If you knew the future you would not get upset when things don’t go your way.
The “all things work together for good” mantra that is dished up in various forms is not needed when the future is clear.
If you could see the future you would know for sure whether it was really working for your good!
The happy times when everything goes well, blind a person to what is waiting for them around the corner, but that is why we have insurance policies for as many things as possible.
The problem is you cannot insure your skills and if one of those skills is your golf swing, then nothing is guaranteed.

Slight changes in your relationships, finances, or sense of well-being can throw you out of your rhythm.
Your game goes the same way your confidence goes.
Out the door!
“Oh, I see.”
“You need a confidence boost.”
“Need a little food for your faith do you?”
Or is the real need not being addressed?
The answer my friend is…you guessed it.
The solution to most people’s situation is, wisdom.
You need wisdom.
“Come on you simple one’s,” she says.
“I’m calling out as you pass by.”

I like to get my wisdom in story form.
Preferably someone else’s story.
I love to hear tragedy turning into triumph stories.
Where their pain turns into their gain.
I love to be inspired and motivated by a book or a movie, or even a sermon.
It’s more interesting watching other people learning the lessons of life.

An evangelist friend of mine goes into Eastern European countries on ministry trips.
He always likes to invite the children to sit up near the stage so he can tell them a story.
What he noticed after doing this a few times was; the adults listened intently as he told the children their story, but when he dismissed the children and began his sermon, the adults lost interest.
Eventually he changed his strategy.
He would still invite the children to the front and then he would weave his sermon for the adults into the children’s story, all the while holding the adults attention.
Now that is wisdom!

Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where everything is black and white?
Where there were no grey areas.
Confusion is not good for anyone who is in the middle of making a decision.
Today I was asked to give directions for a lady who had just stepped off the bus and was trying to find her way to her job interview.
I didn’t see her get off the bus so I presumed she was driving to her interview.
I proceeded to give her directions that were accurate but irrelevant for her particular situation. I could see from her expression that something was not adding up.
Wisdom does not rush in without having all the facts.
Wisdom would ask, “Are you walking or are you driving?”
Here are a few questions that wisdom may well ask you!

Do you want it now or do you want it later?
Do you want the best or the second best?
Which timetable, yours or God’s?

You can see where this is leading!
Real wisdom, the high quality wisdom, is only available from one source.
You have to listen, you have to be very still, you have to be like those children listening to the evangelist telling them a story.
The adults were drawn into the children’s story by the atmosphere of innocence.
For a few minutes they put away their cynicism and weary thought life.
They forgot who they were and where they were.

It’s like Christmas day when the adults watch the children opening their presents.
The adults get excited when the children get excited.
Well, it’s the same with God; he gets excited when you get excited.
And here’s the kicker!
You get excited when you open your present.
And what is your present?
Today folks, your present is…the gift of wisdom you have been asking for!
That’s right, all you had to do was ask!

Tony Egar.

I bought my first kayak when I was living in the small town of Katherine which is 300 miles south of Darwin.
Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory; it is closer to Indonesia than it is to Sydney.
When we kayaked on the Katherine River we would really enjoy doing it in the wet season because the river would have a lot of “white-water”.
The wildlife was also abundant and we saw a lot of freshwater crocodiles.
These crocodiles were fairly harmless…if you kept your distance.
They were not big enough to tip you out of a kayak if they did attack.

We had an opportunity to travel across the top of Australia to another small town called Kununurra which is situated on the Ord River.
This river is very wide and has no “white-water.”
But it does have big and dangerous saltwater crocodiles.
One of them surfaced in front of us as we kayaked down the river and my friend panicked.
He had a bad dream the night before and this had set him up BIG time!
I was amazed at my reaction.
Because we were out in the middle of a very wide section of the river we knew…if we were knocked out of our kayaks we had no way of getting back in.
When you are completely cornered with no escape you sometimes relax even though there is no reason to relax.
The struggle goes out and you are left with a feeling of the inevitable.
When there is nothing you can do about your situation.
What can you do?
NOTHING!!

An adrenaline junkie is accepted in society and looked up to by the younger ones.
Philippe Petit is a French high-wire artist who gained fame in 1974 for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, on the morning of 7 August.

