Grosey's Messages

Four years ago I had a discussion with an American New Tribes Mission director over coffee at Newcastle Airport. "Why do missions like Aussies on the field? Australia is a mission field!" I asked. "We need our best men and women here or the home base will be destroyed. No churches here means no Aussie misisonaries on the field. We support missionaries on average one missionary per evangelical church, Where as in America the rate is one missionary per 5 to 10 churches! Why are you guys so keen on Aussie Missionaries?" "Because Aussies have a stick- to- it-ness. Americans usually go home after one two or three years. Aussies have a competitiveness that says, “we’ll make it work no matter what!”"

This is typified of course on a monument at Gundagai. A few kilometres outside the town of Gundagai in N.S.W. is a monument. It’s a monument to a dog. The dog’s master had been killed in an accident.The story goes that days later they found the dog still guarding his master’s lunch box. The ‘dog sat on the tucker box’ has become a good example of faithfulness.

These lines of verse are part of the story penned by an unknown poet writing under the name of Bowyang Yorke and published in the Gundagai Times in the 1880s. A later version was written by Gundagai journalist and poet Jack Moses.

Both versions speak of a bullock team being bogged at a river crossing nine miles from Gundagai with the dog tenaciously "sitting" on the tuckerbox.

The story of the dog and the tuckerbox was enshrined in the song Where the Dog Sits on the Tuckerbox (Five Miles from Gundagai) by Australian songwriter Jack O'Hagan

The monument of the Dog on the Tuckerbox was unveiled in 1932 by the then Prime Minister of Australia, Joe Lyons, on the 103rd anniversary of Australian explorer Charles Sturt's 1829 crossing of the Riverina's Murrumbidgee River.

Part of Bowyang Yorke's poem about Bullocky Bill:

As I was coming down Conroy's Gap, I heard a maiden cry; 'There goes Bill the Bullocky,
He's bound for Gundagai. A better poor old beggar Never earnt an honest crust,
A better poor old beggar Never drug a whip through dust.'
His team got bogged at the nine mile creek, Bill lashed and swore and cried;
'If Nobby don't get me out of this, I'll tattoo his b…. hide.' But Nobby strained and broke the yoke,
And poked out the leader's eye; Then the dog sat on the Tucker Box Nine miles from Gundagai.

There you go! Only Aussies can put up a monument to a dog's faithfulness. The dog was guarding the owners lunch box long after he ahd died, just in case some other dopey bullocky driver wanted to pinch it!

A shepherd once came to the city of Edinburgh from the country. He had his small obedient dog with him. While there, the man died and was buried. That little dog lay upon its master's grave - not for a day, a week, or a month, but for 12 years. Every day at one o'clock a gun was fired in the castle of Edinburgh. When the gun was fired the dog would run to the local baker who gave it food and water. Then back to the grave it would go. This continued till the dog died 12 years later. That was faithfulness!

A Welsh postman had the British Empire Medal conferred upon him by Queen Elizabeth; he had not missed a day's service in 43 years. That was faithfulness!
Paul Dhrlick, the chemist, performed 605 unsuccessful experiments; the 606th was a success! Thomas Edison made 18,000 experiments before he perfected the light bulb. After experiencing 50 failures on another project he said, "I have found 50 ways it cannot be done!" That was faithfulness!
During the Korean War a man buried himself in the muck and mud of a pig sty (except for his nose and mouth so he could breathe) for eight days and nights rather than betray his buddies and surrender to the enemy. That was faithfulness!

“Faithfulness,” therefore, means perseverance, but not blind perseverance, not mere stubborn determination. It is a perseverance based on “confidence, certainty, and trust.”

So, faithfulness is “stick-to-it-iveness” based on faith. Pistis is “Faith-enough-to-stickto- it-iveness!” Faith enough to stick to it when we’re discouraged. Faith enough to stick to it when others are falling away. Faith enough to stick to it when there are questions for which there are no answers. Perservering faith!

God has demonstrated that faithfulness to you and I.

Jeremiah said it in Lament.3: Your mercies are new every morning. Great is Your Faithfulness...!
The Ten Commandments speak of God’s faithful to a thousand generations of those who love Him.

"Great Is Thy Faithfulness." Talking about God, it says, "There is no shadow of turning with Thee." I wonder if people would say that about our lives.

Deuteronomy 7:9: "Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments" (NKJV).

