A Different Perspective Official Podcast

It turns out that our priorities have an enormous impact on how we feel about our lives.  So if we want to live an abundant, satisfying life we need to get our priorities sorted out; we need to put first things first. So – what should come first? Most people these days live hectic lives, just making it through. I mean, for some people listening to this program it's a touch and go thing everyday just to find enough food. Others they're drowning in emails and more things on their list of things to do than they can possibly get done. Others are sinking in a sea of loneliness. Whatever it is, whoever we are, wherever you're at in your life we can find so many things, really important things to clutter up our daily to do list. Personally my list of things to do is as long as my arm and then some. There are the personal things I have to do, things to do with writing and recording and producing this radio program, there's an organisation to run, people to meet, this project, that project, a new idea over here and a new idea over there. And then I receive a few hundred emails pretty much every day, some of them are junk but many of them are people asking me to do this or get involved in that or can you answer this question for me please or can you help me with my new project, can you please write an endorsement for the book that I'm writing? Welcome to my world. Now don't get me wrong I'm not complaining and none of those things are terribly bad at all but the point is that with so many more things to do than I can possibly fit into my day, my week or even my year, my process for deciding what I do is absolutely critical. One of the big mistakes I used to make was to answer my emails first thing each morning. I receive emails 24x7 from around the world so I used to sit down in the morning which given I'm a morning person is my most lucid and productive time and start answering emails. After a while I realised I wasn't getting anything else done because by putting emails first I was putting other people's priorities first, I was in fact dancing to their tune instead of sorting out for myself what was most important from my agenda, the things I needed to do first. There's a well know principle of framework you read in a lot of management books that sets out the difference between what's urgent and what's important and what you discover is almost nothing that's urgent is important and almost nothing that's important is urgent. And yet most of us are reactive, we react to the urgent things or at least to the things that other people say are urgent and so we spend most of our time doing urgent things instead of important things. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and before you know it your life is slipping away doing a whole bunch of things which in the scheme of things may well be making you extremely busy but how important are they really? What of lasting value do they produce? What of lasting value does your life produce? You see my point here, how are you spending your life and are the things you're spending your time on important and worthwhile? I guess I'm asking those questions for you to ask them of yourself and to answer them, come on be brutally honest. For instance making sure I have some time for my beautiful wife Jacqui is important. Making sure I encourage her, give her a hug and a kiss, spend some unhurried time with her in the morning over breakfast is really important but it's not urgent. It's not as urgent as say an email that comes in from a radio station from somewhere around the world that says, "we weren't able to download tonight's radio program from your ftp server". And yet what I used to do because remember mornings are my most productive time, is get up really early and spend no time with Jacqui over breakfast and just work furiously through that time and by the time she comes home from work and I come home from work in the evening we're both tired and there you go, we haven't spent any time together. Do you see how easily this can happen in people's lives? The urgent trumps the important almost every time and before you know it your life's falling apart, things are in a mess, marriages are failing all because we allow the urgent to crowd out the important. Scary, isn't it? So these days I make sure that almost every morning during the week I'm around to share a time with my wife for breakfast. Sometimes I'm away and sometimes I have to be on a call to Africa or somewhere else but most mornings I have breakfast with my wife. Why? Because it's important and as a result sometimes urgent things don't get done. Let me let you in on a secret, the sky has yet to fall in. So what about you? What about your life? Are you letting the myriad of urgent things crowd out the important things, spending time with people, managing your personal finances, nurturing your children, developing relationships with your co workers. All of those things are incredibly important and in many a persons life they're being cast aside simply because people are too busy. I don't have time to exercise. Well if you don't have time for exercise, which is important let me tell you, you'll certainly be making time for sickness which is going to become urgent and actually that's how it works. Doing the important things generally over time reduces the number of urgent things that you need to do because if the important things go undone they lead to crises and those crises increase the urgent things requiring an immediate response. We've been talking these last few weeks about discovering your destiny. I don't know what your destiny is, I mean really I don't but this is what I do know, your destiny does not lie in the myriad of the things that other people tell you are urgent. Your destiny doesn't lie in answering hundreds of emails. Your destiny doesn't lie in reacting to other people's priorities. Your destiny is somewhere; it's doing the really important things in your life. Building the relationships, having a great marriage, doing the important things to take a career forward that's going to impact other people's lives. My friend please don't make the mistake of letting the urgent crowd out the important because, I'll say it again, I'm absolutely certain of this, your destiny does not lie in the hundreds and thousands of urgent little tasks that other people think that you should do. I mean if you or I went to God, this God who handcrafted us, who designed us in His heart, blue printed our DNA, if we went to Him and said, 'Lord what's the most important thing I have to do with my life?' What do you think He'd answer? What would He put at the very top of our to do list? Well actually we already know. A clever young lawyer asked Him a very similar question. The lawyer sort of said and this is my paraphrase: 'Well Jesus you and I both know that the law that Moses handed down to us there are six hundred and thirteen commandments and prohibitions, it's kind of a lot, I mean day to day that's a lot of things to remember to do so how would you sum up this law, I mean if I'm trying to prioritise these things in my life which ones of all of those commandments are the most important ones?' You can read his exact words in Matthews Gospel chapter 22 and in Mark chapter 12. And if I had to paraphrase Jesus reply in kind of here and now speak it would run something like this. 'Look I know you have a lot of things to do, there are lots of rules, do this, don't do that, they're all good things but you can sum up the whole law in just two commandments. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. That's the most important one and the second one is just like it. To love the people around you as much as you love yourself. That's the whole law in a nutshell, that's it. And you know something the most important thing I do almost every day, the thing I do before anything else is I spend an hour or so alone with Jesus praying, reading the Bible, asking Him questions and that's what sets the course for my whole day and day after day, month after month, year after year it actually sets the course for my whole life. It is quite simply the single most important thing that I do and it's through that time with Him that I've discovered my destiny.

Winning is everything.  At least that's what everyone seems to think.  But sometimes, the more we win, the emptier it all feels.  Somehow, winning isn't all it's cracked up to be.   One of the things we're all pretty much conditioned to do in life is to come first. Now we all can't come first at everything right but it's pretty natural to want to be first, to be the best looking, to be the brightest, to be the most articulate, the fastest runner, the best football player. Even when we think we have things under control in our lives that competitive spirit thing inside each one of us just wants to win, an argument, a situation, a minor conflict at work or at home, we want to have the final say. We want to assert our view, our way, our need, our whatever it happens to be. To be blunt we just want to win. But sometimes winning comes at a very high price, let's face it, if I'm going to live out my destiny, if I'm going to be the me I was meant to be and if I'm going to live the life I was meant to live then surely I have to win at things right? I mean it stands to reason doesn't it? But there are just a few problems with this 'I have to be first' thing. I mean for starters you can't always be first. If everyone was always first by definition none of us would ever be first because winning, coming first means that others have to come second, third, fourth and last and it sets up this thing where we become our own little demi gods and the moment things don't work out, the moment we don't come first we throw a little tantrum or a big tantrum for that matter. To tell you the truth that's how I used to live. I expected everybody else to bow down and scrape to me and if they didn't I'd get upset, I'd roll over the top of them, I'd get offended and annoyed and disappointed because from as early as I can remember I've been programmed to win, to get the recognition, to win the prize. And it turned out that all that stuff was robbing me of my destiny, it was robbing me of being the me I was meant to be and living the life I was made to live. I was this little tin pot god on my own little tin pot throne and I discovered it wasn't much fun up there or down there, wherever it was, especially when you're surrounded by other people with exactly the same world view. The paradox is that being first doesn't work. We need to let that sink in for a moment, the view that you or I are always meant to come first simply doesn't work. Jesus and His disciples were travelling and the disciples were having this argument behind His back about which one of them was the greatest, you know that Mohammad Ali syndrome 'I am the greatest'. And when they came to Capernaum they went inside the house and Jesus said to them, 'So what were you guys arguing about out there on the road?' But they kept quiet because on the way they'd been arguing about who was the greatest, in effect who would come first. See there's nothing new here under the sun, this nonsense of wanting to win is as old as the hills. And sitting down Jesus called the twelve of them over and said, 'Look if any of you wants to be first you actually have to be the very last and the servant of all.' And He took a little child and He had him stand among them and taking this kid in His arms He said to the disciples, 'it's all about welcoming one of these little children'. Don't you love that? They have this argument about who's the greatest, now I don't think for one minute that Peter was saying, "you know I think John's the greatest". No, no, Peter was probably thinking, 'I'm the greatest' and John was probably thinking, "no, no, I'm the greatest". And these guys were playing a power game. Which one of us is on the top of the heap? And when Jesus said, "what were you guys arguing about?" They kept quiet, they didn't want Him to know. Why? Because they knew it was such a stupid argument. They knew it and we know it but it still doesn't seem to stop us playing the power game. At work, in our neighbourhood or a community group, in our families, amongst our so called friends. This idea that 'if anyone wants to be first he must be the very last and the servant of all', it's a really profound notion. Just seventeen little words and everything we've learned and believed about winning gets turned completely on it's head. In that one statement Jesus puts His finger on one of the deepest maladies on this planet, it was way back two thousand years ago and it still is today. Think about it, who are the people who come first in your estimation? Who are the people whom you treasure in your heart? I know who they are, they're the very ones who have sacrificed the most for you aren't they? Those people are the ones you and I hold dearest in our hearts, the ones who loved us when we were tough to love, the ones who put up with us when we were difficult to put up with, the ones who were there for us when we didn't deserve them. And those people instead of wanting to be first, instead of insisting on their rights, instead of all that stuff, we think we're owed and we deserve, instead of all of that they humble themselves to serve us. Instead of putting themselves first they were in fact last for us. If anyone wants to be first he must be the very last and the servant of all. Being first ultimately is about sowing a seed in someone else's life, a seed of gentleness and compassion and to be first we have to be last. If you want to be first you have to be the very last, the servant of all and leave a legacy of respect and gratitude and profound appreciation in other people's hearts. Being first is the thing that happens in their hearts when we serve them instead of what happens in our hearts when they serve us, that's the paradox. It's pretty simple, it's not rocket science but it's one of those things we forget in our business to make sure we get everything we deserve and then some, the me, me, me, thing, we miss it. I didn't start discovering my true destiny in life until I resigned from my own little tin pot despotic role as my own pathetic little god and started serving others. It's something I'm still learning and the amazing thing is, counter intuitive as it was when I started to serve other people instead of myself I actually started enjoying my life again. Not having to win each argument, not having to come out on top, not having to be smarter or faster or better or brighter than the next person is a whole better way of living than always having to come first. Because all of a sudden I wasn't trying to live this impossible life anymore, life became a whole bunch simpler when I started to live the Jesus way. This peace and this joy and this rest started showing up in my life, I don't have to get angry every time someone doesn't meet my expectations. You know something, if anyone wants to be first he must be the very last and the servant of all but more than that I discovered my destiny. I discovered that when I stopped trying to be first and having everyone serve me, when I in fact started to say 'no I'll start serving them' I discovered I had gifts and abilities that God wanted to use in other people's lives. We talked about this the other week and it's so incredibly satisfying, this double sided transaction of giving and serving. First resigning from being first, from me at the centre of the universe and to discover what it means to serve, the pleasure and fulfilment and then you know what happens, all of a sudden in a whole bunch of people's hearts we have a warm significance, we have a firstness if I can call it that, that only comes when we become their servant. Jesus said it in a whole bunch of different ways and it's a profound truth. I mean He said it again in Luke chapter 9, verses 24 and 25 if you want to have a read. Whoever wants to save their life will lose it but whoever loses their life for me will save it. Because what good is it for anyone to gain the whole world and yet to forfeit their very self. You see what we're forfeiting when we try and win, when we try and gain our life, when we try and be first, we're forfeiting our very self. In other words this is such an important part of being the person we were meant to be and living out our destiny. We weren't made by God to be some little tin pot despotic god on our own. We were made to be His children and to lose our lives and in losing our lives to discover who we actually are.  

It turns out that the more we try to fill ourselves up with all the fun stuff this world has to offer, the emptier we feel.  When are we finally going to wake up to the fact that life's not just about "me"? Life is full of paradoxes and contradictions and complexities. It's funny how we can see something one way, believe with all our heart that that's how it is and then in an instant you discover we had it all wrong. Like lemmings sometimes, we all rush in one direction and just in time someone says, "you realise that's a cliff". People and societies chase after this idea or that belief; they believe it with all their hearts only to discover it doesn't work. Take just one thing, consumerism. The advertising industry has a single, very simple mantra that rings out through almost every advertisement and it's this, "if you buy me you'll be happy". And to convince us of that each ad has glossy images of success plastered all over it, images of the things we aspire to: beauty, luxury, quality, comfort, happiness, a great marriage; a beautiful, happy, successful woman; a handsome, strong, driven man; delighted, well adjusted teenagers without acne. In effect the ads tell us what to aspire to because they're defining success. Fine dining, business class travel, crystal clear wide screen televisions, big houses. Who doesn't want those things? But when we finally get there it's a case of, well so what? Great but now what's next? Who doesn't want a good espresso coffee or sit in those wide comfortable seats at the front of the plane or to drive a nice car or to have a happy family? You know the ads that really, really get me, you see father's day and mothers day ads on television sometimes and they have images of happy well adjusted children, you know come in on mother's day or father's day morning and jump on mum and dads bed and they're all smiling, they're all happy. What mother or father doesn't want that to be the story of their family? Or even the margarine advertisement, you know in the mornings and all these happy people, all well dressed and their hair groomed, having breakfast, drinking freshly squeezed orange juice, scraping margarine on perfectly cooked toast, just to sell margarine. Or those watches that cost, you know up market, thousands of dollars type watches and you have images of multi million dollar racing yachts that appeal to the man inside the man. Or the four wheel drives. You notice they're always on beautiful wide country roads which lead towards freedom, never in the maddening peak hour traffic where most people drive them. Or the washing powder that will make your clothes whiter than white and brighter than bright. Or the showers that never need cleaning or the germ free sparkling toilets. This incredible list, on and on and on, all with the same message, buy me and you'll be happy but the plain simple fact is, it's just not true. I mean most of the things they're good, there's nothing wrong with any of those things but they don't fulfil us, they don't fill us up. Our career, self actualising through our work and power and big salaries, whatever people want out of their careers. You see it doesn't matter what it is or how exciting or glamorous it appears ultimately all work becomes mundane and ho-hum. You might be thinking, 'Berni what's the matter with you today? I mean why are you all down and pessimistic?' Well actually I'm not but I know a lot of people who are. They're living on this treadmill all their lives, round and round and round just to discover that it's hollow and it's empty. You know something, even the most wonderful marriage on the planet, if there's something not quite right inside one of those people there, it can end up being hollow. The problem is we've been conned, this buy-me-and-you'll-be-happy thing we know it doesn't work but what's the alternative? I mean so often we don't know anything else so we just keep on going round and round on the same track again and again. You see people swilling around those glossy, ritzy shopping malls, what for? Are they looking for happiness there? These last few weeks on the program and again this week we're looking at what it means to discover your destiny, to be the person you were made to be, to live the life you were made to live. And we've been unpacking this sort of emptiness that so many people feel, this nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Can I ask you something? As you look forward to the rest of your life is how you're living it now the way you want to live it for the rest of your days on this earth? Are the things that you're aspiring to, the things you've been working so hard for, the things that you've been sacrificing your life for, are they really worth it? Is the story, the mantra, the perspective on life that society has somehow infused into you the story that you want for the rest of your life? They might be unsettling questions, I hope actually that they are because this week I want to unpack this paradox, why is it that things don't seem to be working out in life sometimes? Why is it that somehow we try and live our lives kind of the way we're supposed to, the way that's supposed to make sense but it doesn't make sense? I don't feel fulfilled, I don't feel like I'm being the me I was meant to be, why is that? To me this is the biggest paradox of all and it's one I had to discover and unlearn the hard way. The great British columnist Bernard Lennon once wrote this: Countries like ours' he said, 'are full of people who have all they desire and yet they lead lives of quiet desperation, understanding nothing of the fact that there is a hole inside and no matter how much food and drink we pour into it, how many motor cars and TV's we stuff it with, how ever many well balanced children and loyal friends we parade around the edges of it, it aches. See so many people relate to that, sad but true. Can I ask you today, do you relate to that? As we've been spending this short time together today are you one of those many people who, if you're really honest with yourself, would say, "you know, truly there is something missing in my life. The way I've been living my life, the way I'm living my life today is not the way I want to spend the rest of my life?" Because if you are the next question is, so what are you going to do about it, huh? You may think that I'm railing against having money or having possessions, I'm actually not. There's nothing wrong with money, there's nothing wrong with having possessions, have a listen to what wise old King Solomon wrote in the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verse 19: Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and to rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God. Maybe you have wealth, maybe you have possessions but do you have the power to enjoy them because that power is a gift from God. Accepting your lot, enjoying who you are, rejoicing in the work you do, all those things are a gift from God. I like so many people of my generation made the mistake of believing the mantra of the advertising industry, "buy me and you'll be happy". It's not true, it never was true and it never will be true. Happiness and contentment are a gift from God. Joy is something that comes only ever from an intimate close relationship with God, knowing that through Jesus Christ we've been forgiven, knowing that through Jesus we have a fresh start, a new life, the opportunity to fulfil our individual, custom made, handcrafted destiny that was written down in Gods book of life before any of our days ever existed. The Apostle Paul hits the nail right on the head in the first chapter of the Book of Ephesians when he writes that God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and it's only when we lay hold of Gods blessing, real blessing, eternal blessing, blessing that lights up our hearts here and now, the very blessing of God Himself that all this stuff that we have, all the things that we do are enjoyable and make sense. Does that sound like the sort of story you want to live out for the rest of your life? Yeah me too.  

Some people look at themselves in the mirror and think – Ahhh, what a wreck!  What could God ever do with me?  But what if He doesn't see you the way you do?  What if, actually, He has this amazing plan? Yesterday on the program we were talking about the fact that it can be a lot easier to believe in something like the resurrection of Jesus or eternal life than to believe that God could or would step into a particular situation or problem and help us right here and now let alone that he'd step into who we are and deal with some of the rubbish that's going on inside us. How could God take a beaten-up old wreck like me, me for goodness sake, and do anything with me? I want to be the "me" I was meant to be but it all just seems impossible. And you know, so many people have that problem, I had that problem. It's only now that as I look back on almost twelve years of walking every day with Him I can see how patiently he's restored me back to what I was meant to be. He means to make us into a new creation, to throw out the rubbish, to keep the good stuff and restore us back to his original plan. There's a beautiful poem by Myra Brooks-Welsh I'd like to share with you today. It's called The Touch of the Master's Hand, maybe you've heard it before maybe you haven't but it's really worth listening to. Here it is: much time on the old violin but he held it up with a smile. "What am I bidding good folks?" He cried. "Who'll start the bidding for me? A dollar, a dollar then two, only two? Two dollars and who'll make it three? Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three." But no, from the room far back a grey haired man came forward and picked up the bow. Then wiping the dust from the old violin and tightening the loosened strings he played a melody pure and sweet as carolling angels sing. The music ceased and the auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low said, "What am I bid for the old violin?" And he held it up with a bow. "A thousand dollars? Who'll make it two? Two thousand and who'll make it three? Three thousand once, three thousand twice and going and gone." Said he. The people cheered but some of them cried, "We don't quite understand, what changed its worth?" And swift came the reply, "The touch of the masters hand." And many a man with life out of tune and battered and scarred with sin is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd much like the old violin. A mess of pottage, a glass of wine, a game and he travels on. He's going once, going twice, he's going and almost gone. But the master comes and the foolish crowd never can quite understand. The worth of a soul and the change that is rort by the touch of the Master's hand. It's just incredible to me how easily we put ourselves on the scrap heap. How easily other people put us on the scrap heap. Life throws some horrid things at us, I'm 48 years old now, I've been through a marriage breakdown and a divorce as I said yesterday. Twelve years ago, that's where I came to faith in Christ in the middle of all of that. And when you're experiencing deep rejection you have this sense of worthlessness. It was like I lost everything, all my hopes, all my dreams, all my future, I was just like that dusty old violin. Truly. People don't expect the guy on the radio to talk about himself like that but that's how it was. I just couldn't see beyond tomorrow. I couldn't see how I could ever be useful again. Or achieve anything again. Or become the me I was meant to be. Who the heck was that anyway? But there's something you have to realise about a dusty old violin, it's still a violin. Maybe it's neglected, maybe it's disused, maybe it's a bit out of tune, maybe it doesn't look much anymore. But it's still a violin. You and I are made in the image of God; you want to read about that? Go to the very first chapter of the Bible, the book of Genesis, the first page and it will tell you. God looked at everything He had created and he said, "Let us make man in our image. Male and female He made us. Our mistakes and all the stuff that life throws at us can definitely make us look and feel and even sound like that old violin but you know, you know something all it needs is for the master to come along to tune the strings and to strike up a tune and all of a sudden everybody else remembers what they'd forgotten, it's still a violin. Within a few months of going through all the things I was going through, before my emotions had had time to heal, before I'd been able to struggle through things God called me to do what I'm doing now. I began producing radio programs and it was hard and it seemed like four or five or six or seven years went by and then all of a sudden you know, God did some amazing things. I'm now so happily and wonderfully married to my wife Jacqui and we have such a great relationship and we're so blessed and I'm doing what it is God made me to do and people looked at how quickly all that seemed to happen. Didn't happen quickly from where I sat, it took forever from where I sat but other people would look at me and go, "my goodness, what's happened to you? How is it that you're on the radio and you're speaking with all these people and, how is that?" Nothing to do with me, I was just a battered old violin in the corner somewhere, washed up but then there was the touch of the master's hand and he came along and He struck up a tune and He knew exactly who I was and what He'd made me to be and what He'd made me to do and He put me in that place and that's what I'm doing today. There's a message for you today, the master wants to come along and breathe a new breath into you, a new song. Maybe other people can't see it, maybe you can't even see it but He can. He yearns for you to grow into a realisation that you are who He created you and He has a plan. And He wants you and me to be the person He made us to be. And that only happens when the violin is re-united with it's maker, the one who knows it inside out; the one who can restore it to its former glory. The one who when he touches it is able to make it sing. And you know that old violin, most times it's deeper and richer and more beautiful in song and tone than when it was first made, when it was new. It could never have played with such a mellow warmth and beauty and maturity back then but now, now because of what it's been through it has a wonderful, wonderful warmth. Today, just twelve years on, every week I get to share the good news of Jesus Christ with millions of people through the radio and internet around the globe, literally millions of people. That's not the tune that God wants to play with you perhaps but He knows what the tune is and I can only do what I do because I was an old violin. No-one would have given tuppence for me twelve years ago and then the master came along. That's how He works in my life and in yours.

Believing in Jesus is a step of faith.  Plain and simple.  Believing that He can and will make a difference to our lives – well that's a step of faith too.  And sometimes – it can be a huge step. Over these last few weeks we've been talking about being the "me" we were each meant to be, and do you know, we all want that. We all want to somehow grow into who we are meant to be and to realise our destiny. And maybe over these last few weeks you've been tuning in and out and something inside you is just shouting, "YES! YES! That's what I want." But … There's always a but. "But surely God would never do this for me. Nothing's ever going to change in my life. Okay He raised Lazarus from the dead. Okay He raised Jesus from the dead. That was a couple of thousand years ago. Okay God can do anything He wants but you know something, I just don't think He'd do it for me." That's the crutch, isn't it? It's amazing. People can believe in a whole bunch of things. We can believe that God could forgive us. We can believe that Jesus rose from the dead. We can believe that we have eternal life. In a sense they're all easy because they can seem a long way off. But when we look at the very real issues and problems of life sometimes they're really big and ugly. Believing that God can intervene and make things better well, because these problems and issues are so close and sometimes when they're so close they look so big and God feels so far away, believing that God can make a difference. That can be a lot harder. Believing that he can deal with those yucky bits inside us, that can be even harder. I was an incredibly tough, self-centred businessman. I used to eat wimps for breakfast, you know. So when it came to believing all those other things about God and Jesus and stuff I knew straight away there was some tough things for me to deal with. And on top of it all I was going through a marriage breakdown and divorce. You think, 'surely not Berni'. Absolutely, that's when I came to faith in Jesus twelve years ago. That's life, That's my reality. I was listening the other day just to a high-profile businessman who I know really well and he was talking about his life. He took a company from nine million to over half a billion in turn over a few years ago. Everyone looked at him and thought, 'what a super star, what a corporate hero this man is'. But in secret he had his head down over a toilet bowl and he was coughing up blood because that's what the pressure was doing to him on the inside and he almost lost his marriage. The crazy thing you and I do, we all are prone to it. We look at outward signs of success. God, God looks at our hearts. He looks at the stuff that's going on on the inside and I love that about Him. You know something, if he isn't in the business of fixing those things, whatever they are (and yours and mine are bound to be different mind you,) then what's the point? I mean if God isn't going to make a difference, if it doesn't work, what's the point? You know something, when we're in the middle of those things it's so hard, it's so incredibly hard to believe that he could ever come along and make a difference. You know what I mean or is it just me? The apostle Paul was writing to the Ephesian Church and he was busting to help them with exactly that, this is what he wrote almost two thousand years ago. He writes: I pray also that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened so that you would know the hope to which God's called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Jesus when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms far above any rule on earth. You see, Paul's saying here as you get to know God better, my prayer for you is that you would know that the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, that very same power is the power that's at work in you and that's a promise of God. Paul said, "I want you to know the hope, the riches and the power that you have, the incomparably great power, that power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that's at work in you and me". A few years back I went to Toronto, Canada and I visited the CN tower which is the tallest, man-made, free standing structure in the world and part way up at 342 metres there's an observation deck. Now the trick with this observation deck, it's enclosed but it has a glass floor. Now they tell you that the glass floor is five times stronger than a concrete floor. Ha ha! Well that's great but it still doesn't help. I mean I looked down at this glass floor and I was petrified and it took me such a long time to go out there. It's an awful feeling when you look down between your feet and you see the ground way below and these little specks flying around, they're birds but they feel like they're miles away. And I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of people who were really scared to walk out on that glass floor even though the engineers will tell you the glass floor was five times stronger than the concrete floor. But here it is. If you or I want to be the "me" we were meant to be we have to walk out onto God's promises and put our faith in Him. Just like that glass floor. And okay, it's unknown and it maybe an uncomfortable feeling, it maybe unnatural to trust God with our lives. You see, people want to believe in Jesus from a distance and that's not what He wants us to do. He wants us to put our faith in Him. To put our trust in Him. To trust Him with our lives because His plan is to give us life in all it's abundance, hope and riches and power. The apostle Paul again in Galatians, chapter 2, verse 20 writes this, he says: I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me. Now then, a lot of Christians know that passage particularly well but this next bit is the one that I want to point to. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Let me say that again, "The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." Pretty safe to believe in Jesus from a distance and then we grumble and say, "How come I'm not living the life he meant me to have? How come I'm not being the "me" I was meant to be? How come I have a sense that I'm missing out on my destiny?" The answer is because you don't become the "me" you were meant to be until you have that relationship with Jesus and you trust him with your life and when you live the life in the body by faith in the Son of God. When we take a hold of that life, the life that He promises us, we discover what it is to be the 'me' we were meant to be. And it's a step of faith. We have to step out and believe it before we can see it. That's His plan and, I know, sometimes it's hard to do and sometimes we're afraid and sometimes we feel like we don't have enough faith but just take the step, just take the step and say, "Jesus, I'm going to trust you with my life, with every little bit. With that difficult teenage kid, with the relationship I'm having with my wife or my husband, with the problem I'm having at work. I want you in that space because I want to trust that part of my life with you." He wants you and me to be the person He made us to be; to live life with an active faith in Jesus Christ. When we take that step out, He steps in and He does things we could never do. He deals with things we can never deal with and the reason He does it that way is so that you and I can never boast, "It was me. Haw, haw look what I did, I did it." I didn't. He did.

