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"Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for one day. Teach a man how to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime." Poverty does not mean that people are clueless, lazy slobs who deserve to remain so. Poverty can come unexpectedly through natural or personal tragedy. Every poor person still has the breath of life and some human dignity which can bounce them back into a worthwhile existence. Micro-finance can be such a trigger.

Banks are by nature risk-adverse and like to give loans to those who knock on their door and already have money. On the other hand micro-finance providers seek out those who need to be pulled out of poverty and offer them the cash and expertise to reach an achievable goal. 97% of micro-finance clients repay their loan on time which would leave the banking sector green with envy if they knew what goes on beyond their marketing radar. When you live in the mist of abuse, corruption, loan sharks and the like you want to make a good impression in the community who reached out to you with such a lifeline. Suffering causes people to appreciate opportunities that come their way.

Micro-finance stands out from charity because it's not an open-ended transaction devoid of accountability. It is an investment in a community where funds are being recycled again when loans are being repaid. Paying off your loan puts you in good standing with yourself and the community. It also gives a chance for someone else to have a go with the same capital that got you out of your hole.

Micro-finance has its enemies where it exposes and upsets cosy arrangements of slavery, abuse and exploitation. Women turn to micro-finance to escape forced prostitution. Displaced minority groups bounce back into a normal existence.
Corrupt government cronies hate it because they cannot take their cut. They resort to tactics of slander to cast a slur on the white man who comes to colonise and alienate local institutions with his Judeo-Christian values.

Micro-finance takes its name from the ridiculously low amounts lent by western standards. US $50 to $100 can allow someone to buy a goat and have an ongoing supply of milk and cheese to feed their family and sell the surplus on the market. Those loans are usually repaid within 6 months. Another reason why traditional banks stay well clear of that market is because whether the loan is for $100 or $10,000 their processing costs are the same. Traditional lending without collateral is the realm of credit cards. We can guess how many divorces have been caused by encouraging wild spending and so the social responsibility of the established banking sector is something shareholders do not care about.

Micro-financiers on the other hand have a vision to seek out those lost in a woeful plight. They are experts in operating through local churches who identify the needs on the ground. They are highly creative in coming up with schemes that involve local channels of authority. They boost local productivity through simple technical advances or basic hygiene and nutrition standards. Micro-loan clients are not left to their own devices but are being supported and monitored through their local community.

Find out more at www.opportunity.org.au

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Can the world continue merrily like this or are we on the brink of the abyss? Let me take 10 key factors that converge in the start of this 21st century and may point to the fact that our merry-go-round may eventually jam up in the next few years.

I would even go further and state that there is nothing we can do about our poor state of affairs and that the aftermath is to be embraced rather than feared. This is not a "doom and gloom" message but a "watch this space" message.

1- Family under attack

• Birth rates so low western civilisation extinct in 20 years
• Divorce so high one child in two raised in broken home

2- Steady increase in natural disasters

• Floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, tsunamis
• Epidemics HIV, SARS, swine flu

3- Rampant lawlessness

• Powerful organised crime syndicates
• Corporate regulators asleep at the wheel
• Piracy at sea

4- Fear mongering

• Weapons of mass destruction
• Global warming
• Dieting and cancer fads

5- Apostasy in the church

• Doctrinal tangents
• Homosexuals appointed as clergy
• Clergy caught in child abuse

6- Moral decay

• Legal system devoid of Judeo-Christian values
• Litigation as a lifestyle
• Employees replaced by contractors
• Lavishing on pets and ignoring people
• Sport, entertainment and leisure as life pursuits

7- Tampering with life

• Race for the human genome
• Genetically modified crops

8- Lack of leadership

• Minority rules - everyone as they please
• Weakened western democracies
• Scene set for a totalitarian regime coup

9- Nuclear threat

• Iran double minded attitude
• North Korea's brinkmanship
• Pakistan instability

10- Meddling in Middle East affairs

• Western leaders eager to score a peace treaty
• Israel neighbours reject Israel right to exist
• Temple Institute ready to rebuild Solomon's temple

It is pretty obvious by now that we are on a collision course and that several things have gone well past the point of no return.

This is a challenge to be embraced with both arms. A chance to make every day we have left count. It is appointed for each to die once and then give an account of our life. Will you have a good story to tell? Who will be your attorney? Mine is Jesus Christ to find out more check out witness4christ.net

God tells us in the Bible about a period of time called "the last days". It has an uncanny similarity to the 10 points above. It also mentions it is futile to try to guess the exact time. Rather we are supposed to continue to do good and remain in a state of readiness. Are you ready?

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Have you ever had a job interview only to discover that the employer spent the allocated 10 minutes only to focus on your negatives? The name of their game was 'last person standing' and in order to thin down a shortlist of 10 applicants they were quite willing to waste the time of nine people and humiliate them to pick that so-called perfect candidate who may only stay in the job for a short while...

People question "Can you do this?" or "Can you do that?" really treating you like a gizmo trying to see if you would fit with their style of furniture. I'd prefer if people ask me "Would you like to do this?" or "Would you like to do that?" implying "Would you be challenged and motivated by our corporate goals and would you like to walk some of the journey with us?"

Today's corporate goals pale into insignificance in the light of the values we had some time ago. Today's business ethos is like "Maximizing corporate profits (at the expense of customers, suppliers and employees if we can get away with it)"

20 years ago corporate goals were just like "To release our workforce full potential and be a beacon of strength and reliability in the marketplace as a result". In this by-gone era people had the concept of a social balance sheet. Employers took full responsibility for the welfare and professional development of all those who gave them their working life.

