12/1/2020
In the past, I worked some 17 years in the area of entertainment/hospitality. It is an area only existed if we have food security.
What are involved with food security? Land security is needed. We need good soil. Water security is needed. Crops need water to grow. Modern farming requires an irrigation system. Live stocks graze on lush green pasture with plenty of water. We need pest control. Orchards need protection. We need storage for grains. We need to look after the primary producers.
When we drink and eat, our bodies produce waste. Sanitation is important. Otherwise, we could have an outbreak of disease among a population. We need sewage treatment. Whether we have a lot of food for a lot of people for a long time or just enough for food just for a few people for a food days, we still need pest control and storage. We need to look after the town planners and engineers.
We have not eaten anything yet at this point. In order for the food to get to a distribution point, they need to be cleaned from soil residue, package and stored. We need factories to process them. When we have factories, we need electricity and machinery. When we have machinery, they need to be maintained and repaired. The food then need to be transported. We need to look after the food processors.
Here is a side thought on transportation. Motor vehicles had been around for more than a hundred years and railways had been around even much longer. Why did we make railway anyway? We made railways so that we could transport foods and other goods from the country to the cities to feed and serve the large population of the cities. Later, railways were built to transport people from cities to cities. Why did we make motor vehicles? We made motor vehicles to enable city people to travel out to the country with ease for leisure. Motor vehicles also enabled farmers to do work which they depended on live animals in the farm. Motor vehicles also enabled essential services, emergency services and law enforcement took place more efficiently. Therefore, motor vehicles are tools.
There are millions of children and young people around the world growing up and reaching the legal age of getting a permit or license to learn how to drive a motor vehicle. Governments around the world are helping developing countries to develop their infrastructures to make these countries more accessible. In the 1980s, Japanese motor vehicles manufacturers used the just in time management process to minimize costs by reducing the cost of carrying and managing large inventory instead of following the traditional economy by scale. In more recent years, motor vehicles are built in countries with lower labour costs then export them across the world to reduce costs.
A motor vehicle is not an appreciative asset like a property. It loses its value as soon as it touches the ground after its purchase. It depreciates in a rate depended on several factors such as mileage, body condition, make and model, and so for. For owners, a motor vehicle carries the cost of purchase, maintenance, service and repair, fuel, road toll and parking, insurances, registration, roadside assistance membership along with possibility of fines.
With the above in mind, we need to budget the cost of driving. The only way to keep a budget accurately is to obtain receipts and record the expenditures on driving diligently.
I get back to food security, beside we need trucks, we need infrastructures. We need to look after everyone in our transport industries.
The distribution point needs to be powered and maintained. We use currencies to buy food. The financial system is important. We need to look after everyone in whole sales and retails.
When we eat unhealthy due to whether contamination or imbalance or any other reasons, we need healing. We need to pray. We need to remember our Creator. He is our provider and our healer. We need to not neglect the church who always point us to Jesus.
After we eat, there are dishes to wash and trash to dispose. We also have packaging to recycle in an environmental friendly society.
A population is filled with compassionate people because of the virtues of Jesus Christ, we have medical science and health science to help us when we need to regain our physical health. This is by no mean comprehensive, it is a starting point of food security.
We cannot be in difference with so much made available to us.
In early 1999, my wife and I started reading a new set of Christian leadership books recommended to us from our home church from Sydney, Australia while we were living in Hong Kong, China. The titles were:
“Ordering your private world” by Gordon McDonald
“Restoring your spiritual passion” by Gordon McDonald
“Effective Keys to Successful Leadership” by Frank Damazio
“Get a Life” by Brian Houston
“Winning Attitude” by John Maxwell
“Developing the Leader within you” by John Maxwell
“Developing the Leaders around you” by John Maxwell
“Power of Vision” by George Barna
“Turning Vision into Action” by George Barna
“Understanding Leadership” by Tom Marshall
“Spiritual Leadership” by J Oswald Sanders
“Lead On” by John Haggi (Out of print)
I had read the first 4 out of the above 12 titles and I had only 2 copies of the above 12 then. So we bought the other 9 titles that we did not own (and one of them was out of print by then). As we read these books, my mind was stretched in length and I understood the importance of foresight and I needed to develop it. This was the first thing I needed the most then among many other things from those books. We did not have a credit card then and we did not take out any loan at the time. We had decided to put God first always in tithe and offering and we decided to pay all our bills on time for many years. To control our expenses, we recorded down everything we spent on paper from April 1999. By May 2000, we could see confidently the pattern of the expenses after paying the following: tithe, offering, gas, rent, building administration (we lived in one of four 18 storeys buildings within a block), electricity, water, content insurance and phone.