When we make a change – a real change for the better in our lives, it involves in effect dying to the old things and living in the new things.  But try as we will, sometimes we can still be wrapped up in the old. I don't know if you've ever watched one of those old black and white westerns on TV, I grew up with them. There were the baddies and the goodies and then there was that ubiquitous wanted poster, you know the one that said "Wanted. Dead or Alive." Now if we really want to live life to the full, to live out our destiny, to be the me we were meant to be then we have to figure out what we're alive to and what we're dead to because so often, things that look like they'll bring us life end up poisoning us and the things that we think are too much trouble, too hard, they're the ones that bring us life. It's true in sport, it's true in work, it's true in life itself. When I was age 36, about 12 years ago now, I knew I wasn't being the 'me' I was meant to be. I had a lot of potential but somehow never seemed to fulfil it, always it seemed to allude my grasp. I was running an Information Technology Consulting business and we had some really clever people, we were really good at what we did. But the business never quite seemed to blossom the way it should have. It did eventually after I gave my life to Jesus. In that process of change, letting go of my old ways and taking hold of the new ones, I had to figure out that I was going to be dead to some old things and alive to some new ones. I had to believe what God had to say about me and take hold of his new life that he'd given me. I had to die to some things. To sin. In Romans chapter 6, verse 2 it says: What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace might increase? By no means! We are dead to sin, how can we live in it any longer. The past. If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation, old things have passed away and look, everything is new. I had to die to myself and my selfishness. For we know that our old self was crucified with Jesus so that our sin might be done away with so that we're no longer slaves to sin because anyone who has died is freed from sin, to the law, the whole rule based attitude to religion. For sin shall not be a master because you aren't bound by the law anymore but you're walking in God's grace. So my brothers you are dead to the law through the body of Christ and dead to be dead to the devil. Now I don't know whether you believe the devil exists, I do because Jesus did but I'm dead to him because God has rescued me from the dominion of darkness and brought me to the kingdom of light. We have to start believing what God has to say about all this stuff, about sin, about dying to the past, about dying to ourselves, about doing away with rule based religion, about dying to the devil. I had so much sin in my life, there was so much stuff there I didn't know where to begin. Self, I was so full of myself, an ego the size of a small planet and my past was full of so many hurts and mistakes. And I was so prone to sort of a dreary, legalistic, rule bound approach to religion. You know we have been transferred. Jesus paid a huge price. A great story told by Nicky Gumble who does the Alpha course. (If you've ever been involved, it's a great course to do.) And Nicky Gumble talks about the European footballers. You know when they get transferred from one team to another team a huge amount of money changes hands in transfer fees, millions of pounds are paid to transfer a footballer from one team to another team. But once the footballers gone to the new team, he plays for them. He wears their colours. He goes to their training sessions. If the old coach from the old team rang him up and said, "Where are you for training?" He would say, "Well, I've transferred to a new team. I go to the new team's training now." When we make a change – a real change for the better in our lives, it involves in effect dying to the old things and living in the new things.  But try as we will, sometimes we can still be wrapped up in the old. And it's the same thing what Jesus did for you and me on the cross. We've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. We don't play with the old team anymore. We don't train with the old team anymore. We don't wear it's colours anymore. We're on His team and He paid for all. He laid his life down so that you and I would be forgiven and have a clean start in the kingdom of light. Wondering why I can't be the me I'm meant to be? Wondering why it's not working for me? How come my life is not going where I want it to go? Well, are we dead to this old stuff? Have we said, "I'm on a new team; I'm playing for a new team. I'm not going to this old stuff anymore. I'm alive to some new things, I'm alive to Christ"? I've been crucified with Christ and it's no longer 'I live' but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20) I'm alive to the Holy Spirit because through Christ Jesus, the spirit of life, has set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8) I'm alive to God the Father. Jesus said: If anyone loves me they'll obey my commandments and my Dad and I will love them and we will come and make our home with them. (John 14) I'm alive to grace and truth. Jesus became a man and dwelt among us and we've seen his glory, the glory as of the only one of the Father full of grace and truth. We're alive to righteousness, peace and joy. The word isn't about food or drink or physical things, it's about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. It's like this, you know, if you have two dogs, a big black one, a Doberman and a small little white one, the question is, which one is going to grow up stronger? And the answer is, the one you end up feeding. You know it doesn't matter what area of life, if we want to achieve something we have to give some things up. It's normally about giving up short term gratification for longer term gain. When I was a kid growing up, my parents made me learn the piano. To tell you the truth a lot of the time when I was young I just hated having to go to practice, it drove me nuts. Today? Today I can sit down at the piano and make it sing and it brings me such enormous delight to sit down at the grand piano my Mum gave me and to play it and to worship God and to enjoy it. Whether it's dieting or exercise or saving or learning all of those things, good things cost us something. You want to lose weight you have to die to the chocolate bar and come alive to some healthy foods and exercise. You want to save up for a deposit for a house; you have to go without some things today that you'd like in order to have the money to pay the deposit on the house. You'd like to study and get a degree; you have to give up some money and some leisure time now to get there. You want to live an amazing life, an abundant life? You want to be the me you were meant to be? It's time to die to some things. There are some things in our lives that stop us from being the "me" we were meant to be. Maybe it's anger, maybe it's a sense of unforgiveness, maybe, maybe it's a nasty attitude, maybe it's a selfish attitude. I mean, there are so many things they're like, they're like grave clothes that we're wrapped in. Jesus came to give us this new life but we're not living it because we've still got one foot in the grave. Maybe this isn't the message you wanted to hear today but deep in your heart you're going, "You know something, I think God might be talking to me today. I think God might be putting His finger on exactly what it is that's stopping me from being the me I was meant to be." God has a plan, He designed you, He dreamt you up, He hand crafted you, you are His workmanship. He has a plan. He has a whole bunch of good things for you to walk into but it's not going to happen while we've got one foot in the grave.

It's one thing to believe in Jesus and to believe in eternal life – but there are people walking around who believe that stuff, yet somehow they're not quite living the life that He promised us for here and now. You know, I reckon if there is a God, I mean if God is God then he is going to want us to live life to the full. I mean outrageously, abundantly to the full. Not a two out of ten, not a seven out of ten, a minimum of ten out of ten and then some. That doesn't mean there won't be ups and downs, there always will be. But I don't know, my hunch is he'd want us to live a life of outrageous joy right here through the ups and the downs. But I know so many people, people who believe in Jesus and people who don't, who seem to be living a two or a five or a seven out of ten kind of life always with this nagging sense of destiny that there's something more for them but never really get in close to that. Me? I want to be the 'me' I was meant to be, how about you? And yet there's an amazing portrait of that kind of half-life, not really complete life, in the Bible. Yesterday we looked at the story of Lazarus, that he was dying, he was a good mate of Jesus, they came to tell Jesus "Lazarus is about to kick to bucket." And Jesus waits a few days before he goes to Lazarus. And do you know what everyone says when he gets there? "Jesus, how come you didn't get here sooner? You could have healed him." I mean they'd seen Jesus do healing stuff. It's a bit like us, we look at Jesus sometimes and God and we look at the mess we have in life and we say, "God, how can you dish this up to me? Why didn't you come earlier? You could have made it better". Jesus said to the people, "You know something, I'm glad I didn't get there because God is about to make a point and to do something you don't expect". Everyone wanted Jesus to have fixed the problem before Lazarus died but Jesus said to his disciples, "Lazarus is dead and for your sake I'm glad I wasn't there so that you might believe. Come on, let's go to him." So no-one could see it. Jesus was saying it to Martha, his sister. He said, "Your brother will rise again." And Martha said, "I know he'll rise in the resurrection on the last day." So she doesn't get it, she's happy to believe in "pie in the sky when you die" not "steak on the plate while you wait". Let's pick up the story and just read the story, if you have a Bible you can go to it, it's John chapter 11 and it begins at verse 38: Jesus was deeply moved when he came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. "Take away the stone" he said. "But Lord," said Martha the sister of Lazarus, "By this time there's a bad odour, I mean he's been dead for four days." And Jesus said, "Didn't I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God." I love that, "If you believed you would see the glory of God." So they took away the stone and then Jesus looked up and said, "Father I thank You that you heard me, I always knew that You would but I'm saying this for the benefit of the people around me, they might believe that You sent me." And when he said this Jesus said in a loud voice, "Lazarus come on out!" The dead man came out. His hands and feet were wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth was around his face and Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." Jesus was deeply moved. I mean, he loved Lazarus, He cared for him. He was a good mate. He wept for him. So it's not some publicity stunt but it's a tender encounter and people were thinking, 'well, what's Jesus doing? He can't do this I mean Lazarus is dead, Lazarus is on the nose'. I reckon we have to be careful about telling God what He can't do, about putting God in this little box. Imagining somehow that he could never bring Lazarus back to life, imagining somehow he could never really bring life back into us. You see all these people, Martha, Mary, the disciples, all the others, they'd seen Jesus do amazing miracles, they knew him. Yet they didn't believe that he could bring a man to life. But he did. But look at the picture of Lazarus when he walks out of the tomb. "Lazarus, come out" said Jesus. "The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face." You see, Lazarus was bound up in his grave clothes and this is a picture that looks like a lot of people that I know, living this half-life. On the one hand, Jesus has spoken a word of life into them, on the other they're still bound up in their grave clothes, bound up in the things of the past. When Lazarus walked out of that tomb, beneath those grave clothes he was living and breathing, there was colour in his cheeks but he couldn't go living the rest of his life in those grave clothes and the same is true for us. Some people have life from Jesus and yet they have one foot in the past, in that dead half-life that didn't work, one foot in Jesus' new life kind of hoping things will work out and they never quite do it. You know something, there's a reason for that, you can't live your life wrapped in grave clothes. Let me say that again, you can't live your life wrapped in grave clothes. If we believe in Jesus we're like Lazarus, we have colour in our cheeks, he's breathed life into our souls yet people want to hang on to the things of the past, it just doesn't work. What sort of life do you think it would have been for Lazarus if he had continued on in those grave clothes? And anyway that wasn't Jesus' plan for him, look at what Jesus says. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." You like that last bit? "Let him go. Set him free; set him free to be the Lazarus I meant him to be." Being the "me" I was meant to be is a "boots and all thing". "Oh, you know Berni but I want to hang on to this compromise or that attitude, I still want to cheat or lie or be tight with my money or not serve other people and I want to be selfish because you know, all this Jesus stuff is not particularly convenient". Great! Great, stay in your grave clothes but don't expect to be the me you were meant to be because you can't be. The alternative is to set our hearts like flint on being the "me" we were meant to be no matter the cost. You know there is a cost? There is a cost for a heroin addict to give up heroin, there is a cost for an alcoholic to give up alcohol, there is a cost for a smoker to give up smoking. The first step is admitting where we are and the second step is deciding, here and now, "you know something, that joker on the radio has a point, I have to do something. I can't live my life in these grave clothes anymore and you know our grave clothes are all different." For some people, it might be lying and cheating, for other people it might be gossiping, for other people it might just be an attitude of selfishness. You look in the mirror and you know what it is. If you want to be the "me" you were meant to be, you've gotta do what Jesus said. Take off the grave clothes 'cause that's what sets you free. And Jesus is the one who does that. We can come to him and say, "Lord, I just heard this message and you know something? I've got some grave clothes happening in my life, I've got one foot back in that half-life and I recognise that and I don't know what to do about it and I want you to help me". That's the starting point. That invitation for Jesus is when he steps in and He starts taking control and He deals with the things we can't deal with. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions and sometimes we have to ditch some things to get on with life. The choice belongs to each one of us.

You know, it can sometimes be easier to believe in eternal life, than the fact that God wants to give us a rich, abundant life here and now.  What do you think? It's great to be with you again this week and we continue on with a series that I've called, "Discover Your Destiny". Can I ask you something? Are you really living life to the full? I mean really. So many people are struggling to discover their destiny and okay, maybe life's chugging along okay but we all have a sense that, well somehow I have a destiny, a life I'm supposed to live, a "me" I'm meant to be. Now I don't apologise for the fact that over the last couple of weeks we've been unpacking that from A Different Perspective, from God's perspective. I just passionately believe that He so wants each one of us to discover when we have a relationship with Him, a real relationship you know, that all of a sudden we can be the "me" we were meant to be. To, in a sense, die to the old me and rise as a new one. Now I love how Jesus tackled that when his good friend Lazarus upped and died on him. It's a powerful story the story of Lazarus. It's about a real man who died and whom Jesus bought back to life again. Now there's something in that story, I always like to look at what Jesus did and say, "What does it tell me about Him? What does it tell me about God? What does it tell me about God's attitude?" And it does tell us what he means for us here and now today. For me the story of Lazarus has had a powerful impact on my life, day to day. Now there are two parts to the story, we'll look at the first half today and the next one tomorrow on the program. So let's have a bit of a read, if you have a Bible you can grab it. John, chapter 11 is where you'll find this story: Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Now this Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who previously poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sister sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love, Lazarus, is sick." When he heard this Jesus said, "The sickness won't end in death. No, it's for Gods glory so that Gods Son might be glorified through it." Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was for two more days then he said to his disciples, "Well okay, let's get up and go to Judea." "But Jesus," they said, "A short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you and yet you're going back." And Jesus answered, "Aren't there twelve hours of daylight in a day? A man who walks by day won't stumble for he sees the worlds light; it's when he walks by night that he stumbles for he has no light." After he said this he went on to tell them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep but I'm going there to wake him up again." Now his disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps he'll get better." Jesus had been speaking of his death but the disciples thought he meant that Lazarus was just asleep. So then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead and for your sake I'm glad I wasn't there so that you may believe but let us go to him." An interesting story, Lazarus a good mate of Jesus is dying. Jesus could have prevented it, he could have gone there and healed Lazarus, I mean that's why they sent for him, everyone had seen Jesus do this healing stuff but he didn't go because God was going to use this to make a point, a point I think at a couple of levels. The first level is purely to attest to who Jesus is, the power of Jesus because as we'll see tomorrow, ultimately Jesus brings Lazarus back to life again but I think there's a second point, a deeper point, a point that speaks to you and me, here and now. That God is in the business of bringing the dead back to life. The last couple of weeks we've dealt with an issue that, well so many of us don't really want to deal with head on – sin. I mean in our society sin is a four-letter word. The stuff in our lives we know is wrong that robs us of life itself. When I look back on my life as a wealthy, apparently successful businessman, on the outside people envied me, I seemed to have it all together, I seemed to have it all but on the inside I was dying, I was dead and empty and hollow just like a shell, truly. I described myself as a dead man walking. You know something, doesn't matter how much we deny it or try and put a respectable face to it or sell it as a feature of our freedom to do whatever we want. Sin does that to all of us, it makes us dead inside and that's how God sees us, that's how we are until we encounter this Jesus. At this point someone might be saying, 'come on Berni, what an old-fashioned point of view.' If you're in that camp I encourage you to do something, take a look, a good hard look at the way that you're living your life and ask yourself, am I being the me I was meant to be? God lets us go through this death that sin is, God lets us be that 'dead man walking' for a reason. It's the same as with Lazarus, Jesus waited for him to die before bringing him back to life again. God wanted to make a point that he is in the new life business and it's a miracle and he needed to make the point because sometimes we just don't get it, I didn't and nor did Lazarus' sisters. Let's take a look: On his arrival Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem and many Jews came to Mary and Martha to comfort them. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming she went out to meet him and Mary stayed at home. "Lord", Martha said to him, "If you'd been here, if you'd only been here earlier Lazarus wouldn't have died". And Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again". And Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection on that last day". Jesus said to her, "I'm the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? And she said, "Yes Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into the world." And after she had said this she went back and called her sister Mary. "The teacher Jesus is here". She said, "He's asking for you". When Mary heard this she quickly got up and went out to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered their village but was still in the place out where Martha and he had met. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house comforting her noticed how quickly she got up and went out they followed her thinking that she was going to the tomb to mourn there for Lazarus. When Mary reached Jesus and saw him she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if only you had been here my brother wouldn't have died." And when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along, also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. "Where have you laid him?" "Come and see Lord." And Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, "See Jesus loved Lazarus." But some of them said, "Couldn't he who opened the eyes of the blind have come and kept this man from dying." Nobody was expecting Jesus to come along and raise Lazarus from the dead, they were all regretting the fact that Jesus didn't get there earlier to heal him. They'd seen Jesus do healing stuff; they'd never seen Jesus bring a man back to life. The sisters knew Jesus, they'd seen the miracles, they couldn't imagine how here and now, Jesus could bring their brother back to life and isn't that sometimes the way with us. We look at our lives and we see how dead things are inside and we look at God and say, "God, why didn't you show up earlier? Why did you let me marry this person? Why did you let this happen to my child? Why couldn't you have been there and stopped it from happening? And we can't imagine how God could breathe new life into that situation. We can believe he could have done something back there, we can believe that one day we will rise again and have eternal life but it can be so hard to believe that Jesus could come and bring a new life today. Let me ask you, what do you believe?

I passionately believe that God has the most amazing plan for your life and mine.  In His heart He conceived us and with His hands – He made us who we are. And He wants us to be the person He made us to be. Over these last couple of weeks on the program we've just been spending some time discovering your destiny. Survey after survey tells us that 75% of people don't enjoy their work. I wonder how many of those are trying to do a job they just weren't cut out to do, it's just not them. And yet it's not hard to see how different we each are.  Some people are great working with children for instance. Me? That would drive me crazy – all that noise and running around.  No.  Not me.  Other people are great with their hands – they seem to be able to turn all these pieces of wood into a house somehow – I wouldn't know where to begin. Some people are great at sports and athletics – hmmm I love to stay fit, but I can't throw and catch and kick all that well. It's as plain as the nose on your face and mine that people are all made to be different. And what is such a tragedy – we've talked a little bit about this already so far this week – is people trying to do things that they're just not cut out to do. A child at school who is great at creative writing – but terrible at mathematics.  So – what do we do? We make them work harder at their mathematics, instead of encouraging them to go with the creative writing thing that we're good at. Of course, we all have to do a few things that we're not good at from time to time, but if we end up majoring in those things, it's a disaster.  When I left school I was accepted into a medicine degree – I would have made a terrible doctor, and a law degree – and same with being a lawyer because the law is all about detail and I'm not into detail. So – pardon me for saying so, but blind Freddie can see that we have all been made differently.  I'm a fairly unemotional person – it's not that I don't care about people. I do, deeply, I'm just not an emotional person.  I'm not into hugs and kisses from people the way others are.  I don't tend to feel other people's pain, instead I want to do things that help them not feel the pain.  That's how I'm wired.  And it took me a long time – a very long time – to get comfortable inside my skin, to get comfortable with who I am, and stop trying to be like other people are. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said – Be yourself, Everybody else is already taken.  Pretty good thought that. Okay baby is born right, what does it grow up to be? It grows into who it already is, let me explain. A little baby gets born, it can't even go to the toilet on its own, it can't feed itself, it can't protect itself – in fact it can't do anything pretty much except eat, sleep, scream and dirty it's nappy. So …is it any less a human being than you and me? Well, no of course not, this little bubs is just in an early stage of life and just like we all did, it goes through all stages. It begins to recognise and smile at its parents and the psyche develops and it grows an awareness and it crawls and walks and it becomes a toddler and it goes to school and becomes a teenager and then an adult, it's a natural progression. What is it that influences who that little baby becomes when it grows up? Well two things, firstly its natural disposition, its abilities, who God made that child to be and secondly, the things that happen along the way. Now some of those things along the way are positive, some of those things like the good parents who love you and good teachers at school. Those things develop the child's natural abilities, but some of the things that happen rob the person, rob the child, give it a wrong impression of itself. You see bad things will always happen to good people, they do, they always have and they always will. But if we know who we are and if we let God into our lives to be with us, to develop us, to care for us, to nurture us, those bad things instead of robbing us end up enhancing our characters. The negatives get turned into a positive. The problem is so many people never get with God's plan for who they are. For years I tried to be all things to all people, I set myself up to be this and set myself up to be that because I thought it would make me look important and good. But it wasn't until I got with God's plan and started seeing myself the way he sees me that I really started being the me I was meant to be. God made me to be doing what I'm doing right now spending this time with you. I'm never as happy and as fulfilled as when I'm sitting here with you. A friend of mine, a Pastor, once said to me, "You know Berni, you should be more pastoral than that." In other words, you should be around lots more people and you should do this and you should do that and you should be this. And I love people but think about it, much of what I do is I prepare these programs alone and then I come into a studio basically alone. Okay millions of people are listening around the world but they're not in this room with me right now. If God made me to be someone who needed to be around a lot of people, don't you think I'd get awfully lonely doing what I do? He didn't so I don't. Who are you? Who did God make you to be? Maybe you're just one of those people who loves entertaining and having a house full of people over all the time. That's a gift, go and be that person, go and grow into that, go and love it and enjoy it and be the person who God meant you to be. Maybe, maybe you're a quiet, backroom kind of person who does things, book keeping or cleaning or cooking and you know, when you're doing those things you feel so fulfilled, can I tell you something? Go for it, if that's what God made you to be, don't compare with other people, grow in that, develop that, be delighted with who God made you. When we compare ourselves with others, we aspire to be someone who we aren't, who we were never made to be and come on – that's just plain crazy. I'm excited about who God's made me to be – and I focus on the things I'm really good at, try to grow in areas where I'm still a bit immature … and leave the stuff I'm not good at to other people – people who actually love doing those things because they're good at them.  It's not really that complicated, is it? Eph 2:10 For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good things that God prepared beforehand for us to walk into. That's exactly what God's Word says – do the things that God prepared for you – not the things that other people want you to do. God knows who we are, he made us and he made us to be the me we were meant to be. Right now in this instant, His heart and His eyes are on you and me and He knows who He made us to be and He is delighting in us. Wake up! It is time to stop trying to be someone else, it is time to stop trying to squeeze into the world's mould, into a shape that doesn't fit, into something that ultimately becomes a distressing straight jacket. He wants each one of us to be the person He meant us to be. I am so excited because God has a plan, he has a plan for me, he has a plan for you. And we only discover who we're meant to be - it only happens when we get right up close to him, when we have a relationship with him through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing." And you know? You're going to grow different fruit to me 'cause that's how Jesus made us. And if you want to grow the fruit that you were meant to grow in your life, you need to get right up close with Him. His word and His Spirit in a rich and dynamic relationship that's so wondrous and so huge and so safe and secure and at the same time exciting, then and only then can we be the me we were meant to be. I'd like to encourage you just right now, look at your life, are you being the me God made you to be? Because if you're not he wants to change that for you today. God wants you to get close to him so that you can live out the life he planned for you.

So many people compare themselves with others and come to the conclusion – Well, I'm not much good for anything.  But each one of us has a gift.  An ability.  Something that's just ….well, us! Now I don't know if you've ever lived in a house where someone's learning the violin but those first few years were diabolical – the screeching and the out of tune, and its all so loud. It was just awful. Now Corrie became a great pianist and violinist but the first few years were ugly let me tell you. And of course my clarinet playing was just fabulous right from the beginning!! The point is though when we first try something often we're not good at it. We have to persist for a while to discover whether it's our gig or not. But I wonder if that isn't why so many people are wandering around the world with this notion that they're not good at anything. I think we all have a sense of wanting to fulfil our destiny, doing the things we're meant to do, achieving the things we're meant to achieve and being the person we're meant to be. But the more I talk to people the more I discover how many aren't happy with who they are. These two weeks, ten programs are not some kind of systematic ten steps to happiness thing, just some stories and some anecdotes and things to stimulate our thinking, get us with Gods' plan for who he made us to be. I spent a good many years of my life comparing myself with other people, here's how it goes. You look at all the people you know and you pick all their good points up, 'he's athletic and good looking, and she's really intelligent, and he's caring, and she's so perceptive about people, boy he's got such great hand-eye co-ordination, that couple over there everyone seems to like them. He is such a good cook, she has her house so tidy, they have such well behaved kids.' You see what's going on here, we construct some super human unreality which is a composite of the very best points of everyone we know and then when we don't live up to that, all of a sudden, 'Ah, I'm a failure'. Never mind that everybody we know is good a some things and not at others, never mind that each one of those people has weaknesses as well as strengths. We tend to construct an unrealistic image of who we should be and then we spend a lifetime, fuelled by the advertising industry - with all these images of success - we spend a lifetime trying to live up to something that no-one can ever be or live. I wonder if we did a stock take of our strengths and weaknesses maybe sit down with a few people who really know us well whether we would look at that and go, "That's not a bad plus and minus ledger, you know, okay there are some things here I'm not very good at but actually there's one or two things here, oh, that's really my gig, that's my shtick, that's what I do." I mean my strengths are, I have a high IQ it's just the way God made me, I'm a communicator and a story teller and I tend to handle conflict pretty well. I mean I spent 20 years as an objective advisor, as a consultant. I tend to be outcome focused so I deliver things on time. So I've got some things on the positive side of my ledger but I've got weaknesses too like I'm not good at a whole bunch of administrative detail. I'm not as perceptive about other people as I could be, and in my rush to deliver an outcome I can have a tendency to roll over the top of people. I'm not someone to have lots and lots of people around me all the time; I tend to feel crowded. You see the picture? We're a bundle, a composite of assets and not liabilities, but things we may not be so good at. The thing that I've discovered is I need to play to my strengths and team up with people whose strengths plug the gaps of my weaknesses and vice versa. Not everyone else has my strengths, that's why I'm useful in a team. The Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter 12 wrote this he said: "By the grace given to me let me say this to you, don't think of yourself more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God's given you. Just as each one of us has a body with many members these members don't all have the same function and so in Jesus, we who are many form one body, each member belongs to the other. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us, if your gift is in prophesying, then do that in proportion with the faith that God has given you. If it's in serving then for goodness sake go and serve. If your gift is teaching go and teach. If your gift is encouragement go and encourage people, if it's contributing to the needs of others giving well for goodness sake give generously and if it's leadership then lead diligently and if it's showing mercy then go and do it cheerfully." Isn't that beautiful? I love this passage and I come back to it often because what it says here in God's word, this is God talking to us, that's what I believe. It says 'look you can go and think of yourselves either too highly or too lowly'. There is nothing worse than when you see someone who aspires to doing something or being something and you look at them and think, 'it's just not them'. If you could see me I'm 5 foot 9.5 right, 174 cm if you think in metric. I may want to be a basketball player, I don't, but if I did I could never be a basketball player, you know why? I'm too short and it doesn't matter how much I hope I could be a great basketball player, when you're up against 6.5 to 7 foot basketball players you're just not going to cut the mustard. It is so sad to see people to aspire to something they just can't do. And one of the things I see a lot in what I do is a whole bunch of people aspire to be preachers because somehow they think, 'ooh, that's a really good up front thing to do.' Well actually it's a pretty hard gig and you should only do it if that's your calling and your gifting. Paul's saying here, "The body has many members; each one belongs to all the others." When we get comfortable with our strengths and our weaknesses, with who we are, it is such an exciting thing because you know what? We're not threatened anymore, we're not touchy anymore, we can relax. We can enjoy the things that we're good at and let other people do the things we're not good at. Now there are always going to be some things in our lives we have to do that we don't enjoy doing. For me in the ministry of Christianityworks there's the overall management, the finances and the administration and all those things that have to happen in order for these programs to come to you. Are those administrative things my first love? No, but I need to do them and one day we'll have someone else to run those for us, "But Berni what I really enjoy being is a mum. Just seeing my kids grow up, that's all." As though that's not one of the most important things on the planet, "Well Berni, you know I'm only an accountant." WHAT! That's fabulous, I could never be an accountant. We need accountants. When we pick something up, a violin even and put it into God's hands, when we're being the me we're meant to be it is just the most awesome thing and so many people spend their lives doing jobs, aspiring to things that they just aren't. I'm not saying set low standards, I'm not saying don't aim high, I'm someone who always aims high, always think big but you know I don't think big about being a basketball player. What I think big about is doing the things that God made me to do and when we persist and get good at them, it's so wonderful to be the 'me' we were meant to be. Not someone else's 'me' but my 'me' and your 'me'. ©

So many people aren't happy with who they are.  But – well, what if God is?  What if God looks at you and is the most delighted Dad in the universe?  And what if we saw ourselves the way He does? As I look around at people, big, small, black, white, young, old … what I see is an awful lot of people who aren't happy with their lot in life. And as you talk to them, what it often comes down to is not that they're not happy with their lot and the things that are going on –although that's sometimes part of it – but something much deeper going on. Because more often than not, they're not happy with who they are. Yesterday on the program we chatted about the fact, that often, that's because we feel we don't measure up to what the world expects of us but today, I'd like to go even deeper than that again. Let me ask you, forgetting everything that goes on around you, when you're alone in a quiet room, completely alone, do you like who you are? Are you excited about who you are… your potential? Do you enjoy your own company? Or are you one of these people who can't stand to see themselves in a photograph or in a mirror? Every now and then I think to myself, "it's time to get right in your face about something", and today's one of those days. I mean, I don't mean to shove anything down your throat, that's never my intention but I don't know, I just feel that today it's time to really challenge you about how you see yourself. I'm someone who for many, many years, in fact the first 36 years of my life, appeared to be so confident on the outside. I have to tell you, everyone who ever met me thought to themselves, 'this guy is so confident'. But on the inside, which after all is where we live and where we feel and where we laugh and where we cry, I wasn't happy with who I was. People would never have guessed it, because in my confidence I used to roll over the top of them. I'm not talking about the things that we do but who we actually are. As a woman by the name of Joyce Meyer says, "It's not our do that I'm talking about but our who." I didn't like my "who", I didn't like myself and you know the more I tried to pump myself up in my own eyes and in the eyes of others, somehow the lower I sank in my own estimation. Don't get me wrong, I mean I'm blessed, I have a good IQ, I love communicating, I'm good at that … but, I don't know, I just never liked myself and do you know when that changed? For me, it was the day, the very day that I gave myself over, my whole life, every hope and every dream, everything to Jesus Christ. From that moment onward on a bright sunny day on the 15th of October, 1995, under a gum tree outside a Church in my home town, age 36, I knew I was okay. Like I said – I'm not here to shove anything down your throat – I'm just telling you how it was for me. I've thought a lot about this and I thought why did it happen like that? It's one of those things that changed in an instant for me, why? This is such a deep thing. My own self-image had been plaguing me for years and years.  How could it change in an instant? So far as I can see, there's only one answer because on that day I felt accepted and I felt loved in a whole new way, at a whole different level. Different people believe different things. That's the way the world is. So – whatever you believe – let me ask you this? Does your belief system, does your faith – whatever that is – make you feel loved and accepted? Does it bring healing to that deep, nagging suspicion that you're not good enough? Does it bring you into a place where you are truly happy and content with who you are? I never used to be able to look at myself in a photo without cringing.  I recently had a photo shoot, something I have to do from time to time, to get some images to use on websites and in the back of my books, that sort of thing. And when the photos came back, I looked at them and I was really happy with what I saw. I'm never going to win a beauty competition, you understand. No modelling agency is ever going to call me to become a male model – that's because I'm just a pretty ordinary looking kind of man. But as I looked at those photos, I smiled, because I realised that I now like myself. Sometimes I make mistakes – I don't like that. So I get up and learn, and work on my weaknesses. But fundamentally, these days, I'm really happy with who I am … and indeed with who I'm not. I didn't become Mr Perfect overnight and all my faults and all my failures and all my weaknesses didn't disappear in an instant, it's not how it works. It's a process, you know I was this tough, hard-nosed, brutal businessman and when you're that it takes time to develop compassion and to learn to forgive and to understand other people, that didn't happen overnight but the thing that happened for me though, I knew God accepted me just as I was and that even though I could see all the things I'd done wrong, that I was completely forgiven. He came to me and said, "Now, that you have a new beginning let me help you to change." That's the thing, I thought if God sees me that way maybe it's time for me to see me that way and still today there are some things that I'm really good at and others that I'm just not and I may never be. Some of the things that come naturally to you, I'll never be able to do it's unconditional love that brought me to a point with all my heart, I'm delighted to be who I am. I often say to my wife, Jacqui, "I'm so glad I'm me, I never want to be anyone else." That is a gift from God because I never liked me before. Let me get in your face and ask you a question, is it time for you to ask yourself do I see myself the way God does? Do I love me in the right way, not proud and arrogant but in a humble delight in who he made me to be? Because how can you and I possibly ever be the me we were meant to be and live the life we were created to live, if we don't like who we are. When we compare ourselves to other people and think – Wow, I wish I was like him, or I wish I was like her … we're completely missing the point. Completely. I will never be a basketball player, because I'm too short. I will never be a surgeon, because I don't have the skill in my hands. I will never be a pop star, because I can't sing. But what I can be, is the best me that I can possibly be. And you know something – that's just fine with me. And the reason it's fine with me is that I was handcrafted by God and the love that He's shown me is the unconditional love of Jesus … Jesus His one and only Son, who died so that I might be forgiven. We can't truly be happy with who we are, until we know beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus died to pay for all our shortcomings and failings and because the price is fully paid, we can now stand before God completely forgiven, completely whole, completely loved. And if you've ever stood in that place – with your faith in Jesus … Jesus alone – you will know that the acceptance of God is what makes you whole. The love and acceptance of God – is what sets us free to see ourselves through His eyes. Lord God, you created our innermost being, you knit us together in our mother's womb, we praise you 'cause we are fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are so wonderful. We weren't hidden from you when we were made in that secret place, when we were woven together in the depths of the earth; your eyes saw our unformed substance. All the days ordained for us, they were already written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Father, we just want to pray right now and say that we need to know how much you love us. We want to see ourselves through your eyes because as we put our faith in Jesus Christ dear God we believe that he died to pay for our sin on that cross and that he rose again and so we put our faith in him and we know that we are whole and clean and pure and perfect in your sight 'cause that's what Jesus purchased for us on the cross. Father, we pray that you would make each one of us so delighted with who we are because that's what you chose us to be and Lord, we know we're making mistakes and we know that we need your help in those mistakes but right now Father God, by the gift of the cross, would make us just so delighted with who you have made us to be. In Jesus' name.  Amen

