Tassie Update March 2022

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. ²Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, ³though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. ⁵God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. ⁶Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. ⁸Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. ⁹He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shield with fire. ¹⁰He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” ¹¹The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Such a remarkable Psalm and collection of words. There was some serious trouble going on here – figurative or literal, these are still powerful words: earthquakes, gigantic landslides (v2), tsunamis (v3), Countries and continents/regions in political crises, superpowers (and their systems) crumbling (v6) – something similar to what’s going on in the planet today: environmental and weather disasters, geopolitical crisis on every front, outright war, superpowers crumbling, inflation and unsustainable financial and asset “bubbles”, deranged international pride and sabre rattling – the list just goes on. And – inside each one of these tragedies live people, - families, loved ones, sons and daughters, mums and dads, grandparents, friends, neighbours...

Volumes can and have been written on this Psalm. We often hear verse 10 quoted, often on the ‘sunrise poster’ – it is truly encouraging us to ‘stop’, ‘cease striving’ - we are prone to fear and worry. That’s another reason to really enjoy the sunrises - But you can’t really enjoy verse 10 unless you enjoy verse 1 at the same time. Regardless whether Psalm 46 is directed to the people of God, or the enemies of God, or both, we need to understand that there is enormous comfort and security in God and Jesus being our refuge (impenetrable protection) and strength (ability and provision) who will ultimately triumph all across the earth. If we are going to find complete security and safety in Jesus, then we have to stop looking at other areas for security and safety – and no, that does not eliminate the need for planning. May I offer three words to you from Psalm 46, for you to meditate on – verse 1 – ever-present help! We are NEVER alone especially so when trouble is there.

“Ever-present” – adjective - existing or occurring at all times; always there. It’s so encouraging that the “ever presence” of the Lord relates to us being in trouble - (emphasis – mine).

Until you get a couple of hours to read over and over, slowly and deliberately, on Psalm 46, please just meditate on “ever-present help”. Say out loud: “I have ever-present help here with me right now, thank you Jesus” nurturing and growing the consciousness and power of this inside you.

Irrespective of what is going on Jesus has our back! He IS our ever-present help!

2022 – Settling in to Our Year of Progress

1 Timothy 4:15, 16:

¹⁵Practice these things, immerse yourself in them,^[^c^] so that all may see your progress. ¹⁶Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. (Underline mine).

One of the great benefits of these verses is the aspect of accountability. We all need it, in varying forms and I find it very helpful in maintaining focus. We are always on show – just sometimes though we forget that. May I suggest you build some accountability structures into your daily plan. They do help with focus and that reminder that someone, somewhere is being encouraged by watching how well you are doing.

I’m really pleased with what we are getting done at the moment and I am currently proof reading the new Tassie Constitution. Thanks so much to Duncan who has done all the work so far to get us to this stage. The intention was to lodge it by the end of March and we are going to be a little behind on that due to me catching covid and being unwell for a few days.

A little more looking over and this is good to submit, I think. Thanks again to Duncan for all his work.

Covid Interruption Hassle

All of us caught Covid in March. Tiff was unwell and had a week off. I effectively lost a (personal) week along with two full 3-day weekends which was a real hassle. This hindrance was very frustrating indeed but praise the Lord both Lynda and I are recovering well, Britts is now healed of it and is back at work and Kim had experienced covid in Spain so was already much more powerfully aligned in her body anyway.

Aside from it being the flu (effectively) the other confines (house isolation) around close contact movements can be extremely frustrating. Especially so when you are off to 15 acres of bush with no one else there… ☹.

I am very grateful to Jesus and His Word that heals as we are all recovered/recovering and will be released from home next week - after two weeks confined there so far. So much for March! We did however have healing scripture CD’s playing on recurring loop for some 3-4 days though, pretty much running 24/7.

Website, Photos and Podcasts

I haven’t got much done at all this month on the Website – I did lose a fair chunk of my month unfortunately!

However, the Podcasts are still being worked on and that is ticking along steadily.

Radio

GREAT NEWS - We have chosen our new voice over person (well, a new “sound”) for the top and tail of the program. I met with a local company and worked on the new music bed and intro / outro for the program, reflecting our Tassie address. Pretty happy with the progress here at the moment. I’ve circulated it and the feedback so far has been OK.

I’ll probably run with it for the moment and let that take us to the 1000 programs where everything is on the table. I am very keen on other Programs and styles, but it does come back to time availabilities and managing my day job better.

Pastor Al Persohn’s You Tube Channel

MORE GREAT NEWS - Something I should have shared with everyone ages ago – please forgive me for not making this known much sooner - If you really want some serious encouragement and brilliant spiritual education, I can highly recommend you subscribing to Pastor Al’s You tube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLmbg7w8cID6JfHw5ygkl3g/featured

In todays very alarming and rapidly changing world it’s very important to have the influence, security and stability of definitely one of Australia’s most stable and sensible Christian minds speaking into your heart. One of the great things I appreciate is Pastor Al’s ability to show spiritual principles at work in the everyday natural world. Most days you will hear Pastor Al’s voice somewhere in our house - 😊. His lessons are always a family favourite… as well as a personal favourite of Lynda and I for decades now.

The link is above – feel free to share it around.

Those Hardwood Fence Panels

Remember these fence panels? One of my long weekends, when I was unable to go to St Mary’s due to home isolation, I turned them into 7 coffee tables. I truly understand why it’s called “hardwood” now. Dear me! Talk about tough! Shredding the belts on my Makita belt sander was just so easy. $260 in sandpapers later! Anyway…with a lot of missing knuckle skin we now have a whole bunch of actually quite nice, recycled hardwood, hand built coffee tables.

Just got them onto Gumtree so hopefully they will sell pretty well and we can generate a bit of cash back. It was a great learning curve in working the hardwood – I do have a number of slabs drying at present for benches, etc and soon I hope to start milling up some hardwood floorboards. This was a really valuable exercise in getting a bit of firsthand experience in dealing with this timber.