From About Us – After years of research, discussions and relevant experience in life and news, we have created a news source that veers away from current trends of negativity and sensationalism, and will focus on presenting inspiring, in-depth and positive news stories. By being not for profit, we illustrate that the media does not have to be about making money, and with that comes a sense of freedom in journalism, the ability to tell the stories you care for, the truth, unrestricted ideals and a chance for change. ourworldtoday.com.au will have mainstream appeal, but present a unique array of positive and challenging in-depth stories.

EDIT – Bonus; “We refuse to accept that no news is good news”.
[TEDx Adelaide - Mike Worsman & Chris Campbell - A New Approach to News]

“Human beings, ineluctably, want meaning and purpose in life. The meaningful life consists in belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self, and humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow this: religion, political party, being Green, the Boy Scouts, or the family.” – Dr Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, believes finding and holding meaning in life is one of the three fundamentals to leading a happy life.
[Our Greatest Fight] & [What is Well-Being?]

“…although Facebook looks destined to stay, a world where expression hides behind the computer screen will never defeat the old school charm of a romantic gesture…”
[Old School Romance Alive & Well]

“We now know that underestimating the obstacles life has in store lowers stress and anxiety, leading to better health and well-being. This is one reason optimists recover faster from illnesses and live longer.”
[Why So Optimistic?]

“Sometimes EVERYTHING BEING RIGHT makes a kind of sound.”
[Listening]

“Smile, it’ll make people wonder what you’ve been up to.”
[inspired by; A smile is Worth 2000 Chocolate Bars]

“Oh won’t you come, won’t you light all my lights.” - Seeker Lover Keeper
[inspired by; Seeing The Light]

“The reason Gen Y is more educated, passionate and mobilised to create a better world than those before it is because they are able to come together (online) and share this vision of the future that so many so badly want.”
[Gen Y Will Change The World]

This moment made me really appreciative of the perspectives of those around me who were perhaps more open-minded and positive than me about these things.
[The Last Photo My camera Ever Took]

Bonus: Really? You’re just giving me $20?!
[$20 Challenge]

Salvation Army Leader’s Tour

Of Brigadier C. J. Brimblecombe, officer in charge of The Salvation Army in Tasmania (1943)

“… In a second meeting in the evening, he took as his text, “Fear God and keep His commandments.”(Ecclesiastes 12 & 13). “The Christian life.” he said, “is not a complex affair, but one to be lived according to this simple watchword. There is no problem or difficulty which appears at the moment that cannot be overcome when there is a wholehearted acceptance of God and a holy, purposeful determination to live by this rule.”

Makes me think of Commissioner James Knaggs’ axiom “Be holy & show up for work.”

of, Commissioner Robert Henry (the leader of the Salvation Army in the Southern Territory at the time.)
This is an excerpt of a much longer article celebrating their official visit to Ulverstone in 1936.

Initial Hardships

Continuing, he said he also had a purpose in his work – to build and extend the Salvation Army in his territory. Long ago, two men, one a carpenter and the other a milkman, decided to start the Army in Australia. General William Booth sent officers to this country and the foundations were laid.

The pioneers had carried out their work at the cost of much struggling and labor. Referring to the hardships which were endured in the early days of the Army, the Commissioner said: “My own wife had the honour of going to prison in Bairnsdale, Victoria, for taking part in an open-air meeting, because some people thought it a sin against the Crown to do so.”

He spoke highly of the officers and members of the Army, without whom the work could not have carried on.

Army people, he said, were saved to save (emphasis mine). But they did not put service before salvation, which was the foundation of Army service. Out of salvation sprang the spirit of service and self-sacrifice, and the remarkable record of the Army in all countries arose out of the spirit of service. Members of the Army were also willing to sacrifice as well as to serve, and he hoped they would never lose the power to do so.

“My business is to get the world saved. If this involves the standing still of the looms and the shutting up of the factories and the staying of the sailing ships, let them all stand still. When we have got everybody converted, they can go on again.”
William Booth

“There is a fight to be fought in the Christian life. There is a kind of effort and earnestness. Laziness and sluggishness are not the way to live. But the direct focus of the fight is not first on serving or first working or first on patient endurance. The direct focus of the fight is to maintain the full assurance of hope and to love the name of the Lord. And the rest results from that.”
John Piper

“Do not think that saintliness comes from occupation; it depends rather on what one is. The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy.”
- Meister Eckhart

“Friends don’t let friends clap on one and three.”
(Tumblr & Facebook etc.)