Everyone and everything seems to want to tell us who we should be and how we should live.  It's like the world is trying to squeeze us into its mould.  The problem is – we don't fit. It never ceases to amaze me how the rest of the world wants to kind of squeeze us into its own mould. It tells us that we'll only be happy if we buy this particular product. We're only really right if we agree with the things that other people think. We're only really valuable if we're wealthy and attractive. We've only really succeeded if we have all those things that everybody else wants, but never really makes them happy. Have you ever tried to put on someone else's prescription glasses? It just doesn't work does it? In fact it can end up making you feel sick and dizzy, because those glasses weren't made for you, they were made for someone else and that someone else is different to you. And have you ever tried on someone else's clothes? You know someone else who is obviously quite a different shape to you. Well they're not going to fit too well are they? Have you ever tried to do someone else's job, I mean, someone who has quite different skills to you? Well we're not going to be able to do too well at that are we? So why is it that the world wants to keep squeezing us into its mold, remaking us in its image instead of letting us, encouraging us to be who we are? Blind Freddy can see it just ain't going to work. Last week and this week on the program we're chatting about "Discovering Your Destiny". And it's pretty obvious that you and I are not going to fulfil our destinies, if we keep trying to dance to someone else's tune. Pretty obvious isn't it? So why is it that so many of us care so much about what other people think? Why is it that so many of us keep wanting to please others to the point where their expectations rob us of our identity and our destiny? When I was growing up, I always felt so different. I was never any good at sport, running and jumping and ball co-ordination, it's just not me and yet I grew up in Australia which is a sports mad society where we idolise and worship our sports superstars. The teachers and the other kids made me feel like a complete failure. On top of that I have a very high IQ; I mean I'm academically very strong. Other kids may not have been, so they'd ridiculed me for being a geek. I was a veracious learner, I love learning. Imagine how the other kids reacted to that, particularly since I was no good at sport. Instead I was a musician, give me a piano and I can make it sing, I love playing but you couldn't get any farther away from sport so that made things even worse. Now I can see what was going on – the world was trying to squeeze me into its mould, instead of encouraging me to be who I was meant to be. So I grew up with this really uncomfortable feeling that I just didn't fit, I was different and you know we all like to fit in, we all like to be liked especially when we're young. That's my story and I'm sure you have your own story and my hunch is, to a greater or lesser degree, we all have this sense that somehow we don't quite fit and when we don't fit, the world tells us, 'you're no good, you don't measure up. There must be something wrong with you,' and we carry around this burden. Some people carry it round all their lives. Low self-esteem is going around in plague proportions and this is what it's all about, "I don't fit". Have you ever asked yourself, what exactly you don't fit into?' Here it is – you don't fit into someone else's mould, into what other people say or think you should be, what perhaps you think you should be when you look at all those beautiful people whose whole persona seems to scream out at you, "you should be like me." I don't know what it is but we all want people to be like us, to have the same outlook, to agree with us, to behave in the same way. Wouldn't life be a whole lot easier if we were all the same? You are it would – but imagine how boring this world would be if everyone was like me, or everyone was like you.. The Apostle Paul knew that a couple of thousand years ago. Here's what he writes in the book of Romans Chapter 12 in the New Testament: Look, don't go conforming to the pattern of this world. In other words don't let the world squeeze you into it's mould but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you'll be able to know what God's will is and agree with him, his good and pleasing and perfect will. People often want us to say and be and think and behave and live according to some set of standards or rules that they've come up with. Expectations that people have dreamt up and Paul says, 'NO, don't go there, don't let the world stuff you into its mould because you are never going to fit – do you get it?" Last week and I'll just like to read a small part of it again, we looked at Psalm 139. It says this: God you created my innermost being; you kind of knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are so wonderful. I wasn't hidden from you when I was made in that secret place; when I was woven together in the depths of the earth; your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before even one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts O God. How vast is the sum of them. You and I weren't made to be stuffed into someone else's mould, particularly not the world's mould, particularly not some of the bizarre, horrible things the world comes up with, this whole 'do whatever you like and it doesn't matter. You and I were made in a certain way, we're unique, we're different – that's how it was always meant to be. And so I want to encourage you not to be afraid of being you – did you know that you're the best you that there is on this planet. No one else can be you. Enjoy who you are, do the things that you're good at – and when the world tells you you don't quite fit in – it's time to smile to yourself inwardly and whisper … that's because I'm me. I'm being the me I was always meant to be. I'm living the life I was made to live. Pretty good thing that because who you are is God's choice and that's a wonderful thing. It's His sovereign choice that he made you who you are and you know how silly it is for you and me to look at each other and compare ourselves. For me to look at a man who wrote to me from Tauranga in New Zealand – he makes furniture in his shed when I can't even nail two pieces of wood together straight – and say, "I am worthless because I can't make furniture." Well he probably can't do what I do either. I'd love to be able to make furniture but you know something, I just can't. We need to come to a point in our lives where we stop pleasing other people, I don't mean be belligerent, I don't mean be a deliberate misfit … but stop dancing to other people's tunes, to stop thinking that meeting their expectations is the most important thing. Stop living to please other people. You know it's okay for that man to love building furniture in his back shed, it's okay for you to love doing the things you do because you can and you enjoy them, it's okay for us to want to follow in Jesus' footsteps rather than being squeezed into the world's mould I'm talking about a quiet contentment that says, "you know something, I know who God made me to be and I'm comfortable with that." Are you trying to please the world? Are you trying to please a whole bunch of other people? Are you trying to live up to some image that someone else has created for you? Or do you want to please God? Do you want to have a life of pleasing Him? IF you let the world stuff you into the mold they made for you – know this – it's never going to feel comfortable because you're never going to be able to fit in it.

Truth: We can't change the past. We may well want to, but we can't and yet, it's amazing how many people are gripped by the hurts and failures from their past.  Jesus came to set us free – maybe it's time for you to break with the power of the past. The bad things that happened to us in the past have an incredible ability to destroy our lives.  As I just said – it's a two-part destruction, because those past ruin our today's and rob us of our tomorrows. So we can't enjoy today … and we can't look forward to tomorrow. Do you see the tragedy of that? And the past is a funny thing, because it's actually gone. We can never turn back time. We can never change what's been done. We can never unsay something that we regret having said, or undo something we regret having done … so in one sense we have no control over the past. But here's the scary thing - the things of the past end up controlling so many people. Stand back from that, think about that for a moment, and it just doesn't make any sense that something that's gone, something that can't be redone or undone, should have such a devastating effect. But you see it over and over again in peoples' lives.  The mistakes our parents made can end up being imprinted on our characters. The abuse that some people have suffered, the rejection, the hurts, the ridicule … all those things can limit us by stunting our growth. And try we will, too often we just can't shake them off and so  … they end up ruining our today's and robbing us of our tomorrows. Fortunately though, God has a plan, God wants us to be the person he meant us to be and HE wants us to live the lives that He always planned for us to live. We're talking this week on the program about Discovering Your Destiny. Hmm – it's easy to react by saying … "Well, yeah but what does that mean? I look at my life and any notion that there might be a God out there who wants to bless me and set me free and give me a great life – no, that's crazy!  That's just no possible." I've often shared my own stories on the program because I'm not speaking here out of some dry text book, I'm speaking out of a transformed life. I am being the me I was meant to be. I am living the life I was always meant to be living.  But you know, it wasn't always like that. Anyway, today I'd like to share someone else's story, a woman who was caught in adultery with a man, a man who wasn't her husband - at a time when that sort of thing carried some incredibly severe penalties in 1st century Israel. We fine her story in John's Gospel, Chapter 8 if you'd like to have a read later. Here's what it says: Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts; where all the people gathered around him and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought up a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The Law of Moses commands us to stone such a woman to death, now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus; Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away, one at a time, the older ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and said, "Woman, where are they? Has no one stayed to condemn you?" "No one sir." She answered, "Then neither do I condemn you." Jesus declared, "Go now and leave your life of sin." This is one of the most powerful stories in the New Testament for me because Jesus is literally putting himself between this woman and the angry mob. They were doing this to trap Jesus because Roman law and Jewish law were in conflict. Jewish law said you should stone a woman to death. Roman law said you can only kill someone if the Roman Governor said you could. So whichever way Jesus answered, they thought they had him. If he answered, "Don't stone her," he was disobeying Moses' Law, the Jewish law and if he said, "Do stone her," then he was disobeying Roman law. Let's put ourselves for a moment in the woman's shoes. Adultery is a bit of an old-fashioned word these days; people seem to do as they please. Affairs are common, almost acceptable, but they still tear marriages apart, they still tear people's lives apart, they still cause untold pain. So here's this woman, caught in the deed, but where's the man? Who knows? She was just the one who the religious leaders were trying to trap and accuse Jesus. And there must have been incredibly deep shame because this was in the first century, this was in a society where you got stoned to death for doing something like this. She knew she'd done wrong; so here she was in front of an angry mob, with something from her past that was certainly ruining her today and could well have robbed her of all her tomorrows. Stonings have a way of doing that I guess. But the bit ... the bit that I want you to notice here is Jesus' reaction. He makes the point that we all have things in the past like that – every person in that crowd had them, and each one of us today still have them. That immediately took away their right to accuse her – one by one the angry mob disperses until it's just the woman … and Jesus. And then he sets about giving her back her life. It's as though with one fell swoop He saves her, He forgives her and He gives her not only her today back, but her whole future back. Friend we all … all of us … have things in our past that could take away our happiness for today and our hope for tomorrow, but the past is the past. It's gone. And whatever hurts you're carrying around with you – are as painful to you as the stones in the hands of the angry mob would have been to that woman. It's time to let them go. It's time to lay them down. It's time to live for today and look forward to tomorrow. This seems like an absolutely impossible situation – this terrible position that this woman found herself in – through her own actions on this occasion. It would have seemed completely impossible to her, but right in the middle of her impossible, is God's very own "everything is possible" – His name is Jesus.  Jesus is setting her free to go and be the person she was meant to be, and live out the life she was meant to live. In our lives sometimes, the things of the past seem absolutely impossible to resolve. And people will come and condemn us and criticise us and the devil will come sit on our shoulders and condemn us and say, "See, you're not good enough to be a Christian, you're not good enough to believe in Jesus, you're not good enough for this, that and the other." We know the failures of our past and somehow they can grip us like an angry mob and we can think of God as a god of judgement and He is. But Jesus ended up going to the cross for her and for you and for me and he stands up and says, "You know something, I want to set you free from your past so that you can go on and be the person I meant you to be." 2 Cor 5:17 says this: If anyone is in Christ Jesus they are a new creation. Old things have passed away and behold all things are new. On the cross of Christ the demands of God's justice were met and that's why Jesus Christ can come into your life and into my life and say, "You are set free from the power of the past." He handcrafted you and me to be a person whom he meant to be, everything we are he planned before time began and so when our past comes along to condemn us, when the chains of our past want to lock up our hearts, Jesus comes and puts himself on that cross to set you and me free from the power of the past. Do you believe in Jesus? Then you are a new creation, the old things have passed away and behold all things are new.

I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking all those years ago.  And in the same way, giving up other bad things in our lives can be hard.  Do I or don't I? And if I do – how do I give them up? I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking. I was sharing with a couple of builders who were smoking outside my house the other day. I used to smoke three packets a day, that's seventy five cigarettes every day, I mean I was so super addicted I'd be sitting at my desk and light up one cigarette before I'd finished the last one. What did it for me was when I was with someone when they died of lung cancer. I watched them breathe their last breath and when I walked out of that hospital room, just over thirty years ago now, I threw my packet of cigarettes in the bin and I haven't smoked one cigarette since that time. But it wasn't easy. It was a day by day proposition, a craving by craving proposition. Letting go of that habit actually took years and can I tell you there are still some days today when I feel I could smoke a cigarette but I figure I can go just one more day. Giving up bad things can be really, really hard. This week and in fact over the next few weeks we're going through a little series that I've called Discover Your Destiny. And over the week I guess we've looked at the fact that if indeed we're made in God's image and if He actually does have the most amazing plan for our lives and yet when we follow our plans instead of His plans somehow it ends up being hollow and empty. Now I've heard people protest and say that's not the case, "I'm a happy atheist" for instance. But one by one we all eventually come to that conclusion that there's got to be something more. Am I really being the "me" I was meant to be? You know you have this sense of a destiny and somehow you're not quite living that destiny out yet. Yesterday we chatted about how when we go our own way, when we leave the me, me, me, anything goes philosophy we end up facing a dilemma. On the one hand we generally come to the conclusion that it's not working, I did it in my life, I'm a pretty smart guy, I'm also short so there's no pride in that. I just happen to be a very intelligent person and I had everything going for me but it wasn't working on the inside and we know when it's not working. So on the one side we want to go our own way and it's not working and on the other sometimes we believe in God, we want to have a relationship with Him, a relationship that's awesome and amazing and fulfilling and exciting and tender and wonderful but we know there are some things in life that He's going to want us to give up. With me it was my ego. It was huge. I'd speak at conferences all around the world in the IT industry and I was, frankly, full of myself and had an ego the size of a small planet. Then I read the bit in the Bible that says: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Gulp, looks like He wants me to do something with my pride. So there was a crunch time for me there, there always is, there's always one or two things. Often that's all there is that we really need to give up and there are inevitably things that are so important to us that we want to hang on to them for dear life or for grim death because they're bad for us, they poison our lives. When you have a strong pride addiction, a pride that dominates who you are, you can't have close relationships. Pride is always worrying about how other people see you and you never have any peace. Life's always a competition to be the best, it's one-upmanship, but I knew I had to give it up and it was just like giving up smoking. There were two parts. The first part was that deep down decision, throwing the pack of cigarettes in the bin. You see you can't be double minded, you can't have your cake and eat it too, you can't be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time. And the second part was actually living that out day after day. So what is it with you? What's the sin? I hope you don't mind me using that word but it will do, we all have a sense of what it means. What's the sin that's robbing you of your identity, the sin that's robbing you of your destiny and is it really worth it? Maybe it's anger. That's a powerful one. Some people are always angry with the world. Or maybe you're cheating on your wife or your husband. Perhaps you're being dishonest at work. Maybe you're selfish, only interested in yourself and not anyone else. Perhaps you have someone poor or needy close to you and you don't reach out to help them. Maybe you're busy playing politics, undermining people behind their back. Playing the game just so you can win instead of for the good of others. We don't have enough time in the day to go through them all but there's always something isn't there? And here's what I believe, in fact here's what I know, because I learned it the hard way: that something is going to rob you of your destiny, the amazing future God has planned for you. That's a tragedy. Can I ask you to think right now, what's the one thing, the one sin that's robbing you of your destiny? Just think and know it in your mind and look at it and turn it over and over, that one thing, your something. Now let me ask you two questions about it. Firstly are you proud of it or do you hide it? The chances are you hide it. That's what we inevitably do when we know what we're doing is wrong. And secondly what benefit is it to you? That very same question that the Apostle Paul asked in the New Testament, Romans chapter 6, verse 21: So what advantage do you actually get then from those things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. The key to letting that one thing, your something, your sin, go is realising it's just not good for you, it's not good for those whom you love and it's robbing you of your destiny. Your destiny to be who you were always meant to be; your destiny to have a powerful positive impact in this world, to leave behind a living legacy – a legacy that outlives you by generations, a legacy of good. Remember you can't be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time. You can't have your cake and eat it as well. You can't hang on to sin and fulfil your destiny, you just can't. Deciding to make the change, deciding to let go of your something – only you can decide that. I can encourage you but you have to decide. I can put things right before you but only you can decide to do something about it. See some people want God on their own terms, well you know I'm living with my girlfriend or my boyfriend, that's the way things are and if God wants me He just has to accept that. Well you know, it doesn't work that way. We can't remake God in our image, it's exactly the opposite, God said: Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the livestock, over everything on the earth. So God created us in his image, in the image of God he created us, male and female he created us. Letting go of sin is hard but when we live through that, every craving, every urge, every disappointment, just to try and honour God, just to be true to our identity, He blesses it because the sin thing robs us of life, life itself and when we finally put God at the top of the heap with all our hearts, with every fibre of our beings then doors open, our identity comes forward, our destiny is open to us. When we put our trust in Jesus alone we're embarking on a journey, it's not going to be easy, a journey that's going to have trials and temptations and some days we're going to make mistakes and fail, we have to get up again and brush ourselves off and keep on going. But you know something, when we commit to that journey with Jesus and when we understand that we have to work through the issues in our lives, failure by failure, craving by craving, temptation by temptation, day by day, week by week, month by month, all of a sudden what happens and this is what I experienced, this is what so many others have experienced. When we go through that after months and years you look back and you think, "You know something I'm the person that God meant me to be, this is the direction I meant to be headed in, my life's going the right way, I'm doing things I'm meant to do, this is my destiny." Are you being the person God meant you to be? Have you made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life?

Let's say that God has a plan for each one of us.  For our lives.  Now – is that a good thing or a bad thing?  Maybe He has a good plan.  But – what if we don't like that plan?  Does it become a straitjacket? Over the years something I've thought a lot about is whether the idea of that this God I happen to believe in has a plan for my life is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean on the one hand the idea that a good God could have a good plan for my life, sounds pretty good. On the other, well what if I don't like the plan? I mean what if I want to make some changes or go my own way? Is the whole idea of God having a plan for our lives an awesome thing or is it a crutch or worse still, is it a straight jacket? Well today on the program this is kind of what we're going to explore and take a look at it from a different perspective, maybe from God's perspective and then it's up to each one of us to make up our own mind. Remember that old Frank Sinatra song "I Did It My Way"? There was a time in the 1970's I think that on every talent show on television some man and it was always a man would get up and sing it: I Did It My WayAnd now the end is near and so I face the final curtain, my friend I'll say it clear, I'll state my case of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full, I've travelled each and every highway and more, much more than this I did it my way. Ha, I don't know about your experiences in life but I've got to tell you I tried doing it my way and as we talked earlier this week on the program what I discovered was it didn't work so well. You know what; I suspect that God actually designed it to be that way. The other day we took a look at Psalm 139 and we actually looked at the second half but I'd like to begin with the first half of that Psalm so have a listen. It says: Lord you've searched me and you know me really well. You know when I sit down and when I stand up. You know what I'm thinking from a long way off. You see my going in and lying down, you're familiar with all my ways but even before a word is on my tongue you know it completely Lord." You hem me in, behind me, before me. You've laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty to attain. Where can I go from your spirit, where can I flee from your presence? If I go to heaven you are there, if I make my bed in the depths you're there as well. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the farthest side of the sea even there your hand will guide me and your right hand will hold me fast." If I say 'surely the darkness will hide me and the light with become night around me' even the darkness won't be dark to you. The night will shine like the day because darkness is as light to you. That's profound. You know what David's saying here, (it's King David who wrote this Psalm) he's saying that God is on this journey with us. We can't flee, wrestle, fight and run, we can do what we like but He is on our journey with us. One of the things I wrestled with in the early days was Christian jargon. "Sin" was one of them, "repent" was another. I must have seen an old western movie, black and white, when I was a kid – I remember some fire and brimstone preacher on one of those covered wagons standing up and yelling, "Repent!" and I thought "Oh yuck". But as I come to grips with that concept this is what ended up meaning to me, admitting somehow that my way and my choices, as good as they seemed at the time, ended up being hollow. Admitting somehow that my way was empty. I remember buying this really expensive, I mean really expensive huge car years ago. It had everything, it had this beautiful burgundy duco, this lustre, it had a lovely shape that used to turn heads. It had four wheel steering. You know at low speed the front and the back wheels were turning in the opposite direction and you could pivot this car like on a pinhead. And the smell, ah the new car smell of leather, the look of the dashboard, it was awesome and you know I remember sitting inside this car which cost me a bomb and looking at it and smelling that new leather smell and somehow that thing that I wanted to be a real joy to me was empty and hollow and I had to come to grips that my way wasn't working for me. Repenting meant admitting that. Turning and saying, "You know something God, I'm done trying my way. I want to get with your plan. I know that there are some things that I'll have to give up, I know that." But you know there are actually very few things and they're really the rubbish things, the pride, the selfishness, the back-stabbing, the greed. It meant putting Him in the driver's seat and when I started doing that day after day you know what happened, I'll tell you just how it happened. I had this growing sense that I was becoming the me I was meant to be, that I was living the life I was made to live because my frame wasn't hidden from Him when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. His eyes saw my unformed substance. All the days ordained for me were written in His book before even one of them came into being. And so now I can say, "how precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them." That turning point, coming to that decision, coming to that conclusion in life no matter where we're at, no matter what we say we believe, can be a very hard thing because it's just not a single turning point, it's then living that new decision out in life, living out the decision to have God as our Lord, as our number one, that can be hard. But if we're going to be the person God meant us to be that's where it's at and so tomorrow on the program we'll look at what it means actually to live that out. Some people believe in this God, others don't, that's okay, that's the way things are but we know when we're headed down the wrong path, we know when our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviours are being destructive and robbing us of the destiny that lies ahead of each one of us. At some point, come on, at some point we need to wake up and say, enough is enough; this is not working for me anymore. It doesn't matter how hard I try, how much money I spend, how much I try and fill myself, it is not working, I can't keep living this way because if I do one day it will all be over and I'll have missed out on my destiny. So let me ask you, are you at that point in your life? Yesterday on the program we looked at the fact that we really are made in the image of God, we're made to have a relationship with Him. I think there's something inside each one of us that God would enliven to get us to reach out to Him. It's like a marriage in a sense, I mean I was made to have a wife; I'm just not one to be on my own. I enjoy my own space sure but I'm not one to be single. Now I'm married to Jacqui, she's the most wonderful wife and I enjoy my marriage but there's a cost to marriage. You have to lay things down; you have to be prepared to sacrifice certain things in order to have a great relationship, husband and wife. The Bible talks about becoming one flesh, that's great but the becoming bit, coming to grips in being a team rather than just someone on your own is sacrificial. Some days, you know, it hurts but somehow even though I'm an individual there's something that makes me complete in my soul through my marriage relationship with Jacqui my wife. It's how God made me and when it comes to God I don't think I can be the me that I was meant to be or live out the destiny for my life unless in the same way I have a close and dynamic relationship with Him. Lord knows I spent thirty-six long years trying. Money and recognition and career, had it all and I did it my way but there came a time when I had to admit that my way was empty, that I needed more, I needed Him and you know something, He knows that because He knows us. God is the only person or thing that I've ever discovered that makes me whole. Without Him there's a massive cavernous God sized hole inside me somewhere and without Him I can't be the 'me' I was meant to be. Because I'm made in His image, I can't live out the days He planned for me because I'm certain; absolutely certain that He planned me to spend those days with Him. How about you?

Have you noticed how just living life produces waste products.  We breathe out Carbon dioxide.  We perspire.  We create rubbish.  The same is true in life – and if we don't take out that rubbish, it can kill us. I don't know if you've ever noticed but living an average normal everyday life creates dirt. I mean just eating and drinking and living, the most basic things, create waste products. Carbon dioxide that we breathe out with every breath, if we didn't get rid of that it would poison us. Perspiration of course and we excrete waste. If we kept all of those things inside us you know they'd kill us in a pretty short time. And then there's our home. If you don't tidy up along the way it becomes a mess. If you don't clean it each week it gets dirty and for no other reason than we've been living life in it. All good, all normal but life creates mess and dirt and waste products, it's inexorable. You have to wash out the shower or even the soap scum builds up so your shower becomes a mess. See on a global scale we call this pollution. It's a perennial problem; it's just the way it is. For so many years I listened to these Christians talk about sin as though, "ah come on, get out of here, get a life, I don't need this guilt trip that you Christians put me on, I don't need to go to confession or to be absolved or any of that stuff, I'm basically okay. I haven't killed anyone; I haven't robbed a bank, so just leave me alone." The notion of sin had no place in my reckoning. It was a dog eat dog world with plenty of dog to go around and I will tread on whomever I want to, to get where I'm going. That was kind of the attitude I had. I guess it's okay while life is going basically okay but you don't build many relationships and friendships that way and you know, as I was sharing on this program the other day I found out that there was no joy or satisfaction or contentment in living that sort of a life. Now in today's world pretty much anything goes, if it feels good do it. There was an article in my local paper recently on pornography. The pornography industry was trying to make pornographic videos more widely available to reduce their level of restriction and classification. See in this "anything goes" philosophy what people do in their own bedroom, well that's their problem but there are consequences, there are very clear consequences, that's what the research tells us when it comes to pornography and intimacy in marriages. And as a result many marriages are falling apart. When I spend things on me, me, me, that's great but there's no real satisfaction and you don't get any satisfaction until you give of yourself, of who you are, what you have. It's not until we give sacrificially to someone who needs what we have that we really get satisfaction in life and that's where we discover who we are and what life is all about. For many years I kidded myself. I kidded myself that I was okay but it didn't work. Just living my life created waste and mess and dirt and pollution and here's the rub, when we live the 'I am the centre of the universe' model we want everything to flow into us and that includes the waste and the mess and dirt, there's nothing there to clean us out. It stays inside and with everything flowing in it poisons our system and it ruins our lives. Do you get it? Maybe you've heard me talk on the program before about sin and you've thought, 'Why does he keep labouring this point?' I'll tell you why, because sin poisons our lives, it robs us, it means that instead of being the me I was meant to be I let cancer creep into my soul and rob me of being the person and living the life that God planned for me and the same is true for you. The word sin as it's used in the Bible literally means to miss the mark. A bit like an archer aiming at a target, his aim doesn't have to be off by much for him to miss the target all together. That's the idea of sin, it's missing the mark or as we might say these days, missing the point. Can you imagine getting to the end of your life, on your death bed, looking back and thinking to yourself, 'You know the way I lived my life, I didn't love people the way I should have loved them, I didn't serve people, I didn't make a real difference, I haven't left behind a lasting legacy of good, I think I've missed the point of life.' Can you even begin to imagine what a tragedy that would be? We're chatting this week about discovering who we were meant to be, our identity and laying hold of what our life was always meant to accomplish, our destiny. And we can't do those things if we miss the mark, if we miss the whole point of our lives, you just can't. You can't, I can't and if you were able to join me the other day you'll remember that we read something about what Gods plan for our lives is, our identity and our destiny God you created my inner most being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful and I know that full well because my frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in that secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes beheld my unformed substance. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before any of them came into being. Seems to me that we can either co-operate with that plan or we can run hard against it. And whatever we may call it, whatever word we may use for doing wrong things, whether the word is sin or something else, you and I know when we're swimming against the tide, you and I know when we're into things that are selfish and angry and dishonest and just plain wrong. Come on we do and if that's the way we want to live life then the last thing we're going to be doing is co operating with that plan. The last thing that we're going to be doing is discovering our destiny. The last thing we're going to be doing is being the person we were made to be and living the life we were meant to live. Does that make sense to you? I mean does that seem like a particularly wise way of spending your life, this one precious life that you've been given to live? The reason we're talking about this today is that the last thing I want for you and honestly the last thing God wants for any of us is to waste your life, to miss out on your destiny, to live as a square peg in a round hole because that's never particularly comfortable. And this thing sin, the wrong things in our life that's what robs us of our destiny, that's what robs us of our identity. I can't say it any plainer than this, that's just about the dumbest thing that we could possibly do with our lives. Because the problem is that you and I are very good at rationalising our sin away, at justifying it, at defending the indefensible. I was talking to a couple of smokers the other day, some builders out the front of my house. I used to smoke very heavily and as I talked to them about their smoking you know what their response was? "Oh yeah, we know it's wrong, we know it's stupid, we know it's going to make us sick but we just can't stop it." See we get addicted to this poison, we get addicted to the poison of sin. We know it's wrong we just can't stop it so we rationalise it, we brush it off, we resign ourselves to it so it doesn't matter. And when others challenge us about it, when others confront us with the consequences of our sin we say, come on get off the grass, it's none of your business what I do with my life. Well I guess it's not but if you and I want to live the life that God intended us to live, if you and I want to be the person that God made us to be you need to deal with this. Listen to me we need to deal with sin. When we come face to face with Jesus Christ we know in our hearts the things that are wrong. There was that woman, you can read about in John's Gospel chapter 9 if you have a Bible, caught in adultery and they dragged her out to stone her in front of Jesus and they were going to do just that because they wanted to trap Jesus, there was a legal issue which we won't go into now. But Jesus said, "Look if any of you is without sin let him be the first one to throw the stone." You know what happened? Those who heard began to go away. The old ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman. When we look at Jesus in the face we know the stuff that's wrong in our lives. Question is how do we fix it, how do we deal with that? That's what we're going to look at on the program tomorrow.

