Open House Volume 3

Copyright © 2010 Sheridan Voysey/Hope Media Ltd

First published 2010 by Strand Publishing.

The Open House radio program is a production of Hope Media Ltd:

www.hope1032.com.au

ISBN 978-1-921202-26-1

Distributed in Australia by:

KI Entertainment
Unit 31, 317–321 Woodpark Rd
Smithfield NSW 2164 Australia
Phone: (02) 9604 3600
Fax: (02) 9604 3699
Email: sales@kientertainment.com.au
Web: www.kientertainment.com.au

The words from Jeremiah 29:11 on page 166 are taken from The Holy Bible, New
International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible
Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
The words of King David on page 109 are taken from Psalm 27:8, The Holy Bible,
New Living Translation. Copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois, USA 60189. All rights reserved.
The words from the Book of Ecclesiastes on page179 are taken from Ecclesiastes
8:15, The Holy Bible, New International Version.

This book is copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations for
printed reviews, without prior permission of the publisher.

Edited by Owen Salter

Cover design by Joy Lankshear
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria
Printed by McPhersons Printing Group

Open House 3.indd iv 17/8/10 8:20:40 AM

 Please share this FREE chapter  
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If you would like to help spread the word about Open House Volume 3 

YOU CAN… 

Send this file to a friend 

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 Contents
Introduction vii

Life:
Ray Martin: The untold stories of a household name 3
Alain De Botton: The pleasures and sorrows of work 22
Melinda Tankard Reist: A standard passed by is a
standard set 35
Gary Chapman: The language and actions of love 49
Catherine Hamlin: The fistula patients will break your heart 63
Caroline Jones: Walking grief ’s journey 75
Michael Franzese: Never betray the omertà 91

Faith:
Olivera Petrovich: The child’s innate sense of God 111
Donald Miller: Your life as a meaningful story 121
Geraldine Doogue: Wrestling with the faith 129
Joel Osteen: Becoming all God’s made you to be 140
Mark Driscoll: The truth can be controversial 150
Nick Vujicic: Waiting for a miracle, being a miracle 161
Sean George: Resurrection in the goldfields 170

Culture:
Bryce Courtenay: A storyteller, not a writer 181
Karen Pang: Play School songs and manic moments 193
Ralph Winter: Film-making beyond the surface 204

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 Contents

Marilynne Robinson: The story’s over when the characters

walk away 215
Brian Deacon: The face of Jesus 232
Yazz: Plans you’ve never dreamt of 249

About Sheridan Voysey 259

Join the Conversation 260

vi

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 Nick Vujicic
WAITING FOR A MIRACLE, BEING A MIRACLE

On the morning of December 4, 1982, a little boy named Nicholas

was born to new parents Borris and Dushka Vujicic. Like other
children, he would later learn to brush his teeth, comb his hair and
dress himself in the morning. Like other boys, he loved swimming,
fishing and playing soccer. Like other teenagers, he was soon leaving
school and on his way to university.
But throughout Nick’s life there has always been one big difference
between him and those around him. Limbs. Nick was born with
the rare Tetra-amelia disorder—he entered this world with no arms
or legs, just one small foot to live by. That makes those everyday
milestones already mentioned, plus the many achievements you’re
about to read, simply extraordinary.
Today Nick Vujicic is not only living a vibrant, independent life
but is bringing hope to millions as he wriggles up to and then speaks
from stages around the world.

Here we are sitting in a Sydney hotel meeting room and you’ve whizzed
through on your special motorised buggy. How would you describe it to
those who haven’t seen it?
It’s my little BMW 7 Series.
[Laughter]
I’m going to get a big sub-woofer in it and stuff.

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 FAITH

[Laughter]
I control it with my little foot. Having no arms and no legs
obviously has its limitations, but I’m just so thankful for being able
to have the opportunity to be mobile and independent to quite
a good level. So, yeah mate, it’s got hydraulics and it goes about
8 kilometres an hour. I’m getting a new one, actually, that’s going
to raise the seat up to 6-foot-6 if I want to be taller.

Let’s go back to that hospital room in Melbourne in 1982 where your

mum is giving birth to her first child—you. Was there any sign that you
would be different than unexpected?
My parents had three ultrasounds done and the doctors and
medical staff didn’t check [them]. They were supposed to be
checking the size of the baby and measuring the growth from the
elbow to the fingers and the knee to the toes, those sort of things.
But they never did that with me so there was no warning. The
doctors didn’t know and my parents didn’t know. And there was
no genealogy of disability either up or down the chain in either
family. I have a brother and a sister, both younger than me, with
arms and legs. It was just one of those things that happened.

