Eternal Reward or a Useless Car and Some Sticks? 

Bless God and His People or Stubbornly Keep to Your Own Way? 

What is Your Word to God Worth? 

The Lord Jesus had blessed Michael and I with an old broken down Bedford J1 with a cab built on the back for carrying forestry workers into their jobs. 

Phil Keelan and a family who had used it for carrying horticultural produce offered to help us do it up. It was sitting in  the middle of some ploughed soil.  It was a sturdy beast and would consume a lot of petrol.  For nearly three weeks in often freezing cold conditions, wielding gas axes, sanding papers, and with the help of a Christian cabinetmaker and a  builder, the vehicle was turned into basic accommodation / cooking quarters. You could only sit up in it, but at a pinch three of us could sleep in the back without having to put the tents up.  Still we were a bit like sardines. 

In the mid nineties The Lord later had Phil travel in it with us for some weeks as He prepared  him to go on to full time gospel work. 

We never took Lazarus, as the vehicle became known,  to the South Island, but running on CNG it was very economical for use in the North Island of New Zealand. 

Travelling a lot often put us on the edge of chronic fatigue, and there were times we just needed to rest up, with no ministry expectations on us at all. And the Lord Jesus marvellously provided times and places for that. 

On one trip we believed to visit a family who had parked their house bus on a small farmlet outside the main city of their area.  We’ll call the husband and wife Trevor and Julia here. 

Trevor had a store in the adjoining city, and had previously been travelling his young family all over the place. 

The owner of the small farmlet was later to privately tell me that he only really allowed the family to stay for the wife and children’s sakes, and looked forward to the husband finding a better arrangement. 

However I did not  know that when the Lord clearly spoke to me that He wanted to give Trevor his own piece of land, where he was to make a good base for his wife and family. 

The reaction I got when I told Trevor this, was unexpectedly blunt, and quite forceful, and not a little bizarre.  He said that owning land would lock him into the ‘evil world system’, and end him up having to pay rates to the ‘evil world system’, as he styled it. That in no way would God want him to own land for those reasons.  In Trevor’s estimation, it seemed it would all be only just a few steps removed from him taking the mark of the beast, from the way he was talking. 

Strangely, Trevor was happy to squat on another Christian’s land while they paid rates to the ‘evil world system’, as Trevor called what I assumed was the local District Council. 

Nonetheless I believed to emphasise that God was going to have him given land, and he was to accept it as being from the Lord Jesus.  Trevor proclaimed that he had never heard of land being given like that, that God would not do such a thing, and that he wouldn’t do it himself any way. 

I reminded him that it was God’s decision and grace towards him for the good of his family, and left the matter there in the Lord Jesus’ hands.  The next day the Lord strongly showed Michael and I to move on for other things that God wanted to do elsewhere. 

Just a few weeks later we heard back from Trevor, and a lawyer friend of ours in the same area. Trevor had looked up one day to see an older man come into his shop, a man who Trevor knew had faith but who he had not seen for quite a while. 

We’ll call this man Bob. Bob had been strongly moved by God to go and see Trevor in his shop and tell him that he was giving a piece of land he had in a town 30 or so minutes away, free, to Trevor for him and his family to have a proper base. There was just a little bit of back rates to sort out(!) 

Although right in town, the land was unencumbered by any buildings and very ideal for Trevor to move his housebus to, and build an amenities and recreation block on.  Water was already available. 

Our Christian lawyer friend hearing of the matter believed to do all the conveyancing fees for the property transfer, for free – praise God!  Trevor took possession, paying the back rates, and planted a potato patch, and put a longdrop toilet in. 

Michael and I were led by the Holy Spirit back through some time after all this had gone down.  We were rejoicing at the wonder  of what the Lord had done.  Trevor wanted us to go with him to the land and dedicate it to the Lord Jesus for His work. He wanted to open it up for us and  others to go and stay on as well as his family. 

We were reluctant to do that, as we needed to see if Trevor knew what it meant to dedicate land, money  or possessions to the Lord? 