Most of us have a sense of destiny – something that we're supposed to fulfil in our lives.  But if I'm going to be the me I was meant to be, if you're going to be the you that you were meant to be, then we have to know who we were meant to be in the first place. If you want to ask yourself the question, am I being the "me" I was meant to be, am I really fulfilling the destiny for my life, how would you answer? On a scale of one to ten how would you rate your life against that question? Well the problem is so many people can't answer it because they don't know who they were meant to be in the first place or where they're meant to be headed. All they sometimes have is a nagging suspicion inside, a bit of an unsettling feeling that the answer is more a "no" than a "yes", more a one or two than an eight or nine out of ten. Am I being the "me" I was meant to be? Am I really fulfilling the destiny of my life? See they're really good questions. I don't know how to talk about this except at least in part from my own experience because discovering your destiny is a profound issue of life. I'd like to share with you today part of my journey and something that began to answer those questions for me. By global standards I was blessed, I grew up in a wealthy household, we had plenty of food, a roof over our head, I had a good education and one of my physical attributes, as well as being short, as well as having some grey hair, as well as being short sighted in one eye and long sighted in the other eye, is that I have a high IQ. So I did really well at school and I had the choice of doing anything that I wanted to do, medicine or law. Back then I was interested in these emerging things that they called computers. So I left high school and I went to the Royal Military college Duntroon, the officer-training academy for our army, a bit like England's Sandhurst or the USA's WestPoint. Now I graduated with an IT degree and spent ten years in the military and after that had well paying jobs and I owned a consulting firm for seventeen years in the IT industry and I travelled around and spoke at international conferences and lived the high life. I basically had it handed to me on a silver platter. Okay it had its ups and downs, I had to work hard, I had to strive for things but by any standard I had it pretty good and I kind of enjoyed that stuff but all along I found that nothing ever really satisfied me. I was so concerned about being the best, I was so concerned about what other people thought of me that I couldn't enjoy my life, I couldn't relax. I was successful on the outside but inside I had a deep sense of inadequacy and failure and the feeling of being a fraud and that's how I lived my life, day by day for many years and believe you me it's not a lot of fun. Why is that? What's going on? I had this emerging sense that I wasn't being the me I was meant to be and that there was some destiny for my life that I hadn't yet stumbled across. Despite all the good things that were happening in my life I had this sort of vague distant belief in God I guess but even in my late thirties when I gave my life over to Him, when I became a Christian, there was still something, well it wasn't quite right. I look back on it now and I know there was something missing, things I didn't really understand. For me the starting point of being the 'me' I was meant to be was knowing where I'd come from and who I'm meant to be. So, so many people in the midst of their lives aren't really comfortable with who they are or where their life's going and so you don't have a real sense of security, you're more like a cork bobbing around in the stormy ocean. We're going to explore that today through Psalm 139 from the Old Testament of the Bible. I come back to it again and again and again in my own life because it reminds me of exactly who I am. What I love about this Psalm is that the writer starts in the middle of the dilemmas of life and works his way back to God to discover who he is and ultimately he comes to this point. Have a listen: God you created me in my inner most being. It was you that knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful; I know that full well because my frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in that secret place. When I was being woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed substance and all the days ordained for me were written down in your book of life before even one of them came into being. How precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake I'm still with you. There's something that really strikes me in there and this is one of those passages in the Bible that is beautiful and wondrous to me and as I said I keep coming back to it again and again. It's like my passport; it tells me who I am. We all started life in our mother's womb. A dark hidden place in the depths of the earth as it were and God created our inner most being, He knits us together in our mothers womb and we can praise Him because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I'm not sure what you believe and I'm not here, please understand this, to force any of my beliefs onto you. I just want to share with you how it was for me. After reading that Psalm I had this sense of "WOW! If God really made me who I am then who I am, my personality, my strengths, my limitations and my hair colour and my blue eyes and the way I think and react, all of those things are His choice." You know we have bits about ourselves in our lives that we like and we have other bits that we don't so much like. Some people say, "I wish I was smarter, I wish I was taller, I wish I was better looking." I wish I had blonde hair instead of that mousy brown colour mop on top of my head. You know what I mean. But when I wrap my heart around this Psalm I thought, wow not only has God made me who I am, each strand of my DNA according to the blue print of His great and mighty heart, He also planned every day of my life, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before any of them came into being. And see, that's my passport, that's my compass, that's given me my sense of identity and direction in life and hey, that's not such a bad thing. No wonder the psalmist goes on in wonder to say; How precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand. Our lives aren't about being some karma or some vague sense of chance or destiny, our lives have a plan and a purpose and a destiny and before any of our days ever existed every day ordained for you and me were written in God's book, God's blue print. It was written in our DNA, who we are and what would happen, the number of hairs on our head, every thought, every desire, every dream, every hope, every hurt, every experience. He knit us together in our mother's womb and He set every day before us according to His plan. You and I are who we are because that's how He made us. You and I are living the lives we have because that's what He ordained for us. That's the profound and wonderful beauty as so many people spend so much of their lives not liking themselves when all along we are who God made us to be. In His infinite wisdom and mercy and creativity that's how He handcrafted us. He planned us, He knew us and He wrote down all the days of our lives before time began. Let me challenge you today; let me get right in your face with this. Are you prepared to live every minute of every day in this wonderful knowledge, in this wonderful truth? Sure we've all made mistakes, there are consequences, there are scars, there are broken relationships but fundamentally who we are is no surprise to God. What we're going through is no surprise to God and in the middle of that He wants to give us peace and rest and that's what we get when we accept who we are and where we are according to Gods plan. It's time to love who you are. That honours God, to thank Him and to praise Him: I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful and that I know full well.

Have you ever sat down and wondered – who am I?  Where's my life headed? Am I being the me that I was meant to be?  Well, you're not alone.  We all ask those questions at some point. I remember once a few years back being in the airport in Christchurch, New Zealand. My international flight from Australia was late in getting in and I had to race to make the last domestic connection that night to my final destination Wellington, New Zealand's capital. And in the rush I left my passport lying in one of those luggage trolleys at the international terminal, something I didn't realise until I was checking in at the domestic terminal on my next flight. Panic attack, can you imagine losing your passport while you're overseas? No passport no identity, no identity now what? How could I tell people I was me? I couldn't leave the country; I couldn't stay there. See it turns out that our identity is very important. Well I won't keep you in suspense the domestic and international terminal in Christchurch are about ten minutes walk apart so I raced down outside the domestic terminal but the taxi didn't want to take me because is was such a short fare. He said, "Catch the shuttle bus." Of course I didn't have time to do that so I paid him thirty dollars and we raced back and I went into the police station off to one side of the international terminal in Christchurch. Now there was a young police woman on duty that night so I explained my problem to her and she said, "Well yes, an Australian passport has just been handed in." And then she asks me, just get this, "Do you have any ID?" I couldn't believe it. I said "Yes", I was a bit stressed at this point, "it's my passport and there's a photo in the front." Oh yeah, it dawned on her. Anyway I received my passport and I just made my flight and all was well. I've never forgotten that. You know, you can't travel without your passport, it's the clear and tangible evidence of your identity. And in a very real sense the same is true in life. We need to know the answer to that important question, who exactly am I and where's my life headed? Other people need to know who we are; it's so basic, it's so fundamental. So many people though don't have a deep sense of who they are, it's a problem deep down somewhere and it's not something we talk about a lot but it's there. And as I talk to people I think it goes something like this. Often we live our lives just day to day without thinking too much, just go along and do the things we do and go to work or to school or we look after the children, whatever it is that you do but bubbling away deep down somewhere is a sense of, what's this all about? Why am I doing this? What's the point? The reality is we have just one life to live here on this earth. It's not a dress rehearsal, you can't hit the rewind button and play it again and change things, when today's gone it's gone and that's it. And every year, every week, every day, every moment that you and I have lived up to this point frankly is gone, we can never get them back. The only thing left in our time here on this earth is the time between right now and when we breathe our last breath. Hey it's a sobering thought and at the same time most people have some sort of sense of a destiny, whether or not they believe in Jesus or some God even, they believe in things that are meant to be. How often have you heard someone say, "Well that was just meant to be", or "If it's meant to be it will happen?" Whether it's karma or whether it's "que sera sera, whatever will be will be", we all have some sense of a future and a destiny to be fulfilled. It's as though some intelligent destiny or design that we just can't quite put our finger on is out there for us. I believe that that's there because each one of us, you and I and everybody have been made in the image of God - each one of us. And when we look at the time that we have left here on this earth in the context of some sort of destiny, a profound question of life emerges. Am I being the "me" I was meant to be? Am I living the life I was made to live? These are huge questions. It's not just about having things, it's about being. The turning point of my life was when I was reading a book and the author asked this question. Do you want to be or do you want to have? And I realised very clearly that I was one of those people who wanted to have and having isn't being. Having is about, I don't know, the next car, the next sound system, the next pair of shoes. But being is about a profound sense of joy and contentment, about being really happy with who we are and what we're doing and how we're living, the relationships that we're enjoying. When I realised that it was so incredibly unsettling for me because I tried to live it all my way, I tried to do that stuff my way but it turned out just empty. Let me ask you something, as you contemplate the remaining time that you have left here on planet earth, when you ask yourself the question am I being the me that I was meant to be, what's the answer? Yes or no? If your answers yes then you're talking about some profound sense of joy and peace and contentment, the sort of stuff I was talking about just before. But if the answer's no then probably there's this nagging sense that you're missing out on something, is this all there is? Surely there must be something more. You know in my experience most people, by far the majority of people live in the no category, they have a sense that they should be, that there is some destiny out there for their lives but they also have that nagging suspicion that they're not really living it out to the full. That's why we're kicking off a series of programs over the next few weeks that I've called Discover Your Destiny to, I don't know, to help us unscramble all of that and maybe get a solid foundation of life sorted out in our hearts, to get our lives on track, to live them out to the full, to realise our destiny. So that when we're on deaths door we can look back on our lives with a deep sense of satisfaction and say to ourselves, "You know what, I've lived it to the full. I became the me I was meant to be and now I'm ready for my eternity with God." The starting point of all that is an understanding of who we're meant to be. It's knowing where we've come from and who we are. And what a tragedy it is for so many people to live their lives without knowing those things about themselves, without having a sense of what their lives are all about. Without having, in effect, a really good handle on their identity and their destiny. See we live in a world that wants to tell us who we are. We live in a world shaped by commerce and sales targets and advertising that tells us if you're this or if you're that, if you buy this or you buy that, hey then you're going to be happy, then you'll have a sense of who you are and where you're going. I lived out that life for a good many years, I mean I lived it out par excellence and so successful was that strategy that it drove me to the point of suicide. God's take is completely different. God tells us that we are made in His image you and I. He tells us that not only did He make us who we are but He also made every day of our life to fit with who we are. More about that another day. Today all we've really done is to try and put our finger on the problem, that nagging thing that just doesn't seem to want to go away. That sense that many people have, that they're missing out on something, something that they just can't quite explain. Surely there must be more to life than this, this drudgery. Surely there has to be something that sets my heart on fire, that inspires me, that lets me be the me I was meant to be. Do you really know who you are? Who you were made to be? Who you were meant to be? Where your life is meant to be headed? Or is your life like a bit of a cork bobbing around on the ocean completely at the mercy of the elements – sunny one day, stormy the next but just drifting, drifting? Well I'm hoping you can join me each day over these coming weeks as we go on this journey to discover the 'me' that you were meant to be.

God wants to unleash power, power unlimited in your life. And one of the ways that He does that is when you hear His Word preached and take it into your heart. There's power, real power, power unlimited right there in God's Word. If you spend anytime with me here on the program one of the things you will know is that I'm really passionate about God and what He has to say. Not in a religious sort of a way but in a Jesus sort of way. The thing that really strikes me about Jesus when you read about Him, is how plain and matter of fact He was about sharing with people who God is and what His plans are. Over these last couple of weeks on the program we've been looking at what it means to lay hold of God's power unlimited, God's resurrection power that's available to you, as you open His Word the Bible and listen to what He has to say. The Bible is God speaking to us and He means to challenge us and stretch us and encourage us and bless us through His Word. One of the ways that many people get God's Word into them is by listening to people speak. Radio programs like this or on television and of course, if you attend a Church. But how can preaching and teaching be a part of really getting God's Word into us? Over these last twenty years or so, the time that I've been a Christian, I've seen two things. On the one hand I have been so blessed by some really good teaching and on the other hand I've seen some pretty bad stuff too. In my very first Church, a little Baptist Church, our pastor's name was Phil Littlejohn. Now Phil was a gifted teacher, he just had this ability to open God's Word and speak God stuff into my heart. I learned later this is a real gifting, different people have different gifts and abilities given to them by God and teaching is one of them. Jesus had that, I mean time and time again when He opened His mouth people were amazed because He spoke with a plainness and a power and an authority that they hadn't heard before. And you know something, He didn't always tell them things they wanted to hear. "Love your enemy." "Take up your cross and follow me." "Lose your life for my sake and you'll gain your life." It's not exactly good marketing, I mean the spin merchants would not have let Him get up and speak like that today. I've spent quite a bit of time looking at how Jesus preached. It's real, it's powerful. It's balanced on the one hand and radical on the other and it sort of, well, it cuts through all the selfish rubbish we go on with, right to the heart of what God wants to talk about. And my prayer is that when I discharge my gifting to teach in my own way, I'll always try to teach like He did. But you know I've also sat in Churches over the years and listened to preachers drone on with dry and theoretical, completely cerebral stuff, that's not relevant to my life. On more than one occasion I've walked out after church and two hours later I ask myself "Do I remember what he talked about?" And the answer is, "No, not really." Or you listen to other speakers and there are lots of words and they're very entertaining and they make people laugh and they tickle their ears with great stories and things they want to hear and they yell and people slap them on the back afterwards, 'praise the Lord' but I've been to some of those too and well, I felt like I'd been at the Lord's table to be fed but I left hungry and empty. The flip side of that is that with some other preachers, I can remember years later what they were talking about, years later in difficult circumstances God seems to bring into my heart the words they spoke to me. Preaching and teaching is one of the ways that God gets His Word into us. You see it right through the Bible; He uses men and women to speak to others, to teach them. I mean the Samaritan woman at the well; she went and told people about Jesus. Paul and Peter and all the other guys that went out preaching. The question is, how do you get the most out of that? How does preaching and teaching play a part in us reading our Bible and unlocking the power unlimited that God has for us? Well, here are just some of my observations. I see people come into a Church on a Sunday and listen to the preacher and they don't take any notes and they don't bring their Bible and they don't follow what the preacher's saying in their Bible. I take my Bible with me, I open my Bible and I read what the preacher is talking about. People can speak all the words that they like, everything that they say, they can crack jokes and have great stories – the most important thing is God's Word, the most important thing is what God is saying. And secondly I take some notes. I mean you can't even get through kindergarten on a half an hour a week without taking notes. You know, if we take God seriously, if we want to follow Jesus and really take that seriously, you know something, we've got to take learning seriously. Do you know what a disciple is? A disciple is literally "a learner", that's what the word disciple means, to be a learner. And thirdly, the thing I do when I've listened to some really good preaching, is I spend some time afterwards in God's Word reading it for myself. Sometimes it's not until you get home and you pray it through and you spend some time in that passage and maybe looking at some other related ones, that God really drops it into your spirit. I mean, years ago I heard a preacher teaching on a profound passage: 1 Peter 5:6-7: Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that He may exalt you in due time. Cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you. Now I've learnt so much from what God taught me through that preacher in this passage but I've learned just as much and maybe even more from pondering and praying over this scripture and looking at other related passages. Learning in my heart – that's when I humble myself, when I get off my little tin pot throne and just walk each day faithfully with God. He's the one who later opens the doors; He's the one that's got an eternity ready for me. I've looked at this whole thing of preaching, and listened to some incredibly sermons and some dreadful ones too, I've come to the conclusion that there are two types of preaching; dead and alive. Dead preaching is full of words, it's boring and dry or maybe it's hyped up and frothy and bubbly but at the end of the day, there's no eternal food there because God's Word is not being preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's only God's Word by the power of the Spirit that can change us. I can't change you, I can't say things in my own strength that will change your life, but if I'm speaking God's stuff, if the Holy Spirit somehow takes God's stuff and puts it into your heart, that's when change happens and only God can do that. This is how the Apostle Paul put it: 1 Cor 2:1-5: When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God Can I encourage you to be discerning as to what you listen to? Go and listen to the preachers who are proclaiming God's Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.. Go and have a read about how Jesus preached in the Gospels Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, the first four books of the New Testament. It's edgy and profound and real and dealing with the hard issues, and find yourself some preachers like that. Not ones that just entertain and tickle your ears with things you want to hear. The ones that open up God's Word and say, "Well, what's God saying to us today?" and then take what they said home, open your Bible there where they left off and go and lay hold of God's power unlimited for you, for your life.

So many people, when they open their Bibles, run into a significant problem. They don't quite understand what's going on – that's certainly the problem I used to run into. It's not that I'm stupid, it's just that a lot of it didn't make all that much sense to me. So if you find yourself in that boat from time to time, stick with me, because today, we're going to make your Bible a whole bunch more accessible to you. I have to tell you, that thing they call the Bible was a real problem for me. I mean, first coming to grips with the fact that it is what it says that it is, the Word of God but then, just getting into it. It's made up of 66 separate books written over about 1,500 years in different times, in different places and different cultures. So there are words and names and places and concepts and ways of thinking … well, we're not always familiar with them. We're continuing in our series 'Power Unlimited' – because that's what God's Word brings into our lives so today, we're going to get down and really practical on just how to get into the Bible because unless we do, we're going to miss out on much of the power that God wants to pour into our lives. Over the years I've discovered a few very simple helps or resources that have made such a difference in making sense of God's Word. You see, it turns out there's a whole bunch of people much smarter than me who have done some great research and put the information together in such easy usable ways and all their work makes getting into God's Word, the Bible, so much easier for the likes of you and me. Today I just want to share some of those resources with you. I remember twenty or so years ago, just after I became a Christian, I started attending a tiny little Baptist Church in the southern suburbs of Sydney. A little place called Oyster Bay. Our pastor, Phil, was a passionate and gifted Bible teacher and that man has had a huge impact on my life. Now as well as Sunday services, the Church used to have these little home Bible studies and we'd meet one night a week in someone's house. In our small group, five of us would gather together. And at the time, the particular little home fellowship that I'd joined, was studying the Old Testament book of Hosea. So we'd lob in there each Wednesday evening, we'd have a cup of tea and some fellowship and then we'd sit down and do a Bible study together. And right through that book, over and over and over again, Hosea talks about Ephraim – that word is mentioned 29 times by Hosea. So I remember asking these people, most of them had been Christians for a good many years, "Okay, who or what is this Ephraim thing?" I mean, Hosea kept talking about it and so it seemed to be quite central to what he was saying. But you know something, no-one could tell me who or what Ephraim was. Now it turns out the Ephraim was one of the tribes of Israel, Ephraim was one of Joseph's sons and there's a whole history around this tribe and how they rebelled against God, but we didn't know that in that Bible study so a lot of what God was saying to us, through this amazing, powerful book of Hosea, well it was frankly lost on us. And that sort of thing happens a lot more than you might think. Consider the story of the Good Samaritan. It loses its whole meaning if we don't understand the Samaritans and who they were and what the Jews thought of them. Now when Jesus told that story to the assembled masses they all knew the Samaritan story but we don't, it's not natural to us. And there are names and places and concepts and ways of thinking in the Bible that are foreign to us, because we're separated from them by time and culture. It might have made sense to the people back then but not to us now. And unless we understand those things, we miss out on the richness, on the gravity, on the power of what God is trying to say to us. I remember coming to grips with the Jewish system of blood sacrifice in the Old Testament. Now I kind of think about blood sacrifice and it's pretty ghastly to me here and now, but it's something I really had to understand to understand what Jesus did for me on the Cross. So I decided I was going to find out, not just skim the surface, not read through a story and have them talk about Ephraim or Samaria or all these other things I didn't know about and miss out on what God was trying to say to me through the story. Now these accounts were written such a long time ago and God has preserved them and kept them accurate for us here and now but there is indeed a gap of culture and time in history that we have to bridge to understand completely what's happening in what's been written. I mean after all if the Bible is God's Word and if God is speaking to us through it, I decided I needed to know what He was saying. And surprisingly, that's not as difficult as I thought it would be. Right now, I'm going to talk about a handful of really simple resources that made absolutely the world of difference. The first one was my Bible, a simple English translation, not the King James with the 'thees' and 'thou arts', there are so many good contemporary language translations available to you and me today. The New International Version or the NIV as it's called, is really popular. I happen to use the New Revised Standard Version (the NRSV). There's a translation called The Message which is really in here and now language. The Contemporary English Version (CEV). The New English Translation (NET). Which one is the best one? The one you're going to read. You can get a thing called A Study Bible, it's got not just the words of the Bible, but it's also got a huge amount of resources packed into it. It explains the meanings of different words, there are notes and maps and cross references. They're really good, they don't cost a whole bunch more than a Bible with just the Bible words. So if you want to do more than just skim across the surface, it's really good to have one of those – a Study Bible. Check them out. One of the most helpful features in a Study Bible is a summary of each book: who wrote it, when, to whom and why because context is so important isn't it? Before I read Ephesians I read four or five paragraphs in my Study Bible which explain the context and all of a sudden the book of Ephesians made a whole bunch more sense to me. A Study Bible is a really worthwhile investment and it's not much more than an ordinary Bible. You can get one from a Christian bookshop or you can buy one online. I happen to have an electronic one these days on my tablet device. The second resource is my Bible dictionary. Now I happen to purchase a Bible dictionary called the Holman Bible Dictionary, years ago – it's just one, single volume. You can get Bible dictionaries that are 25 volumes, mine is just one volume and it has pictures. So when I was reading and it talked about the Temple in the Bible, I could go to my Bible dictionary and look at it and see a picture and plans and explaining the different parts. So I'm able to read a few paragraphs in just a few minutes, and I'm there, I understand what the writers saying about the Temple, about the Holy of Holies, wow! When the Bible talks about Ephraim I look it up, half a column, three minutes, I know who or what Ephraim is. The story of the Good Samaritan; who were the Samaritans? What was their relationship to the Jews? Ah! That's what Jesus meant by the story of the Good Samaritan. And lastly, the third resource was a Bible timeline. It's one of these things you can fold out and it's about four pages wide that show the chronology of the Bible. You read about King David, when was he king? Who was King before him? Who was King after him? What else was going on? Which prophets were writing when David was alive? And all of a sudden you put the whole Bible thing in time sequence, that's huge. And just to top things off, let me tell you about two stunning websites. The first is biblegateway.com (https://www.biblegateway.com) where you can compare different Bible translations. The second is studylight.org (https://www.studylight.org), it has Bible dictionaries online, the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words, and so many more great resources. All free. So let me ask you? Do you take Jesus seriously? If you do then we need to take the Bible seriously. And for just a small investment on your part in just a few simple resources, they pay such huge dividends in hearing and understanding what God is saying to us today through His Word.

God's Word is packed full of power … power unlimited … to transform your life. But one of the biggest problems people have with the Bible is understanding it. Making sense of it. Knowing where it comes from, and where what they're reading today fits into the big picture. Well, I think it's time we did something about that. We've all heard of those word association tests that psychologists use. You know, they say 'black', you say 'white'; they say 'rabbit' and you say 'carrot'; day/night; God/mmm love; devil/mmm evil; Bible/hmm … Bible? How do you respond to that? Stuffy, old, irrelevant? Well, different people will have some different views but actually in Australia where I live, the Bible is one of the least trusted of all historical documents. Over the last week and a bit on the program/ over the last few weeks on the program we've been talking about the incredible power that we unlock, when we read the Bible. But this thing that we call "the Bible", it's a big book, it's massive and it can be daunting. So today I thought it might be useful just to have a look to see what this Bible is exactly. I want to share with you a secret, it's sad but true. I never read a book cover to cover until I was in my early twenties. I managed to get through school and university and did pretty well I might add, without ever reading a book from beginning to end. I remember at university, in first year English, we studied the book Wuthering Heights which absolutely bored me to tears, I'm sorry and I never opened the book once. There are companies that publish crib notes, you know the summary of the book and a summary of what's in it and a summary of what some of the critics say, so I just quickly read those, crib notes, wrote essays and did, by and large, reasonably well. And I never, ever liked libraries either. You know how libraries have this kind of dusty, dank smell; all of them are the same. Every library on the planet has the same smell. I thought about it for a while, I thought 'Berni, why don't you like libraries? Why did it take you so long to read books?' The answer I guess has two parts. Firstly, libraries for me always felt really big and inaccessible. They have tens of thousands of books and in the old days when I was at university, they had card systems for accessing, for finding things, I mean these days they have computers. The old card systems had what they call the Dewey Classification system and finding anything just took so incredibly long. And secondly, when you did find the stuff, there was always so much of it, there was so much time involved to, I don't know, look through all those books and research them. I mean, some people are natural book worms, well I'm not. I still frankly don't like libraries. I'm sorry if you're a librarian, I just don't like libraries. I haven't darkened the doorstep of one since I finished my last degree quite a few years ago now. You know something; I think for a lot of people the Bible is exactly like that. It feels big and inaccessible. There are many, many people who wouldn't mind having a read but, for goodness sakes, where do you start? Well today let's break it down a bit, let's make it a bit more accessible. I remember when I started Bible College only a few months after becoming a Christian, everyone took for granted that we knew about the Bible. The reality was, I didn't and my hunch is, I wasn't alone. Let's unpack it a bit, let's demystify it a bit. All of a sudden you know it becomes a whole bunch more accessible. The thing that we call the Bible is made up of 66 different books written by different people over somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 years. That's the kind of period over which the Bible was written. And it wasn't just written by different people but at different times and the last book was written, well almost 2,000 years ago. There are essentially two parts to the Bible, this was complete news to me when I first opened it, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and when I started at Bible College I didn't know which one was which. The Old Testament, well the Old Testament is God's story and the story of how He interacted with and engaged with His chosen people, the Israelites. The Old Testament is written completely B.C., before Christ, before Jesus came to be on earth with us here. What Christians call the Old Testament is in fact exactly the same as the Jewish Hebrew scriptures, Jews still use those same scriptures today, Christians call it the Old Testament. It's written mostly in the original language of Hebrew, the language of the Jews. Now there's small parts of books like Daniel which is written in a language called Aramaic which is the language that Jesus actually spoke but by and large, the Old Testament was originally written in the language of Hebrew. And what we have today, the thing that we call the Old Testament is an English translation of that. Now there are lots of funny name books, Deuteronomy and Judges and Chronicles and there's Ezekiel, there are 39 separate books and there are kind of 4 main parts of the Old Testament. The first 5 books, Genesis to Deuteronomy, are the Jewish or Hebrew Law, the Torah. And then you go Joshua through Ezra and Nehemiah and that's kind of the history of what God did and how His people responded. And then after that are the wisdom books, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Lamentations. And the rest of the books in the Old Testament are written by men called Prophets. Men whom God called to call His people back to Him. That's the Old Testament, it's a story of God engaging with Gods people. And the New Testament is 27 books. Now, it was mostly written in the language of Greek. The first 4 books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are gospel accounts, they're the historical account of Jesus' life and His ministry. And the next book, the book of Acts is the story of the first 20 or so years of the Church after Jesus rose again to be with His Father. Then there's a whole bunch of letters called Epistles from people like Peter and John and Paul, written to Churches that they were involved in or in some cases, to individuals. This may be old hat to some, but I know to many, just a simple understanding of the basic structure of the Bible is going to be a real help. I know that when I was a new Christian, no one ever bothered to explain it to me – I wish they had. Now some people might be saying to themselves, that's all well and good, but how accurate is the Bible. Because before the printing press was ever invented by Gutenberg in 1450, the Bible – there's this massive thing, the Old Testament and New Testament – was transcribed over and over by hand by people called Scribes who copied them by hand. It's hard to imagine. But these days, there's a science called Textual Criticism. It studies whether any errors crept into the Bible as it was copied through all these generations manuscripts. And what it tells us, is that having studied thousands of manuscripts, the levels of accuracy are remarkable. I mean it's a science, people have done it. There are very, very few words or sentences where there is any doubt what was originally written. And blessedly these days, this thing called the Bible has been translated into easy to read, contemporary versions. No more thee's and thou's – great, modern day, accurate, easy to understand translations. And did you know that in the Bible, over half of the 66 books, over half, you can read in half and hour or less. Now look, in a few minutes we can't hope to do anything but scrape the surface. Today we've just talked about some basic factual stuff. No-one really taught me this stuff. I remember becoming a Christian and going and sitting in a Church and people just teach from the Bible which is wonderful but no-one ever explained to me that it was 66 books written by a whole bunch of people over different periods of time. That some of it was stories and history and some of it was letters and some of it was poetry. But when you simplify and demystify all that stuff, it turns out that it's just a wonderful book. And with the many contemporary translations, it's much, much easier to read than I ever thought. As I started to read the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament, I was completely blown away by this amazing Jesus. Who would have thought … the Bible.