When we think of people in your situation we tend to wonder if

thalidomide was involved.
Yeah, well, I was born in the 1980s [after thalidomide had been
withdrawn from sale]. My mum was a nurse and had delivered
many babies before I was born, so she knew quite well what that
was. She actually had a premonition that something would go
wrong in her first pregnancy so she didn’t even take Panadol when
she had a headache. The doctors still don’t know what it is, so they

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 Nick Vujicic

called it ‘folk-amelia’, which basically means being born without

arms and legs for no medical reason.
[Laughter]

I guess it would have been a pretty difficult thing for your parents to get
used to right from the beginning.
Absolutely. It took my mum about four months before she came
to terms with it. My dad took the initiative to hold me first. They
took me home but it was puzzling, shocking, tragic, horrific. It was
basically a nightmare for my parents. And they were asking why.
Why did this happen? My mum and dad weren’t just believers in
God; they were lay pastors of a church. My dad’s been a lay pastor
for twenty-six-odd years and the whole church was asking, ‘Where’s
God in this? Why would God let this happen?’ Just very trying for
everybody.

Being pastors I guess they prayed for a miracle too.

Absolutely. The whole church did. I grew up learning about Jesus
loving me and how he had a plan, a hope and a future for me. And
Jesus healed many people, so I prayed for a miracle and wondered
why mine never came. The Bible says, ‘Ask and you shall receive’;
it tells us that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains.
It’s not about the size of faith but the existence of faith in a God
who can do all things, so my lack of a miracle was puzzling to me.
I actually hated God for many years of my life. You know the
song that goes, ‘Jesus loves the little children/All the children of
the world’? I went to school and saw the other kids and I was, like,
‘God, if you love me like you love all the other kids then why did
you give me less?’ I prayed for an answer why and he didn’t answer
me for many, many years. It was very lonely at times.

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 FAITH

The worst disability in the world is the fear of loneliness. Fear is

going to paralyse you more than having no arms and no legs. And if
you don’t know the answers to any of these three questions: Who am
I? Why am I here? and Where am I going when I’m not here? then
that will cripple you more than having no limbs. I didn’t just have no
arms or legs, I didn’t know why I was here, why he hadn’t given me
arms and legs and why he wasn’t answering me. I had pain.
If God wasn’t going to stop my pain I decided I was, so I tried
to do that. I was eight years old and I tried to drown myself in a
bath tub with 10 centimetres of water. I turned over two or three
times and couldn’t go through with it because I had an image of my
parents at my grave. I didn’t want to leave them with a lifetime of
guilt on their shoulders, wishing they could have done something
more for their son. I loved my parents more than myself at that
stage, and I just tried to get through one day at a time.

When did your parents find out about that suicide attempt?
I don’t think they actually knew until I was a teenager. But that
night, after trying to take my life, I told my brother, Aaron, who
was five years old at the time, that I was going to kill myself at
twenty-one. I could see myself going to school, I could see myself
going to high school and maybe even going to university, but I
didn’t see a life for me after that. Well, Aaron said, ‘I’m gonna tell
dad!’ So he did, and dad came in and comforted me, put his hands
through my hair, calmed me down and prayed with me, assuring
me that God would never leave me or forsake me, and that while
God sometimes doesn’t make sense, he’s always with us.

Looking at some of the video footage on your website, you seemed like a
happy kid. You were learning to play the piano with your toe and even

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 Nick Vujicic

learning to swim. Obviously at some stage things got difficult. Was that
in school?
Having no arms and no legs wasn’t such a big deal for me until
I had the unwanted attention of people ridiculing me, rejecting
me and alienating me at school. I couldn’t play or do some things
and I looked weird. I was still generally a happy kid during my
childhood. I had my ups and downs and stuff, but I learnt how
to write with my foot, type with my foot; I learnt how to swim,
fish, play golf and play the piano. I loved doing all that. But it was
definitely in the schoolyard where I got teased a lot. I’d come home
crying, and mum would throw on a song by Joni Eareckson Tada
about how cool it was to be in a wheelchair. That was sometimes
the only encouragement I could receive in those times because no
one with arms and legs, even my parents, could understand my
pain.
Tears are a language that only God understands. And there were
times where all I could do was just cry and be held. Those were hard
moments also for my parents because you can only do so much for
your child. But they continued to encourage me throughout my
childhood.
My mum gave me some wisdom. When people see me for the
first time, they don’t know exactly how to approach me or what
level of conversation to have with me. So she said, ‘Nick, just start
talking to people and they will see that you’re just like anybody
else.’ I started doing that and that’s when I started becoming more
confident in myself, being able to speak out and concentrate on
what I do have instead of what I don’t have.