“No one ever fought God and won.”
Major Robert Kean

“Kill compromise before it kills you.”
Bill Johnson

“To this end, dispense to us in our temporal interest, what you seest may best secure our spiritual; if a greater degree of outward misery will tend to the cure of our inward evil, LORD, spare not they rod, but strike yet more sharply. Cast out this devil, though with ever so much foaming and tearing. But if you see’st that mercy may be most likely to melt us, O be pleased so far to condescend to our wretchedness as to afford us that; and whether by thy sharper or thy gentler methods, bring us home to thyself. And then, O LORD, we know thy hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; but when you have delivered us from our sins, you can and wilt deliver us from our troubles.”
John Wesley

“Opportunities of a lifetime must be seized in the lifetime of the opportunity.”
 Linda Ravenhill

“Make the spreading of the good news your life work.”
2 Timothy 4:5 (J.B. Philips) 

Song of the Saints

I’ve got a home
In glory land
Outshines the sun
Outshines the sun
You took my feet
You took my hands
You wipe them clean Lord,
You wipe them clean.

When air fills thin,
We hardly breathe
You fill our lungs Lord
You fill our lungs

Bursting through the sky with Glory
Our saviour comes to save the saints
Redemptive eyes we see your mercy
You made the choice
You took our place.

The air feels thin
We hardly breathe
You fill our lungs Lord,
You fill our lungs

On darker days
We lift our eyes
We find a trace
We find a trace

Bursting through the sky with glory
Our Saviour comes, to save the saints
Redemptive eyes, we see your mercy,
You made the choice, you took our place.

Bursting through the sky with Glory
A Saviour comes to save the saints
Redemptive eyes we see your mercy
You made the choice, you took our place.

I’m coming home
I’m coming home
To a place, to a place
I’m coming home
I’m coming home
To a place, to a place

Love and mercy, truth and glory
I’m home, I’m home
Of love and mercy, truth and glory
I’m home, I’m home.

I’ve got a home, in glory land
Outshines the sun
Outshines the sun.

1. Download the following instruction sheet HERE.
2. Enjoy!
3. Let me know if you have any questions! 

“For the prophets characteristically were not moralisers or explainers, all even advocates of any program. They were poets! Their work was to open the world to alternative practice by inviting their listeners our beyond “the given”. As poets they tell the truth even in the face of empire, the truth that exploitation will not work, that brutality offends the Holy One, that imperial power is limited and called to account. As poets they tell with the hope, even in the face of empire, the hope that will cease, that the earth will be protected, that the particularity of neighbourliness will prevail against the ambitions of horse and chariot. The recovery of that alternative voice is decisive to the maintenance of “local tradition” in the face of empire.”
- Walter Brueggemann 

“What costs are we willing to endergo? you can’t be a Christian, if you’re not willing to pick up your cross. And, in the end, be crucified on it. That’s the botton line. The rest of it is just sounding brass and tinkling symbols. [the question is] How deep is your love?”
- Cornel West

“The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.”
- William Gibson

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time; but if you are here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
- Lila Watson (articulating the wisdom of her people)

“God does not love you for who you are; He loves you for who He is.”
- Attributed to Matt Kean (or Anon, depending on who you talk to)

“The silence of good people never serves God well. We must always be prepared to deafen wrong, poverty, and injustice.”
- 2 Kings 18:36

“Fear is vision without hope.”
- Mark Driscoll

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. if you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So, keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
- Steve Jobs

“You are the God who sees me.”
Genesis 16:13

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte 

Our first counsel is

(1) MAGNIFY IT.

Get to know definitely what it is you have to do. Think what it is to be an ambassador of Christ — to stand between the living and the dead, and to be the savour of life unto life, or death unto death. Consider what will be the outcome of the faithful discharge of your duty on the one hand, and what will follow the neglect of it on the other.

Read the 23rd chapter of Ezekiel, and the Acts of the Apostles; call up the memories of the holy, successful soul-winners who have gone through oceans of difficulties and led thousands to the Cross: lay aside every weight in the shape of worldly idolatry and self-indulgence, and then lay on the altar every power of body and soul, consecrating all you have, or ever hope to have, to the successful accomplishment of the greatest undertaking to which God could possibly have called you here.

To successfully manage a station you must

(2) LOVE IT

with a love that never falters, never swerves, never dies. You must have the same burning, unquenchable flame that Jesus had, or you cannot — will not — succeed; and your success will be just according to the measure of your affection for your people and for the perishing people around you. This love —this passion for souls — is the main-spring of religious activity and the principle which governs all real and lasting work for God. Love, rightly directed, makes a good parent, a good husband, a good workman; and nothing short of love, and a great deal of it, will make a good evangelist.

The secret of success is often inquired for; here it is: It is not in natural gifts, or human bearing, or exceptional opportunities, or earthly advantages, but in a heart consumed with the flame of ardent, holy, heavenly love.

Love will make a man study. He wants to save his people; his aim is to bless them, not to amuse them. He wants to lead them on to know God, to imitate Christ, to be meet for Heaven. This he sees is to be done through the truth. He has now one absorbing anxiety to persuade them to hear, to think, to feel, to yield, to be saved, to be holy. Here is work for him. He must have arguments that will convince, facts that will affirm, illustrations that will explain, and truths that will both awaken and interest, and convert.