HE WAS THE CENTER OF ATTENTION.

EVERYONE WAS LOOKING AT HIM.
Even though this man did the walk illegally the public admired him for his bravery and boldness.
While he was high above the ground, he would have been high on adrenaline.

This French high-wire artist who walked on a rope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center is an interesting example.
When he was half-way across and in danger of falling.
What could he do?
Nothing.

He would have taken a deep breath and tried to relax.

Here is a more recent story:
We live just outside of Brisbane on 3.5 acres.
We have a lot of wildlife including koalas, wallabies, goannas and you guessed it.
Snakes!!
Most of them are carpet snakes which can be up to 6 feet long.
There are also tree snakes, they are very skinny and can get into your house.
We have been living here for 12 years and never had a snake inside.
But last year I was writing on the computer when my wife said:
“Don’t move a snake is behind you.”
Well I did move and scared the snake which had scared me.
It went into one of the kitchen cupboards.
The big problem was…we didn’t see which cupboard.
In the end, not knowing where it was, meant we may never find it.
The not knowing gets to you and plays on your mind.
You are constantly thinking, “where is that snake?”

I don’t like mysteries and I am always trying to solve them.
A lot of people are the same.
That’s why the scientists are going further into space.
They can’t stand not knowing.
Where did everything come from?
Were we created or was it an accident or incident?
If it was a big bang, what existed before the big bang?

As humans we have our own set of questions.

The biggest is, “Why does God allow suffering?”

I want to know why God created snakes..??

I visited New Zealand [which does not have any snakes] a couple of years ago.
When we drove out into the country I got out of the car and ran around the field at the side of the road.
I wanted to feel what it was like to walk through high grass and not have to worry about snakes.
A bit weird, I know!
Some people don’t know what it feels like to be free from pain.
Others don’t know what it feels like to be free from debt…the list goes on.

Let me repeat myself by remembering what happened when I was confronted by a large salt-water crocodile.
When you are completely cornered with no escape, you sometimes relax even though there is no reason to relax.
The struggle goes out and you are left with a feeling of the inevitable.
When there is nothing you can do about your situation.
What can you do?
NOTHING..!!

Tony Egar.

My first job after school was as a “laboratory sample
preparer” and I had to relocate from the city of Adelaide to the very,
very, isolated town of Dampier at the top of Western Australia.
Dampier is a port for most of Australia’s iron ore.
As the iron ore was loaded onto the ships, I had to take samples for the
laboratory.
The town had a population of 2000 people; most of them were young men from
different countries around the world.
They got these jobs because the place was so isolated.
[No-one else wanted to work there] and the money was good, this enabled them to
continue their travels after only working for a few months or a year at the
most.

I was meeting people from England, Ireland and Canada.
They loved to talk about the countries in Asia they had visited.
Guess what?
I picked up the travel bug; I got influenced by their stories.
When I finished my 6-month contract I began to travel.
The first place I went to was Bali in Indonesia, which I loved.
The beach lifestyle suited me in a big way.
Then I travelled up through South-East Asia to Nepal, then down to India and onto Europe.
While I enjoyed Europe, I did not enjoy the weather, it was so cold, I kept thinking of Bali and the beach lifestyle.
Eventually I gave in and bought a plane ticket to Thailand and then made my way back down to Bali, where I stayed for a long time.

May I point out a few observations from this story?

The first is, notice how I picked up the vision to travel.
Before I mixed with all those travellers, I had no thoughts about travel, I had no friends or family who had travelled.
It was the 1970’s…no internet, no computer and I was just out of school.
Yet as soon as I was hanging around people with a vision, I caught their vision.
I did not have one of my own so I picked up theirs.

The second point is, notice how I enjoyed the first part of my trip and then spent the rest of my travels thinking it was going to get better and better, but it didn’t and it took me a long time to realise this.
I wanted to recreate the past and I did… because it was an easy thing for me to do.
Just buy a plane ticket, no problem.
All through Europe I was only a plane flight away from Bali.
I was only one decision away from my favourite place in the world.
The main point of this discussion is…I wasn’t looking for a location.
I was actually looking for an experience.
When I was in Bali, I felt good from the inside out, it felt good to learn to surf, it felt good to live in a hut near the waves, and it felt good to be alive.
In Europe I felt like a tourist and that’s all I was really doing.
Looking at things instead of being involved in what I was seeing.
In Bali you weren’t just looking at the view, you were swimming in it.
You weren’t just looking at the sunset you were throwing frisbees’ at sunset on the beach along with the locals.