Let’s talk about what you can do, because you can do a lot. Explain to
people who haven’t seen you do it just how you swim and play golf.

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 FAITH

In golf I hold the putter between my chin and my shoulder. I don’t

drive or chip but I do putt. I can go to a golf club and sit there
for two-and-a-half hours just practising my putts. I find that very
relaxing. And the way that I learnt to swim was from my dad. He
put his hand under my head when I was eighteen months old and
taught me how to float in the bath tub. Then I started swimming
at six all by myself. I have a normal lung capacity, which allows me
to be buoyant even if I’m still, and then I use my foot basically like
a motorised paddle.
There are still many things that I can’t do, but I love to challenge
myself. I went surfing last year in Waikiki, Hawaii, and got up on
my long board. I was on the front page of Surfing Magazine because
of it.
But the thing I really want to talk about is that I know who I
am. I’m a child of God. I’m the richest man on earth because I have
peace, which is something money cannot buy. I’m forgiven of my
sins. I know who I am, I know why I’m here and I know where I’m
going when I’m not here.
About three weeks ago I was thinking how it would’ve been the
saddest day in heaven for me if God had given me arms and legs at
the age of eight. I used to beg God for them. Today I do believe in a
God of miracles: I’ve seen blind people seeing, deaf people hearing,
lame people walking—we got it on our cameras as we travelled
across fourteen countries last year. I believe in a God of miracles
and I have a pair of shoes in my closet just in case. But the faith
[I have] is that what God doesn’t change he will use. Romans 8:28
says, ‘All things come together for the good of those who love him.’
Jeremiah 29:11 says, ‘For I know the plans I have for you, declares
the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give
you hope and a future.’

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 Nick Vujicic

When you have suffering in your life, you subconsciously

compare your suffering to somebody else’s. But hope is found
when you compare your suffering to the grace of God. God never
makes a mistake. He knew me before the earth began—that’s what
Jeremiah 1 says. Psalm 139 says that I am fearfully and wonderfully
made. So I tell teenagers that it’s not about how they look, it’s about
Who they belong to. Every girl is beautiful just the way she is; she
doesn’t need to be taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, smarter or whatever.
So many girls want boyfriends just to feel loved and wanted, but
you can’t find your happiness in relationships either. There’s one
thing worse than being single and alone and that’s being married
and alone. It’s only by the grace of God that you can look at yourself
and be thankful for what you have.
I’ve actually been given the greatest gift of all. You see, if I was
born without arms and legs for just one more soul to come to Jesus
Christ and for them to be in heaven, what a sad day it would have
been if God had said yes to my prayer at eight years of age. Then, if
I had sat down with God and asked him which wrong choice out of
all the wrong choices I made was the one that stuck out to him, I’m
sure he would have said, ‘Nick, I actually created you without arms
and legs to be the miracle I wanted you to be. If you just asked me
for my will instead of your will, I would’ve kept you without arms
and legs, and before you reached age twenty-seven, two hundred
thousand souls would’ve been here.’
So far I’ve spoken to six hundred million people. I’m not joking.
One in ten people in the world knows who I am. I’ve travelled
across twenty-four countries and spoken to three million people
face to face. We’ve seen two hundred thousand first decisions for
Christ, and if it’s only one soul that comes to heaven then it’s all
worth it.

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 FAITH

Two years ago in California I met a little boy named Daniel,

also without arms or legs. I just happened to be [speaking] in the
church where he and his mum worshipped. He had no arms, no
legs and a little foot just like me. Doctors didn’t know why he was
born that way. They didn’t know what kind of life he was going to
have. He’s not going to walk; he’s going to be a ‘vegetable’ for the
rest of his life; he’s going to be a ‘burden’ to his mum. No. Now I’m
his miracle. I’m the miracle of God for somebody else.
When God doesn’t give you a miracle, you are a miracle of God.
I can’t guarantee your business is not going to fail. I can’t guarantee
your cancer is going to be healed. But I’ll tell you one thing—God
is with you and he never makes a mistake. And every day he asks
me, ‘Will you trust me?’ So the three things I do daily are: I pray,
I thank God and I trust God.

