crying. As a modern paraphrase puts it:

"I’m tired of all this—so tired. My bed has been floating forty days and nights on the flood of my tears. My mattress is soaked, soggy with tears." (Psalm 6:6 The Message.)

These men were not nut cases. They were connecting with a weeping God, touching a part of the divine nature in which we too participate (2 Peter 1:4). It's one thing for us to be irritated at the ungodly laws being passed in our day and to take part in a march or two, but another to be in tears because God’s law is not obeyed. (Psalm 119:136)

Jeremiah grieved much over the words of false prophets: "…My heart is broken within me; all my bones tremble. I am like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine, because of the Lord and his holy words." (Jer 23:9)

Are we closer to God than Jeremiah? God’s holy words caused Jeremiah to stagger. But a broken heart is the very condition God is looking for. It is, in fact, the place where he wants to dwell. Look at Isaiah 57:15:

"For this is what the high and lofty One says—he who lives for ever, whose name is holy: 'I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.'

So God seems to dwell simultaneously "up there" in total holiness and "down here" in a broken heart. James Stewart, a man from the last generation, has written:

"In revival, in a real work of God, there is a burden. The prophets of old called their messages burdens. In old–fashioned evangelism God’s people had an agony over lost souls. One could feel it in the very atmosphere…..Oh that God would give us weeping prophets again!"

With all of the historical extremities of our day, the perversion and pollution flooding our generation, and the overemphasis on pursuing a happy life for the Lord, isn't it time for the weepers to arise? For the poets to penetrate? For the preachers to pierce the very conscience of society? Isn’t it time for worship leaders to retreat for days alone with God? To write songs that wake up a sleeping church from compromise and confront a sinning world? Isn’t it time for the fifteen-year-old prophet to arise in the school cafeteria and bring a broken-hearted message of reconciliation? Isn’t it time for God to plead through us? (2 Cor 5:20). Isn't it time for someone to touch the very heart of God and through this heart bring healing to a hurting world?

I think it is. The hour is already late and I'm jumping in whatever it costs. How about you?

Pastor opens his home to unwanted babies

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Steve Dunne in Local News:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/2382366/Pastor-opens-his-home-to-unwanted-babies http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/adopting-children-others-not-2653087