So, we've been chatting on the program recently about laying hold of the unlimited power that God wants to give those who love Him. Great … but come on, how do you actually lay hold of that power? Well … the answer may not be what you think. A few years ago now, I had the opportunity to speak with a group of high school students at the opening of their college and senior campus. The subject of my presentation was this: 'How to Get More out of Your Parents'. I just remember that when I was at high school, speakers at those functions were so boring. I wanted to grab their attention and it certainly did that. A few of the parents, I have to tell you, were listening pretty closely as well but the heart of the presentation was this. Our parents, at least the greatest majority of them, are hard wired to bless us, but one of the things teenagers do, I know I did, is rebel against them and that stops the flow of parental blessing dead in its tracks. I shared some insights with these young men and women about how, in a very practical way, they can respond to their parents' love at the same time as growing up, to get that relationship and that blessing flowing again. You could see some lights going on as they came to grips with how to respond to their parents. It turns out, our relationship with God is no different. Over the last little while on the program, we've been working our way through a series of messages called "Power Unlimited". Over the last twenty or so years I've spent a lot of time studying God's Word, the 66 different books in the Bible and so I've had the chance to mull it all over. And whilst I know I've really just scratched the surface, the more I think about it, the Bible appears to me to be about 4 things. Who God is, God's will and purpose for us, who you and I are in his heart and fourthly, the thing I want to talk about today is, how we can respond to God. And as it turns out, that's the key to laying hold of the unlimited power that He has for us. Now some people think that all the Bible has to offer, is a bunch of rules and regulations. But as I've read my way through the Bible, what I've discovered is that, how we can respond to God isn't the main thing, it kind of drops out of all the other three; it's a natural consequence of who God is, His will and purpose, who I am and as we get our hearts around those things, well for me at least, my heart just wanted to explode and respond to Him. We're going to unpack this last one today because you know something; it's not a rules and regulations thing. I don't stay faithful to my wife because I have to, I do, but that's not why I stay faithful to her. I stay faithful to her because I want to; it's my response to her love and to our promise to one another. Not a difficult thing to do at all, because she loves me and one of the ways that I respond to that love is through my faithfulness to her. It's the same deal with God but you know something, it's not good enough to know that we ought to respond or even that we want to respond, we need to know how to respond. So often in marriages the husband wants to show love to the wife and the wife wants to show love to the husband, but they're actually two very different people and they don't know how. A lot of marriages fall apart simply because people don't know how to love one another. We were talking about teenagers earlier; nobody ever explained to me what was going on when I was growing up. You know, we start with a total dependence on our parents, we're a baby, we have breast milk, we're in nappies and progressively we grow to be independent of them. It's a natural thing to grow up and become an adult and to be independent of your parents. Jesus quoted the Old Testament, he said: Matthew 19:5 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they'll become one flesh. In those teenage years, we're kind of almost adults but not really, we're still dependant on our parents financially. We're still under their authority and discipline; we still live in their home. Those awkward in–between years are times when a lot of people rebel against their parents in all sorts of ways. You know the teenage roll of the eyes, 'I know it all and what would my parents know'. We continually do things parents ask us not to and we yet do them anyway. We leave the empty coke can on the sink or the underwear on the floor in the bathroom, whatever it is that a teenager does that drives their parents nuts, it's almost like if they know that it drives their parents nuts, they'll do it more. I did that. We establish a pattern of behaviour that's rebellious and so you get into a rut that you don't know how to get out of. In the short time we spent together, these young people and I, I just gave them some practical advice on how to honour their parents so that the blessing will flow to them. You know something; I think it's the same in our relationship with God. It's the little things we do or we don't do. The way we think, the way we behave, the way we hold onto things and the pride and the selfishness. We can understand God's love, perhaps we even understand what Jesus did on the cross for us but unless we know how to respond to that, we may not respond properly. And sometimes we know but we just can't bring ourselves to respond. The Apostle John explained how to love God: 1 John 5:3 This is love for God, to obey His commandments and His commands aren't burdensome because everyone born of God overcomes the world." Here's what a regular pattern of Bible reading and prayer has done for me: it's changed me progressively. Just when I'm going through a tough time in a relationship I read something like this, 1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love but perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears isn't made perfect in love, we love because God first loved us. If anyone says 'I love God' yet hates his brother, he's a liar because anyone who doesn't love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he hasn't seen and he has given us this command, "Whoever loves God must also love his brother. You know, when you're going through a tough relationship and you want to rip someone's head off, you pick up your Bible and you read that, you go 'God's speaking to me about how I should respond to His love.' Just when I'm struggling with this or that, I turn the next page and He speaks to me right into that struggle, right into that need, right into that 'I want to go my way' and God says, 'but if you want to respond to my love, this is my way. It's a much narrower path, it's a much more difficult path, but these are my ways and my ways are not always your ways, my thoughts are not always your thoughts'. His quiet, still voice speaks into our heart with a power and gentleness and calls us in His direction, not our own and for me it's always been that God's spoken to me in a way that my heart just wants to receive what He says. In a way that nobody else could speak and He does that through His Word, the Bible. He speaks in a way that changes me, that fills me and equips me and prepares me and encourages me. When I read God's word I'm not just a better preacher, I'm a better husband, I'm a better father, I'm a better work colleague. God teaches me how to respond. Now I have to tell you, this is still very much a work in progress and others no doubt are much further down the track than I am but that's not the point. Like a surgeon He's taking out the cancers, the cancers of sin, reconstructing, repairing, healing, encouraging. That's what happens when we go to Him and listen to what He has to say. He teaches us and shows us how to respond when we spend time in His Word – He just does! That's why there is such incredible power in the living Word of the living God.

They say that following Jesus isn't easy. And not just "they". In fact Jesus said that following Jesus wouldn't be easy. Because following Jesus means swimming against the tide of popular opinion. Following Jesus means, all too often … in fact most of the time … going in the opposite direction. That's why we need power … power unlimited … to follow Jesus. Last week on the program, we were chatting about the unlimited power that's available to you and me through God's Word. It seems like a bit of a crazy notion, this idea that you can find incredible power, unlimited power in a book. But the Bible, well … the Bible isn't just a book. It's the living Word of the living God and when God speaks, amazing things happen. This is what the Bible says about the Bible – two key verses that change everything about how we look at God's Word: Hebrews 4:12: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 2 Tim 3:16-17: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. It never ceases to amaze me how people who call themselves Christians think that they can live their lives in peace and joy and power and service … by never, ever opening the Bible. By never, ever drinking in the living, active Word of God that helps us discern the intentions of our hearts. Because let's face it, it's in our heart that we deceive ourselves. It's in our heart that we conceive sin and give birth to it. And so we do need teaching, we do need reproof and correction and training in righteousness in order to be proficient and equipped for every good work. What I've discovered in my life is that there are fundamental flaws and weaknesses in my personality, that, try as I might, I am powerless to change. And yet, when I let God's Word wash through my heart, when I allow the Holy Spirit to write God's Word on my heart, He does things that I could never do, He unleashes power … power unlimited … to do the things I cannot do. That's what happens when we listen to God through His Word. Because God calls into existence the things that do not yet exist (Romans 4:17). Think about it, how did God create the universe? God said "Let there be light and there was light." (Genesis 1:4) God said "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters. (Gen 1:6) God said "Let dry land appear" and it was so (Gen 1:9) God said … God said … God said … and so the universe was created. In other words God spoke the whole universe, the trillions of stars, the great lights, all the creatures and plants on the earth … God said … and it was so. That's the power of God's Word. And if that isn't power unlimited, I don't know what is. But … there always seems to be a "but" doesn't there? … but you and I, all too often, we want that power for all the wrong reasons. We want it to make our lives better, rather than to empower us to sacrifice our lives for Christ's sake. We want it to get ahead, to overcome this, to get that … rather than to take our Cross and follow Jesus. I said at the beginning of the program that Jesus said that following Him would be hard. Here it is: Matthew 16:24-26: Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life. Let me ask you plainly, quietly but very honestly: Why do you want God's power, God's unlimited power, in your life?  Is it in order to change the difficult circumstances, the difficult people the things out there, the things around you that are causing you grief? Or is it in order that God would change you, to empower you, to enable you to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth? Is it that the Holy Spirit would give you the power to take up your Cross and lay down your life, to potentially lose it all, for Christ's sake? This whole series of messages Power Unlimited, comes with a warning. Don't try this at home, unless you're prepared to lose it all because this wild, untamed, Jesus, is radically counter-cultural and He's calling His followers to a radical, counter-cultural life. A life that could cost you, will cost you, everything. Have a listen to these couple of encounters that Jesus had with the religious establishment. It's worth taking a few moments to see how Jesus upset the prevailing culture of His day: Matthew 12:1-8: At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath." He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath." He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, "Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?" so that they might accuse him. He said to them, "Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. Do you get it? This is what got Him killed. This is why they crucified Him … because He shone light where there was darkness; because He brought truth where there were lies … and that upset people. Have you noticed how vitriolic people, society, culture becomes when you stand up for the rights of the unborn child, or when you speak with love of the wonder of God's plan for marriage to be a sublime union between one man and one woman, or when you pull back from the filthy jokes that people tell at work? Have you noticed that? Or have you noticed about the "dangerous religious teachings" in schools that people talk about these days in the news … when it was Christians who are responsible for taking education far and wide across this globe, founding schools, founding hospitals, caring for the needy. Have you noticed? Jesus isn't calling you to an easy life my friend, make no mistake about it. You follow Jesus and you are going to upset people, and they will come against you like nothing else on earth. And what you're going to need the power for, is to make it through in love, to continue shining the light of God's love into this earth, despite the opposition, the persecution, the difficult people, the difficult circumstances. As Adrian Pass wrote: You're going to need the joy to bear the pain and sorrow. And yet, when we get God's Word into us, the promise of Jesus, the Son of God Himself, is this: John 15:7-8: If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.  Did you get that? If the Word of God abides in you, dwells in you, has say in you, and if you abide in Jesus – you can ask for whatever you wish – whatever – and it will be done for you. There it is. Power unlimited. But not to do the things that you want, because once God's Word abides in you, you'll be asking for the things that He wants. Let your will be done on this earth … as it is in heaven. Power unlimited.

One of the most perplexing questions that each of us faces in life at some point, is: Who am I? What was I made to do? All too often we go looking for the answers in all the wrong places, and the image that we build of ourselves, the understanding that we have of who we are, becomes twisted and distorted. That one thing has ruined … is ruining … many a life. One of the things that many people ponder in life is this question, "Who am I?" We have so many pictures and images of who we should be thrust under our noses each day … and yet none of them ring true, so we end up feeling a bit like refugees, lost. The media and the advertisers, they want to define success for us. They want to tell us what it means to be open-minded. They want to tell us what we should aspire to. They want to tell us what a happy, well adjusted family looks like, and what beauty looks like and what we have to achieve, who we have to be, what we have to look like, to be successful. They tell us if we don't look like this, we haven't made it, but we will if we buy their product and I don't know about you, but I can get so lost in that maze because my life never quite looks like those images of success that they wave under my nose. And we compare ourselves with other people, people who look successful and so often we come to the conclusion that we aren't. And so that question, "Who am I?" rattles around in that empty, hollow void inside. Who am I? Have you ever been to one of those fairs, you know where they have Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds and amusements and sideshows? And in side-show alley, they have those distorted mirrors. You know, you walk in front of one and you look all tall and skinny or short and fat or all wobbly and wavy. They're good fun for a little while, about a minute or two. But imagine, imagine if our mirrors at home were like that, all distorted … not good. I remember when I was working as an IT consultant one of the clients I used to work for, the front door of their offices had this glass that was a perfect distortion of me. It just made me look a bit slimmer and a bit taller, you know I could have stood in front of that door all day and looked at myself. We'd like to have a mirror like that at home, wouldn't we? Or would we? My hunch is, whenever we get a distorted image of ourselves, of who we are, that's not a good thing even if we happen to like the distorted image better than the real one. For example, the distorted image that society puts up that you can be whoever you want to be, it's all up to you, it's all out there, just go and be whoever you want to be. I'm 5 foot, 9 inches or 174 cm tall, so it doesn't matter how much I want to be a basketball player, I'm never going to be a basketball player. In fact there are some things in life that I am decidedly not good at. If I try to be those things, it would be a bad fit. Maybe that's why so many people aren't happy, because they're trying to do jobs or be someone that they're quite simply not cut out to be. Aspiring to something that we're never going to be any good at is one of the worst things that we can do in the world. I wonder if that's why there are so many people, who literally hate their jobs. I was looking at a recent 'job satisfaction' survey on the internet. Have a listen to these stats: 45% of workers say that they're either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. You know what that means? That means that 55%, or over half, aren't. Of those 45% who said they were happy, less than half again, in fact only 20% said that they felt really passionate about their jobs. That means that 80% of people don't feel passionate about their jobs and 33%, fully a third believed they'd reached a dead end in their careers, there was no hope for a future. 21% were eager to change careers. I think that these statistics are a tragedy. The vast majority of people aren't passionate about what they do every day. So many people aren't enjoying their lives. But …. let's look at the flipside of that coin. There's a whole bunch of people wandering around in life, believing with every fibre of their being, that they're worthless. 'Oh, I'm only a stay at home mum. I'm only a clerk. I'm not as smart or as good looking or as talented or as successful or as wealthy or whatever as the next person.' So many people and advertisers and product manufacturers and self styled guru's out there want to tell us who we should be and how we get there and if we aren't we need to get onto their program. Amidst all of that, here's a question, who am I? Who are you? In the cosmos, in the scheme of things, how do you define your worth and who you actually are? And if you're living your life that way, then you are living a powerless life. A life that will, ultimately, count for nothing. In a very real sense, that was the life that I was living, until I discovered what God said about me. How God sees me. What His view of me from Heaven's balcony looks like. And that's something that you find in the Bible over and over again. I want to set you a challenge today, to read Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 – only a few pages – and to write down all the things that just those three chapters say about you. Let me just give you the first few: You are a saint, grace and peace are yours, you are already blessed with every spiritual blessing, you were chosen before the creation of the world, predestined, adopted into God's family, redeemed, forgiven, God's grace is being lavished on you, wisdom and understanding are yours, God's will is made known to you … and we haven't even arrived yet, at the tenth verse of the first chapter. Do you get it? The Bible presents a radically different view of who you are. The Bible tells you who God says you are. So instead of believing the distorted images that the world reflects back at you, you can see, a crystal clear, accurate representation of who you are. As one of my Bible College lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, often used to say – you and I need to ditch our self image, and develop a faith image, by discovering and believing what God says about you. Because when you know who you really are, who you are in Christ, you will have laid hold of the power to be who God made you to be. It's a power that will completely and utterly and radically transform your life. You see God is no other pedlar of good philosophies or belief systems; He's not some distorted mirror of low self–esteem or unrealistic stereotypes. If God is truly God, if God made you and me, how does He see us? The answer to that question tells us who we really are. And not knowing who we are is like trying to navigate your place from A to B, with an inaccurate map. Blind Freddy can see that that's no way to live life. I come back again, to the many people I speak to about the problems that they're experiencing in life. When I ask them … how often do you read your Bible, they invariably tell me, in a low voice, with obvious embarrassment … Well, not very often. Okay then, so when was the last time you opened your Bible and spent just five minutes listening to what God wants to tell you? The answer? For many it's months and even years ago. Who am I? If that's a question that you want the answer to, a question let me say that you want the right answer to, if you want an accurate map for your life, then the only place that you're going to find it is in God's Word. Because when we come to His word, the Bible with questions like "Who am I?", His Spirit breathes those truths into our hearts. I can't do that for you, only you can do that with Him, only He can do that for you and that stuff is the stuff that's in the Bible because all of us who are led by God's spirit are children of God. So let me take you back to that challenge. Open your Bible, go to Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 in the New Testament. Read them. And write down everything that you find in those few sort pages that tell you who you are. I found thirty statements about my identity. Let's see how many you can find. Right them down, ponder them, believe them … and tell me then if you don't find power unlimited to live your life.

Many people, many Christians even, let me say, live directionless, rudderless lives. Their lives don't seem to be heading anywhere in particular. And at some point, as we realise that life is slipping by ever so quickly, that shocks us into realising that before long, this life will be over … and for what? You know one of the most common things that we all experience at some point or other in our lives, is this dilemma, this crisis if you will, of, well where is my life headed? I think it's because somehow we're hardwired to have hope for the future, to be able to look forward to a good future, to have a sense of significance, to make our mark in this world. Where is my life headed? … can become a question of quite some desperation. And for our lives to be headed in the right direction we need a few things to come together. The way we live, the things that we can control, and the things that go on around us, the ones we can't control. That's not easy. It's almost an impossible juggling act. But … what if God has a plan? What if He has a purpose in the things that we've been travelling through? What if there's meaning behind it all, and He does want to do amazing things and He does want to be involved in the choices we make today? What if? Wouldn't you want to tap into that? I mean, wouldn't you want to know? Wouldn't you want Him to speak those plans and purposes gently into your heart and let them make a difference for you, here and now? Just think … what a powerful way that would be to live. Yesterday we saw that the biggest thing that we can get out of the Bible is discovering God Himself, who He is, what He's like, how does He react to different situations and things? To me that is the greatest prize of them all, God Himself, getting to know Him, having a wonderful, rich relationship that just gets deeper and deeper as time goes by. Today I want to look at the second thing that I think the Bible is about, God's plans and God's purposes, both the big picture and specifically for you and me. The big picture is so important. What's Gods big plan? What's He up to? A friend and colleague of mine, Dr Graham Pratt, he and I were speaking a few years ago at an IT conference in Singapore. We were talking over coffee about some technology thing and he said to me, "Berni, context is so important, in fact in understanding something, context is almost everything." I'll never forget it, it's a pearl of wisdom. We want to know where our lives are headed, my life, my little piece of the puzzle, right? If we want to do that we need to understand the big picture; God's great plan as well as His specific plans and purposes for our lives. You know, when I read the Bible, the stories and the things that happened a long time ago, somehow God's plan for my life becomes so crystal clear. For me, life was just a 'here and now' thing. It was about wealth and career. In reality, it was empty, hollow, directionless. Where was it headed? What was the point? But when I encountered Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, when I started listening to Him by reading the Bible, I began to get a handle on God's big picture. A big picture that's best summed up in something that God says over and over again: I will be your God and you will be my people. (Exodus 6:7) From the beginning to the end of the Bible, you see God saying that and explaining it and sending Jesus so that it could happen. They're not just words on a page. This is the very heartbeat of God to call us back to Himself, to call us back home, here and now and for all eternity, despite our rebellion, despite the fact that we rejected Him, despite all our mistakes; to give us a new life, an eternal life that's not about rules and regulations but a relationship with Him. And right through the whole Bible you see Him engaging with people and drawing them closer, people just like you and me, people in their weaknesses and their failures and yet He loves them and touches them and reaches out to them. Okay, we see His anger too sometimes, you see God getting angry and yet despite that He still reaches out to people from in the midst of His anger and that's where we discover His grace and we see Jesus dying on a cross for you and me. As we read those stories over and over again, His heartbeat touches ours, His desire touches us, His grace wraps itself around us and through us. I've only just started to wrap my heart around that as I've spent twenty odd years listening to Him, hearing His words and His stories and His heartbeat in the pages of that wondrous book – the Bible. You know, you open the Bible and you read the story of Jesus dying on the cross and crying out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46) And from the pages of that book we hear God crying out to you and me, here and now; "Don't you realise how much I love you". And you know, as well as this big picture of God's engagement of all humanity and His plans for humanity as a whole, the thing that, for me, so often leaps off the pages of His word are His specific plans for me. Sometimes we think that 'Well, you know, God's stopped talking. God had the prophets in the Old Testament and He had Jesus in the New Testament and He had some Apostles in the New Testament … but that was back then. Today though, here and now God's stopped talking'. But when we're travelling through times that are uncertain, when we want to give up, when we're in a relationship or in a thing we thought God had called us into but now we're not sure, we need God to speak. I cannot tell you the number of times, in the early days, that I wanted to give up on this ministry of Christianityworks that I'm involved in. I can't begin to tell you. It all looked so impossible, it all looked so hopeless. How could this guy from the IT industry ever do this thing called 'sharing Gods love with people through the media'? It was incongruous but as I look back on it now, that regular habit of spending time in Gods word, day after day, is how He touched me and whispered in my heart 'just keep going'. That's what happens, you read God's word and you discover power … power unlimited … power to keep going with God's plan for your life. That's what happens. Just when I was rock bottom I remember one time, reading this: My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2,3) Another time, just when I was wondering whether or not to step out in faith by growing the ministry into Africa when we clearly didn't have the resources to do so, I opened up to the next chapter and read about Peter stepping out of the boat. He didn't wait for the storm to stop. No, he stepped out in the middle of the storm and walked on the water towards Jesus. Just when I was feeling so incredibly inadequate one tome, I read about how Peter and all the other disciples deserted Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. And yet Jesus still went on to use them to start this thing He called "the church". The Bible is full of this stuff and somehow God, through His Spirit, takes those stories and connects them with our lives and in our hearts we just know that God is speaking to us. There have been so many times when just when I needed a gentle touch from God … then I read about how He healed the leper or the blind person or the lame man. The Bible is full of God's promises and plans and purposes. And when we establish a regular habit of just spending some time in there with Him, His Spirit writes His promises and plans and purposes on our hearts with indelible ink, in a way that no person, no man or woman, no situation, no trial can ever rub them off. God Himself brings His word to life and that changes everything. So often I wonder where I'd be if I hadn't established a regular habit of reading Gods word. You know, it just doesn't bear thinking about.

God is so profoundly different to anyone or anything that this world has to offer. His ways are so different to our ways, and unless and until we have a personal encounter with the risen Christ, unless and until we encounter Jesus in our own, personal experience, our lives simply cannot be transformed. Who or what is God? Well you go out and ask different people and what you discover is that they have a picture of God in their heads that doesn't always have a whole bunch to do with who God actually is. It's almost like we reconstruct Him in our own image, to suit ourselves, to suit our own agendas, but let me ask you something, if God is God wouldn't it be worthwhile kind of figuring out exactly who He is? IF God has the power, is the power, to transform our lives, shouldn't we get to know Him? I mean, who is He really and how do you and I relate to Him? What if God is awesome and powerful and loving and kind and we spend the rest of our lives missing out on all that because we never really went after Him to discover who He really is? So how do we discover who God really is? This week on the program we're setting about laying hold of God's power to completely and utterly transform our lives. And the place that we discover that power, the place that God the Holy Spirit has made available for us to lay hold of that power – is His Word, the Bible. I mean reading the Bible was something I would never have done in a million years. What do you think I am, some wacky fundamentalist? But you know something, reading the Bible for myself has completely and utterly transformed my life. It didn't stunt me, it opened me up. It didn't narrow my mind; it opened me up to the wonder and the possibilities of life with God, to the power that God wants to unleash in my life. Over the last twenty or so years I guess I've spent a lot of time in that Book, in fact its 66 different books. I've had the chance to study and to learn and to think and to mull it all over and truly, in those twenty odd years I've really only scratched the surface. But the more I think about it, the Bible is basically about four things: Who God is, what He's like and how He reacts to things. What God's will and purposes are, what His plan is. Where my life is headed. It's about who I am, made in His image but how does He see me? Who did He make me to be? And … how I can respond to God. Some people think this last one, number four, is all that the Bible has to offer; just rules and regulations … but you know, as you read it for yourself, how to respond to God is quite simply not the main thing, it just kind of drops out at the end, it's the natural consequence of the first three. Those four things again are: who God is, what His will and purposes are, who you and I are in His eyes and how we can respond. That's what the Bible contains, it's real and it's practical, it's about life, it's awesome and it's exciting and it contains power … power unlimited to transform you, to transform your life, to heal you, to bless you, to empower you. Today I just want to look at the first one of those; who God is. I mean if God is God, shouldn't we figure out who He is? Who He says He is? Where better to do that, to search Him out, than that great love letter that He's written to you and to me, the Bible. It makes sense, doesn't it? When I first laid eyes on my wife Jacqui, when I first saw her from a distance, I was speaking at a Church and she was sitting in that congregation. As far as I was concerned, she was just another face in the crowd and had I never sought her out, I would never have come to know her and to have a relationship with her. So, I did seek her out and she responded to that. In a sense, picking up the Bible is seeking God out, it's the same thing, He responds. It's not a dead book written by men thousands of years ago. It's the living, active word of God and His promise is that when we pick it up, the Holy Spirit, God Himself, will bring it to life in our hearts. God promised that He would pour His Spirit out on all flesh and that He would write His words onto our heart. By far, the greatest reason for reading the Bible, is to encounter God Himself, to discover who He is, and how He sees things; what He's like and what He's up to. You see, it's easy to read this story or that in the Bible and say, "Well that was a story about King David" or "That one over there, that's the story about Moses or Peter or Paul". But so often in the pages of this great and mighty book, the great unseen player is God Himself and as I read every story, every verse, I keep asking myself, "What does this tell me about God Himself? What's He up to in this story?" Let's take just one example, it's a short story. God makes a promise to this man called Abram who is childless. You know, Abram's an old man, his wife Sarai is an old woman, they're childless and yet God has called them to go from their home on this huge journey. God's promised them children, a multitude of children, but it's never happened. It's gone on for years and years and years. Abraham's out of his comfort zone, he's on this long, uncomfortable journey and he's frustrated and this is what happens. After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the Lord came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6) It's really easy to read this story and imagine that it's a story all about Abram. But the real question that we should be asking is What does this short little story, tell us about God? Here's Abram. He's frustrated, he's waiting for a breakthrough that's not coming. He's trying to believe in God, but it's hard. I wonder if that sounds at all familiar to you? And it's going on for years and years and years and he and his wife are old and it's just absolutely impossible. But along comes God and He does this kind of gentle and kind and wondrous and patient thing with Abraham, He takes him outside to gaze up into this beautiful masterpiece called the Milky Way. Have you ever looked up at the stars away from the smog and the lights of a big city at night? It's incredible how many stars are up there and in the middle of Abram's frustration, God says 'Abram, look … look at this! This is how many descendants you're going to have. My promise will actually happen". And if you read the rest of this story, Abraham ultimately has a son, with his wife Sarah, called Isaac. He never saw all these offspring happen, he never saw the rest of the promise fulfilled in his life time, but here is this good and gracious and powerful God who takes a man in the middle of his frustration and just speaks lovingly to him. It's a story about God do you get it? It's a story about how God treats those who He loves when they're at the end of their tether. the Bible is full of those stories. You pick it up and you read them and wow, you discover who God really is. Do you see the power in that? Do you see how know God, and how in our small, limited way, coming to understand Him can make such a powerful difference to us, when we're lost and frustrated and clinging onto a promise … but only just? People often say to me, "Berni, you seem to be so enthusiastic about God." Can I tell you why? Because over the last couple of decades I've discovered Him in the pages of the Bible and discovered what He says about Himself there and those things have ended up being etched onto my heart, so that I can experience Him in my life. I can't help but be enthusiastic and you know, I can't help but wonder, where would my life be? Where would I be, if I hadn't laid hold of this power … power unlimited in the living Word of God?