You said earlier that you were angry at God for some years. When did
that faith become a reality for you again?
That’s a great question. Many of us have held something against
God. Perhaps he took our father away or he took our job away or
he let this happen or that. I think I ‘forgave’ God [for not giving me
arms and legs] when I read a newspaper article about a man with
a disability. I realised then that I had a choice either to be angry at
God for what I didn’t have or be thankful for what I did have. That
was at thirteen.
I gave my life to Jesus Christ at fifteen when I read John chapter 9
—the story about a man who was born blind and no one knew
why, but Jesus said it happened so that the works of God may be
revealed through him. Those verses changed my life forever. I had
this faith, this peace, this closure in my mind and it felt like God
was asking me to trust him. Just because the blind man didn’t

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 Nick Vujicic

know why he was born that way didn’t mean there was no reason
for it.
That was a huge revelation for me, and that day I prayed, ‘God,
if you give me arms and legs I’ll serve you, and if you don’t give me
arms and legs I’ll still serve you.’ Because there was a greater need
for me than to have arms and legs. I’ve lied once, I’ve stolen once,
I’ve cheated once, I’ve lusted once, I’ve hated somebody once, I’ve
broken just about every single one of the Ten Commandments. I’m
a sinner. But because I believe that Jesus is Lord—the only holy
man that pointed to himself and said ‘I am the way, the truth and
the life’—and he died on the cross for my sins and rose from the
dead, and because I confess that I’m a sinner and that he is Lord of
my life, I’m saved. That’s the deeper need that I had and now it’s
fulfilled.

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 Please share this FREE chapter  
with your friends 
If you would like to help spread the word about Open House Volume 3 

YOU CAN… 

Send this file to a friend 

Send them a link to  openhouseonline.com.au  so they can 
download the file for themselves 

Buy copies of the book at  hope1032.com.au/shop 

Print out as many copies of this as you like and distribute to family, 
friends, colleagues, and your community  
 AVAIL ABLE
at BOOKSTORES
EVERYWHERE

I will have to be honest with

you, Sheridan, and say one
reason [why I’m still a
Christian] is that I haven’t
found a better alternative.
And I’ve looked, I really have.
P H I L I P YA N C E Y

I had all the worldly things,

the trappings of status and
success, but I used to lie
awake at three o’clock in the
morning just feeling empty.
MARINA PRIOR

Meaning is everything and

humans will never cease
pursuing the question of
meaning. Nor should they.
Indeed, nor can they.
T H O M A S K E N E A L LY

Every Sunday evening Sheridan Voysey welcomes a variety of authors, artists and
activists to his national radio program Open House. If the Chinese proverb is true
and a single conversation with a wise person is worth a month’s study of books,
then this collection of the ‘best’ Open House interviews could be the equivalent of
a Master’s course in life, with topics ranging from God, pain, success and poverty
to masculinity, materialism, politics and art.

Laugh, cry and marvel as you read the tales, tragedies and beliefs of some of the
world’s most intriguing personalities.

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 AVAIL ABLE
at BOOKSTORES
EVERYWHERE
I think meeting Mother Teresa
had a big impact on me—the
way she gave to the poorest
of the poor her whole life without
regard to material possessions…
it was incredible what she did.
S T E V E WA U G H

I think beauty is [God’s] way of

telling us on a most basic level
that he is here, that he made this
world and this universe. Why else
would we cry at the sight of a
beautiful tree caught in the wind
with all of its limbs dancing?
ANNE RICE

I’m still working on [the faith

question]. It’s something that is
there but I haven’t got an answer
to it and I’m just worrying at it all
the time. D R KA R L K R U S Z E L N I C K I

In this second book of conversations drawn from Sheridan Voysey’s national

Open House radio program, we peer through a window into the lives of national and
international personalities to glimpse aspects of the world left previously unseen.

What does riding a violently-shaking rocket into orbit then landing and walking on
the moon feel like? What is life really like behind the scenes of the adult
entertainment industry? Are there answers to some of the most perplexing questions
levelled at belief in a creator? Where do you turn when you have all that life could
seemingly offer yet still feel profoundly empty?

Come, converse and find out.

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