Episode Transcript
It is all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Therefore, I challenge this idea with my story, which I've titled. You Robbed Me.
Welcome to miracles in the 21st century. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
It was some years ago now that I went sailing with a friend and I really enjoyed sailing my friends. Dad had a beautiful cruising yacht. The setting was in Tasmania in the D'Entre Castro Channel.
And I decided that I would like very much to buy a cruising yacht. And I took this over with my wife and she thought she was came along with the idea. We had two children at the time and we had a number of pieces of land and I decided to sell one piece of one of the pieces of land.
It was a lovely location. It was five acres, had a creek, it was near a beautiful bay and in a really lovely location. And I had a buyer come for the land.
He and his wife seemed very happy with it. They paid the money and I now began looking around to buy a cruising yacht. A little while later, you can remember it was one Friday evening, this the person who had bought the land, his name was Graham, knocked on my back door and he opened the door, he was very angry and he said, you robbed me.
And I said, how did I rob you? And he said, you charged me too much for the land. And I said, well, you know, you agreed to pay for the land. He said, you call yourself a Christian? You robbed me.
And he'd been talking to neighbours who I'd also sold land to who didn't have very much money and I'd sold it to them at the time at a much lower value. Anyway, I said to him, well, we went through a solicitor and, you know, you've agreed, I'm sorry. And he stomped away and I can still remember the words, you robbed me.
Anyway, a little while later I came across a beautiful Huon Pine cruising yacht. It was of a famous Harrison Butler design with a diesel engine and full headroom. Beautiful yacht was being sold by a doctor and we agreed on a price, but I was a little bit short, I was, and I meant that I had to go to the bank and borrow some money.
And at that time I was debt free. We had no mortgages, where I was very much against borrowing money. And I remember driving to the bank praying God, why didn't the doctor come down in price? Why didn't he come down that little bit so I didn't have to borrow the gap figure? And I felt that God was impressing me that John, I could have done that why didn't you give Graham back the money that he asked for? So Graham had given me a price that he felt that I'd over, or an amount that he felt that I'd overcharged him by.
And I said, I'm sorry, God, I understand why. We'll go and borrow the money now and buy the yacht and when I've paid off this loan, I will save up and I will pay back Graham the amount of money that he claimed that I overcharged him. And that's what I did.
I paid off the loan in a year. We enjoyed sailing this beautiful yacht for many years, actually. And the first thing I did after I'd paid off the loan was I saved up.
And when I had the amount that Graham claimed I had overcharged him, I wrote out a cheque and I posted it to him. Now, meanwhile, a couple of years had passed and a couple of days after I posted the cheque, Graham appeared on my doorstep again, but this time with tears in his eyes. And what had happened in the meantime was that he had resigned from his job.
He'd been a lecturer at the College of Advanced Education to build their new dream home on this beautiful block. His wife, who was a teacher, had got a job in a local school, but during this time she'd fallen pregnant and had some problems with the pregnancy and couldn't work. And this now put them in financial straits.
But they were renting and they figured that with the income they had, if they didn't have to pay rent and could move into the house that they had almost finished, then that would help them, they'd be able to finish their house. And also in the meantime, they had become Christians under the influence of the other neighbours who were also Christians. And the night before my cheque arrived, they had prayed to God, God, could you please somehow provide the money to pay for the roof so that we could move in? And the next day my cheque arrived with just the right amount for them to be able to buy the materials for the roof.
I've always remembered this fantastic answer to prayer, and Graham was so excited to tell me and I still remember his face with tears in his eyes. Some years later, we moved from Tasmania and I sold my yacht. And I sold it for pretty well twice what I paid for it.
So God had blessed me again for my generosity to Graham. These are the answers to prayer that I believe prove we have a wonderful, loving creator, God, who is interested in our personal lives and interested in blessing us. I'm Dr.
John Ashton. Have a great day.
