Nick Willis

What an outstanding result for Nick Willis and New Zealand at the Olympics! I set my alarm and got up to watch the race. So glad I did! I thought he was going to be pipped at the post by the Frech guy but he pushed on when it counted and got the bronze. Come on!!

Last year Promise Keepers interviewed Nick about his career and his faith. Here is an extract:

How did Nick become a Christian? He says that it started when he went to the USA - he was impacted by senior students who were excellent role models of what it meant to be godly men. It inspired him to seek out God for himself.

Then he met Bruce Dishnow from Athletes in Action. “After six weeks I became a Christian. Since then Bruce has been a great mentor to me. He and his family have opened their home to me, so much so that I was best man at a family wedding - it was a real honour. Bruce has been a source of stability. He is slightly removed from the sport and College scene so he can offer an unbiased opinion to me.”

On the subject of accountability in his life, Nick feels that this is very important and he meets once or twice a week for Bible studies with Bruce. He also formed an accountability group with five guys that he met through Campus Crusade for Christ and they got together every Sunday night for a year. He believes that they grew as brothers. They agreed on a mission statement that would encompass time in the Word, their physical purity and also their emotional purity. These guys became Nick’s 3:00 am friends – he could call them at any time if he felt tempted or was facing issues. They were all at similar stages, ending college, thinking about employment, as well as girlfriends and marriage.

Olympics

How good are the Olympics!! Saturday had to be one of our greatest sports days ever. Medals galore, a decisive All Black victory in the Republic and a Warriors win!. It doesn't get much better than that!

American Presidential Race

I am finding the American Presidential race fascinating. The following are excepts from an email I receive form Relevant Magazine.

Rick Warren’s Southern California mega-church, Saddleback Church, hosted the two presumptive Presidential nominees to answer questions about faith and morality.

Questions centered on moral issues such as poverty and climate change, issues that didn’t seem to create much distance between the candidates. But things changed when Warren pressed them on the “big two”: abortion and same sex marriage.

When asked to define marriage, Obama appeared centrist. “It’s a union between a man and a woman,” he said. “For me as a Christian, it is a sacred union. God is in the mix.” Obama added that he does support civil unions for gay couples because civil rights should be afforded to others even if he doesn’t share their view. McCain played it safe and said that he would leave the decision up to individual States.

When asked when the candidates believed life began, McCain blurted out “conception” without hesitation. Obama seemed to spin things a little bit. While he said he supports Roe vs. Wade and has always been pro-choice, the goal should be to reduce the number of abortions in America.
“What I can do is say, are there ways we can work together to reduce unwanted pregnancies,” he said. Obama never answered the question.

The Saddleback Civil Forum did Obama no favors. Several pundits commented that Obama looked uncomfortable, and more than a few noted that he had trouble offering straight answers to straight questions. The reaction from many people of faith was mixed if not uninspired.
McCain occasionally rushed Warren’s questions to offer tightrope responses. His comments regarding abortion, same sex unions, and court appointees made him look like a traditional, Reaganesque Republican, something of which he is not often accused. Perhaps his true colors surfaced that night or maybe it was the typical, posturing rhetoric employed by politicians running for the land’s highest office.

Jonathan Merritt Jonathan.

Merritt is a faith and culture writer whose political thoughts have appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and The Washington Post. He is a regular contributor to RELEVANT publications and would love to connect with you at jonathanmerritt.com.

Kaira Grace

We had a bit of a surprise last week. Our baby girl came 6 weeks earlier than we expected. She is so beautiful and both her and mum are doing great.

The Ripple Effect

The Ripple Effect can be observed when a stone or a droplet of water is dropped into a still
pool of water. Long after the stone or droplet is no longer visible, we can see its effect on the
surface in the expanding ripples. This same ripple effect can be seen when someone
touches their finger to the water’s surface.

Our lives cause a rippple effect. The question is wheter our actionas and comments casue a positive or a negatice ripple.

In 1855, A Sunday School teacher, a Mr. Kimball, led a Boston shoe clerk to give his life to Christ. The clerk, Dwight L. Moody, became an evangelist.

In England in 1879, Dwight L. Moody awakened evangelistic zeal in the heart of Fredrick B. Meyer, pastor of a small church.

F.B. Meyer, preaching to an American college campus, brought to Christ a student named J. Wilbur Chapman.

J. Wilbur Chapman, engaged in YMCA work, employed a former baseball player, Billy Sunday, to do evangelistic work.

Bill Sunday held a revival in Charlotte, N.C. A group of local men were so enthusiastic afterward that they planned another evangelistic campaign, bringing Mordecai Hamm to town to preach.

During Mordecai Hamm's revival, a young man named Billy Graham heard the Gospel and yielded his life to Christ.

Only Eternity will reveal the tremendous impact of that one Sunday School teacher, Mr. Kimball, who invested his life in the lives of others.

Everything we do in the name of Jesus Christ has an effect which will be viewed through Eternity. We may not even know he impact of our "ripples" this side of eternity.

The Butterfly Effect

The butterfly effect is a the theory that small variations of the initial condition of a system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of that system. For example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

Term "butterfly effect" was coined by Edward Lorenz who refferred to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.

In arguably the earliest illustration of the butterfly effect in a story on film, an angel in 'It's a Wonderful Life' (1946) shows George Bailey how rewriting history so that George was never born would detrimentally affect the lives of everyone in his hometown. In a subtle butterfly effect, snow is falling in one version of reality but not the other.

The 1998 British movie 'Sliding Doors' runs two parallel stories of the same woman, Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow). In one universe, Helen manages to catch a London Underground train home on time, and in the other she misses it. This small event influenced her life dramatically.
In many cases, minor and seemingly inconsequential actions in the past are extrapolated over time and can have radical effects on the present time of the main characters.

The second episode in the "Back to the Future" trilogy also vividly illustrates the cascading and broad effects of what seemed a minor change in the course of events: because the loathsome Biff Tannen accidentally gets his hands on a record book from 2015, he is able to grow rich and corrupt Marty Mcfly's home town. When McFly returns to 1985, he finds it utterly degraded from what had used to be.

The lesson for us from the butterfly effect is that small events can trigger significant consequences. A small act can disturb the status quo and bring significant change.

If we make minor adjustments to our everday living, there can be signifcant effects further down the track. What can you do today to that could have a major effect later on?

It's our daily decisions that determines our destiny, and potentially the destiny of others as well.

Trust, Hope, love

1 Corinthians 13:13 (The Message)

Trust steadily in God,
Hope unswervingly,
Love extravagantly.