A thousand generations. Now, that's a Bible way of saying God is always going to be faithful to us. He is faithful in every generation. In fact, in Psalm 119:90, it says, "Your faithfulness endures to all generations"

Is God going to be faithful to me when I fail God? "But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one."

What if I do fall into temptation? 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness"

That faithfulness of God is also powerfully shown in some of the Biblical images.

Scripture calls God... our ROCK. Psalm 18:2 "The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge..." In a rock we have something firm, steady and true.
Well, God is like that – an unmovable Rock.
Paul says in 2Tim.213 "If we are faithless, he will remain faithful for He cannot deny Himself."

God's faithfulness to us is a model of the stick-to - it ness we eed to demonstrate in our lives as the Fruit of the Spirit. Perservering Faith!

Perservering Faith is Sticking to a commitment even when the glory and fun are gone.

Keeping our word when doing so gets difficult.

Remaining true to a friend despite the heat you take for doing so.

Refusing to take the easy way out and running from a difficult situation.

The desert fathers were monks who left “civilization” to go live in Middle Eastern deserts as early as the third century. One of those holy men, Abba Anthony, once was asked, “What must one do to please God?” Abba Anthony gave answers that we’d expect such as “Be aware of God’s presence,” and “Obey God’s word.” But his third piece of sage advice was unique: “Wherever you find yourself—do not easily leave.”

Leaving is sometimes attractive, isn’t it? Just walking away. Finding greener grass. But leaving is often not the answer.

There are several funny commercials for a company called “CareerBuilder.com.” The commercials show a guy in an office full of monkeys. The monkeys are toying with the copier, playing computer games, and monkeying around at the water cooler. While apologizing to a client on the phone the one human employee in the office says, “I’m sorry, but…I work with a bunch of monkeys.” Then the logo comes up: “Want a better job?” The message is, “Let us help you find that place to work where there are no monkeys!”

But here’s the truth: There are monkeys everywhere!

There is no perfect workplace. There is no perfect school. There is no perfect community. There is no perfect church. There are no perfect relationships.

Granted, some situations are better than others. And sometimes change is the best thing.

But leaving often is a short-sited, short-lived, solution. Wherever you find yourself, do

not easily leave!

Have the faith to believe that God has a purpose for you and it might not necessarily mean leaving the situation you’re in. Practice perservering faith.

Moral causes deserve our perservering faith

Remember the name William Wilberforce? Wilberforce is credited with convincing the British to outlaw and abandon slave trade. But it didn’t come easily. For forty years he worked. Year after year, Wilberforce went before Parliament in London pleading for the abolishment of the trafficking in human beings.

Then, in 1833, eighteen years since his first trip to Parliament, and one month after his death, Parliament passed the bill which eradicated slavery.

Rosa Parks died a few weeks ago. She had faith enough to stick to it when told to move to the back of a public bus in Montgomery fifty years ago. Chuck Colson wrote, “Most people know the story of the seamstress who helped ignite the civil-rights movement, but many people don't know that Rosa Parks is a devout Christian, and that it was her faith that gave her the strength to do what she did that day in 1955.” Mrs. Parks had perservering faith.

Galatians 6:9 reads, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Marriage deserves our perservering faith

When you got married you said, “I take this person for better or for worse.” Of course you might feel like the lady who went to the judge requesting a divorce from her husband. The judge reminded her that she took him for better or worse. “I know,” she said, “But he’s worse than I took him for!”

Nonetheless, marriage is a sacred covenant between two people before their God—worthy of nothing less than our earnest commitment.

Ecclesiastes 5:1 Guard your step when you go to the house of God. Better to draw near in obedience than to offer the sacrifice as fools do, for they are ignorant and do wrong. 2 Do not be hasty to speak, and do not be impulsive to make a speech before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.
3 For dreams result from much work and a fool’s voice from many words. 4 When you make a vow to God, don’t delay fulfilling it, because He does not delight in fools. Fulfill what you vow. 5 Better that you do not vow than that you vow and not fulfill it. 6 Do not let your mouth bring guilt on you, and do not say in the presence of the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry with your words and destroy the work of your hands?

A Vow is a vow before God. God takes your vows very seriously!

