The Captain smiled at me

Posted on June 18, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Robert Louis Stevenson used to tell the story of a ship being battered by a huge storm. The crew were terrified and one young sailor gave way to panic and left his post to rush to the bridge, where he hid behind the door, frozen in fright as he watched the captain calmly giving orders to the man who wrestled with the ship’s wheel, guiding the vessel through the threatening seas. The Captain turned slightly, looked at the frightened sailor, and smiled. The boy then returned below deck and assured the crew all danger was over. When they inquired how he knew, he answered, ‘I have seen the face of the Captain, and he smiled at me.’
That’s why Christians sing ‘With Christ in my vessel I can smile at the storm.’ Fear goes when you know the one who’s is in control.

Posted in Confidence, Danger, Divine Protection, Faith, God with us, Peace, Trials and testings, Troubles | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Turning beer into furniture

Posted on June 6, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

One of the most memorable characters I ever met was a man named Snowy Royal. When I knew him he was an evangelist, but in earlier times he had been a prominent member of the Sydney underworld, a violent alcoholic who had spent half his life in gaol, and a man who was known to the police as ‘The man who was born to be bad.’ But Snowy had an encounter with Jesus in an open air Gospel meeting in Sydney and his life was marvellously transformed. I remember an interjector at a similar meeting once say to him that no sensible person could believe that Jesus turned water into wine. To which Snowy replied: ‘Well I wasn’t there to see Him change water into wine, but in my own house I did see Him change beer into furniture.’
If you want to see a miracle, look at what happens when someone opens their life to Jesus.

Posted in Conversion, Jesus, New Life, Salvation, Seeing Jesus, Spiritual blessing, Spiritual growth, Spiritual Insight, Starting afresh, Transformation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Being famous doesn’t always mean being admired

Posted on June 6, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

In the closing years of the nineteenth century the Cherry Sisters performed to packed theatres throughout the American Midwest. Their fame came from them being unbelievably bad actors that people came to throw vegetables at. Amazingly, the girls were then offered a thousand dollars a week to perform on Broadway – not because they were so good, but because they were so unbelievably bad. And seven years later, after they had earned a respectable fortune, they retired from the stage and went back to the farm, convinced that they had been God’s gift to the American theatre, when the truth was they had actually been a freak show.
It reminds us that the final assessment of our lives will rest not on how much money we’ve made but rather on what God thinks about the real worth of what we did with what we’ve been given.

Posted in accountability, fame, Judgement, Laughter, Life, Life's journey, Living Life, Making the most of what you've got, Self Deception | Tagged | Leave a comment

Sitting on a gold mine

Posted on June 6, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A few years ago builders, while renovating a landmark hotel in Georgia, discovered the entrance to a shaft under the concrete floor in the main dining room. To their amazement they found the shaft led to the entrance of a gold mine under the building. The original owner built the house there when the city refused him permission to dig for gold on his property. They said it was because it was too close to the town square, but he claimed it was because he was a Northerner. It now appears that he built the house to cover-up his mining operation, until poor health forced him to sell the land. The current owners used to joke that they were ‘sitting on a gold mine’, but they had no idea just how true that really was.
It makes you wonder what treasures might there be in our own lives that we don’t realise because we’ve never really looked deep enough to see them.

Posted in Life, Life's journey, Living Life, Seeing the possibilities, Treasure | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Think, Believe, Dream, and Dare.

Posted on June 6, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Walt Disney once gave this advice to a young boy whose Dad had told him that Walt was a very wise man. He said: ‘There are four things you’ve got to do if you too want to be a wise man. The first is to think about the values you want to live by. The second is to believe in yourself based on your thinking about those values. The third is to dream about the things that can be, based on your belief in yourself and those values. The last is to dare to make your dreams become reality, based on your belief in yourself and your values. Think, Believe, Dream, and Dare.’
Louisa May Allcott put it this way: ‘Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead. Therein lies the meaning of life.’