Perhaps he would just like to ask God to bless the land and undertaking? We asked, explaining to Trevor how final dedication is, – how he would not be able to dispose if it with out a direct word from the Lord and then only for the purposes that God then designated; and his wife and sons  needed to understand that the purposes for which it had been dedicated stood before God, even after their father  would pass on.  We even explained to him that one of the main Hebrew words in the Bible for dedicating things to God meant destruction by fire, the donor could not themselves claim it back¾it was passed to the Lord for ever. 

I have often shuddered when farmers or others say their land or business or whatever is dedicated to the Lord, so frequently they cling on to it for grim death when the Lord Jesus actually comes knocking.  
A most dreadful trade off—worldly things—for Eternal Life. 

Trevor thought about this and the next day said that he still wanted to dedicate the land. So we again explained the seriousness of it all, sharing Eccl 5 with him from the Bible. Still he said he wanted to do it.  So a couple of days on we met Trevor on his land. We explained the whole thing to him again.   No, he did not just want to ask for God’s blessing on the land, he was going to dedicate it for the purposes discussed, so that others could use it as well.  And so it was done. 

Over a period of a year or more we stayed on the land a few times, and even started reaching out with the gospel while in the town.  Others came to know about the dedication of the land as well.  Trevor asked us to tell people.  However we never saw Trevor set things up for his wife and family, or for any one else, as he had said he was going to do. 

Then one day unexpectedly we received a letter not from Trevor, but from Julia his wife. Julia wrote that Trevor had disposed of the land in a deal where he traded it for a broken–down  old station wagon, and some four by two timber to make an extension at the site they were staying on originally. Julia was worried that people would still go to use the land. 

We never heard directly from Trevor again for many years, and then I did  not known how to answer him. We learnt from others that he  took his whole family off on a whimsical trip for one of his hobbies to Europe, and had some great difficulties there, and has ended up still there now.   It had long–term seemed strongly that God had wanted to lead him into a real  purpose of His here in New Zealand, but all has been lost now. 

And during our last contacts with him we discovered that  Trevor has been given over to a strange belief that people can be saved by music. Not gospel words in music, but by specially ‘anointed’ tunes – series of notes – said to be from the Lord.  We no longer consider him, a man who had once been used of the Lord to share the gospel widely, to even currently be a brother in Christ.  He has made himself   unreachable. When we last tried to speak to him about it he was besotted with it all. Music had become an idol he worships, no longer a means of worship. 

Over the years so many Christian workers have noticed that this modern idea of haphazzedly declaring some one with a natural musical or performing  or other natural gift as having a spiritual ministry,  is very wrong before God.  It rarely, and I mean rarely, bears any good fruit.  Meetings and gospel outreach are intended by God not to rely on the power of an entertainment system, but to be in the power of  His Holy Spirit! 

We could list countless New Zealand so–called musical ‘ministeries’ who have left their families and committed adultery. One wrote a song with words in it,  “I had to leave her for the music”, Trevor said to a common friend back then that “the Music”, and not the Lord Jesus, took him to Europe.  A Headship issue again. 

You do not find such so–called ‘ministeries’ related to the arts, listed as of any importance in the New Testament!  Not one!  It most often provides a stage for folly, sinfulness, and many false things. 

Really important gifts are listed in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans, and  ministries in Ephesians 4.  However any kind of song or act or performance can be used of the Lord – if He has inspired it in the first place, and the people keep themselves in the Holy Spirit–but no one can just make it happen or in the flesh reproduce it– that’s Headship again. Spiritually, Headship can refer to source, like the head of a river. 

Ending up in “Trevor’s” kind of deception is a sad reality for many who bail out on something else major, that God has ordained in their lives, and a warning to the rest of us.  Don’t muck around with the gospel and how people get saved!  It is through the preaching of God’s word in whatever form that people get saved, not through entertainment  no matter how high class. If the gospel message is not in it, and the Holy Spirit is not working with it, no one can get saved. 

Be warned that there are such things that a person can do and be left un able to repent by God, for example: 

“It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,   who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age,   if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
“Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.  But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.                  Hebrews 6:4– 

And Gal 1:8– 

“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!  As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!”