Search For Life – Participant's Manual

By Allan Meyer and Helen Meyer

The Search for Life Participant's Manual is a program designed to identify the cause of many challenging human tensions and equip participants with the transforming power of truth in a context of acceptance and peer support. The content in the manual is expanded, explained and demonstrated in 6 video presentations available from Careforce Lifekeys Community Resources under the title Small Group Leader and Facilitator Training. The full value of the manual will not be accessible without the use of the supporting video material.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allan Meyer
• Release date: Nov 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223476054

Allan Meyer

Allan and Helen met in high school, marrying in 1968 while completing their teacher training. Allan has a Lutheran background, and Helen has an Anglican background. While teaching, students’ struggles, and self-destructive behaviour saw them open their home to local high school students. They shared their faith in Jesus and helped young people see a deeper view of life. The impact on many students resulted in a call to youth work in 1978, serving the Life Ministry Centre, until 1982. In 1983 Allan and Helen were invited to lead a local Church of Christ, Mt Evelyn Christian Fellowship, where they served for 26 years. At the coal face of pastoral care, they established Careforce Lifekeys in 1992. Their teaching skills helped create courses focused on bringing healing and recovery to ordinary people through a teaching and small group process. They set up a Small Group Leadership Training Program and 14 courses addressing the challenges people face worldwide. From recovery of sexual abuse to financial management, the role of Lifekeys is to lead people into a restoration of life and hope. In 2004 Allan completed his doctorate with Denver Seminary creating the Valiant Man course to restore and fortify men’s moral and spiritual integrity. From Good Man to Valiant Man is an added resource, translated into Russian, German, Czech, Indonesian, and Swahili. Over 100,000 men in Australia have undergone the course that includes a manual and 10 video-produced teaching sessions. A prime focus of Allan’s work is speaking at men’s conferences and bringing the Lifekeys material to people worldwide. Helen is the Director of Careforce Lifekeys and a trained primary and high school teacher. She has a Master in Education, Master in Counselling, Master of Science in Medicine (Sexual Health), and a Grad Dip in Human Relationships Education. She has founded two counselling centres in semi-rural and urban areas servicing the community and offers internships for counselling students. Helen’s story of being raised in a household with chemical dependency issues, and the early loss of her mother, assisted in sharing the healing process with insight and best practice. Allan and Helen travel in Australia and worldwide, training and sharing the Restoration themes of the Bible and coaching churches and counselling groups to use the Lifekeys programs.

Book preview

acknowledgements

The ideas, insights, and teaching material which comprise the substance of this course are the product of many enriching encounters for which I am profoundly grateful.

In 1969 I was a student at Monash University, studying for a Diploma in Education. I was trying to prepare for an exam but was so distracted and distressed by the call of God to ministry that I couldn’t study. In an attempt to find peace I went to the Religious Centre for a lunch-time service and happened to sit next to another student I had never met. His name is Graeme Turton.

He stayed after that service concluded and initiated a conversation for which I will be forever grateful. The essence of that conversation clarified a vital issue: if I wanted Jesus to be my Saviour, I needed to embrace him as my Lord. I am where I am today, in part, because of that conversation. I recounted that conversation in a sermon in 2019. A relative of Graeme was present to hear it which resulted in us re-connecting after 50 years. He has played a significant role in this new version of Search for Life by editing and commenting on the notes for this course as they were being developed. Once again, I have been the beneficiary of Graeme Turton’s discipleship.

Such is also the case with Dr. D. M. Lloyd-Jones whose theological works, particularly his book on Justification and his two books on the Sermon on the Mount, were so significant in igniting my passion for preaching. I have in my possession a kind and encouraging letter from The Doctor in response to a letter which I wrote to him after reading Romans 3 & 4, a book which touched both myself and my wife.

Some encounters have come through reading the works of people I will never meet in this life. Of those works, none are more important than those penned by Dr. Francis Schaeffer, whose perspectives on the Trinity have forever marked my understanding of the God Who Is There.