Posted in Believing, Dare, Dreams, Faith, Vision, Visionary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Handling pressure

Posted on June 6, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

In the depths of the ocean there are two ways of handling the enormous water pressure that would crush a normal submarine. One is that of the bathysphere whose hull is made of steel plate several inches thick. It keeps the water out but also makes it heavy and hard to maneuver. The other is that of the fish which inhabit those great depths. They don’t develop thick exteriors; they remain supple and free. They compensate through having equal and opposite pressure inside themselves.
In this we see an example of what faith does for people when they too are under pressure from outside. It’s not external strength that gets them through; it’s the quiet inner confidence of faith that assures them they ‘can do all things through Christ who strengthens them.’

Posted in inner peace, Spiritual blessing, Spiritual comfort, Spiritual Insight, Storms of life, Strength, Stress filled life, Tested, Trials and testings, tribulation and trouble | Leave a comment

Acedia, an aversion to spiritual things

Posted on June 6, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

William Bennet, speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said: ‘There is a coarseness and a cynicism to our era…The ancients called it acedia, an aversion to spiritual things and an undue concern for the external and the worldly… I submit that only when we turn to the right things – enduring, noble, spiritual things – will life get better…the solution to our chief problem of spiritual impoverishment depends on spiritual renewal. The surrendering of strong beliefs, in our private and public lives, has demoralized society. Today, much of society ridicules and mocks those who are serious about their faith and the only respectable form of bigotry is bigotry against religion, and that because it makes us confront matters we prefer to ignore.’
Wise word we’d do well to heed!

Posted in Bigotry, Cynicism, Materialism, Speaking the truth, Spiritual blindness, Spiritual Darkness | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Hold the line

Posted on June 5, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A woman once phoned a theatre to say she’d lost a valuable diamond brooch and thought it might have happened there the night before. The manager told her to hold the line while he went to look. He searched thoroughly and finally found the brooch lodged in a crack beneath her seat number. He raced back to the telephone only to find she’d hung up. She’d been so distraught that she couldn’t endure waiting any longer, and had gone on to call her next possibility. Sadly, she never called back, neither did she respond to a notice he placed in the newspaper.
She reminds me of how we often are in our prayers. We tell God our needs, but in our anxiety we fail to hold the line if the answer is delayed. That’s why Jesus taught that we should be persistent in our prayers. ‘Ask’ he said, ‘And keep on asking.’

Posted in Faith, Fear, Persistence, Prayer | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Pushing the limits

Posted on June 5, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

Frank Allegretti, a meticulous pilot with more than twenty years experience, crashed his plane in a cornfield because it ran out of fuel. His distraught wife said: ‘Everybody told me, he was the most cautious pilot they ever knew.’
Sadly, Allegretti’s story is fairly common. The National Transportation Safety Board says pilots run out of fuel with surprising frequency, and knowingly push the limits thinking: ‘I’m nearly there, I can just make the last couple of miles.’ But they don’t. It seems that even the most responsible people get tempted to push the limits against the voice of reason.
Well, to play fast and loose with your life is pretty stupid. But to do it with your eternal soul is more than stupid, which is why Jesus said: ‘What can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Posted in Eternity, Foolishness, Risking, Salvation, Soul, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

First things first

Posted on June 5, 2015 by vincentsmithauthor

A seminar leader once placed a large jar next to a pile of rocks and asked how many rocks would fit in the jar. Then he piled as many in as he could and asked if the jar was full. The audience said yes. So he took a bucket of gravel and poured that in until it filled the empty spaces. He asked again if it was full and everyone said yes. Then he took a bucket of sand, poured it in until the gaps between the gravel were filled. The audience again said the jar was now full, until he poured two litres of water in too.
‘There’s a lesson in this for our lives,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to put first things first. If I’d put the other stuff in first I’d never have got the rocks in.’
That wise observation resonates with something Jesus said about the meaning of life. ‘Put God first and do what he wants, and all the other things will fall into place.’

Posted in Putting first things first, Spiritual growth, Spiritual Insight, Success | Tagged , | Leave a comment