This is a story by\u00a0 Gordon Moyes in the book Australian Stories for the Soul.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In mid-1975, while ministering at the Cheltenham Church of Christ in Victoria, I had a strong conviction that the church should purchase the large double block of land and house at the end of Pine Street, a street that divided our very extensive property.\u00a0 I wanted this house and the large double block for the church to build a child care centre.\u00a0 We had four young children at the time, and it seemed with over 300 children in our Sunday School, that a day child care centre was what was most needed.<\/p>\n
The need was simple: we wanted to bring glory to God by servicing the needs of the community.\u00a0 The problem was, we had extended our property enormously and had no money in the bank at all.\u00a0 We had just finished building a large retirement village near the church and had purchased several houses for demolition for the building of a further retirement village.\u00a0 We had assets but no cash!<\/p>\n
I stood on the road, faced the house and the double block of land and prayed: \u2018Lord, I believe you want this land for development of our church\u2014to minister to the needs of others.\u00a0 I claim this land now for your work.\u00a0 Thank you for giving it to us!\u2019\u00a0 As I stood in the middle of the road I felt really stupid.\u00a0 With no money in the bank, it was to all intents and purposes a foolish prayer.<\/p>\n
I thought laterally for answers.\u00a0 One was to get the Whitlam Government to buy the land and house for us.\u00a0 I approached the Children\u2019s Commission to get a grant to cover part of the cost of a huge child care complex.\u00a0 Eventually a grant was promised.\u00a0 We were excited.\u00a0 Then everything went wrong:\u00a0 Gough Whitlam was sacked on 11 November 1975.\u00a0 The Fraser Government stopped all grants.\u00a0 The Children’s Commission was closed down and we could not purchase the property.\u00a0 I was jut as if our prayers had been in vain and God was allowing us to be mocked!<\/p>\n
We then discovered that one of our elders, George Daff, was related to the lady who owned the property.\u00a0 She was his wife\u2019s aunt.\u00a0 So we commissioned George to negotiate with her.\u00a0 We agreed on a price, placed a small deposit, and arranged that when she was ready to sell we would borrow and pay her the remainder.\u00a0 We rejoiced at how God had enabled the plans to be worked out.<\/p>\n
Soon afterwards, a man stood at the door and handed me some money.\u00a0 It was the wealthy builder who lived over the back fence from the property.\u00a0 He gave me back the money we had placed as a deposit and simply told me he had made a surprise cash bid for the house and it had been accepted.\u00a0 The papers had been signed before we knew it.<\/p>\n
A wave of anger swept over me.\u00a0 God had let us down.\u00a0 We\u2019d been robbed.\u00a0 I looked hard at him.<\/p>\n
I looked hard at him: \u2018Damn you, Bill Marshall! You knew we wanted that land and house to minister to other.\u00a0 You would have read that in the church paper your kids took home.\u00a0 And knowing we\u2019d put the deposit down and were about to sign the papers, you went in and confused the old lady with cash and pushed us out!\u2019<\/p>\n
The builder looked coldly at me.\u00a0 \u2018I bought it for my daughter to live in.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be marrying her in a couple of years, and we want her to live next to my wife and me.\u00a0 Sorry about your plans, but in this life cash always wins.\u2019<\/p>\n
We had no cash so Bill go the property.\u00a0 He then rented it our for a couple of years until his daughter was married in our church.<\/p>\n
I had wanted that property for the right reason\u2014to help children in need.\u00a0 But we soon discovered our plans had been for the wrong age group.\u00a0 The great need in our area was not child care but aged care.\u00a0 Before long we had over a hundred people on our waiting list for our Christian Retirement Centre.\u00a0 We had two centres and opened a third, but the waiting lists grew even longer.<\/p>\n
Then two years after the night the builder told me he had bought the property, he was once more standing on my doorstep.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019ve got a problem,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018You know I\u2019ve been renting out that property at the end of Pine street.\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s brought me nothing but trouble.\u00a0 The first crowd in there were all drunks who threw their bottles over into our swimming pool.\u00a0 Then there were those motorcycle people who repaired their bikes in the lounge room.\u00a0 Then it was those young people with the rock band and we couldn\u2019t get a wink of sleep.\u00a0 And now it\u2019s my daughter; she and her husband don\u2019t want to live so close to us!<\/p>\n
He paused and took a deep breath.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019m not going to rent it to anyone else.\u00a0 I\u2019m, wondering if the church would do a deal.\u00a0 I\u2019m short of work at the moment, and I know you have a lot of people on the waiting list to get into the Christian Retirement Centre.\u00a0 If you gave me the contract to build another retirement centre for you, I\u2019ll give you the land-free!\u00a0 You could lease the units so it wouldn\u2019t cost you any money, and you would own the property without it costing you a cent.\u2019<\/p>\n
Carefully controlling my words and trying not to appear too eager, I replied, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll get our people to consider if we still want it.\u2019<\/p>\n
I had prayed for a ministry on that block.\u00a0 New we got the house, two large blocks of land and a purpose-built two-storey brick building to complete our ministry to the aged\u2014and the whole project was completed without the church having to borrow or raise a cent!\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help but think of the assurance I had forgotten when everything went wrong: \u2018We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose\u2019 (Romans 8:28)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a story by\u00a0 Gordon Moyes in the book Australian Stories for the Soul. In mid-1975, while ministering at the Cheltenham Church of Christ in Victoria, I had a strong conviction that the church should purchase the large double block of land and house at the end of Pine Street, a street that … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15,16,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}