Robert S. McGee’s The Search for Significance made a connection between the great Reformation doctrines, human emotions, and human behaviour that has impacted my understanding of the Bible, and hence my preaching and teaching will bear his imprint for the rest of my life.

Some encounters have come through associations and friendships that were part of God’s gracious gift in my journey of life. While it is not possible to acknowledge all those who have contributed to the development of thinking that made this program possible it would be remiss not to mention the following:

Jeff Van Vonderen – author and speaker. We met at a conference on Recovery in the USA in 1992. Jeff’s insights to the human condition, particularly the issues of Guilt and Shame, are transformational. Jeff was the key speaker at our first Careforce conference held in 1994.

Beth Allison, who embraced the value of this program early in the piece, taught the course herself for many years, and played a significant part in development and improvements in the 2006 version of this course.

Hal Oxley – my Senior Pastor, mentor, and friend from 1975 until his death at the age of 103 in 2020. His unshakeable commitment to the Bible, to understanding the way forward in life through obedience to God’s Word, and his relentless personal courage have marked me forever.

David Johnson – formerly of Church of the Open Door. From his preaching I learned much about exegeting the biblical text in the light of human brokenness and the amazing grace of God.

Larry Greenwald and Al Els of that great church, Word of Grace, in Phoenix, Arizona. These two good men formed the recovery teaching ministry that flourished at Word of Grace in the early 1990’s. Their work provided the first seeds of insight and the inspiration to develop ministries of healing delivered through small group processes. They helped us and encouraged us. Without them Lifekeys would never have begun.

To all of you, and many more – thank you.

Dr. Allan R Meyer

Co-founder Neuma Lifekeys

(Formerly Careforce Lifekeys)

introduction to the search for life

I am alive. I am here. I exist. I think. I feel. I am aware. I ponder the stars, yet the stars ponder nothing. What am I? What is my destiny? The search for life has begun.

I’m not the first to begin this journey. An ancient poet once said;

When I consider the heavens, the moon and the stars that you have made, what is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you should consider him.?[1]

There are three witnesses that speak to these questions if we are willing to hear their testimony.

The first witness is the universe itself. Another ancient poet put it in these words:

The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.[2] The universe is vast beyond description or comprehension. Extraordinary. Yet here it is.

Where did it come from? How did it come to be? It’s not a new question. Every civilization that has left a record of its existence has asked that question.

Perhaps the universe didn’t come from anywhere, perhaps the universe is eternal, perhaps it has always been here. Is it possible the universe never had a beginning?

Science used to think so. There would be no question about the origin of the universe if it was eternal. Something that is eternal has no beginning, it just IS.

There was a time when science hoped that might be the case. Not anymore. While there are numerous theories about the nature of the universe the most widely embraced acknowledges our universe is not eternal; it had a beginning: it’s called the Big Bang.

Early ideas about a Big Bang imagined a single super-hot, super-dense ball of mass energy which exploded to become the expanding universe. Science doesn’t believe that idea anymore.

Science is largely agreed: Matter is not eternal – time, space, and matter all had a beginning.

One of the great questions of philosophy and science is this: why is there something rather than nothing?

Evolutionary biologist, Julian Huxley said:

It is easier to believe that there was nothing before there was something than that there was something before there was nothing.

Science asks us to believe that everything that exists came from NOTHING.

Particle physicist and philosopher, Victor Stenger, expresses a similar perspective:

The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent.

Philosopher, Anthony Kenny, described the current view of most scientists in National Geographic:

According to the big bang theory the whole matter of the universe began to exist at a particular time in the remote past. A proponent of such a theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the matter of the universe came from nothing and by nothing.

Physicist, Paul Davies, describes this view in even more startling language:

[The big bang] represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws, the sudden abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing. It represents a true miracle...