The result of my travelling experience was…
What I was looking for in life was still something that I had not found.
The thing that amazed me the most was… how similar people were on the inside even though they were so different on the outside.
Everyone wanted to be happy.
And have a good job or career with purpose.
Everyone wanted to belong to a family.
And have some good friends.

Tony Egar.

In my last year at school, the final year camp was located at a place called Wilpena Pound.
It is a natural amphitheatre of mountains located 429 kilometres north of Adelaide, South Australia.
The Pound is a very popular area for bush-walking, and therefore a good place to have a school camp.
The Pound traverses some of the most beautiful country in the Flinders Ranges.
The peaks are very rugged, and thick scrub and timber inside the Pound can make navigation difficult.
In 1959, a 12-year-old boy became lost while walking inside the Pound, and despite search efforts, his skeletal remains were not located until 18 months later.
A pass on the upper slopes of St Mary Peak is named after him.
His brother John Bannon, later became the Premier of South Australia.
Just outside the Pound is a motel and camping ground.

At the beginning of the school camp.
We were dropped off by bus and set up our tents for an overnight stay, before setting off in the morning to walk across the Pound, there were about 100 students.

My friend’s parents happened to be staying in the motel and they invited both of us to dinner in the restaurant.
We didn’t tell the teachers, but someone did.
As we were in the middle of our meal… in came the teacher in charge of the camp.
He rudely pulled me out of the restaurant and I was sent back to my tent.
He didn’t want me in the restaurant while the other students were eating basic food at the camp grounds.
My friend could stay in the restaurant because he was with his parents.
This teacher always gave me a hard time.
The next morning the students were separated into groups of six and a leader was put in charge of each group.
We were sent off at different intervals to cross the Pound and then everyone was going to come together at the end of the walk to camp on the other side of the surrounding hills.
There were not any facilities for camping where we were going and also we would be out of contact with the motel and everyone else because the two-way radios would not work as the terrain blocked the signal.
It was about a six-hour hike.

The group I was leading got to our destination in the afternoon, but no-one was there, we had not seen any other students for hours.
Then we understood why we had not seen any other students on our hike.
We were lost!!
The Pound was a dangerous place to get lost in, the weather was hot and we did not have much water.
We climbed to the highest peak and tried to get our bearings, but all we could see were the hills in the distance that marked where we began our journey in the morning.
We knew how to get back to safety so we almost ran for the next few hours and arrived at the motel and camping ground at around 7.00 pm.
A summer storm was brewing and it was getting dark by the time we tiredly walked into the motel and told the staff what had happened to us.
My friend’s parents were still there and they organised for us to stay at the motel, they also made sure we were fed… as we were very hungry.
Now the tables were turned, the night before I had been ingloriously dragged out of the restaurant and one night later, I am sitting in the same restaurant having a lovely meal, surrounded by well-wishers.
Meanwhile the teacher that gave me a hard time was now having his own hard time.
He did not know we were safe.
He spent the night looking for us in the rain.
Boy, did it feel good sleeping in the motel and waking up to a cooked breakfast.

The big problem was.
The teacher and the students who spent the whole night looking for us, never believed our story about getting lost.
They always believed we went back to the motel on purpose.
But the truth is…we really were lost.
Isn’t it tough when you tell the truth and no-one believes you.

Tony Egar.

Every time you jump, you experience gravity.
It pulls you back down to the ground.
Without gravity, you’d float off into the atmosphere.
We see gravity at work in our lives every day.
We see the evidence, but the mystery is still there.
Even with several well-received theories attempting to explain why a book falls to the ground…they’re still just theories.
The mystery of gravity is still unexplained.

