Dear Friends,

I'm heading off very shortly on a hiking trip......so looking forward to it. The Black Alley Range where I'm visiting is a very remote part of Queensland and is rarely visited so I feel a bit like an explorer. However I wanted to quickly write something encouraging before I head off. One of my hopes and dreams is to continue to talk about "being clean inside" like I did with the last email, however I will do that on my return.

A few days ago I was watching Survivor Palau a tv show about people stranded on an island. The show is a survival reality show where people compete against each other to survive and outlast each other to win a million dollars......and this competing often includes various games or contests. On the show last week there was a competition of wills where the contestants had to stand on a tiny stool over the ocean. They couldn't hop down, sit or fall in the water or they were out and the winner was given "immunity" which meant he could not be voted off the show that week.

The contestants all stood on their stools for over and hour, by which time I guess they were feeling very tired. At this point the producer Mark Burnett brought out a plate of donuts and said that "anyone who wants one can come and get it" and immediately several contestants leapt off their stools into the water to swim over for a donut. After another hour or so, the producer brought out cookies and milk and managed to convince several others to leap in for food and exit the competition. Finally after 3 hours the producer brought out hot pizza and said to the remaining 3 contestants, "You have 5 seconds to come for this pizza or you will not get it." I guess that after 3 hours of standing upright that their muscles would have been aching..........and the lure of good food too much to resist, so 2 more leapt in for pizza leaving only one remaining contestant who was the winner.

After this the contestants had to vote someone out..........guess who they voted on.........the guy who was the first to jump in for a donut. So for this man, named Coby, the donut cost him a chance of having a million dollars...........its was a million dollar donut.

Sadly, sometimes we treat our faith in a similar way. We often don't realise how valuable and important our faith is.............worth far more than a million dollars and we exchange it for "spiritual donuts." Instead of seeking after God we tend to seek after many other things which seem like fun or entertaining, or they satisfy our desires, but at the same time we are forfeiting a fortune of blessing we could have in God instead. There was a man called Esau who did a similar thing in the Bible...he exchanged his family inheritance for a meal of stew and lentils....needless to say he later regretted it. You can read about this in Genesis 25:29-34.

Let me encourage and remind you how valuable and important it is to follow Christ......and what blessings we get when we do so wholeheartedly

Give God another chance, and you'll get another chance yourself
Cheers
David