The Bible tells us (Ephesians Chapter 1) That God has already made His incredible great power, His resurrection power, available to each and every person who believes in Jesus. So today, were going to take a look at what happens, when we lay hold of that power. As you can imagine, I speak with a lot of people. People who respond to this radio program, people I meet in my travels, people who've hear me speak and want to know how to apply it to their lives. And most people, come to me with a problem. This is working in my life … and I just don't know why. That isn't working in my life … and I don't know what to do about it. I want to follow Jesus … but Satan keeps on winning as he tempts me with this sin or that sin. Over and over again, I hear the same thing, the same question, the same problem, the same frustration in people's voices. Why isn't my life all that Jesus promised it would be?! It's a question that plagues many a Christ follower. It causes many to fall by the wayside. It causes many people to live a life that falls so far short of all that it could be in Christ. To my way of thinking, this is one of the greatest tragedies playing itself out in the Kingdom of God today. And just like many of the lifestyle and diet related illnesses that are killing people across the globe, this is a sickness that is completely avoidable. Here is what I see happening in God's Kingdom, amongst God's people. The societies in which we live are moving further and further away from God. Look at the United States. A country of religious freedom, founded by the pilgrims, who came to the land to have the freedom to worship God. A nation who, on its dollar bill, has the words "In God we trust". And now, a country, where it's illegal to pray at school, illegal for an officer in the military to share his faith or a Bible with a soldier, a country where four in ten unborn children are 'terminated' – that's a genocide of around 1.2 million children each year. I'm not just picking on the US of A … it's happening right around the globe. Societies founded on Christian love, as they become more secular, are shifting further and further away from God. And they're behaving as though this is progress. It's progress to allow one man to marry another man, or a woman to marry another woman. It's progress to allow a woman to choose whether or not to kill her unborn child. It's progress for women not to respect their husbands and men not to cherish their wives. And anybody who stands in the way of this so-called 'progress' is a narrow-minded, conservative bigot. And these sweeping changes are sweeping many a Christian along them. Christians en masse are forsaking a life based on God's Word, for a life based on the world's ways. And not just individual Christians, but preachers, Bible teachers, churches and denominations. And then we wonder why things aren't going so well for us in our lives. Really?! Back to the Bible International based in Lincoln Nebraska, is a ministry that I have been closely involved with now for a good many years. They in fact founded the ministry of Christianityworks that I now lead here in Australia, way back in 1957. Part of Back to the Bible is the Centre for Bible Engagement, which has conducted extensive research around the world on the impact in the lives of men and woman, who are engaged with God's Word on a regular basis. Remember, the Bible itself says that there is incredible power to defeat Satan, in God's Word: … our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17) The only offensive weapon in our spiritual armour given to us by God is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. All the other parts of the armour are defensive, which is good, but you don't win a battle by going on the defence. You have to go on the offence, you have to attack the enemy to defeat him. And the one tool, the one weapon that God has given us to do that, is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. So the Centre for Bible Engagement researched the spiritual lives of more than 100,000 people 21 countries, ranging from ages of eight to 80 years. They began with this question: What is it, of all the things that Christians do, that is the most powerful predictor of spiritual growth? When you think about it, Christians do a lot of things to express their faith. They go to church, they pray, the listen to sermons, they attend home groups, they give, they serve … and many more things. The Centre of Bible Engagement's research project wanted to find out which ones of those had the most impact in the life of a Christian. That's not a bad question to ask through a large, scientifically constituted, statistically valid, international research project. That's not a bad question to ask, for anyone who wants to lay hold the super-abundant life that Jesus promised (John 10:10) to give us. The conclusions of this research was as follows (and I quote from their report): The findings consistently show that engaging in the Bible four or more days a week is the single most powerful predictor of spiritual growth – and they defined spiritual growth as becoming less of the person I was before I committed my life to Jesus and more like Christ in my thoughts, words and deeds. In fact, I know Arnie Cole, the President of Back to the Bible pretty well. His background is as a professional researcher and statistician. And he said to me that statistically speaking, the correlation between engaging with God's Word, the Bible four times a week or more and spiritual growth, is stronger than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Just think about that. What powerful evidence of the importance of receiving, reflecting on and responding to God's Word having a powerful impact in changing our lives. Making the changes that we ourselves have been powerless to change. Let me come back to the Apostle Paul's reflection on this whole question of the power to change: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24) The answer is that only God can give us the power to change, the resurrection power to be able to live the born-again, new, super-abundant life that Jesus came to give us. What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4) Do you see? God's plan is for you to walk in the newness of life, the resurrection life made available to you through the Cross and the Empty tomb. And the power to live that life is something that you will find in the Word of God, as the Spirit of God breathes His Word into your heart: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (1 Tim 3:16-17) That's where you'll find the power to change – power unlimited. In God's Word. So … you have to ask yourself, why do so many Christians ignore their Bibles?!

Too many Christians, in fact, way too many Christians, are living lives that fall so far short of the life that Jesus promised. When Jesus promised power, they instead end up living a powerless life. I wonder if you know anyone like that. I wonder if this scenario sounds at all familiar to you. At some stage, way back when, you decided to believe in Jesus. Perhaps you, like me, can remember the day that you took that step. Or maybe like many people I know, you can't remember a time when you didn't believe in Jesus. So you've believed … and believed … and believed … and somehow life doesn't seem to get any better. You seem to have the same challenges, successes, failures … whatever, as all the other people you know who don't believe in Jesus. In fact, often times, they seem to be living a better life than you are and on top of that, they're not wracked by guilt the way you are, because by not believing in Jesus, they don't have to worry about the idea of temptation, or falling short of God's ideals, or any of that stuff. Does that sounded all familiar? Sadly, it's de rigour for many a Christian. Most Christians in fact. The Christian life doesn't seem all it's cracked up to be. Wasn't it Jesus who said: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10) So where is that abundant life (the original Greek word used there actually means super-abundant!) Where is this super-abundant life that Jesus promised us? Why is everything so difficult? Why is it that I'm not filled with the joy and the excitement that I first felt when I gave my life to Jesus? Can I tell you, I speak to a lot of people, all around the world, who come to me with basically that scenario; basically that same story. Here it is in a nutshell: I know that my life isn't what it's meant to be in Christ. I know that. But I don't know why. I don't know what to do about it. And that's why today we're kicking off a brand new series of messages called 'Power Unlimited'. Because the thing that's lacking in the lives of these people – perhaps in your life too – is the power to live the life that Jesus promised us. The devil comes along and whispers in our ear You're not good enough for God. And actually He's right. That's exactly what the Apostle Paul says of himself (and remember God called him to write almost half of the books of the New Testament). For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. (Romans 7:14-21) So Paul, as it turns out, has exactly the same problem that you and I have. But happily, he doesn't give up, because the old Paul, God bless him, also has the answer. The only answer that has the power to make a difference: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24) You see I have some very good news for you today. Listen carefully so you don't miss it: God has already placed within you all the power that you need, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus died and rose again to give you. God has already made the resurrection power, the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead, available to you, here and now, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus came to give you. I know, I know … you don't believe me. Good, you shouldn't believe me, it's not within my purview to grant you that power. But will you believe what God says in the Bible: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:17-22) Do you see? Paul's prayer for the Ephesians is that they would discover the immeasurable greatness of God's power for us who believe … the very same power that raised Christ from the dead. Each year we celebrate Easter, the death on the Cross (which receives most of the focus) and the resurrection (which frankly, we don't focus on as much). But this resurrection is the evidence of the immeasurably great power that is available to you and me, so that we can live a new life. The life that Jesus promised. As Bible teacher Casey Treat once said … we need to stop praying for power, and start praying with power, the power that we already have. One of my Bible college lecturers from years ago, Dr Barry Chant, once said that if he were to transliterate the original Greek words used there for immeasurably great power, it would sound something like this: hyperballistic, megathonic, dynamic power! Do you get it? Do you realise the immeasurable greatness of God's power that He has placed at your disposal to live your life for Christ? Hello, wake-up! And the purpose of this power, the whole point of this power, is to enable us to live the new life, the born–again life, the resurrection life, the super-abundant life, that Jesus came to give us. Yet so many Christians, most Christians, fail to live that life for one reason and one reason alone. Because they don't lay hold of that power. We live on a spiritual battlefield. The Apostle Paul puts it this way: … our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17) No I'm an old soldier from way back. And I can tell you that as I look at each of the elements of that spiritual armour that Paul lists there, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes, the shield the helmet, each of them those is a defensive piece of armour. Defence is important to protect yourself, but you don't win a war by defending. To win, you have to attack. And the only offensive weapon in that list is … what? The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God! That's the only attack weapon in the spiritual armoury that God has given you. And the truth is that most Christians leave it in its scabbard. They leave the sword of the Spirit at home, and then they wonder why the devil keeps on winning! And that … that's something we're going to talk a lot more about over the coming days.

We race through Easter. A long weekend, chance for a break. Maybe a trip to church … but then again, perhaps not. And to do that, we have to shield our eyes. We have to avoid looking at the cross. Because when you do, when you turn your eyes to Calvary, let me tell you, it's something you just can't ignore. Then Pilate took Jesus and had Him flogged and the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on His head and they dressed Him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to Him saying, 'Hail, king of the Jews', and striking Him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, 'Look I'm bringing Him out to let you know I find no case against Him'. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, 'Here, here is the man'. When the Chief Priests and the police saw Him they shouted, 'Crucify Him, crucify Him'. Pilate said to them, 'Take Him yourselves and crucify Him. I find no case against Him'. The Jews answered, 'We have a law and according to that law He ought to die because He has claimed to be the Son of God.' Now when Pilate heard this he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters and again asked Jesus, 'Where are you from?' But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore said to Him, 'Do you refuse to speak to me? Don't you know I have the power to release you and the power to crucify you?' And Jesus answered him, 'You have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.' From then on Pilate tried to release Him but the Jews cried out, 'If you release this man you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor'. When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, 'Here is your king'. They cried out, 'Away with Him, away with Him. Crucify Him'. Pilate asked them, 'Shall I crucify your king?' The Chief Priests answered, 'We have no king but the emperor' and he handed Him over to be crucified. So they took Jesus and carrying a cross by Himself He went out to what is known as The Place of the Skull which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified Him and with Him two others. One on either side with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put it on the cross, it read 'Jesus of Nazareth king of the Jews'. Many of the Jews read this inscription because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Then the Chief Priests of the Jews said to Pilate, 'Do not write "the king of the Jews" but "this man said, I am the king of the Jews".' Pilate answered, 'I have written what I have written.' When the soldiers had crucified Jesus they took His clothes, divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took His tunic. Now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, 'Lets not tear it but cast lots for it to see who will get it'. This was to fulfil what the Scriptures says, "They divided my clothes among them and for my clothing they cast lots." And that is what the soldiers did. Meanwhile standing near the cross of Jesus were His mother and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene."  When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loves standing beside her, he said to His mother, 'Woman, here is your son'. Then He said to the disciple, 'Here is your mother'. And from that hour the disciple took her in his own home. After this when Jesus knew that all was finished He said, in order to fulfil the Scripture, 'I'm thirsty'. A jar full of sour wine was standing there so they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to His mouth. When Jesus had received the wine He said, 'It is finished'. Then He bowed His head and gave up His Spirit. Since it was the day of preparation the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath especially because that Sabbath was a great day of solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed.  Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with Him but when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead they didn't break His legs. Instead one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and at once blood and water came out. He who saw this has testified so that you may believe. His testimony is true and he knows that he tells the truth. These things occurred so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, "None of His bones shall be broken." And again another passage of Scripture says, "They will look on the one whom they have pierced." After these things Joseph of Arimathea who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission so he came and removed the body. Nicodemus, who had come at first to Jesus by night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where He was crucified and in that garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid and so because it was the Jewish day of preparation the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. It's an amazing story. And I thought that on this day, the day that we call Good Friday, there was nothing to share with you, no words that I could possibly say that could come anywhere close to the power of this account. This Jesus, this Son of God who came to earth and became a man. Who grew up a Jew, who loved the loveless. He healed the sick, He blessed those who were cursed in this world, He taught those who didn't understand, He liberated those who were captive. Arrested, beaten, tried and found guilty. This Jesus who came for the people in that crowd, the people who just days had shouted Hosanna in the Highest as He rode into Jerusalem on that colt, the foal of a donkey. The people who now, whipped up by the religious leaders, bayed for His blood. These people are the ones that had Him crucified. Common, ordinary people. People in fact just like you and me. And there He died, bloodied and beaten, the death that I deserve for my sin. The death that you deserve for yours. He died that we might live again. He died to give us a new life, a life where for all eternity we might be with Him where He is and behold His glory. For this reason Jesus came, to die for my sin and for yours that we may have access once again to God the Father. To give you and me a new life. My slate wiped clean, completely clean. Forgiven by God. To give you a new life, your slate wiped clean, completely forgiven by God. But what a terrible price He had to pay this Jesus who knew no sin. In fact He became sin on that cross so that you and I might have a right standing with God. Greater love has no one than this, that He lay down His life for His friends. You are my friends, said Jesus, if you do what I command. Friend, this story of Easter is simple and powerful and profound. May you be blessed, may you be blessed richly as you drink in His blood red message of Easter. They don't call it the good news for nothing.

Judas Iscariot would have to be one of the most infamous men in all of history. The friend of Jesus who betrayed Him. The man who betrayed the Son of God. Have you ever wondered – what made him do it? What if I told you that the trigger, the straw that broke the camel's back, was a love of money?! All of us have experienced some time in our lives the betrayal of a friend. It's a terrible thing and in fact it is quite possibly the worst thing we could ever experience. When a trust is broken. When there's an infidelity or a betrayal where there should have been faithfulness and trust. Where there's hate where there once was love. Where there's strife where once there was peace. These are the most painful of all pains. The greater the love, the greater the trust that once was, the deeper and darker the betrayal. As I speak these words no doubt your mind turns to a betrayal in your life. Your heart remembers the darkness and the depth of the loss. That's because betrayal was never meant to be. And so when we talk about Jesus betrayal by Judas Iscariot, this man whom Jesus took to be one of His closest disciples, then this is the thing of which we speak. It's not just a story as familiar as it may be, it's a real human and spiritual drama based on betrayal and desertion. And as it turns out Judas wasn't the only one of the disciples who betrayed Jesus. When push came to shove they all fled, they all left Him completely alone in His hour of need. Jesus didn't just die on that cross, he was betrayed and He was deserted by His closest friends. Turns out He suffered in a whole bunch of different ways, in ways that we sometimes gloss over and miss and ignore. Betrayal is something that begins in the heart and that is exactly what happened with Judas Iscariot. Interestingly the thing that seemed to trigger it was money. Have a listen, John chapter 12 beginning at verse 1: Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus whom He'd raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for Him. Martha served and Lazarus was one of those at the table with Him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard and anointed Jesus feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume but Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, the one who was about to betray Him said, 'Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?' He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it. So there they were just six days before the Passover, less than a week before Jesus was arrested and tried, that money was playing merry hell in Judas' heart. Am I drawing too long a bow here? Well I don't think so particularly when you look at a similar thing that happened also in Bethany just four days later. Matthew chapter 26 beginning at verse 1: When Jesus had finished saying all these things He said to His disciples, 'You know that after two days the Passover is coming and the Son of man will be handed over to be crucified?' Then the Chief Priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the High Priest who was called Caiaphas and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill Him. But they said, 'Not during the festival or there may be a riot among the people'. Now while Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper a woman came to Him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it they were angry and they said, 'Why waste this for this ointment could have been sold for a large sum and the money given to the poor'. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, 'Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world what she had done will be told in remembrance of her.' Then one of the twelve who was called Judas Iscariot went to the Chief Priests and said, 'What will you give me if I betray Him to you?' They paid him thirty pieces of silver and from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus. So there it was. It was Judas' love of money that caused him to go out after the thirty pieces of silver and sell out the Son of God. It is the sin that triggered the crucifixion of Jesus, the love of money. And it wasn't long before the wheels were set in motion. John chapter 18 beginning at verse 1: After Jesus had spoken these words He went out with His disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden which He and His disciples entered. Now Judas who betrayed Him also knew the place because Jesus often met there with His disciples. So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the Chief Priests and the Pharisee's and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to Him, came forward and asked them, 'Who are you looking for?' They answered, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' Jesus replied, 'I am he.' Judas who betrayed Him was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, 'I am he', they stepped back and they fell to the ground.  Again He asked them, 'Whom are you looking for?' And they said, 'Jesus of Nazareth'. Jesus answered them, 'I told you I am he, so if you are looking for me let these other men go.' So the soldiers, their officer and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound Him. And of course Jesus was tried several times and unjustly eventually condemned to death. Judas suffered a lot as a result of this and actually he had a change of heart, we read in Matthew chapter 27 beginning at verse 3: When Judas His betrayer saw that Jesus was condemned he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the Chief Priests and to the elders. He said, 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.' But they said, 'What is that to us? See to it yourself.' So throwing down the pieces of silver in the Temple he departed and he went and hanged himself. Do you see how normal, everyday, human sin and frailty were involved in the arrest and the crucifixion of Jesus? How the lure of treasures of this world placed in Judas' heart and fanned by satan himself were at play here. You and I, we're so quick to cut ourselves some slack, to rationalise and justify our own sin and sweep it under the carpet. And yet it was your sin and mine that Jesus went to the cross to pay for. And one of the most common of all sins friend is this love of money. The delight in the riches of this world which rises up and sets itself above God in our hearts and our lives. That's what happened to Judas. He saw all this money being poured out on Jesus by way of these perfumes, he wanted that money, he wanted money and so he went and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Friend, sin is as insidious as it is dangerous. It is all the sort of sin that God views so gravely that He sent His Son to die for it so that you and I might be forgiven. We can fool ourselves sure but only for so long. At some point we come to the painful realisation that Judas Iscariot came to. That it just ain't worth it. That setting up other gods above the one true God is just about the dumbest thing that you and I could ever do in our lives. And maybe, just maybe right now as we're heading towards Easter you and I have the opportunity to ask ourselves, are we in that position? Is there something in our lives that we're setting up above God? Are we, in anyway shape or form, like Judas? Because no sin is small sin, it starts as a seed, it festers, it grows and before we know it its fully blown sin which leads to death. Judas discovered that, when we do that it has the most dire of consequences. Let me ask you to examine your heart, is there something that you are placing above God because if there is it's time to let it go?

You discover a lot about someone when you see how they react under pressure. That's when you see the real man or the real woman. And one of the things that Jesus does just before He's to be crucified is that He prays. Question is – who or what does He pray for? Now that's an interesting question, because the answer tells us an awful lot about Jesus. Prayer is something that most of us, well we don't have time for, right? I mean life's busy, we're under pressure and so we're just flat out getting through life. The idea of spending twenty minutes or half an hour or maybe even an hour praying each day, well I guess that's nice, maybe it's good for the minister to pray every day, I mean after all it's what we pay him for but me, I'm just under too much pressure, I don't have time. And you know when we're in a difficult place if we do pray then the things that we're praying fervently about are the things that are putting us under pressure. If it's a financial thing we pray for that. If it's our children we pray for them. Whatever's affecting our little world that's where the focus of our prayer is. Imploring God, make a difference, fix this up. Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, we should take our problems and our pressures to God, we should lay them at His feet and ask Him for His help, all good. That's why when Jesus prays just before He's about to be handed over and crucified, that's why this pray completely blows me out of the water. John chapter 17. The theologians call it the "high priestly" prayer. Bit much for me. Here is Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of man, praying to His Father in heaven just before He's about to be nailed to that cross. What do we imagine He's praying about? Who or what is He praying for? I know who I'd be praying for I have to tell you if I were in His shoes. So let's go and have a listen, it's rather a long prayer but it's a beautiful one and it's worth eavesdropping to see who or what He prayed for. Come on, let's have a listen and carefully, who's He actually praying for? After Jesus had spoken these words He looked up to heaven and said, 'Father, the hours come, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you. Since you have given Him authority over all people to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. I have made your name known to those whom you gave to me from the beginning from the world. They were yours and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you for the words that you gave to me I have given to them and they have received them and they know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me. I'm asking you on their behalf, I'm not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me because they're yours. All mine are yours and yours are mine and I have been glorified in them. And now I'm no longer in the world but they are in the world and I'm coming to you. Holy Father protect them in your name that you have given me so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. But now I'm coming to you and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I've given them your word and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world just as I do not belong to the world. I'm not asking you to take them out of the world but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. So they do not belong to the world just as I don't belong to the world. Sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth as you have sent me into the world so I have sent them into the world and for their sakes I sanctify myself so that they also may be sanctified in the truth. I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word that they may be all one. As you Father are in me and I am in you may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them so that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, they may be completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also whom you have given to me may be with me where I am to see my glory which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father the world doesn't know you but I know you and these know you that you have sent me. I made your name known to them. I will make it known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.' So, a long prayer but who's He praying for? Well for His disciples and not just for His disciples back then but actually for us here and now. Very specifically, did you pick that up? Let's have another look, verse 20: I ask not just on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may also be one. Well we've believed in Jesus through the word of the disciples so Jesus is praying for us quite specifically here. Jesus is praying for you and for me. Friend I love doing what I do. I love being part of bringing the word of God to you and I'm so blessed in the knowledge that from time to time in different people's lives God uses the foolishness I preach to transform them. Truly I've dedicated my life to that BUT I have to be honest here, I am struggling to imagine myself on death row about to be nailed to a cross praying for you instead of me. Do you get my point? Maybe the Spirit of God will fill me in a way where I could do that but I have to be honest here I'm thinking I'd probably be praying about saving my own skin. And yet here Jesus, just before He's about to suffer the most gruesome death, is praying for you and for me. And what's He praying? That God would protect us from the evil one so that you and I could be one just as Jesus and the Father are one. You discover what's in a man's heart when you see how he reacts under pressure. The real man, the real woman comes out when we're under pressure. And here we discover the real Jesus. Jesus is so passionate about you and me, so passionate about making us one with Him and with the Father, so passionate about uniting us in His body the Church as one that He would lay down His life to achieve that passion. Just stop and think about that for a moment, let it sink in. If someone said, "Would the real Jesus please stand up?", well here in John chapter 17 in this beautiful prayer, this is where we discover the real Jesus, the heart of God beating. Glory for Him isn't about being on a throne, being glorified is about being nailed to a cross so that you and I could be part of His glory. Do you see how sad it is when we just breeze through Easter as though it's just another holiday or maybe a religious festival? I've heard the story so many times, I mean I know how it ends but do you see the tragedy of that? Of missing the heart of God, of missing what Jesus is all about in coming to be a man to suffer and to die and to rise again. Because there's a point to it all. That we are invited to a completely new life, a life based on the sacrifice of Jesus that includes being one with God with an intimacy that we could never have imagined. Just in the same way as Jesus and the Father are one. It includes a unity and a fellowship and a family of God's people being one with them. It includes beholding the glory of God for all eternity, being with Jesus where He is forever. That's why Jesus went to the cross. That's why we celebrate Easter. That's why sailing through as though it's just another holiday is such a tragedy.

Back in those few days leading up to that very first Easter, the Disciples were afraid. Petrified in fact. There was a plot afoot to assassinate Jesus. That was bad enough. But were they in the firing line too? Were they going to die too? And into that little mess, Jesus spoke to them about joy and peace. The days leading up to that first Good Friday, which incidentally at the time must have felt anything but good, they were frightening days. Not for Jesus. Of course His impending crucifixion weighed heavily upon Him but He didn't seem to be afraid since He knew where He was going and what He had to do. But His disciples, they were very definitely afraid. Why? Not just because they felt the plot to assassinate Jesus, not just because they were aware of the under currents and the plotting and the scheming and the conniving that was afoot to rob them of this amazing Jesus but because their lives were under threat too. I mean they were His disciples, they were widely recognised as being the inner circle of Rabbi Jesus followers. That's why Peter ended up denying Jesus three times because he feared for his own life. So while on these days leading up to Easter you and I may well be looking forward to a long weekend and a rest and having just a bit extra chocolate that frankly our waistlines and cholesterol levels just don't need, these disciples of Jesus were living in fear. Fear not just of losing Jesus but fear of losing their own lives, fear of their whole belief system collapsing. Everything they'd dedicated their lives to these last three and a half years and fear for their own skin. No, that Friday looked anything but good and it's into this reality, this fearful reality that Jesus speaks these words to His disciples. John chapter 16 beginning at verse 16: 'A little while and you won't see me any longer and again a little while and you will see me.' Then some of His disciples said to one another, 'What does He mean by saying "In a little while you'll see me no longer and again in a while you'll see me, because I'm going away to the Father?"' They said, 'What does He mean by this "a little while"? We do not know what He's talking about.'  Jesus knew they wanted to ask Him so He said to them, 'Are you discussing amongst yourselves what I meant when I said "A little while and you'll no longer see me and again in a little while you'll see me?" Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn but the world will rejoice and you will have pain but your pain will turn to joy.' When a woman's in labour she has pain because her hour has come but when her child is born she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you. On that day you'll be asking nothing of me. Very truly I tell you if you ask anything of the Father in my name He will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive so that your joy may be made complete. I've said these things to you in figures of speech but the hour's coming when I'll no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name and I do not say to you that I'll ask the Father on your behalf for the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me and believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into this world. Again I am leaving the world and going to the Father.' His disciples said, 'Yes now you're speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech. Now we know that you know all things and do not need to have anyone question you. By this we believe that you came from God'. Jesus answered them, 'Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come when you'll be scattered, each one to his home and you will leave me alone yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution but take courage I have conquered the world. Now as I put myself in the shoes of these disciples, this rag tag group of fishermen and tax collectors, uneducated yokels by and large who had fallen for Jesus, I have to say what Jesus just said to us, its frightening and confusing, it just doesn't make sense. For a little while and then I'll be gone and then you'll see me again and then I'll speak plainly instead of in riddles and you're going to suffer pain but your pain will turn to joy. I mean give me a break Jesus, I would have been saying, can you please, please tell me exactly what you mean. So are you saying the forces of darkness that are plotting against you, they're going to win? Is that what you're saying? And if it is so what about all your miracles? What about all the amazing things that you told us and taught us, is this how it's all going to end? Are we just going to be left behind? And how can you come back again from all of that? Do you think in this fearful confusing time, isn't that what you and I would be thinking and wanting to ask Jesus? Why are you promising me pain? Why are you doing this if you're the Messiah? I left everything to follow you and now it's all falling in a screaming heap and what about me? What's going to happen to me? Am I going to die too or do I just go back to the fishing boat and forget the last three and half years of sacrifice? The hour is coming, indeed it has come when you'll be scattered, each one to his home and you will leave me alone. Yet I'm not alone because the Father is with me. Why is He telling me this stuff? Why is He doing this? Jesus? I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. For in this world you will face persecution but take courage for I have overcome the world. Jesus was telling them things just the way they were. And I love that about Him. He's never one to sweep things under the carpet or to coat them in sugar or to hoodwink us with some false reality that we're all floating around like angels on cloud nine. Jesus came to do something tough and brutal. So seriously does God take our sin, yours and mine, so big a deal is it to Him that our sin separates us from Him for all eternity. So great is His love for us and His desire for us to spend from now until the rest of eternity in His presence that He sends us His one and only Son to be brutally nailed to a cross for thee and for me. That's how big a deal my sin and your sin is for God lest we should ever be inclined to think we can just sweep our little sins under the carpet. And He speaks into their fear with words of confidence in His Father and with words of peace. For in this world we will all have tribulation, we will be persecuted, the going will get tough, it will be difficult and fearful and confusing and unpredictable. That word there for persecution, the Greek, is the word Thlipsis which means literally to be put under pressure like grapes in a wine press, to have the juice, the life squeezed out of you. That's what He's talking about. And I know you're going to travel through all of this and I know it isn't going to make sense and I know you're going to be afraid but as you're in this place remember my words because I'm coming back for you. I haven't left you alone. You won't be orphaned. I'm telling you the truth, the way things are, in this world you will be under pressure but take courage, be strong, gird up the loins of your heart for I have overcome the world. Jesus has won. He defeated sin on the cross. He defeated death in the empty tomb and He has said these things and done these things so that in the middle of our fear and our pain and our tribulation we might have peace. Shalom. A complete peace and trust and confidence in Jesus.

Just before He was betrayed, Jesus got down and washed the dirty, smelly feet of His disciples. Have you ever wondered how you'd react if He knocked on your front door tonight and offered to wash your feet? I'm not sure I'd be that keen to let Him do that … but as it turns out, that's exactly what He came to do! An amazing week coming up this week. Not just here on the program but in life generally as we head towards Easter. Here we are on the Monday before that Friday where we celebrate, oh maybe celebrate isn't quite an apt choice of words here, when we remember that Jesus was nailed to that cross. We call it Good Friday but back then it didn't look too good, it didn't feel too good and those days and weeks leading up to that fateful day, a day on which the whole of the history of humanity pivots. They were tense and dangerous days and for the disciples it was quite a frightening time. And so today and over the coming days we're again going to spend some time just travelling alongside the disciples, seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard and hopefully feeling what they felt. Why? Well that's simple. Because I for one am sick of kind of just zooming through Easter as though it's just a long weekend and a religious celebration, a time for some extra chocolate which truly I just don't need. No this Easter thing is huge, I mean it's huge and my hunch is that as we walk beside the disciples, as we're going to do by recounting the Apostle John's account of events through the Gospel, my hunch is that Gods Spirit will touch our hearts with a fresh revelation and what it is that our mighty God was up to. And today we're going to take a look at this thing that Jesus did of washing His disciples feet, what was that all about? John chapter 13 beginning at verse 1: Now before the festival of the Passover Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart from this world and to go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world He loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Him. And during the supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off His outer robe and tied a towel around Himself. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciple's feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around Him. He came to Simon Peter who said to Him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" And Jesus answered, "You do not know what I'm doing but later you will understand". Peter said to Him, "You'll never wash my feet" and Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share in me". So Simon Peter said to Him, 'Lord, not just my feet but also my hands and my head'. Jesus said to him, 'One who has bathed does not need to wash except for the feet but is entirely clean and you are clean though not all of you', for He knew who was about to betray Him and for this reason He said, 'Not all of you are clean.' After He'd washed their feet and He put His robe back on again and He returned to the table He said to them, 'Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord and you are right for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.  Very truly I tell you servants are not greater than their masters nor are messengers greater than the one who have sent them. If you know these things you are blessed if you do them. I'm not speaking of all of you, I know whom I have chosen but it is to fulfil the Scriptures that "The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me." I tell you this now before it occurs so that when it does occur you may believe that I am He. Very truly I tell you whoever receives one whom I send receives me and whoever receives me receives the one who has sent me. So there's Jesus, the Son of God, He washes the feet of His disciples on that night as they celebrated the Passover meal together in the upper room and literally just hours before He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was a difficult time, a dangerous time. I suspect the disciples had never celebrated the Passover quite in this way, with this dark cloud of danger and betrayal and fear and death hanging over them. The thing we can so often forget is that they knew there were plots afoot to kill Jesus and they simple couldn't imagine that happening after having seen Him do all the things He'd done. The miracles, the acts of kindness and after having heard all that He had to say, the wisdom and the truth and the love in His words. But that wasn't all, they were afraid for their own lives too. Would they be arrested? Would they be tried and crucified too? So they eat the meal, roast lamb with the bitter herbs and unleavened bread and they drink the wine and then Jesus gives them a foot bath. Now think about this, the Son of God girds up His loins, gets a bowl and a bath and washes their grubby smelly feet. And they were really grubby and smelly. These people had been walking out their on the roads with animal excrement and dust and dirt wearing just sandals. Who knows how long and how dirty their toenails were. I mean let's get real here right? This wasn't some nice clean safe sanitised religious ritual. This was a grubby, dirty, smelly thing that Jesus was doing, washing their feet and He, the Son of the living God. Do you see how low He was prepared to bow? Do you see how humble He was? And He didn't just wash the feet of those disciples who loved Him, He washed the feet of that one disciple, Judas Iscariot, who had already plotted to betray Him and sell Him out to the authorities. Judas the assassin who'd taken thirty pieces of silver for the life of Jesus. Jesus washed his feet too. And Peter had the reaction that I think I would have had. Peter said to Jesus, "You will never wash my feet". In other words, it's just not right. You're the Lord, you're the Messiah, you're the Son of God, what are you doing washing my feet? It's not right. This reaction, it was a reaction against grace so Jesus answered him; Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. So Peter being Peter gets this quickly and dives in boots and all and says, "well Lord, not just my feet but my hands and my head". No Jesus was right, they didn't understand what He was up to but this act of complete servitude, complete humility, complete stepping down off the throne of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and washing their feet was a symbolic act. It was acting out the grace of the cross which was about to come. It was explaining in a way that one day they would understand looking back on it, what the cross was all about. Jesus became a nothing and a nobody. Jesus bowing His life down at our feet in order that we might be saved. And the whole point of grace is that it's not right, it's not just, it's completely wrong, it's completely the wrong way round that Jesus should have to suffer on that cross and to die for my sin and my rebellion and yours. On that cross He died my death, the death that I deserve and yours. Completely unfair, completely the wrong way round and we could protest, we could say that's unjust but no doubt He would answer: Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. Unless we accept what He's done for us, He who knew no sin becoming sin so that we might be completely right with God, unless we accept that and trust in that and believe in that with all that we are then quite simply we will have no share in Jesus.

