Woody's Words

A MEDIA DRIVEN BY SENSATIONALISM By David Woodbury   Australia has just passed through a bush fire season the like of which we have never known. Even large cities like Sydney that may be relatively untouched by the actual bush fires have had their air quality drastically impacted by the smoke that lingered for weeks. Following hard on the heels of the bush fires the outbreak of the COVID 19 virus has rocked the world. One gets the feeling that these events are fodder for a media that immediately goes into overdrive with sensational reporting.  It may well be that the media outlets compete to see who can publish the most sensational headline and each headline has to be more sensational than the previous day. There is a degree of irresponsibility on the part of the media as to the impact this sort of sensational reporting has on the general public.  Words like disaster, crisis, emergency, catastrophic are bandied...

LIVING A SINLESS LIFE By David Woodbury There is a sense in which when we reflect on everything God does for us we are left speechless. With God not only on our side but indeed dwelling within us, who is able to condemn us? In his love and mercy, God sacrificed his son to enable us to live in a right standing with him and surely such a sacrifice is the ultimate gift. Consequently, can we not rely on such a God to freely  and  graciously give us everything else that we can need? When faced by the evidence of our past, or threatened with the problems of the present, we have a hope and confidence that faces the future, secure in knowing that the entirety of our life is in the hands of a God who loves us beyond human comprehension. 31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?33 ...

A CHILD OF GOD IN A SINFUL WORLD By David Woodbury The reality is that the Christian still has to live in in a sinful world, and an imperfect body with its natural orientation toward sin. However, when we are born again we are under no obligation to our old, sinful nature, rather we choose, of our own volition, to ignore that natural orientation toward sin and conduct our lives under the influence of the Holy Spirit. There is a delicate balance here between body and spirit which all thinking Christians need to address. We still live in this world and there are facets of daily living which have to be addressed and resolved by the Christian. Some aspects of daily life are not in themselves wrong or sinful and they play a part in our everyday existence; activities like relaxation and pleasure. They are part of being human but need to be constantly monitored lest their priority and place in in our lives begins to undermine the influence of the Spirit. 12 Therefore, de...

I AM ANGRY By David Woodbury A recent trip to the supermarket has put me in frustrated and bewildered headspace as I watched people unnecessarily hoarding basic supplies because of the Coronavirus epidemic. I found myself angry with my fellows Australians who appear to have descended to a mob mentality where the only person that matters is “me”. Fights in supermarkets over supplies such as toilet rolls, paper towels, tissues; hand sanitiser, hand soap, meat, milk, pasta etc. are, to say the least, just lack plain common sense.  The big losers here are the elderly and the handicapped. While some of the panic may be driven by people who have come from other cultures whose background is food scarcity and long queues, one cannot help but feel that there is an element of greed in what is taking place, something that is foreign to the Australian way of life. It is greed that factures the bonds of community more than anything else. It was Mahatma Ghandi who rightly said:...

SALVATION ARMY – What happened to you? By David Woodbury In a few months I will celebrate my 80 th birthday and I guess, like many before me, it has become a time of reflection, review and evaluation. The world of my boyhood is a vastly different world in which I exist today. For the first 25-30 years of my life there were not great cultural changes.   On any given Friday night or Saturday if you walked down the main street of most suburbs you would probably have to step off the footpath to get around the crowds gathered at the local pub. They were, in a sense, a place of community gathering and interaction, mainly for males. RSL clubs overflowed with patrons and membership of a service club like Lions or Rotary were prized relationship only available to those who could be sponsored.   Suburban movie theatres drew crowds every weekend and the drive-in movies were a great family event. For The Salvation Army the Sunday night Salvation Meeting was a big event. I...

The Era of Phoney Outrage By David Woodbury     Residents of Batemans Bay shelter from bushfires along the beach. Apparently there is a growing trend among the media and some sections of the political spectrum to indulge in a sense of outrage over peripheral issues, more often than not with the purpose to denigrate a person. Outrage, aimed at a particular person has become the chosen weapon of distraction and destruction. Typical of that was the interview on Monday 6 January 2020 by Channel Nines’ Today show host Karl Stefanovic with Rural Fire Services Commissioner, Shane Fitsimmons. The main issue centred on the fact that Prime Minister Scott Morrison mobilised the ADF to assist with the catastrophic fire facing Australia without informing the Rural Fire Services Commissioner. Whether or not he was obliged to, is a minor issue in light of the dire situation facing Australia. A message this week from Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama reminded me of ...

NO CONDEMNATION THE LAW IS FULFILLED So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.  2  And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. 3  The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins.  4  He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4 – NLT) The use of the word therefore in the NKJV indicates that this passage has a distinct and indelible connection to all Paul has been saying and the law, sin and grace. Within these first few verses, Paul covers a number of subjects, ye...