In that month, I had a phone call from my previous employer offering me a new full time job. After I started work, I sat down and worked out how much money we would have extra after I tithed and gave over the months of the Northern Hemisphere summer. It came to the sum of 2 return airfare tickets between Hong Kong and Sydney. We knew that it was to be used to return home for a visit for a week. My parents in law had moved to the Gold Coast in Queensland then, we purchased an extra leg of journey to Brisbane and my wife flew out 4 days ahead of me so she could make better use of her holidays. We used the allocated saving from June and our salaries from the end of June (as we were paid monthly) to purchase the return tickets. We had enough money according to our previous year expense record for the month of July. My parents in law then drove us from Gold Coast to Sydney and visited all the relatives in the North Coast along the way. After a week in Sydney, we flew back to Hong Kong to complete our missions. However, when we were in Gold Coast and Sydney, we did not really need to spend any money and we received some gifts so when we got paid at the end of July, we had more than enough to pay for all our bills and expenses for August. After this successful trip, the grace, gifts and power of Jesus in accordance with Ephesians 3:20-21 became a whole new dimension in our lives.
Foresight, the ability to look ahead and allocate tangible resources to achieve specific goals; add discipline to use those allocated resources purposefully and objectively; along with the grace, gifts and power of Jesus Christ, we have changed our future forever.
Budgeting and forecasting: They enable me to see what have been going out and what have been coming in; and more importantly, what will be going out and what will be coming in. This is the beginning of serious life management for us.
Investing into the future generation: Once I can see clearly where our resources are going and coming, the book of Proverbs chapter 13 verse 22 and the book of Isaiah chapter 59 verse 21 made a lot of sense.
Controlling my standard of living: It did not take very long to see how much it costs to build a new generation of godly offspring lest alone make a difference in the world around us. I see the out working of God’s faithfulness in my life, the maintenance of resources in my hands, and the meeting of needs all around me. The sizes of these three are overwhelming at time. By decreasing my standard of living and increasing my giving, I can help and make a difference a bit faster; I have much better use of my time. It helps me to master more basic skills and make the most of more basic things instead of try to muscle things out.
Matthew 7:7-12 (NIV) Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened....
God, your Heavenly Father answers your prayers. When we ask Him for help, he answers us. God is the one who grants us favour so that those who have resources would lend to us. He is also the one who brings increase with what we loaned so that we can redeem the harvest by buying back the seeds that we have borrowed to sow.
In the Old Testament, the book of Psalm 37 verse 21 says, “The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously”.
When I borrow, I must repay to the lender, otherwise, it is wrong. Is it right to borrow? Is it right to lend? Is it better to do without till there is the extra to do the new thing?
In 1997-1998, with the handful people who came a few times a year along with the new people at our church plant in Hong Kong, we raised $1,000.00AUD from Hong Kong to join with our home church in Sydney, Australia for helping an older church plant of our home church in Ghana, Africa in their job creation programmes through Opportunity International. My accountant in Hong Kong, who was a Christian, asked me what it was when he saw my incomes and expenditures statement. He was shocked to find out about Ghana’s high double digits unemployment rate while Hong Kong up to that time had only less than 2% unemployment rate. The $1,000.00AUD would be used as micro-enterprise loans to help 2 families to start their own businesses. When they make substantial profits, they would repay the loan amount and the money would then lend to another 2 families to help starting their own businesses. Those 2 families would repay eventually and this cycle of lending and repaying would continue.