In my last year of high school, my favourite class was physics.
We were learning how and why everything works.
Until we got to gravity!
I was shocked to discover that my very clever physics teacher did not know the answer.
Gravity is so simple;
I thought the scientists would have found out by now why gravity does what it does.
We see it, we believe it, and yet we don’t understand it.
How can that be?
Is it part spiritual, part material?

Gravity works in our emotional life.
We stir ourselves up on the inside to get motivated,
then along comes gravity in the form of negativity.
Negative thoughts or experiences do their work and bring us down.
Here is another mystery, if you leave your garden unattended why do weeds take over?
Why doesn’t the garden prosper by itself?
Why does it need constant attention?
None of these questions would need to be answered if we didn’t suffer from an ailment called curiosity.
Curious people can find themselves being frustrated by a lack of answers.
If you are not curious, then you don’t care.
But you do care, don’t you?
When we care, it means we are interested.
And interested people are motivated people.

When life tries to drag you down, your curiosity causes you to lift your eyes and open your mind to ask the question in a fresh way.
Sometimes a question which has no satisfactory answer can lead you to ponder a new question that you have never thought of before.
In other words, you can just go around the unanswered question which is blocking your way.

As you get older a lot of mysteries are already solved, such as:
What is it like to fall in love?
How does it feel to have children?
What career will I have?
Will they find the Titanic?

As old mysteries are solved, new ones surface, such as:
What is it like to fall out of love?

Now I have got your attention!
People fall out of love when they get bored, and that happens because they lose interest, and that happens because they aren’t curious about their loved one any more.

Last night my wife and I were home alone having dinner, it was the 26^th of January which was a public holiday called “Australia Day”.
Our dinner was going along pleasantly enough until we spontaneously told each other a story from our childhood that we had never shared before in over 30 years of marriage.
The stories were not ground shaking, but they were interesting.
We discovered a tiny bit of something new about each other and I could sense both of us falling in love all over again.

Love is the biggest mystery of all.

Here is my theory on how to stay in love. It’s just a theory.
See your loved one as a mystery… and then see yourself as the only person in the universe with the keys to unlock them in the fullest way possible.
Now you are on an adventure where the discoveries are endless.
Life is exciting again.
You are a person on a mission.

Curiosity is an elixir of youth. Re-discover it!

Just remember… be curious about your wife, not your friend’s wife.

Tony Egar.

The following story motivated me when I read how much this teenager from England had achieved starting from something small and persevering until something large happened.
Her believing made everything possible.
And this is what happened to this troubled young girl from England.
“Everything became possible.”

While going through a hard time she was encouraged to help out on a charity walk. 
She found that she was good at walking. 
Her self-esteem was boosted by the realisation that she was good at something, even if it was the simple act of walking. 
She was able to keep going after the other people wanted to stop.
She came up with the idea to do a charity walk from the top of England to the bottom. 
After she completed that goal, she decided to walk across the U.S.A.
Eventually she walked across Australia, then from South Africa to Morocco.
Up through Spain, then France and finally back to Britain.
She received a hero’s welcome.
This young Lady had walked around the world!
It is such a small gift to be able to walk long distances. 
But she used her gift to elevate herself above her companions.
Now she was in a position of influence.
She was able to help other troubled young teenagers to believe in themselves.
It was amazing to see how many people helped her to achieve this dream.

This is the usual response by the public and others that are close to you.
People are always ready to help anyone with a plan.

It is almost strange to watch people give of their time and finances, for a project they can believe in.

Last night I saw a program on T.V. about an Australian man who had been very successful in the film industry.
He was involved in the sales and promotion of large Hollywood films.
He had gone on a holiday to Cambodia and while he was there he became interested in the welfare of the local people.

One thing led to another and he ended up visiting the local garbage dump where he saw some of the poorest people he had ever seen.
They were trying to make a living picking through the rubbish.
As he was experiencing this; his mobile phone rang.

On the other end of the phone was a famous movie star and her agent.
They were about to get on a private jet he had organised for them as part of a film promotion.
This movie star was not very happy with him because the wrong food had been organised for her flight.
This movie star said to him, while he was standing in the middle of this rubbish and human misery.

“Why does my life have to be this difficult?”