In the Search for Life perhaps the first question I must ask myself is this:

Is it reasonable to believe that all there is, including myself, is the product of nothing?

nothing plus nothing equals nothing

If there was ever a state in which there was absolutely nothing, right now there would be absolutely nothing.

If there is something in existence now, it’s because something has always existed: something never had a beginning.

Since time, space and matter had a beginning something outside time, something outside space, something outside matter is the cause.

Something is eternal. The universe exists because of that something. I exist because of that something. I am not the product of nothing.

I wonder what that something might be. One thing I can know is this: the something that is the cause of the universe is eternal - and powerful beyond imagination.

For all the stunning wonder of the existence of the universe, something yet more extraordinary is found on this one planet called Earth. This little dot, circling one sun in this massive universe holds a more breathtaking reality. That something is the second witness.

That extraordinary something is called LIFE.

Life: so mysterious that even science has difficulty in defining it. Impossibly complex, incredibly beautiful, an even greater mystery than the universe that is its home.

life!

The loudest voices in science have been declaring for the past few hundred years that time and chemistry is all that is required to produce life; that a simple living cell might arise by chemistry alone.

There is no such thing as a simple cell.

Even the simplest living cell is not simple at all. The simplest living cell is a tiny universe of extraordinary information with machines and factories and processes so marvellous the only appropriate response is awe.

Yet casually it has been assumed that with enough time and chemistry life is inevitable. It is not. Life is a wonder of intentionality and brilliance that ought to cause everyone who sees what they are looking at to ask – how can this be?

Science has been telling the media for decades they know how life happened. The media has perpetrated the myth so relentlessly that people, including scientists, lose the depth of awe that ought to be present in the face of the existence of life. We become blind and deaf to the testimony of life. Science does not know how life could possibly begin. The origin of life is a profound and confronting reality.[3]

The existence of life demands profound skills of design and profound power to execute that design. Matter is mindless and thus lacks the creative vision capable of providing a plan and the skill to implement a plan.

The required level of design and power in the forming of the universe and the framing of life is so profound that everyone can know that the cause of life is more than an eternal impersonal something. You exist because of an eternal someone. That someone is both ETERNAL and PERSONAL.

There is a difference between the personal and the impersonal. A person contemplates the stars, the stars contemplate nothing. A person can know, understand, plan, dream things that never existed and exercise wisdom to impose order on impersonal matter and bring those dreams into reality.

Life is the product of wisdom as big as eternity itself. You live and you have life because at the back of all things is a person with life, the kind of life you need and were formed for.

These two witnesses, the vast and extraordinary universe, and the existence of the miracle of life, speak to your questions about the Search for Life.

Then there is a third witness, and that witness is you. Human Beings. Humanity.

To be human is to possess God-like qualities.

That ancient poet (referred to above) added something to his question

what is man that you are mindful of him?

He went on to observe:

For you have made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honour.

Education and science have combined to bring us to a view of our humanity much lower than that – we have been lowered to the status of an animal. In the mind of modern education our place in the universe is no more than one of the species on the tree of life.

Humanity has redefined itself as the product of a mindless, mechanistic evolutionary process.

In reality, a profound gift has been bestowed on you as a human being: while you have a material body you are not just another animal. You are a being made in the image of the Creator and bestowed with inalienable qualities – one ring to rule them all. You were created to reign in life. God has breathed into humanity something of his own divine nature.

The life we have been given lifts us to God-like places, with capacities to rule as emissaries of heaven itself. Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but human beings fly to the moon and beyond. Dogs have an amazing capacity to smell, pigeons have an amazing capacity to find their way home, monkeys will make you laugh, but human beings split the atom.

We write laws and contemplate Justice. We create instruments, invent music, record it, and share it on Spotify. We invent the Olympic games, make golf balls, and glory in sport.

We invent building materials that never existed, span rivers, tunnel through mountains and build towers. We invent engines, travel beyond the speed of sound, dive into the oceans and rocket