Large companies provided not just employment but also education, housing and health services. The human resources department was planning people's careers from teller to director. Promotion was awarded to acknowledge the good and reliable service of long standing employees. Newcomers had to prove themselves and did not bypass the ranks.

Then greed moved in and strikes took place. The unions demands pushed many manufacturing jobs offshore. Consumers bought foreign goods never questioning why they were cheaper than locally made ones. Nobody dared to say out loud that is was so because labour rates in third world countries were so low it was equivalent to slavery. (Child labour in India is still an issue).

To finish full circle now we are facing significant illegal immigration in the US, Europe and Australia supposing we could offload our labour market issues offshore. Only it's coming back with a vengeance.

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If God is full of love and compassion as the Christian Gospel claims how come He kills innocent victims through natural disasters?

Fair questions - but not every question bears a direct answer. There are the things that we know - and the things we do not know.

We know that our sojourn down here is limited. So whether you die in an earthquake or tsunami or fire or epidemic or quietly in your bed in a retirement home - the fact is: you have to die of something.

We also know that just as our parents could not predict precisely our date of birth - we are powerless to know when is our time to depart - unless we commit suicide, which is not a good idea (I'll explain why later...) So you either die when your heart naturally stops beating or your depart with a bang in some accident - only two choices...

We also know that where our treasure is, there our heart is also. So if you labour all your life to get a better car, a better house, a better superannuation - those things have the knack to cling onto you and you are in bondage to them. On the other hand if you build a treasure in heaven for yourself where rust doesn't corrode and moths do not eat away, then you are looking forward to the time when you will step into eternity and it will be a celebration - not a lament.

We know from those who had a near death and an out of the body experience that the moment your soul departs from your body you feel no pain. We also know that Jesus Christ went ahead of us into heaven to prepare a place for us. We are told that God will give us the desire of our hearts.

Quite frankly you'd better do your homework and find out everything you should know by now about heaven and what the preconditions to get there are. I can assure you it is a much, much, much better place that here and you should do your utmost to get your citizenship there for eternity.

In the meantime we have work to do down here. Work to do good and as the body of Christ on this earth it is our corporate duty to reflect God everlasting love and compassion to our fellow man. That will build up your bank account upstairs. Not that anyone can buy their salvation by good deeds - it is a free gift by faith. But once you are on the winning team you want to put your shoulder to the wheel and help give people a glimpse of heaven by displaying altruistic motives.

Oh, by the way, did you know that when God created mankind, we screwed up and handed over our dominion of the earth to the devil, the enemy of our soul? So get insurance companies to re-write their fine-print contracts by crossing out "acts of God" when they mean to exclude natural disasters from your policy!

So by now you understand that God does not kill innocent people through natural disasters. Instead people are called to give an account of their lives at a time they do not control. That's why we tell you to get ready and get right with God. If you think it is unfair for children to be snatched away you have no clue what God has in store for them. You should trust Him implicitly because the divine exchange that took place at the cross of Calvary is a perfect sacrifice that provides everything.

Because we are creatures of God our own lives do not even belong to us - committing suicide is the fastest way to go to hell. People do it when they are driven to utter despair (what the enemy of our soul wants to achieve). Instead you should throw yourselves into the arms of a loving and merciful God who didn't even spare His own Son to die a death we should have died so that in exchange we could partake in His eternal life.

So is God in the earthquake and the tsunami? He is everywhere at once and nothing escapes His knowledge. God is sovereign which means He is not accountable to us - instead we are accountable to Him. Denying that is called rebellion and is the root cause of our condition as human beings. We have a built-in propensity to turn our back on God and dare to be independent of Him. That condition is called sin. Our challenge here on earth is to overcome this separation and come back into the right relationship with God. Wouldn't you like to have as a friend no other than the One who created the universe? Don't you think it would take you eternity to ask Him questions and for Him to show you a few tricks? So start that relationship on the right foot today.

Find out more about Christian values at http://witness4christ.net

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If you ever get a chance to get out of your high rise building and get away from all the trappings of man-made things you will encounter a peculiar experience. There are things out there that grow, thrive and reproduce without money or electricity. There is an infinite variety of species - none is trademarked or copyrighted.

God doesn't have to prove Himself to us. He transcends time and travels eternity. Only those who reach out to Him find Him. You can delude yourself and miss out on the relationship of a lifetime.

Yet some have invented some clever theories to backup their unbelief. Evolution is tantamount to saying that if you try enough times you can reproduce the complete edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica by detonating a bomb in a print shop.

Others have erred the other way saying that any scientific discovery that's not found in the bible is a fraud. The issue is that the bible is God's love letter to mankind - not a treatise on thermo-dynamics. Surely God would want to keep a few things to Himself so that we don't wreck the planet ahead of time...

As it turns out some recent assessments on the nature of particles within the atom (the smallest form of matter), have concluded that matter is essentially a vibration. So we have gone full circle since Genesis tells us that God spoke and then the world was made.

Try to speak your next car into existence. Yet this is exactly what some Christians are doing with various degrees of success. The power of proclamation is to understand that God's word in your mouth is as powerful as God's word in His mouth. Jesus gave us a stark demonstration of this as He spoke to the wind and waves to calm the storm.

The trick there is to understand what is involved in the power of proxy when we utter a prayer in Jesus' name. This comes naturally when we spend time in worship basking in the presence of God. All selfish motives are burned up and we have a new prayer language to utter inexpressible things back to God. If you have not been baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues this is something to eagerly seek after. God is sovereign as to how He deals with people. Some folks had that experience at salvation, others while being water baptized, others still after years of opposition to the experience chose to let down their guard and let God invade their world.

To find out more about Christian values check out http://witness4christ.net

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