In that moment he knew that he could not go back to Hollywood.
He had to stay in Cambodia and help these poor struggling people.
He could see the contrast between his life in Hollywood and the lives of the people scavenging for a living around him
His heart opened up and grace flowed.
Since then he has raised up a school and medical clinic.
He has even gone back to Hollywood to raise money for his dream.
And because he believes…others have started believing and assisting him financially or with their time and effort.
This man sold nearly everything he owned so he could help these Cambodians.
He actually became poor so that they might become richer.
His wealth was transferred to them.
It lifted them up into a better life.

Grace releases grace.
A thought becomes a stream; which becomes a river.

You suddenly realise you have the ability to walk a long distance.
Or a different lifestyle can appear before you.
And then your heart turns within you.
You were going in one direction and now you are facing the other way.

Both of these people could not have achieved their goals without the help of others.
Grace can flow towards you and under-gird you so that all your needs are met.
We only have to believe; this grace is available.

It may appear in our lives as the smallest idea but in the end it can remove every mountain and fill up every valley.
Grace is free.
It has the power to enable you to achieve all your goals and dreams.
There is no limit to undeserved favour.
People can show you unusual kindness.
There is no waiting period.
Are you ready?

The largest river in Australia is called the River Murray.
When I was a teenager my friend’s parents hired a houseboat for a holiday on the River Murray.
Parts of the river are separated from each other by artificial locks.
These locks stop the river from running dry during periods of drought.
When you travel up the river against the current in a houseboat, you have to go inside one of these locks at different stages of your journey.

Very large steel doors close behind the boat.
The lock master opens up an enormous pipe that lets water flow from the high side of the river into the lock.
The houseboat starts to rise until it is level with the river on the high side of the lock.
Then a different set of steel doors open and the boat is released out into the wide open upper spaces of the River Murray.
The houseboat is so heavy and we are so weak in comparison.
But all the engineers do is tap into the ability and power of the river.

They open a pipe…water flows out and we float up to a new level.
We then continue our journey on this new level without a care in the world.

WHAT IS YOUR DREAM?
Why not start to do something about it.
If you are going to start your dream this week please let someone know about it.
Sometimes it helps to share your dream, so people that read or hear about your dream can encourage you even if they do not know you or have only just met you.

Perhaps they have come into your life for a reason that is not immediately obvious.
Our actions and decisions can motivate others to believe and inspire them to make the tough decisions.
When people gather together and agree together, nothing is impossible.
Your friends and family will respect you for your perseverance.
They might even join you on your adventure.

Tony Egar.

Remember what it was like when you were motivated and encouraged.
No-one could stop you doing what you were meant to do.
Yes, a very important job was in front of you.
Someone had to take a chance.
And now here you are, standing on the spot that your destiny has prepared.
The right person and the best opportunity.
To save the planet from it’s present madness.
Speak the truth in all it’s fullness..!!
Sharpen your tongue and freshen your mind.
Because words are about to come forth to change the world.
Families will be set free from the hunger that comes from a famine of truth.
Settle down into the rhythm that follows a different drum.
A small echo that reflects a thousand voices.
An ear to hear what you propose.
Semi-trailers in Australia haul supplies from the big cities to the small country towns.
And then return to the cities full of produce from the farms, cattle and sheep stations.
No-one questions this supply cycle and neither should they.
What is to question?
It is the way life works.
Round and round, endlessly circling the cycle of life.
Our thoughts do the same thing.
Wrestling between questions and answers, now we know it and now we do not.
Please free us from all unnecessary mental activity.
Peace in the mind and heart is true peace.
Put your hand up and yell, “stop”.
The music has gone quiet and the game is finished.
The problem we are left with is this.
How to sift the relevant from the irrelevant.
The rational from the irrational.
Imagine you are one of the drivers supplying the city and country towns with your big truck.
Suddenly you are relevant and rational.
Basically, you are the link that keeps the people alive because you are feeding them.
But in this wide world of talk and stale idea’s, people are sensing a famine of new idea’s that is just below the surface.
Here comes the clarity.
New idea’s and old idea’s are different ends of the same stick.
A stick that assaults us day and night from the rubbish media.
What to think, how to talk.
It’s force is deafening.
We try to hold back the tide, but it flows over us and we are submerged.
Yes, nearly drowning under the social pressure that gushes from the computer, T.V or mobile phone.
School children killing themselves or being killed by someone’s opinion.
Teachers being restrained by “culture”.
The truth being sold too cheaply and lies being held up as truth.
Their truth maybe, but not “the” truth.
True wisdom has two sides.
Please tell us both sides of the story.
Even a winner needs someone to come second.
A race is always against something, even it is only your past performance.
It is called resistance training, if one side manages to silence the other side, we are in deep trouble.
Something can only have value in a world where something else has no value.
Every opinion is only half the story.
You can only be 100% right when the other person is 100% wrong.
Anything in between is nearly there, but not there completely.
Here is my final question.

