America's Cup Fever

New Zealand is currently obsessed with the America’s Cup. Most people in the world do not know it exists, and many who do don’t care. Even in San Francico, most people do not know it is on.  It is different here. People are talking about nothing else.

The America’s cup was a yachting trophy for a challenge between the United States and Britain that began more than a century ago. For the first hundred years, it was held by the New York Yacht Club. Since the rules were made fairer a couple of decades ago, the cup has been held by teams from Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and currently the United States. The latest challenge is taking place on huge catamarans off San Francisco between an American syndicate sponsored by Oracle and a New Zealand syndicate sponsored by Emirates Airlines, which needs only one more win to take the cup.


Although most the world has not noticed, the people of New Zealand are really stirred up. Our television channels have wall to wall coverage and people are going to work late, so they can catch the first race each day (at 8 am New Zealand time). Primary school children are wearing red socks and doing America’s Cup activities.

I am intrigued by the way that television can be used to make people passionate about something they should not care about. This one does not matter, but the ability of the media to draw people into something trivial is scary.

When the race this morning was cancelled this morning due to unsuitable weather conditions, there was huge disappointment. An online news organisation captured the tone with these words.

The wait for glory continues for the team and the nation.

The contest seems to have been turned into a measure of our value as a nation.
This is quite hard to understand.

• Yachting is a minority sport in New Zealand. Most of cannot distinguish between port and starboard, or know the difference between a sheet and a halyard.

• The America’s Cup is a competition for billionaires, outside the scope of most people.

• New Zealanders tend to be egalitarian. They usually hate to see rich people showing off their wealth. The early settlers came to New Zealand to get away from the class system in England, and the wealth and poverty that went with it.

• Most of the sponsorship for the New Zealand based syndicate comes from Emirates, so it is really a Middle Eastern syndicate that has purchased New Zealand crew and designers.

Nevertheless, winning the America’s Cup has become really important to us. The people of New Zealand seemed to have this need to prove themselves by excelling in a sport that the rest of the world does not take seriously.

I call this “small boy syndrome”. A school playground is often dominated by a bully. A few crawlers hang around him and bask in his glory, but most of the boys are scared of him and stay out of his way. Often a small boy who is mocked by most of the rest of his group will go and give cheek to the bully, and then runs away and hides in the crowd before the bully can strike back. The bully does not chase after the small boy, because he is too small and weak to be bothered about. The small boy builds himself up as a hero among his friends, but most of the boys in the playground realise that he is just a small boy, and they expect juvenile behaviour from small boys.

The sad thing is that we are not small boy. God brought the Maori people here many centuries ago, and then English and Scottish settlers more recently, because he had a purpose for this nation. This was summed up well by the English Evangelist David Pawson.

God wants New Zealand back.
He wants New Zealand back as
a nation that will be a model to the nations
of a people who are living under the government of GOD.
God intends New Zealand to be one of those nations
where he demonstrates his Kingdom.

God wants New Zealand back.
He is wanting his people to reign with him.
Don't wait for eternity to begin to reign with him
He is looking for a queen to reign with him now,
because New Zealand has a king an his name is King Jesus.
This country needs a change of government.
New Zealand is a nation that could be brought
under the government of God
and be a light to the nations.

God purpose is to establish his Kingdom in New Zealand in a way that will shine as a light to the nations. When we seek and receive the Kingdom of God, rich men’s sports will not matter any more. We will have something real to be proud about, but we will have stopped caring about national pride, too.

Wealth and Revival

The key to the fullness of the spirit is Christians Connecting with each other, loving one another as Jesus has loved us. He will only put his new wine in wineskin that is made of love.

The greatest barrier to Christians connecting is our wealth. In a traditional society, people were bound together by mutual obligation. I helped you with your harvest, and you helped me with mine. If a woman was sick, the other women came to care for her family. Most exchanges of goods and services took place through giving and sharing out of mutual obligation.

Most of these transactions have now been monetised. If I need someone to help with the harvest, I pay someone to help. If a woman gets sick, she pays someone to provide childcare and do the housework. Very little giving and haring takes place outside of immediate families.

Our wealth makes this possible. Most goods and services are now paid for with money. Wealth has contaminated our relationships. People form relationships with the people they work with or for recreation, but they have limited interaction with the people in their communities.

Christian relationships have been casualised in a similar way. We go to church on Sunday to receive services from the ministry team and pay for them with tithes. We have only casual relationships with other Christians.

God may have to take away our wealth to get us back into connection with each other. May be this the key to the evangelist David Pawson’s question to New Zealand. He asked.

Who is willing to pray for economic ruin to make revival possible.

This is a hard prayer to pray. I am not sure if I am up for it.

David Pawsons Burden for New Zealand (5)

Twenty-three years after David Pawson visited, another David brought a similar message to New Zealand. David Wilkerson also carried a real burden from God when he spoke to Christian leaders in Auckland. The following is a summary of his message.

David Wilkerson had a strong sense that calamity will affect a big percentage of our population, even up to one million people. The collapse of our real estate boom will hit New Zealand like a whirlwind. If God has to touch every pocket book, he will do it because He loves this country.

The Lord knows what He is doing and everything is in His divine order. Many people are putting together money in the bank to see them through the storm they intuitively see ahead. They are putting their energy into a nest egg, rather than trusting in God, caring for the poor, the widows, etc.

He quoted Ezekiel 16:46-56 that lists the
following sins:

pride
fullness of bread
abundance of idleness
did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy
haughty

There is no greater sin than apathy, because apathy is a by-product of covetousness. We have bought into the idea that happiness only happens when we have nice things, a house, a job, etc. Apathy demands judgement before any other sin. He asked God to smite our apathy.

Long Delay
An interesting question is why David Pawson’s burden has been brought up again, after such a long delay. The reason for the delay is that God was giving his people time to get ready. If he had allowed an economic disaster to strike New Zealand at that time, many of his people would have been ruined.

Many Christians would have been swept away,
because they were not prepared.
If the economy had collapsed,
most people would have been shaken
and many would have fallen.
God needed his people standing together,
so they could minister
to those who were shaken.

Our complacency has held back God’s ability to shape our nation. This was dangerous, because while God withheld his hand to protect his wayward people, evil continued to increase. Evil has now been unrestrained for thirty years and has penetrated so deep into our culture that he cannot hold back any more.

Forgotten
New Zealand has forgotten God.
As a nation we once knew him;
not very well,
but we tried to serve him,
we tried to obey him,
we tried to worship him
and he blessed us.
But now New Zealand has abandoned God
most people have rejected his love,
many have forgotten who he is,
some of our leaders oppose him,
and others really hate him.
Given that we have forgotten God,
we should have lost our blessing
we should have lost it long ago.
But God is merciful
and has held back the judgement
He has held back the trouble and sorrow,
He has held back the pain,
and allowed his blessing to remain
although we have forgotten him.

But the season of patience has now come to an end. God must deal with evil, even though his people are not prepared. God wanted to reach New Zealand before hearts became too hard. If his people had been prepared, he could have turned the nation back with one quick shake (possibly in 1987). He offered the church a quick painless victory, but we refused to get ready, so the opportunity passed, a painful economic crisis inevitable.