S05E025, The Gift That Isn't, Andy B 2 Minute Video
It’s good to give gifts to others, and it can be great to receive them. But, some gifts, simply are not what they appear to be and can create more issues than they solve.
We’ve had gifts on both side of that coin - and I’m sure you have too. Many have changed our life for good, even if just for one day. Others, well, they ended up in the bin where they belonged.
We’ve got a whole stack of logs to chop up and a neighbour let us borrow his safe chainsaw. It’s a great idea, but it is rather flawed and ended up at our local rubbish dump. He had asked for some money as he was happy to sell it, and we had offered to buy it. However, we had a go with it and found it didn’t work. Hence why it ended up at the tip!
Some gifts really are not what you think they will be. Some, truly are.
As Christians we have the best possible gift in a relationship with Jesus Christ. It is the gift which keeps on giving; it has no end! And it is a gift we need to share with others.
We can give people a gift which will cost them more than they could afford. But, we can also give them a gift which will bring them more than they could ever hope to buy with anything they could ever hope to have.
It is a gift worth having. It is a gift worth sharing. It is a gift worth hanging onto.
Just a thought...
Andy B
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Transcript
[00:00:00] So, another Andy B 2 Minute video. And I was thinking today about gifts that are not, hence the title, The Gift That Isn't. And I was thinking because we've been doing hedges, I've mentioned this quite a lot, we've got a lot of hedges. There's some more work being done today, which is quite good. But we've got a lot of hedges.
[00:00:25] We've done a lot of work and it's not really hedges. Some of it's actually quite thick branches because it's been let to go for quite a long time and it's become quite unruly and it's not really a hedge so much as a collection of vegetation that sort of is in a basically straight line. So we've been trimming that down. And one of the things we've discovered was we were using a hand saw an awful lot because an awful lot of these hedges, the branches have just been allowed to go so wild.
[00:00:49] You've got 2, 3, 4, 5 inch branches, which is insane. So we've been trimming that down. But we've also been trying to make some logs. 'Cos we've got so much wood now we thought we'd make some logs [00:01:00] out of what we've got, and we can burn it in our wood fire across the winter.
[00:01:03] Now a next door neighbour said, Oh, you can borrow this thing. It's this safety saw. It's got teeth. You put the wood in. The, the safety thing basically puts a little bit of pressure on the log, so it pulls itself against the chainsaw so it's a bit safer and it's got a bottom jaw as well, so you can not have to worry about getting it on you or whatever. It's quite clever.
[00:01:23] It's flawed cuz it doesn't work. And it's also broken now. Initially he said we could buy it from him. We said, well, let's just make sure it's actually working before we paying any money out for this. And, quite quickly, we discovered quite a few problems.
[00:01:35] It hadn't been maintained very well. The chainsaw hadn't been tightened properly. So the first time we used it, it kind of came off, and it was not very happy. And now the motor's gone. or the clutch or something specific. But it's not something that you can fix. I've got apart as much of this machine as I can, and it is not working. So it was a gift that isn't.
[00:01:55] But there is a gift that we each have in the power of the Holy Spirit, and it's called [00:02:00] faith. It's called faith in Jesus Christ. It's called faith in God. It's faith in something that's bigger than we are, that's more than who we are. And that faith is a gift, and it is worth fighting for.
[00:02:11] We've spent some time with this safe chainsaw. We were trying to get it to work. It was worth having a go. Having a go at our faith with Jesus is very much more worth it! And we have amazingly, the Holy Spirit, the great comforter, to help us in our journeys, in our daily walks. So my thought for you today is simply this.
[00:02:31] Be careful with the gifts that we give other people that aren't. But there is a free gift, which is guaranteed to work, from God, and it's called faith, and it's always worth it, and it is a beautiful gift
[00:02:49] Just a thought.