He must range through earth, and Heaven, and Hell, for matter to make men flee to Christ, save their souls and bathe in the ocean of redeeming love. He has set his heart on this — not on studying, but on saving souls; but as souls are saved by preaching, and as he cannot preach unless he has something to say likely to accomplish his end, he becomes a real student, a thinker, and it is love that makes him one.

Love will make you pray. Love wants all the help it can command: and as it realizes that the great God is in sympathy, and willing to be a co-worker with any and every heart set on this mission of mercy, it will ever be knocking at the door of Heaven for countenance and co-operation. The love of souls will lead you into the spirit of ceaseless intercession with Him whose love for them was stronger than death.

Love will make you feel. A stony-hearted preacher makes a stony-hearted people. Perhaps there is no such monstrosity in the universe as a professed representative and resemblance of Jesus Christ who goes about his business in a cold, emotionless spirit.

There is a great cry in some directions for more intellect in the pulpit; it seems to me that there is a far greater need for more heart.

If there be one character which above another God must abominate, angels weep over, and devils despise, it must be the automatical preachers who can discourse by the hour about the love of Christ, the worth of souls, the terrors of judgment. and the sorrows of the lost, with a flinty indifference or a ranting fervour which hardly lasts the service over, and which all can see is put on for the occasion.

Oh, these ministerial machines, these mechanical preachers who are quite content if their salaries are paid and a round of meetings gone through, are the curse of Christendom and the wholesale manufacturers of backsliders and infidels. May God deliver us from them. Brethren, whatever other gifts you have, if you are to succeed, you must have hearts, and hearts that can feel.

Love will make you preach. A man cannot help but be an interesting talker on any theme on which his nature is powerfully stirred, and on which he has any measure of information. It is the stolid, indifferent, professional spouters of sermons that can get neither hearers nor souls.

Again and again in his autobiography, Finney, the great American Evangelist, says, “I let out my heart to my people”; and they wept and fell under the power of God. Of how many preachers can this be said? How often, alas! is it not just a got-off piece of intellectual stuff — and not much intellect either — that is let out.

The last thing the preacher thinks of or desires is the letting out of his heart, and consequently the heartless performance is met with a heartless response from those who listen, and who, after a few minutes’ wonderment, or, as it may be, admiration, forget the whole affair. Oh, if you love, you will pour out your souls before the people, and they will weep and feel in return.

Love will make you beloved. If you love your people they cannot help but love you in return. There are exceptions to all rules. There is a November time, perhaps, in every man’s history, when everything is gloomy, and nothing seems to bring sunshine to the people’s hearts so twisted and perverted may they have become.

Cross-currents will sometimes run so strongly that, try as you will, you cannot reach the desired haven of the people’s affections. But, as a rule, love will prove an invincible conqueror, and will bring the people to your feet. You can love your way through every difficulty. Hold on, then, even though the more you love the less you are beloved.

To manage a station effectively you must

(3) NURSE YOUR PEOPLE.

I don’t mean that you should cozen, and comfort, and encourage the old do-nothing members, if there are any, who come with their mouths open three times every Sabbath to be fed in idleness. No! Tip up their cradle. Make them question the ground of their religious hopes.

Make them understand that true godliness is practical benevolence, and that they must at once become followers of Jesus, and go in for a life of self-sacrifice in order to do good and save souls, or else give up all hope and title to being Christians.

Make the people see this, and keep on at it until they do. They will rub their eyes, and wake up, depend upon it, when they do see it; and though some may go off to other places where they can be edified without being constantly faced with their neglected responsibilities, others will go to work with a will, and you will soon see things move.

But I was saying that you must nurse your people, and there are two classes that seem to me to want specially your tender care.

There are the wanderers, England is full of backsliders, These should be hunted up, and brought back.
Nurse the converts, . . . My experience has taught me that the use of appropriate means is as indispensable to preserve the converts as it is to secure them.. . .

I leave the theology of this question to the doctors of divinity, I simply state the fact. If you fathers and mothers want to rear your children up to strong man- and womanhood, you feed and watch over them with all tender, loving care; and if you evangelists, and brethren, and sisters, in charge of God’s great family want to rear up for Him and for humanity the babes with whom you are entrusted, to perfect men and women in Jesus Christ, you must care for them; you must nurse them.

If you keep them, brethren, and if your returns from time to time show increases, you will prove in the most incontestable manner that you do wisely and lovingly watch them. But if, on the contrary, you do not — if you bring statements of large numbers of converts, and small or no increases in membership, you will leave it open for people to infer either that the conversions are not real, or that, being real, they are not properly looked after.