論壇 - Anton Meyer

博客具有GRN 内部信息以及世界各地成員的個人意見

Tranquility

Anton Meyer - Friday 20 May 2016

STOP! STOP! Someone hit the brakes! Get your foot off the accelerator! It’s the end of May and it is only one month from the middle of the year. But… but it’s only just started. That’s the way it feels anyway. I’m recording and compiling videos for “distance teaching/learning” for the training of trainers and every time I look around, another month has passed. As they say: ”Time passes when you’re having fun”.

Is that true or is it just that life has become so hectic that we don’t notice the passing of time as we used to. We move from one engagement to the next without noticing the passing of time because we are so involved in everything and we have piled so much onto the plate that we no longer have time to be quiet and to take a good look at ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, we still have our quiet time with the Lord, because we have made time for that and have put that into the schedule. But is that all it has become? Just another entry in the calendar or to do list?

I just don’t seem to get the point where I can go and sit on the rocks and stare at the sea to drink in the tranquillity it brings so that I can take a good look at myself. Where do I stand in my relationship with my family, my friends and my colleagues? Jesus went off just to have time to Himself away from His disciples.

The quiet time with oneself often turns into quiet time with the LORD. The difference is that it is not regimented quiet time with Bible and study notes under the arm. This is just one on one quiet time with the Creator of the universe. Quiet time with a very dear friend and Father. Irreplaceable and incomparable.

Still a Life of Privilege

Anton Meyer - Monday 07 March 2016

When I started to write this blog I whent back to the last time I wrote here in September 2015. At that time I wrote about the "Life of Privilege" we lead as children of God. Two months later I was told at Sydney airport, while on my way to GRN USA, that I would not be allowed back into Australia because my visa had expired. Not really what you envisage as a "Life of Privilege" when considering the ramifications of the simple statement by the Immigration people at the airport. The immediate reaction always seems to be "What now Lord? How did this happen?"

Lucy and I prayed about this with very concerned and troubled minds. There is a sudden feeling of being cut off and set adrift like a boat that has broke it's mooring in a storm and is headed for the rocks. Then the captain takes the wheel, starts the engine and steers into the storm away from disaster. This is exactly what God did for us. He reassured us from His word that He was in control of the situation steering us away from disaster. He spoke to us through Isaiah 43:18-19 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland."

Still a life of privilege. God is in control and he steers the boat. All we have to do is to trust Him completely for every aspect of our lives. Even in the darkest of times He "makes a way in the wilderness" and leads us to a safe haven to re-attach our mooring in the safety of His harbor.
We don't know what the way forward looks like, but we do know that we can trust Him to do His will in our lives and ensure a good outcome.

A Life of Privilege

Anton Meyer - Tuesday 22 September 2015

I love motor racing and a while ago when the Monaco Grand Prix was run, I remember looking at the yachts and boats along the track where it passes close to the sea. I was thinking to myself how wonderful it would be to have seen the race from that vantage point. I remembered the royals and thinking: “Wow! They have an even better vantage point”. A life of privilege. How great is that.

I had to hang my head in shame as I realized that I am a son of the Greatest of Kings. I have been called to a life of privilege. The following verses say something about that:

Psalm 139
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

Luke 19
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

I am indeed privileged to have been called by my Father to work alongside Him in His vineyard. It is clear from the above that He doesn’t need me to build His kingdom. He made me and He can call up the stones to deliver His message of hope. Yet He chose me to walk alongside of Him and see what He is doing. I am indeed privileged beyond my understanding and it is never going to end. How can any privilege on earth match that?

Communicating the Gospel

Anton Meyer - Wednesday 01 April 2015

A very good friend said to me one day: "Preach or tell the Gospel every day and if it is absolutely necessary and completely unavoidable, use words!" Well, what now? I am working with an organization whose primary form of communication is words or rather recordings of words. Yes, it is true, we do have pictures for some of our recordings, but somehow I don't think that that is what Derek meant when he implied visual communication. He was talking about what can be called, "The Living Testimony or The Living Witness." Acts chapter 1:8 says:"... you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses ...... to the ends of the earth."

A changed life is the first sign we look for in a "new" Christian, because that is what we can see and not just what we are told. What constitutes a changed life? Is it something that can be faked? I am reminded of a friend who always seemed to have a hard expression on his face. He had this tough guy image that never slipped. When he came to a new life through Jesus Christ he was still the same man. Still tough in every way but somehow also less severe and approachable. Gone was the warning fist in the air, the one finger salutes and the outward signs that were his “stock in trade”. So, I don’t think it can be faked. Even as Christians we still make mistakes. The difference is Christ in our lives and that makes all the difference in the world. So we do in effect become witnesses for Christ from the first moment we are “saved” from destruction and eternal death. How does that apply to the recordings we use to tell people who have never heard the Gospel in their heart language?

The first thing we were taught on an intensive radio “techniques” course was to employ the “Theatre of the Mind” in our radio programmes. This term was as foreign to me then as it must be to some who are reading this. It is the creation of a “mind picture” through description that in turn creates understanding. This description often includes sound effects to enhance the picture, but is always basic and easy to understand. The mind is a truly wonderful creation of God. We all have the same basic organ with the same connections and yet each of us is different. Each mind is as unique as our fingerprints or the retinas of our eyes and yet each group exposed to the same circumstance identifies with others of that group to establish yet another unique identity. Each script we write and each program we record and produce must take account of all these idiosyncrasies. It is the only way in which we can effectively appeal to that theatre which will paint the picture that will trigger a response and the picture is so much clearer in their heart language!

From archives to fingers

Anton Meyer - Friday 10 October 2014

The moment people talk about archives, I get that damp, musty smell in my nostrils and I usually start to itch. I always tend to think that it is a little like a graveyard. You feel sad because a friend has passed away and you invariably remember the good times. Sometimes you feel that you would rather forget and not recall the past. After all it the PAST!

We have been making recordings for the past 75 years and that stacks up to a lot of recordings and no, we would rather not forget about them. We would rather pick them up, dust them off and have them available to all and in that way, their original purpose will be fulfilled. We think of the care and dedication that has gone into these recordings and realize that there is no way that we can just let them go to seed.

Restoring these old recordings though comes with its own set of problems. We tend to get used to our modern environment and forget what went before. We live in the age of semi-conductor storage and have almost no recollection of paper based, back-coated and plastic based analogue tapes and the variety of forms that it came in. We have forgotten about the progression from open reel to cassette and then ultimately to digital tapes. Even more frightening is that some of us have never seen a 78 R.P.M. Bakelite record and very few even remember or think about the later vinyl versions that played at slower speeds and were capable of giving us an increased number of tracks.

Many of our younger generation have never seen our old 8 track continuous tape players that provided the “ultimate stereophonic sound” in our cars. CDs are still in plentiful supply, but increasingly, the trend is to download recordings from the Internet and store them electronically. We reproduce the sound electronically on telephones and small players and walk around with “in-ear” headphones that makes a mush of our delicate inner ears. Even our cars are regarded as old fashioned if the radio in it is not a “sound system” which plays micro SD cards and has Bluetooth capability to play music from a variety of external devices.

Many years ago a very good friend said to me that our development in electronics will be governed by the size of our fingers and for many years I believed that. Not any more though! Nowadays we can talk to our electronics and achieve the desired result that way. Praise God that He has given us this as a means to talk to our neighbour and share the Gospel with him by means of this amazing thing called “Electronics”.

Thank you Father
Anton