How can you be happy, if you have never been sad?

Written by Tony Egar.

Three things to motivate you endlessly upwards into a new energy level.
The first is, know where the energy comes from.
The second is, fight lethargy before it gets a foothold.
The third is, write “return to sender” on every letter and package that is negative.
Let us move along from damage control, to a new phase that includes these words.
Rebuild, restore and refresh.
Three positive words.

Energy comes from your head or your heart.
It is an invisible wind and therefore you need invisible wings.
Wings that can catch that energy and change it into encouragement.
Yes, a wave of encouragement can cause you to soar into the sky of endless possibilities.
Freedom from lethargy is now possible.

Now let us do what a hot air balloon pilot does.
The person flying a hot air balloon unties the sandbags that are holding it down.
And it naturally ascends upward.
The wings of a bird work because the shape of their wings causes the air to flow over the top of their wing faster than it flows over the bottom of their wing.

Right now, positive and negative words and images are flowing through your mind.
If the negative message gets the upper hand you may go from happy to sad.
But if the positive message gains the upper hand you can go from sad to happy.
Hot air balloons work because hot air is lighter than cold air.
More hot air than cold air and you fly.
More cold air than hot air and you fall.
Two different ways to fly.
Two different reasons for things to fly.

Happy thoughts work like hot air and they lift you up.
Sad thoughts work like cold air and weigh you down.
To fly the hot air balloon you turn on the gas and flames shoot out and heat up the air inside the balloon.
How to do this in our thought life?
How to increase the power of the positive message?
Everyone has tried to do this in a thousand different ways.
Sometimes they succeed and sometimes not.

The two examples of flying have one unpleasant truth.
The bird or plane has to land at some point in time.
And also the balloon always has to come back to earth.
How depressing..!!

It depends on how you view the situation.
Is landing the plane, just a break between flights?
Or are the flights what you do between landings?
Do we live to work or work to live?

The Germans live to work.
One of their comedians says that Germans laugh after the work is done.
But the British laugh before the work is done.
The people in Greece know how to enjoy themselves.
Still the question remains.
How to be more positive and hopefully happier?

Let us break it down into the basics.
Cold ice cream and hot apple pie work well together.
Opposites sometimes go together and make a great meal.
We say, “This works”.

We have a machine to make the ice cream cold.
And a different machine to make the apple pie hot.
Two different machines, doing the opposite.
One machine makes things cold.
The other machine makes things hot.
Yet both are doing a good job.

Usually, we say negative thoughts are bad and positive thoughts are good.
We have an oven and a fridge, but both are good.
Perhaps negative thoughts just have a different job.
And positive thoughts also have a different job.

Like the brake and accelerator on your car.
They do the opposite job, but both are good.
A car is designed to move and stop and then move again and stop.

What if humans are designed to be happy and then sad and then happy again?
Suddenly negative thoughts are just doing their job.
Their job is to slow you down.
And then our positive thoughts get us going again.

We feel bad if we get sad and depressed.
Our goal is to be happy all the time.
But what if we are not designed to be happy all the time?

Maybe we are designed to operate like our car.
Happy, then sad, then happy again.

If you are flying high at the moment, don’t worry about landing with a thud.
If you are sad at the moment, maybe this is temporary.

Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer.
Decide what season you are in right now.
You are only ever two seasons away from Spring or Summer.

Unless you live at the North or South Pole?

Written by Tony Egar.