Anger is an interesting thing – it comes from our sense of justice. Even God gets angry. Problem is, sometimes our sense of justice can be a little distorted. So when we experience anger – what can we do with it? Anger is one of those basic facts of life and in many respects it's a natural reaction to a whole range of situations. Sometimes we think that anger in and of itself is wrong, well that's not so. See, God gets angry so either God is a sinner or anger itself is not a sin. Hmm, makes you think doesn't it? I passionately believe that Jesus Christ came and died for my sins and yours and that He was and is utterly perfect. A perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. And yet when He went to the temple in Jerusalem and saw that they had turned it into a bizarre He was angry, He made a whip and turned over the tables and drove the traders out of the temple with that whip. Of course God is a loving God but God is also a god of anger and ultimately, of punishment. So is anger right or wrong in our lives and what do we do with that anger? Well, well let's take a look at the anatomy of anger today. Basically it goes something like this: I've been wronged by someone, I therefore feel angry, they owe me some recompense so I'm going to respond in anger to obtain vengeance. That's kind of the cycle and in a sense, anger comes out of our sense of justice. Of course, as we've seen on the program this week we can have quite a distorted sense of justice sometimes. We can be touchy or selfish and throw tantrums and so even though actually sometimes we haven't been wronged, people just fall short of our expectations or, or we're being selfish and we feel wronged and then anger, justice and vengeance take hold in our hearts. Sometimes people do things that are clearly wrong and we're angry, okay how do we respond? The other day on the program we read this passage from the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 26. It says: Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil. In other words, sometimes we get angry, God knows that. The question is whether we dwell on it and let it fester over night and tomorrow and the next day and over and over and over and in doing so, whether we make room for the devil to distort our sense of justice and then this root of bitterness takes hold in our lives OR whether, like God, we're "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." See, anger itself isn't a sin, God is angry with those who turn their backs on Him. You see that over and over and over again throughout the Bible. Let me read you just one example of God's anger, this is about Israel, Gods chosen people and it comes from the book of Judges chapter 2, verse 12: Israel forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt. They followed and they worshipped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook Him and they served Baal and the other gods. In His anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to the raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them just as He had sworn to them. They were in great distress. See, this is God's response to His people forsaking Him but it's a right response. God never gets angry without just cause and this anger of God against Israel comes from God's sense of justice. He had a relationship with Israel, they were His people, He was their God and He said: I'm a jealous God; you will have no other Gods before Me. You will worship me and me alone. And of course Israel turns away from God and does these horrible things and they experience Gods anger and yet the wonder of God is that He's slow to anger and ready to forgive. You know ultimately, when you and I harden our hearts against Him and our ways against Him, like Israel we will experience His anger. So how do we make sense of all of this? God gets angry but we shouldn't? Remember anger has its roots in our sense of justice. That much we get from God because we're made in His image. And of course, as I said, God never gets angry without just cause. The problem is, we can't say the same thing about us. Our justice gyroscope is so often out of balance and then, when we do experience anger we want to wallow in it and work it over and over in our heads and seek revenge and in doing that we make room for the devil. Anger is a natural reaction and in some cases it's the right reaction the problem is, when you or I are the injured party our sense of justice is questionable at best and whacky at worst. So what do we do? How do we handle it when we feel that we've been wronged and we want revenge? We want recompense, we want justice to be done, how do we handle that? Well, God tells us in Romans chapter 12 beginning at verse 17 have a listen, he says: Don't repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what's right in the eyes of everybody. If its possible, as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. Don't take revenge my friends but leave room for Gods wrath for it is written, "It is mine to avenge and I will repay," says the Lord. To the contrary: If your enemy is hungry feed him, if he's thirsty give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. In other words leave the "justice" thing to God, leave the satisfaction, the recompense, the vengeance as God puts it, to God because His sense of justice is so much better than ours and in any case who knows what He's up to in that person's life? Only He does. When someone hurts us our initial reaction may well be anger, the same anger that God feels when He sees injustice. The thing that's wrong is for us to repay that evil with another evil, 2 wrongs maketh not a right and God's saying here, "Don't take revenge but leave room for Gods wrath." Leave room for God to act because Gods justice is so much better than ours, instead bless your enemy. If they're hungry feed them, if they're thirsty give them something to drink, show them grace. Now we may never see the justice but then that's why Jesus died for you and me, that was so unjust but on that cross justice meets love and its called grace. Grace has been shown to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on that cross, a grace He now calls us to show to others. Yes, you and I will experience anger from time to time but we're not to repay evil with evil, leave that bit to God. Forgive, forget, live life to the full and bless people, even the people that hurt us, with the grace that God has shown to us. You know something, I don't think that's too bad a plan, what do you think?

It is so easy to go from cool, calm and collected one minute into a temper tantrum the very next. Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde. But God has some really practical advice on how to handle that. When you get a group of people together there seems to be, well, two sorts of people there. First there's the person who talks all the time, never shuts up and the other is the person who almost never says anything in the group. Somehow it seems that not many people seem to get the balance right, the balance between talking and listening and often the people who are really quiet in the group can be quite vocal even aggressive in a one on one situation. Well take for instance when someone provokes us, you know when they do something and you can feel your blood boiling and you go all red in the face, right at that moment it's so easy to spit out something venomous, words we can't take back, words that damage a relationship. Sometimes when we're provoked we can be a bit quick on the draw when it comes to responding. I want to share a story with you, I remember once as a consultant  (I used to run an IT consulting firm with some partners before I became a Christian. Quite a few years ago now) I was being mucked around by a large and important client of a particular ethnic heritage. I was dealing with him for months trying to kick off a project that meant a lot of money for our firm, it was a large global organisation and after months of investing time and effort with the people and with their management they pulled the plug on the project. I remember I was sitting in my office and I received an email from one of our consultants working with me on this particular project, explaining that the client had decided not to go ahead. I just blew my stack, I couldn't believe that they had wasted so much of our time and resources and it wasn't fair and we were losing all this revenue and I tell you, I am not afraid to admit, I had a few choice sentiments that I almost expressed in a reply to that email to my fellow consultant. I even typed this angry venomous email. I was just about to send it and I thought better of it and instead I erased all of that and I sent a fairly benign email. Well, it's just as well because I hit the "reply to all" button on the email, and the email ended up not only with my fellow consultant but also with the client. Gulp! Can you imagine, if my thoughts of anger had been included in this vitriolic angry email, what would have happened? Now you might say, "Berni, why are you sharing this stuff with us?" It's simple because we all go through situations day by day by day that make us angry. People, organisations, circumstances drive us insane and we want to explode. Just the other day I was staying at a place and the houses were fairly close together and it was a little holiday place and a neighbour, a few doors down, had their music on really loud, I mean really loud. Couldn't sit in our lounge room and just talk so I just went down and asked them if they wouldn't mind turning it down. Well, you should have heard what came out of that guy's mouth. Just a simple thing, their music was too loud and obviously they'd never been taught to take other people into account and the vitriol, the words, the venom that came out of his mouth and now he just ignores me and I just asked him to turn it down and I thought, "hang on, you're missing something. You were the guy who was doing the wrong thing!" And you know what I wanted to do? I just wanted to explode at him, I just wanted to tell him what I really thought, I wanted to teach him a lesson, I wanted to teach him some manners. You know the feeling don't you? And then he ignores me, he was the one that did wrong. Now I'm really glad that I went through that experience and as hard as it was, can I tell you? Every fibre of my being wanted to tell this guy what I thought, as hard as that was I didn't say anything because exploding is never a good look, never but this feeling of anger is something we all experience. Some people more than others, some people are like on a hair trigger, anything will set them off, anger and tantrums are an ugly thing. We're talking about anger management on the program this week and there's some really great practical input from Gods word that I want to share with you today. Comes from James in the New Testament chapter 1, verse 19. It says this: My dear brothers take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry because a mans anger doesn't bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore get rid of all the moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you. Isn't this really practical, it's special? God's solution to this whole anger thing, 'Be slow to speak and slow to become angry.' Slow down! Every time someone does something that annoys us we don't have to react this instant. We don't have to rip their heads off; we don't have to send an angry email. Maybe this is where the advice comes from "count to ten" you know. Interesting, throughout the Bible nine times you'll find these words or ones very similar: The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger abounding in steadfast love. I'll read it to you again; this comes from Psalm 103, verse 8: The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. What a great concept, firstly He's compassionate and gracious, He's slow to anger. Just hold on for a minute, cut this person some slack, this man who wouldn't turn his music down. If I'm behaving like God I'm going to be slow to anger and the abounding and steadfast love bit, you know what I've decided to do? I've decided to pray for this guy regularly 'cause that's what Jesus says, "Pray for your enemies." And be slow to speak. Just don't say anything, don't defend or assert or criticise or judge or belittle or shout or scream or anything. Don't! Be slow to speak. Now that's not easy, it begins with a change of heart; it begins by deciding that my anger is my problem. It begins by me resigning from the position of "tin pot little god at the centre of the universe". It begins by deciding the world doesn't owe me anything. Being slow to anger and slow to respond and when we do respond, what should we say? I love this, this bit from Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1: A gentle answer turns away wrath but a hard word stirs up anger. You know when someone's done us wrong the last thing we want to do is give them a gently answer, it just so cuts across the grain. We want to get recompense but Gods wisdom is that, 'a gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up even more anger'. This is Gods wisdom and it's really hard, it goes against the grain to bite our lip when someone else does something wrong. It's so hard sometimes to respond in love, I find it hard. Each time becomes a little easier, each time heals a relationship, each time people notice and one day the relationship can be so strong that we have the ability to influence this person who hurt us with the love and the mercy and the grace of God. It's hard to deal with anger but there's a right way and the wrong way. The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger abounding in steadfast love.

Every now and then – we all throw a temper tantrum. And so often it's over the craziest little things. A hot temper isn't a good look. So – how do you deal with it? How can you conquer it? Now when we're bringing up children we expect them to have temper tantrums. They're never fun of course but a temper tantrum is part of growing up. It's a part of the process of moving from immaturity to maturity, of discovering how to exercise the responsibilities that come with new freedoms and that's why I believe Gods plan is to put children into loving families so that mum and dad who are more mature and who love the child are there to guide the child through that growing process and the love bit helps us to absorb the pain and the inconvenience of the tantrums along the way. It's something that I think none of us really appreciate until we become parents ourselves. Now temper tantrums are par for the course for a child or a teenager but what about an adult, what about a person who is supposed to have matured and learned how to control their emotions? And when you or I have a temper tantrum do we just shrug our shoulders and say, "oh well' or is it something we need to deal with?" We've all been there haven't we? Having our little temper tantrum and 99% of the time they're over silly little things. If we were truly honest with ourselves we'd stand back and say, "well, that was dumb wasn't it? Why did I bite my wife's head off over something small? Why did I snap at my husband because of this tiny little thing?" For me it's the fact that I'm a perfectionist, it's just the way I am, it was the way I was brought up. Our school motto was "Age quod agis" which means "whatever you do, do well" or "if it's worth doing it's worth doing properly". So I always fold and hang the bath towels perfectly, when I'm dusting I pick up things on the shelf and dust under them instead of dusting around them, I'm always on time and normally five minutes early, I always put the milk back exactly the same spot in the fridge not in a different place, the knives in the knife block, each one has to be in its place. When you're a person like that God is going to make absolutely sure that He puts you in a family and into a work place into a Church where there's at least one person who's completely at the opposite end of the spectrum. Someone who's not neat and tidy, someone who's not always on time. It's an absolute dead certainty that God's going to do that. And it doesn't matter what personality type we are He's always going to make sure that we rub up against someone who's different and that is sometimes going to drive us nuts if we let it. That's where so many people have their temper tantrums, right in that place of difference. Instead of standing back and realising those differences we just react like Pavlov's dogs, stimulus: response, stimulus: response, stimulus: response. It's a vicious cycle that leads to anger and temper tantrums. Someone does something that flicks our switch off we go with this temper tantrum. I wonder if you can relate to this. My daughter Melissa works part time on a check-out in a large department store and every time she comes home at least one customer had to have a temper tantrum at the counter over something. Let's get a revelation today; we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people who are going to do imperfect things. At the department store, on the road, at work, at home, at Church, everywhere we go. And we can either have temper tantrums or decide, you know something I actually want to have some peace in my life. I want to enjoy my life and you know something other people's failures are not going to rob me of that peace. Other people falling short of my expectations are not going to rob me of that peace. You know something we want everyone to be just like us, we want everyone to see the world just the way we see the world and it's never going to be like that. There's a wonderful little Proverb, if you want to read it it's in the Old Testament Proverbs chapter 29, verse 22: An angry man stirs up dissention and a hot-tempered one commits many sins. If we have a bit of a temper maybe today's the day we need to admit that and it's time to deal with it. It's time to get things into perspective. You see those little things that we get upset about 99.9% of them just don't matter, really they don't. I need this perhaps even more than you do. Temper tantrums are a sure sign that we need to do some growing up. I tell you something God wants three things for our lives, a deep relationship with Him, the deep joy that comes from that relationship and for that relationship to bear good fruit in our lives, fruit that other people can be blessed through. It's how He works, that's how Gods economy runs and temper tantrums are a sure sign we haven't come to grips with the main currency of that economy, the currency of grace. There's another Proverb, Proverbs chapter 16, verse 32: Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper is better than one who takes a city. Isn't that an interesting way of putting it because a warrior, the man who takes the city, is someone who takes things by force through fighting? And Gods saying here a patient person is better than a warrior, patience is better than taking things by force, patience is better than a temper tantrum. When we control our aggression we can be such a great influence for God in the lives of other people because they see something that they want, a peace, a quiet contentment, a joy that replaces the outbursts and that's a beautiful thing; humility, a grace, a sweet fragrance of God Himself. We do, we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people, fact of life, full stop, end of story, never going to change this side of eternity. People are always going to be different to us, people are always going to have weaknesses that rub us the wrong way and we have a choice, either behaving like an immature adolescent and throwing our little temper tantrum or deciding, you know something I'm just not going to go round that mountain anymore. Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper is better than one who takes a city. An angry man stirs up dissention and a hot-tempered one commits many sins. I'm not going there anymore. It is time to flip the switch and say, "God I just don't want to go there anymore." Can I tell you? Sometimes it is so hard just to shut up and not say anything. Sometimes we have to bite our lips so hard that they bleed. But when we draw close to God, we let Him change us on the inside as we come to grips with His grace and we do away with the little temper tantrums. Self control and patience are hard things to learn and there's only one way of learning them, the hard way but they're fruits of the Spirit of God that grow in us as we draw close to Him and co-operate with Him and lay down our right to perfection and lay down our right to everything we expect of other people. God wants us to have peace.

Bitterness and anger can become a habit – an attitude that grips our live. It's like a venom that pumps through our veins. Fortunately though, there is an antidote. God made certain of that. Anger is a real problem in this world, it's running at plague proportions and yet it's something you don't hear people talk much about. Psychologists have come up with a term 'the last straw syndrome'; people seem to do outrageously destructive things. The young teenager who shoots up his high school, the road rage that happens around the place, people are flying off the handle all over the place, it's an epidemic. You and I experience anger on a regular basis, both when it grips our hearts and when we're on the receiving end of someone else's anger. Anger, fury, rage, indignation, a desire to lash out, to hurt others, a deep sense that we've been wronged and we have to set it right through revenge. It's the stuff that wars are made of. So what's the antidote? How do we deal with it decisively and end the hurt that anger causes? Well I have to tell you I am an expert in anger management, I'll tell you why. They say once an alcoholic always an alcoholic, people who seem to have overcome it talk about themselves as being recovering alcoholics. In other words it always stays with them but it's something that they keep overcoming every day. Well for me it's the same when it comes to anger. My big Achilles heel, the deep flaw in my character is this anger thing. Berni's a type A achiever type of personality, I set goals, I chase them down, I hit targets, I move on to the next thing, and that's okay, it reflects in everything I do, the way I drive, the way I cook, I'm always planning my time, I'm always being efficient, achieving the best that I can. It's great but it has its down sides. Now no matter what personality type we have each one of us, we expect everyone to be like us. I expect you to be like me and when you drive more slowly than I want you to and when you're not as efficient as I want you to I have a tendency to get angry. When you have my sort of personality you can be brutal about all those other people out there who just don't meet your expectations. It drives me nuts when the car in front of me drives just slowly enough for me to miss the green traffic light up ahead. Unbelievable, how can they do that? I just want to lean on my horn and shake my fist and find some choice words. It's the stuff that road rage is made of. My favourite saying used to be, "it's so hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys." So for the first thirty or forty years of my life I lived in an almost constant state of anger and rage. So when I talk about dealing with anger and finding an antidote to anger I'm not talking this stuff from a text book, I'm talking from a transformed life, a life that continues to be transformed because I'm kind of like that recovering alcoholic, this is going to be a lifelong process in me, a process of rehabilitation that God takes me through because that's how I'm wired. Now I love a passage out of the New Testament of the Bible, the Book of Hebrews, it talks right into this problem and it's the place where I discovered the antidote to this venom. We had a quick look at this yesterday on the program. Have a listen. It comes from Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14: Pursue peace with everyone and holiness because without them you won't get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble because through it so many will be contaminated. That root of bitterness is what takes hold of our hearts and our lives when we fail to deal with anger. It's like biting into a lemon and sucking out the sour juice, have you ever done that? Just thinking about it makes your eyes water doesn't it? I remember working with a woman and she was a senior manager in government, very competent woman but she had this attitude in life and this look on her face as though just before she walked out of her office she had bitten into a lemon, she was that sort of a person. When a root of bitterness springs up it causes trouble. When you plant a plum seed eventually it's going to take root and produce plums, not apricots or nectarines or apples but plums. When we let goodness take root in our hearts we're going to grow good fruit. When we let bitterness take root in our hearts we're going to grow bitter fruit. The root produces the fruit and that's what causes trouble. It doesn't matter so much what's going on around us, see we can blame everyone and everything and every circumstance but really it matters on what's happening in our hearts, that's what determines the fruit in our lives. Proverbs chapter 15, verse 15 says this: All the days of the poor are hard but a cheerful heart has a continual feast. In other words how we respond to things, how we react to things depends on what's going on in our hearts and if we've allowed a root of bitterness to take hold of our heart, you know when people have hurt us in the past or we've missed out on things and all of a sudden we get this bad attitude, this attitude that's like we've bitten into a lemon and we treat everything in the world as though we've just bitten into a lemon it's going to ruin our lives. But the antidote, the antidote is also a thing of the heart; the antidote is the grace of God. God has every right to be angry with you and me; we both turned our backs on Him. In fact the Bible talks a lot about the anger of God and says, look when you get angry leave it to Him because He knows how to handle it but if we keep living in anger we're going to end up with a root of bitterness. God handles His anger by a thing called grace, the unmerited favour of God. Grace by definition is something we don't deserve. Grace is what happened on the cross when Jesus was crucified. A place where Gods justice, the punishment that we deserve fuses with God's love because He let His Son take the punishment and it turns into this thing called grace. He forgives us by sacrificing His Son to satisfy His sense of justice and anger and that's the good news for us, that's grace, it's the antidote for bitterness and anger. Listen again to that passage out of Hebrews. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. When we live in that grace it takes the bitterness away, it tears it out and heals it because when we come to grips with grace, when we come to grips with how much He's forgiven us and the cost to Him of doing that in His Son it produces a new root, a root of grace and mercy in our hearts and that starts producing a new fruit. God's grace is the only antidote to this bitterness and this anger that I've come across. Instead of changing the fruit, you see sometimes we try and change the outside, because we can't, we need to change the root, we need to experience and drink in the grace of God and let Him produce a new fruit in our lives.

Bitterness is something that we sometimes carry around in our hearts. And so often we don't even realise that this root of bitterness has taken hold in our lives. What is it and what can we do about it? I don't know if you've noticed but when a seed falls to the ground and dies ultimately it sprouts and takes root. And if it was the seed of a plum tree we can be fairly certain that the thing that's growing there is going to one day produce, well not apricots, not apples, not pears, we all know it's going to produce a plum because it's a plum tree that's taken root and in fact it's the root that ultimately produces the fruit. It just one of those basic facts of life that actually we don't have to think much about, the root produces the fruit. And it's a bit like that in our hearts. If our heart takes root in goodness then we'll produce good fruit, in bad things and we'll produce bad fruit, in sweet things then we'll produce sweet fruit, in bitter things and we'll produce bitter fruit. It's just not rocket science is it? This week on the program we're going to take a look at the phenomenon of anger in our society and in our lives. There's a great movie a few years ago called Anger Management. Anger is a real phenomenon in the hearts of so many people, you know how pressure builds up in life and ultimately people explode. We have at home a pressure cooker and we cook things in it and there's a vent and if the steam didn't come out of the vent that pressure cooker would explode and it's the same with us. So many people are out there venting their anger; it's in epidemic proportions. You have road rage and supermarket rage and a call centre rage, in fact this week's program was prompted by a real life experience. At the moment I have a couple of brothers, Greek guys, doing some painting at my old 19th century terrace, just needed a bit of touching up. And they're doing a much bigger job in parallel to ours in one of the wealthiest streets in our country. This place they're painting is a huge five storey mansion, they're using a special paint that costs, wait for it, a thousand dollars a tin – unbelievable and the houses in this street are worth between fifteen and twenty-five million, this is where the mega wealthy live. And lots of people in this fairly narrow street are having building work done and so it's pretty crowded and so even though they've got great views and lots of money and massive mansions there's quite a bit of strife in this place. The painters have been working there now for a few weeks and they were telling me that you wouldn't believe the arguments raging between the neighbours. The house that they're working on belongs to a couple in their seventies and they haven't talked to their neighbours for twenty-five years because a quarter of a century ago they had an argument about some building works. And all the neighbours in this street are fighting with one another. The woman who our painters are working for, they'd done some work a few years before and she was very nice, and now all of a sudden everyone is mean and nasty and horrible. Now you stand back from that and you think that's unbelievable. I mean these people have everything in life, there's nothing they can't have or buy or own really, everything their hearts desire and yet there's a spirit, well a spirit of anger and bitterness and dissention in this place. Makes you wonder what's going on there. These two painters, I've used them before, they are lovely people, they do a brilliant job, they're honest as the day is long. How can this woman be so nasty to them? I'll tell you what's happened, anger and bitterness has taken root in her heart, that's why. You let things get to you and you get angry with people over and over and over again and it's like, it's like bitterness takes root in your heart and the root produces the fruit. God actually talks a lot about anger, you know it's a word that pops up three hundred and seventy-six times in the Bible which makes it one of the leading subjects that God talks about. Anger is something we all have to deal with and it springs up so often out of a root of bitterness. The writer of the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament puts it like this, he says: Pursue peace with everyone and holiness because without them you won't get so much of a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on God's grace so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble because through it so many will be contaminated. See there it is, the root produces the fruit. Make sure no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. When a root of bitterness takes hold in our hearts it springs up and causes trouble and contaminates everyone around us. We all have a problem with anger some days, we do, some people more than others but the longer we let it go on the more it takes hold of our hearts and our lives and produces bitterness and a bitter root produces bitter fruit. A root isn't something that happens overnight, it's something we cultivate and if we don't want it to keep growing we have to stop feeding it. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 26. He says: Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil. See he knows, God knows. We all get angry from time to time, it's not a sin. I mean sometimes people do things and it just causes us to get angry because they've wronged us but if we keep it inside, if we let the sun go down on our anger, if we keep it in our hearts and we brood over it and we work it over and over and over in our minds and we plan our revenge, that's when it grows from a root into fruit. The right way of handling it is just to get over it, to forgive and to move on and then we won't be cultivating this root of bitterness which as sure as God made little green apples will produce fruit of bitterness because the root produces the fruit. Now this isn't something we can do on our own, I believe we need an antidote to this venom. It's something that heals and cleanses and just gives us a fresh perspective. Let me just take you back to that earlier quote that we read before from Hebrews chapter 12, verses 14 and 15 where the writer says: Pursue peace with everyone … In fact that's an active thing isn't it? Pursue peace, go out of your way to pursue peace: … and holiness because without them you won't get so much of a glimpse of God. Make sure no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. See the antidote to bitterness that the Apostle Paul is pointing to here is God's grace. What's grace? Grace is Gods unmerited favour. We're going to talk about it a bit on the program tomorrow because it's a really important thing. God's grace is His unmerited favour. He has every right under the sun to be angry with you and me a whole bunch more than He ever is and yet He sent His Son Jesus to die on that cross. The cross is where justice meets love and turns it into grace, God's forgiveness and when we experience that grace that's what acts as the antidote to this root of bitterness. Without it it's inevitable that a root of bitterness will spring up.