When Jesus commented on divorce, he declared that husbands and wives are to “cleave” (KJV) together (Matthew 19:5). This word “cleave” (translated “be united” in the NIV) comes from the Greek word, kollao, the word from which we get the English word “glue.” In fact, this word was usually used to describe sticking things like metals and other materials together. Jesus said, then, that husbands and wives are “glued together.” He also said in that conversation that if God has “glued” them together, no person has the right to “unglue” them. It’s a superglue situation. Paste just sticks things to the paste. Its stickiness wear’s out and the things fall apart. But Superglue is molecular bonding. Molecules are heated up and move apart, then when they cool, part of the two substances put together are wedged by their own molecules into the bond. Last week I managed to get superglue over both hands. I spread my fingers apart fast, because you know what the result of that is! A long painful experience of trying to separate fingers. That is what marriage is to be licke. A molecular bond. And that molecular bonding, the blending of personalities and character through marriage, Cleaving together, begins with a vow.

I know that a failing marriage is a complex thing. And even Scripture makes exceptions to God’s eternal intention that people who get married stay married. But I encourage you to have the faith to believe that God will bless your marriage if you are faithful to your vows, and practice perservering faith.

The church deserves our perservering faith

Here are three reasons for sticking to the church:

(1) Jesus himself established the church. (“I will build my church” said Jesus). Quite frankly, if the origin of the church is Jesus, then it is worth our very lives.

(2) The church is the body of Christ in the world. Though our blemishes are many, we are His hands and feet—ministering to the world in Jesus’ name.

(3) With all its problems, the church is the best hope for the world, and the best place people can turn in our attempts to live meaningful, joyful lives. Unfortunately, a popular adage about the church is that it is like Noah’s ark: the stench inside would be unbearable if it were not for the storm outside. Though I regret that such a slogan rings so true, most would agree that the storm outside is raging violently. The best way to raise good kids and get through the stresses of our jobs and survive the various bumps and bangs of life is to be intimately involved in a church family. Have the faith to believe that the church is the best hope for the world, and thus that God will use us, and practice perservering faith.

George Mueller prayed for 52 years for a certain man to come to Christ. A pastor visited an elderly man 21 times before being admitted, but then he befriended the man and led him to Christ. That was faithfulness!

Our Lord deserves our perservering faith

“Be faithful until death,” Scripture says. Those words are found in Revelation 2:10, within a section of Revelation addressed to Christians at Smyrna. The Christians at Smyrna were persecuted in countless ways. They were maligned, oppressed, imprisoned and impoverished because of their faith.

An early hero of the faith, Polycarp, was one of the first pastors of the church at Smyrna—very possibly the pastor there when this was written. If he was not the pastor at that time, he certainly assumed that role shortly thereafter. Whichever was the case, the words of Jesus to the Smyrnan Christians via the pen of John were still fresh as Polycarp gave spiritual leadership to their church. And Polycarp took seriously the mandate, “be faithful until death.” It seems to have been on February 23, AD 155, when Polycarp was a very old man, that the Roman soldiers came for him. He was dragged away to the arena like a common criminal.

He stepped forward, and was asked by the proconsul if he really was Polycarp. When he said yes, the proconsul urged him to deny the charge. "Swear, and I will set you free: curse, denounce, Christ."
"For eighty-six years," replied Polycarp, "I have been his servant, and he has never done me wrong: how can I blaspheme my king who saved me?"
"I have wild beasts," said the proconsul. I shall throw you to them, if you don't change your attitude."
"Call them," replied the old man ...
"If you make light of the beasts," retorted the governor, "I'll have you destroyed by fire, unless you change your attitude."
Polycarp answered: "The fire you threaten burns for a time and is soon extinguished: there is a fire you know nothing about -- the fire of the judgement to come and of eternal punishment, the fire reserved for the ungodly. But why do you hesitate? Do what you want." ...
The proconsul was amazed, and sent the crier to stand in the middle of the arena and announce three times: "Polycarp has confessed that he is a Christian." ... Then a shout went up from every throat that Polycarp must be burnt alive.
The rest followed in less time than it takes to describe: the crowds rushed to collect logs and branches ... When the pyre was ready ... Polycarp prayed ... When he had offered up the Amen and completed his prayer, the men in charge lit the fire, and a great flame shot up.

Rick Husband was the commander of the space shuttle that, unfortunately and tragically, blew up just before landing a couple of years ago. You remember the event. I remember watching it on television live. The wife of Rick Husband, Evelyn Husband, had her children there (two children); and they were watching their father come home after being in space for all those days. Rick and Evelyn Husband were believers who loved the Lord dearly. And when asked about the incident, Evelyn Husband said, "Deep inside I knew God was going to walk me through this somehow. I knew it because He had walked me through other crises earlier in my life."