From this story with my accountant, we can see that people lend money to people who borrow money to do something that they cannot gather or save enough capital to do. This endeavour for the borrowers would put them into a position that is far more stable than anything they would have experienced previously. More importantly, when they repay, they redeem the harvest by buying back the seeds that they borrowed to sow. They would enable others also to be lifted into their new positions and their duties of repaying combined with their gratitude would bring about relief, release, rejoicing and continuing a cycle of regeneration.
There is power in repayment.
On 20/8/2004, my wife and I used our credit card to purchase a car for $800 from a second hand cars dealer in Sydney; pay for its transfer fee of $48 and its service and repair of $300 a week and a half later. As we honoured God with our increases through tithing along with prayer, we redeemed the contribution we made in our world by repaying those credit card loans in two months, on the 26/10/2004.
Two months prior we purchased this car, we disposed of our previous car. For two months, we used public transport as a family with children. We noticed how much money, time and energy we saved after we had a car again. We did not have to pay bus fares; take much long time to travel; and concern about missing the buses. We spent $536 on bus fares and car rental in those previous two months we did not have a car. Therefore, we would have put at the least $536 to pay back the credit card loans during September and October. Shopping was another big difference. Instead of doing short trips with back pack and carry bags, we could put many times more items into the car in one trip. We did not have to miss all the discount items. It took a friction of time and a whole lot less energy. We saved so much money from discounts. Those savings went back to repaying the credit card loans.
God makes a way where there seems to be no way out of a situation as we ask Him to help. I trust this page with various perspectives encourage you to keep asking God and thanking Him for your situation which you have written down in writing to remind yourself. You shall see a way out and get to the other side.
Everyone experiences change. The older I get, my body changes. I could not bend down and touch my toes with my fingers while my knees are straight any more. I could do that when I was a child. Some changes we must change in order to improve. It is harder to change for improvement when things are going alright in my mind. I mean nothing really bad is happening, a lot of people seem to do the same as I am doing now. And a lot of people are not doing what I am doing now.
You would say that I have no problem to improve having read this page so far. It seems that I am already improving. Therefore, you may think that I am repeating myself.
16/5/2022
Well, after I am changing for better gradually for 20 years with God's help, I look certain a lot different from who I was at the beginning but God promise all of us that all his people go from strength to strength and glory to glory. He is the initiator of change in my life and he keeps helping me to be better, grow and get better.
Let me illustrate it with this story. Most people have travel in a motor vehicle whether a private car or a taxi. Not everyone check all the tyre patterns on the wheels before they travel in a vehicle. If a car has different tyre patterns on each of its wheels, it will still move. I drove cars with different tyre brands and hence different tyre patterns for many years. With the good tyre dealers, they always say that keep the front two tyres the same brand and tread and the back two tyres the same brand and tread. I can change one tyre at a time but it is good to have replaced it with the same brand and tread. I buy cheap unknown brands tyres. Those brands come and go. I might not be able to replace one easily. So once I ignore the advice of the tyre dealers and I just replaced one with a different brand. So I had three different brands tyres on the four wheels of my car. Immediately after installation, my car did not feel the same in the negative sense. The next thing came to my mind was that if the car felt like this in dry weather, what would happen if I drive it in wet weather condition.
I need to make a change with how I replace tyres. God is the God of restoration but he restores us not to where we were but where we should be. There are many places in the bible show that is true such as 2Kings 8:16. There is a cost to change. There is a cost to change one cheap brand tyre and there is a greater cost to change two cheap but same brand tyres. Actually, all four tyres are wearing down. To improve safety in wet weather, I changed all four tyres with the same brand but I replaced them with second hand tyres. The wheels also needed to be balance and aligned to minimize tyres wearing quickly.
Change for the better does not mean to arrive at ideal immediately. It may seem like a step backward then two steps forward. It is still going forward and getting better with God's help.