Have you ever found yourself completely at the end of your tether. You just don't have anything left. You just don't know which way to turn or what to do. It's a desperate place, a confusing place, a fearful place and a place where God is ready and waiting to touch you, bless you and bring you peace. We get a lot of prayer requests at our www.christianityworks.com website from people who are at the end of their tether. I'd like to share one of these with you today, anonymously of course, because my hunch is that there are so many people who are just struggling with this, who are at the end of their tethers. This is the prayer request that we received just recently from a woman. I just had an uncontrollable anger situation between my husband and our teenage son. My husband had come to visit and a heated argument started over our son's attitude to choices of sport, and it resulted in a hard slap across my son's face. Then he left again in one of our cars whilst he'd lost his license for drink driving. I feel so confused and sad and upset and unhappy. When is my husband going to control his anger? When is he going to control his drink? I'm so fed up. When are our three boys going to have a controllable loving father? We've been separated so often now. I know these boys are just so desperately wanting a happy and balanced and controllable family. Will you please pray that I keep falling and picking myself up? I just don't know what's going to happen this year. It's the anniversary of my Dad's passing away, its twelve months ago and it's been so hard. I had an accident from falling off a horse, which left me immobile for the last six months. And with all of these going on, no family, no support, barely any friends, I'm so lonely. I just don't know where I'd be without God. Please pray for us. This woman is at the end of her tether. She's nowhere to turn except God. And things are happening over and over again, like you can never break out, like you know that movie Groundhog Day. You never escape, it'll never change. Here is this man who has a drinking problem and a problem with anger over and over again back together, separated, back together, separated. The boys have arguments … you know, it is so hard when we feel that we have problems that just keep repeating themselves and we can't break out of them. What's life look like at the end of your tether? What are the things that keep going round and round and over and over again – kids or spouse or work or addictions or loneliness or fear or pain? So many people these days suffer from multiple alienations, not just one but two or three at the same time. And it drives them to the edge; it drives them to the end of their tether. The Apostle Peter wrote a wonderful passage in one of his letters. If you have a Bible, you can go and look at it sometime. It's in the book First Peter Chapter 5 verse 7. It's almost right at the end of the Bible, 1 Peter 5:7. He writes this, it's beautiful: Cast all your anxiety on God because he cares for you. Cast all your anxiety on God because he cares for you. Now, I always kind of thought of anxiety as being a twentieth century or a twenty-first century word, you know. It seems to be a symptom of the speed we live life at, the technology, the pressure, the emails, the phone calls, the here and now. I always thought of anxiety like that. But here two thousand years ago, Peter the Apostle talks about anxiety. He talks about being at the end of your tether, about being anxious and threatened and not being able to cope and just not being able to deal with any more. "Stop the world, I want to get off", is what Peter was talking about here two thousand years ago. I'm sure there were angry husbands. I'm sure there were drinking problems. I'm sure there were alienated teenagers. And on top of all that, he was writing at the time to a Church that was being persecuted in a brutal way – Christians were being killed for their faith. And he writes "Cast all your anxiety on Him." Why? "Because He cares for you." My hunch is that when we're anxious – when we're at the end of our tether, when we are dealing with alcoholics and angry people and all these horrible things that happen in our relationships and our lives – the last thing we ever expect is … that God cares for us. He seems to care for successful people. He seems to care for people that are doing well. You look at other people and you think, "Well, God's looking after them. They haven't got a problem in their lives." Of course, the reality is we don't see the problems in their lives most of the time. And we look at our own little dung heap that were scratching around in, we look at our own little lot and we think, "Well, where the heck is God for me?" I actually sent this woman an email just the other day to encourage her and say, I personally will be praying for her husband. Because you know something, the Bible says that the prayer of a righteous man achieves much. I have an enormous faith in God. I believe that as I pray for this man – I don't know where he lives, I don't know what his name is, I don't know what he looks like – but I know that God does. I know that as I sit down in prayer and say, "Father I just pray for this man, and I pray for this relationship", I know God can and will do mighty things. Whether you're at the end of your tether now or whether this is something that you need to store away for the future, I'd ask you to let this simple truth sink in to your soul. When you have no other options; when you have no other place to turn; when you just can't take it anymore; when the past just keeps repeating itself over and over again; when everybody else is turning against you; right at that point … Jesus Christ is standing next to you waiting, supporting, believing, and calling you. Calling you with the words: Come to me all you who are heavily burdened and I will give you rest. I'm lowly and humble of heart and my yoke is light. (Matthew 11:28) Right at the point where you can't take any more, Jesus Christ is in that place with you to take the load off your back. That's His desire. He is a God of the practical. He is a God of grace. He is a God of love. He is a God that will reach each one of us at the lowest point, especially when we feel like God's looking after everyone else except us. If you are at the end of your tether, I'm going to pray for you right now. Father I pray for each person here, right now who for whatever reason, whatever their circumstances, whatever is going on in their space, because of that they are at the end of their tether. Jesus, you are a God who specialises in the end of the tether. You're a God who comes to meet us in those dark places. Put your arms around us to pour your Spirit over us, to comfort us, to bind us up, to heal us, to lift us up, to give us a new life and give us a new hope. Lord we believe that, we believe that you are a God of healing, a God of future, a God of grace. Father, I pray each for person who's at the end of their tether. Lord, I pray that you would pour your goodness and your grace and your peace and your comfort into their hearts right now. Father, I pray that in the name of Jesus, I pray that you would bring people around them, to hold them close, to comfort them, to help them in the healing process. And I pray that right now through the words that we've spoken together today, you would give each person a sense of the wonderful future and destiny that you have planned for them. Father, I pray that in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Poverty is a terrible thing. Physical poverty. Emotional poverty. Spiritual poverty. It eats away at you. Well, what if I told you that God wants to make you rich. No, no – I don't mean a big house, and expensive car and a personal jet. They're just trinkets. No … God has something much better planned for you. As we look around at people that walk past us on the street, what we often see are blank faces with very little emotion, faces that hide what's really going on inside – joy, pain, boldness, fear, wealth, poverty – we just don't know, do you? Now I used to think I knew what poverty was. And then in January 2005, I found myself standing in the middle of a squalored little village, just a few hours drive outside Hyderabad in India. It was all I could do not to weep over the depth of the poverty that screamed at all of my senses. Sometimes a lack of money, financial poverty, strikes. It can strike the wealthy and the not so wealthy, in the developed world and the developing world. So where's God? Today, I'd like to share with you the story of 'Harry', a young man from Zimbabwe and his friend Joseph from South Africa. It's a story of God's blessing amidst poverty. The story begins in the middle of June 2005 at a conference in the UK at Stock-on-Trent. It was the conference of the United Christian Broadcasters, which I attended. There were Christian TV and radio stations from right around the world at this conference. In particular, I wanted to connect with the CEO of a ministry called 'Media Village' in South Africa. These are people who train young folk in television and radio and they seem to be doing some really cool stuff. But she was so busy, she was speaking at most of the conference, we just couldn't seem to connect. The last morning of the conference at breakfast, my wife and I sat down at the table in the dining room and this young, very well dressed African man in his late 20s, by the name of Joseph sat down at our table. We got chatting and it turned out that he was the head of the radio school at the Media Village. As we talked, somehow we just seemed to click and we got excited. And we said, "Let's do something when we get back to Australia and South Africa respectively". So over the next few months our relationship developed. Joseph was promoting our radio programs, this program and the other programs that we produce, to stations right around Africa. It's a great ministry partnership that's developing. But on the 22nd of December 2005, Joseph sent a broadcast email out to a number of people, (me included), telling us that there were nine students who had just completed a three-month course on how to produce radio programs. They'd all done so successfully, but so many of these students were very poor. And without paying their fees, just as with any other institution, they couldn't get their graduation certificate. It's the bit of paper that said well, this is what they have done. It's the reality. They're very poor people and we were talking about US$4000 about AU$5000 for all the students. Most of them had paid some of their fees but you know there was some really poor people there. And in particular, I'd like to share with you now Harry's story. Have a listen to this because when I read Harry's story in Joseph's email, I tell you, it really got to me. He writes this: Dear Friend, It's been a privilege attending the school of radio broadcasting 2005, here at the Media Village in Africa and I just wanted to express my appreciation. I hope this letter finds you in good shape emotionally, and physically, and mostly spiritually. It's been a challenge being at this school, considering that when I came, I was really greatly financially disadvantaged. It took me a huge step of faith to leave Zimbabwe with only the money to get to Johannesburg and I just didn't have enough money to get to Cape Town, (which is twice the distance from Zimbabwe to Johannesburg). God took care of me by His grace and I made it to the Media Village. I was still short with my finances because I was supposed to pay half the fees but I didn't have the money and so a friend blessed me with some money but still it wasn't enough. But praise God because they allowed me to start the school. Because of the production costs, they still needed me to pay the first half. I went through some troubles but thank God He provided the first half but I was still left with the second half of the fees, which I still owe today. But God's grace is still on me because last night I graduated and despite of me coming late, I was awarded the 'Most Improved Student Award' which was such an honour. I still have problems in hand because in January I need to start my internship and I haven't paid my whole fees, so they won't allow me to start. They have given me until Friday to pay the money, or else I will vacate the premises because I can't afford to do that. I still need the money and greatly appreciate your prayers. Have a blessed Christmas! In His service, Harry So we received this email just a couple of days before Christmas. And I tell you, you listen to this man and he left his home with not enough money to get to where God was calling him to go, and he went anyway, and he just believed, and somehow he scraped through. But at the end of the day, he didn't have the money to continue. Enormous faith! And so we were able to respond really quickly, we talked to our US parent 'Back to the Bible' who had some money in a scholarship fund. And we found some money locally, and we got half way to paying for the fees for these nine students that were outstanding. So I sent and email off saying, 'Look, here's half the amount, that's all we could scratch together, I'll pray that you'll get the rest'. And so I sent that email off, and I was trying to write radio programs but somehow God wouldn't let me settle. And I just felt God saying, 'Put this before your brothers in Canada' because of course 'Back to the Bible' the Ministry that we serve is a global Ministry. And so I've flown it by our Canadian Director, a good friend of mine. Five minutes later my PC rings, because we talk across the internet and PC's, and it was Bob, our Canadian Director and his second in charge, Byron. We were chit chatting and they said, 'We'd love to help. We'd love to pay the whole of the remaining amount'. I thought, 'Wow! Here we are, the last working day before Christmas. This is Harry's last day before he has to pull the plug on his dream of being trained in Christian radio and go home back to Zimbabwe where it's very difficult to be a Christian. And God goes from Africa, to Australia, to the US, to Canada, and all the way back again, just for Harry and these eight other students.' For me, I felt like a bystander in the middle of something God was doing. I mean Harry, in the world's eyes, is just some young black kid from Zimbabwe who needs money. But in Gods eyes, Harry, is a great man of faith. Harry stepped out in faith and he took the risk. And listen to me, God never ever forsakes the Harry's of this world, never! I shudder to think what God has got planned for Harry in the next few years. How many lives He will save across Africa through Harry? Let me ask you something … are you poor? Are you needy? Do you know someone who is? When we are poor, when we don't have enough money to make ends meet, when we are struggling financially, as people often are, you know it's almost worse in a wealthy society like Australia, or New Zealand, or the UK, or the US because they're supposed to be the land of opportunity. They're supposed to be the place where you can be well off. When we are struggling financially, and we look and we turn, and we say, 'Father, Father God, I need you. I need your help', He will never ever forsake us, never. It's God's promise, 'You put your faith in me, you look for me, you seek for me, you want me and I will never leave you destitute'. It's so easy when we are struggling financially, when we're in a precarious position, to think, 'God could never come through on this. God would never do this for me'. If you are ever in that position, can I ask you to remember Harry? Can I ask you to remember what God did for that young man who had the guts to follow after the call that the Holy Spirit had put in his heart? God is an awesome God. God will travel around the world ten times to get you the money that you need, if you're struggling. God will never leave us destitute. We need never be afraid of being poor. And maybe if you know somebody who is struggling financially, maybe it's time where God is calling you to be the instrument of God's grace in that person's life. Just a simple thing like helping someone make a car payment can say more about who God is and how much He loves a person than all sermons under the sun. I would encourage you to have the faith to believe. I would encourage you to remember Harry's story in your heart. And have the faith to believe that God can provide for you, and that God will provide for you.

Ever felt sick on the inside. Sometimes it's physical. Other times it's emotional. Sometimes it's spiritual. And sometimes, we really don't know what it is. Well, if healing is what you need, then today's message … is for you. The reality is, that some people aren't well. We all get sick, sometimes it's just a cold, or the flu for a couple of days and we feel miserable, but other times it can be much worse. My Mother, who's seventy-five years old, just had shingles, which is an incredibly painful disorder and a bit dicey at that age. She's out of the woods now and on the mend. I, for one, am a shocking patient. I'm so active and out there doing things, that within about half a day of getting sick, I've had enough. I just want t get back on my feet. Fortunately, I'm a pretty healthy beast so it doesn't happen too often. But when we're sick, it's easy to see the rest of the world getting on with life and we feel like we've been left behind or deserted. At our website www.christianityworks.com, lots of people come and ask for prayer. Often, we have people ask for prayer, either for themselves or for family, or friends in times of sickness. It's a very common reason why people ask for prayer. A couple that just came in this other week; was to continue to pray for someone who was involved in a tragic motorcycle accident (just recently). And to pray for a friend who was in hospital with a critical condition of pneumonia. They asked us to pray for full recovery for him and that Jesus would give him the strength to fight this. It happens you know, people have accidents, and it happens so quickly, a motorcycle, a car. I remember when I was younger, my young two-year old son reached up and caused me to pour boiling water over myself and over him. It was just a normal everyday morning and within a split second, it all changed, and boiling water was all over my face. Sickness can be so unexpected. Everything is going fine, we're just drifting along and then the doctor tells you … you have cancer or your husband has a heart attack. We feel so helpless, so lost. We go into shock and when that sinks in, despair, and anger, and all sorts of different emotions. Or there's the person suffering from chronic pain, arthritis, back pain, all sorts of disorders, or mental disorders – both sufferers and carers. How can a loving God let this happen? Come on, how can God let these sorts of things happen to people? Then we look around at all the other people and think, "Well, we used to be like that. We used to have a normal life-like that until, until this happened." And it hurts so much. People pay a bit of attention to us in the first week or so, and then they just get on with their lives. You even watch a high-profile Christian preacher on television and they're talking about how to succeed and stuff. Or you listen to some joker on the radio and you think, "Well, it's okay for you, God's with you but what about me? I'm sick?" Got the picture? My hunch is … this is pressing a few buttons out there. God seems to be doing stuff everywhere else, except right here where I need him at the moment. That's how we tend to feel so often when we feel sick. Have you ever felt that? Have you ever had this sense of abandonment and, "Well, what's going on in my life? How long is this going to last? How long is it going to hurt? How long am I going to be disabled?" Imagine what it must be like to be perfectly healthy and fit one minute and a quadriplegic the next, for the rest of your life? That would take an enormous amount of adjustment – take an enormous amount of courage. So, whether we have a serious disease or whether we have the cold, or flu, or feel miserable, sometimes we get this sense we have been left alone and deserted. I'd like to shine just a little bit of light into that, with a very simple statement "Jesus, Jesus specialises in sick people". It's not the "hoi faloitin" preachers He hung around with; it wasn't the wealthy businessmen. When they accused him of hanging out with the flotsam and jetsam of society, you know what He said? He said, "Look, the physician came to heal the sick people not the ones who are already well". Jesus specialised, specialised in sick people. You know how we get this funny thing when we're sick and we're crook, and we're lying on the couch or the bed, and we're thinking "Jesus can't possibly be here with me. He must be with that fancy preacher out there, or He must be with that wealthy Christian business person out there. That's where Jesus is, He's not with me." Exactly the opposite is true, exactly! You read just one of the four historical accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, the first four books of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Just pick one. Mark's the shortest one, it's a two to two and a half hour read and have at look at who Jesus spent his time with. And it wasn't the people that we expected Him to spend His time with. It was the sick people – the ones in the lonely place, in the nursing home, and the hospital, and the bedroom, and the lounge room – so alone. When we're sick Jesus chooses to be with us in that place. Now, we can know that in our heads. We can hear some guy say that on the radio, we can hear that, read that, write that a million times. But all of a sudden we get sick (when the doctor tells us we have skin cancer, when the doctor says you've got five times the risk of having a heart attack because of your blood disorder), all of a sudden when the reality of sickness hits us – the reality of who Jesus is and who He wants to spend His time with, and His compassion, His grace, and His desire to bless us in the middle of sickness – all of a sudden that disappears out the window. Maybe you're sick right now and maybe you need to hear this right now – Jesus Christ is in that place with you. And maybe God's plan, the reason that you're listening to this program today, maybe God's plan is just to tuck that away in your heart. For one day, when you might need it. To tuck away the reality that Jesus Christ spent His time with people who are marginalized, people who are hurting, people who were alone and people who were sick, He healed some of them. And some of them He healed in such an amazing way but others He didn't. Why does that happen? How come God does some amazing miracles in some people's lives and not in others? If I could answer that I'd be God and I'm not. I don't know why God chooses to heal some people and not others. I just don't know, but He does, and He cares. And when we're sick, He is more powerfully, profoundly, amazingly, intimately, personally, beautifully present with us than we can ever imagine. That's a blessing. That is an enormous blessing! Jesus is a healer. The Old Testament says that He is a God who heals our every disease and He's the lover of our soul. He's there to be with us when we're sick. I know that when someone has cancer and when someone has a serious health issue, they can be Christians, they can pray for healing but it is not always God's plan that they should be healed. We all die eventually, our bodies all give out eventually. And the only instance in which that won't happen is if Jesus Christ comes back before it's my time to die or yours. That's the reality of the life we live, we are mortal, we will die physically but never spiritually. Spiritually we will live on, either in the presence of God or in the outer darkness called hell away from Him. Jesus is in this place when you are sick. And Father, I pray for anyone who is sick today, that you will just give them the most amazing sense of your presence with them right now. Father, I pray for their complete healing in their body, their soul, their mind, everything that's wrong with them. And above all Lord, whatever your will is in terms of this person's health and future and life, I pray that you'll bless them with the knowledge of your presence that is indescribable. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

Loneliness is a tough gig and it's way, way more common than you might think. But God is a God who speaks into our loneliness. God is a God who shows up in our loneliness. God is a God who takes away … our loneliness. It never ceases to amaze me how we can be surrounded by people and yet, still feel lonely. That's probably because loneliness has nothing to do with how physically close we are to other people. It's more about how emotionally connected we feel. I remember in a restaurant, recently, having dinner with my wife and there was an older couple at the next table, hardly talking and completely bored looks on their faces. It's so sad, isn't it? Loneliness can strike anyone, anytime, anywhere. We receive so many requests for prayer on our www.christianityworks.com website and one of the most common requests has to do with loneliness. I'd like to share one of those requests with you today (quite anonymously of course), so we can look at the whole issue of loneliness – from A Different Perspective. Just the other day, we received this prayer request from a University student who's away from home studying overseas. I ask you to pray for me for comfort from the Lord as I'm feeling really lonely just at the moment. I'm away from my family and friends overseas. And I'd ask you to pray for renewed strength and confidence for me over this coming year to lean more on the Lord, to lift up my worries to Him. Thank you so much. And he signs his name. It's so natural, isn't it? So real and everyday, this problem of feeling lonely. Me, well, I actually enjoy my own company a lot. I don't like to have a lot of people around me. I'm happy to spend days on my own reading and praying and thinking and walking. But even so, I still (sometimes) feel lonely. Now, we're not all like that. Some people depend a lot more on company. Some people, to tell you the truth, are over dependent on other people and that's not healthy. But whatever our balance is, whatever our fit is, we can all end up lonely. I know people who call themselves Christians who feel desperately lonely. Now, in part you can understand that. We all need human company – women need female friends, guys need their mates, we all need people around us. But there's another part of me that is so profoundly sad when I hear that. There are two promises of Jesus that I'd like to look at today, in this context of loneliness. The first one, He made to His disciples, He said, "It's good for you that I go away, because if I don't go, the promised Holy Spirit won't come." And the second one was, He said to them, "I will never leave you or forsake you." You put those two together and really what He's saying is, just the way that He was physically present with those disciples, a couple of thousand years ago, by sending His Holy Spirit (and this took me a while to come to grips with. I have to tell you, the notion that when I believe in Jesus the Spirit of God comes to dwell in me), so He was saying … just as He was present physically with those disciples two thousand years ago, today, He is spiritually present with His disciples, with those of us who say, "Jesus I want to follow you", here and now. Just as real, just as amazing. Sometimes I hear people talking about praying as though it were a chore. I just struggle to believe that. Jesus said: It is good for you that I go away, I will never leave you or forsake you, I will send my Spirit. He said, "It's good for you, it's almost better for you that I've gone away physically so that you can experience me spiritually through the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, people are desperately lonely. And yet on the other hand, they're hungering for some authentic spiritual experience – something that's more than pews, and choirs, and stain glass windows. You know, something that is real and alive. And so sadly, so many people never put the two together. We can do that. We can, in faith, put the two together – our problem of loneliness and our hunger for an authentic spiritual experience. Because if Jesus said, it's good for you that I go away because I'm going to send my Holy Spirit to dwell in you, to make My home in you, through My Spirit … if that is true, if we can believe in that (just with the smallest bit of faith), Jesus wants to do something here. Jesus wants to show the lonely that they don't have to be lonely anymore. I remember being desperately lonely when I was going through marriage breakdown, ten years ago. And Jesus did something in me and just gave me that little bit of faith that I needed to believe that He is here, right now. That the moment we say, "Jesus I believe in you," He sends His Holy Spirit to dwell inside of us – today, tomorrow, forever and ever because He will never leave us or forsake us. I believe that I can come boldly before the throne of grace. And that I'll find God's help with exactly the thing that I need at the time that I need it. When we have a desperate hunger after human company that just isn't being satisfied, maybe you're there now, maybe this is something that you've got to tuck away for the future, if only we would just hunger first after God's company, just as much. In fact, I don't think that until we've been drenched in God's company, in God's presence, we're going to be any good company to anyone else. And in the same way, I don't think we can really enjoy other peoples' company (the full and rich thing that relationships with other people have to offer), until we've been so hungry for company that we've found in the company of Jesus Christ. That we've found the joy of that quite beautiful relationship with Jesus Christ, that can sustain us through every high and every low, and everything that this earth has to throw at us. So often, Jesus allows us to wander in a lonely wilderness to give us the space to discover Him. And maybe, if today, you are desperately lonely, or you know someone who is desperately lonely, maybe today is the day that He is speaking to you and saying, "The reason I allow this loneliness is so in the midst of it all, you would hear my quite still voice. In the midst of it all, you'd notice I'm waiting for you. I'm here, I'm with you. I so want to have a relationship with you." For me (for my part), as I look back on that time in the middle of loneliness, where I got to discover Jesus and have a relationship with Him, I know that I could not be the husband that I am for my wife, Jacqui, today, if I hadn't first discovered Him. I know that I wouldn't enjoy the fullness of our relationship, if I hadn't been lonely and bumped into Jesus in the middle of that. And I know, I couldn't love her and honour her and bless her with who I am unless first, I discovered who Jesus was. Unless first, I let Him change me, take out some of the rubbish that was swimming round inside me. I'm not perfect, nor are you, none of us are. Some days, I'm just not your perfect husband. Some days, I'm grumpy and tired. But you know something, most days, I'm not. Most days, I get to enjoy the life that Jesus gave me and enjoy the relationships that He has brought me because of that lonely dark time in the wilderness when there was just One Light. And that light was called Jesus Christ! God has a plan. That plan is to bless us. And when we are starving and hungering for company and there's just nobody around, there is – Jesus is! And He's waiting.

What happens to us in life happens to us in two different places. On the outside, and on the inside and in fact it's on the inside where we experience emotions like joy, delight, fear and failure. So … have you ever found yourself feeling like you're dying on the inside? I was sitting next to an older man, recently, in the bus and I thought I would just love to know your life story. Yet through the anonymity of the internet so many people come to our website, www.christianityworks.com and ask for prayer for things in their lives that (in most cases) they could never talk to anyone else about. And it never ceases to amaze me how great their need is. This week, anonymously, I'd like to share some of those with you starting with someone who writes, "I'm just dying inside." I always remember the story of a young doctor who used to visit wealthy houses in a suburb, near where I used to live. And he said that, it doesn't matter how many houses he went into, all these large wealthy people, in big houses, he said, 'Time after time after time, in almost all of them, there was some form of tragedy or abuse or drug abuse or marriage breakdown'. And I guess, that's the thing, isn't it? At the train station or the bus stop, you just don't know. You look at a person and you see a blank face and you think 'what happened to them yesterday or last night or today? What's going on in their hearts? What are they feeling right now – joy or pain or boredom or emptiness or loss or gain? You don't know. And sadly, so often, no one cares either. It's the same with us too. We go out there in life, we may have had an argument or a hurt or a pain or you maybe feeling desperately, desperately lonely and we go out to the bus stop or the train station or to work and we put the face on that hides what's going on in our hearts. When people send prayer requests to our website www.christianityworks.com, it's interesting how the anonymity of the internet allows people to be much more open and frank with what's going on in their lives. In a way, that's quite different to face-to-face contact, where they would be much more inhibited about talking about themselves. This week, on A Different Perspective, I'd like to walk through some of the common types of prayer requests we get (quite anonymously, of course). Not talking about anyone's names or particular circumstances but just look through some of those things because, to me, those many prayer requests and kind of like a cross-section of what's going on in the lives of the people at my bus stop and my train station. One of the ones that we often get, and this is a typical example, is the sense of "I'm falling, I'm plagued by dread and doubt and depression. I've stopped having contact with people and I'm afraid of being judged". Now recently, I had one like that from a person who said, "I'm just dying inside", and this person identified themselves as someone who actually believed in Jesus Christ. They identified themselves as a Christian. I wonder how many people feel like they are dying inside? Despite all the worldly goods and things we have around us – whether they have ever met Jesus before or whether they are Christians – they live in this centreless, materialistic world with more choices than we can poke a stick at. And yet, they have this sense that they're dying inside. It's so sad to see people to be surrounded by all the good things they could ever want, every comfort, every luxury and yet still, to be dying inside. All sorts of things promise a new life and a new beginning. And I tried a lot of them before I became a Christian and they're okay for a while. But ultimately, they lead to disappointment. They don't work. Religion doesn't work. I love the fact that Jesus specialised in people who were dying inside. The prostitute, this woman who is so despised, yet obviously, still had a business. Obviously, there were men in the society who were using her and paying for the privilege. But this prostitute, who just kind of saw Jesus and He encouraged her and He stood up for her when the religious leaders wanted to belittle her and to kick her out. The demon possessed man, the Gerasene demoniac. This man who was like an animal, living in a graveyard amongst the gravestones and Jesus went and touched him. All sorts of people; weirdos and unhealthy people. Jesus went and healed them. But something more than that … there was compassion. There was a reality an authenticity, a Jesus just wanted to put His arms around these people and love them. I remember a time in my life when I drove a large flash car and lived in a huge house with gold taps. And was so full of my own self importance as an International Consultant, that sat with Boards and CEO's of large Corporations. And the first time I met Jesus, under a tree, after a Church service (I got to tell you, I hadn't been to a Church for years other than the odd wedding or funeral), I went to this Church service and I went out afterwards and sat down under a tree and for the first time – I encountered life. When I gave my life to Jesus it was like I was a little balloon full of helium, you know, it was like I was floating. It was the most awesome experience of my life. And it wasn't until after I did that, that I could look back on my life and think, there I was with the big car and the big house and the self-importance but all along, deep inside, I had a sense of being an impostor, a sense of dread and doubt and depression. Just like this person (who sent this prayer request to us last week), afraid of being judged, I wanted to be so high and mighty. But inside, there was a secret fear and so I put on a strong exterior, a strong face. That stuff is completely, completely gone. Why? What happened? Because over the last ten years, I have spent hours and hours and hours, quietly, in the presence of God – praying, listening, reading His word. Just sitting quietly to hear what He had to say; and tasting His goodness, seeing His hand on my life; feeling the blessing of His goodness all around me and what He did; and how He interacted with me as He puts His spirit inside each one of us. And the greatest thing; the most important thing for me was (over a period of many years of spending time with Him), finally coming to grips with the fact that all my failures, all of them, were paid for by Jesus on the cross. And today, I know I have a right standing with Him. There's no dread, no doubt, no depression, no fear of being judged because in Jesus Christ, God accepted me. In Jesus Christ, God accepts me and in Jesus Christ, God accepts you. We need never, ever, feel as though we are dying inside. And the reason, quite plainly, is this – because Jesus has already done the dying for us, because Jesus has already suffered the pain of all our failures and inadequacies, and He just waits. He longs to spend hours and hours and hours with you and with me, quietly, beautifully, gently pouring His love and His grace and His blessing and His goodness into our very soul and spirit and being. We need never… ever again feel as though we are dying inside.

There's nothing like sharing in someone else's loneliness to get a handle on overcoming your own loneliness. And today, we're going to meet a man who, well, if anyone has a reason to wallow in self–pity, it's this guy. But that's the last thing he ends up doing in his loneliness. For me, I think prison would have to be one of the loneliest places on the planet. The loss of freedom, infrequent visits, perhaps none at all, the threat and the danger of prison politics. I was re-reading a letter from a guy called Paul who was on death row (in Rome, around about 60 or 61 AD), the letter he wrote to some good friends in a Roman outpost called Philippi. And there's one bit in there that really struck me, the sort of thing you just wouldn't expect from this guy in a damp dungeon, waiting to die. The reality of prison … I cannot begin to imagine being in jail let alone, like the Apostle Paul, being on death row. You see, Paul had quite some fall from grace. As a young man in Jerusalem, he was a religious hot-shot. He was a member of the ruling body of the Sanhedrin. He was well-known academic. He was busy persecuting Christians. Man this guy had his career all cut out. And then one day, as he was traveling to Damascus, on the road he encountered Jesus and that turned his whole world upside down. He left all of the prestige and status behind and spent over a decade traveling around Asia Minor, preaching, telling people about Jesus Christ. Now, Paul was thrown out of synagogues; Paul caused riots; Paul was beaten and flogged and run out of town and imprisoned several times. And now as we look at this letter that he wrote to the Church at Philippi (it's known as the book of Philippians in the New Testament), he is on death row in Rome. He has every right to feel lonely, has every right to feel resentful, has every right to say to God and shake his fists, "Come on God, what's going on here? I did all the stuff you asked me to do and now I'm on death row in Rome, what's going on?" And while he was locked up there are others out there doing what he was supposed to be doing, getting all the limelight. Got the picture? A dark, dank, dungeon, in chains, actually chained to a guard. Now I am sure that prison today is no cakewalk but this, we cannot begin to imagine. Got the picture? And this is what he writes towards the end of this letter. You can read it in the book of Philippians, the last chapter. He says to them: Finally my friends, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about those things. (Philippians 4:8) I think this is one of the best pieces of advice from someone who had every right to be lonely and resentful, to someone who is lonely, that I have ever heard. You look at loneliness and there's this kind of downward spiral. People are lonely, they're not in meaningful connections with other people, there's no one to encourage or support or to strengthen them. And so the mind wanders and wanders and goes down the gurgler. It focuses on rubbish. It focuses on regret, on anger, on revenge, on disappointment, on the inevitability and on the powerlessness of the situation. You know, when we feel lonely, we want to blame someone. When we feel lonely, we want to exercise our right to be resentful don't we? When we feel lonely, we just want to grumble and because we are alone we got time to do that, and do it "par excellence'. Often, lonely people spend all of their thinking time and feeling time in this bad, rubbishy, regretful, angry, revengeful, disappointed place. And Paul, our buddy, sitting on death row there, who has every right to feel angry, says, "Hang on … no, don't do that. Think about the good stuff, anything that is honourable or just or pure or pleasing or commendable or excellent or worthy of praise." What do you think about that stuff? Now, what are you saying here Berni? Are you saying, "Just think positive thoughts. Be positive?" I don't think that's what Paul is saying. I think he's saying, "Consume positive stuff, exercise your mind in a space, that's healthy". You know the routine: eat junk food, you'll carry extra weight. You don't do any exercise and your cholesterol will be up – your triglycerides will be up, your blood pressure will be up, your blood sugar will be up, you'll be diabetic, you get a heart attack, you have a stroke, you die young. Right? Simple. They're the consequences. On the other hand, you eat cereal, fruit, go walking and exercising, lose some weight and all of a sudden the consequences are good. You have energy, you feel stronger, you're not as tired, you reduce your health risks, your blood levels go to all the right levels. There's vigour and sparkle and joy, because there are consequences to what we do with our body. It's simple cause-and-effect stuff. We all know this. If it is true with our bodies, it's also true of our hearts and minds. It depends on what we read, what we listen to, what we say, what we think, what we believe. "Oh, I'm never, ever, ever going to get over this loneliness. I'm never going to be able to do this." Well, that's one place you can spend your time. Or maybe, you can go and buy a book like The Mystery According To Susie, which is about someone who struggled with loneliness and depression and fear and overcame it. We can spend time mulling over the bad stuff or – we can take deliberate steps to consume good stuff. Paul goes on though. He doesn't stop there. He says, in effect: I have learnt to be content with whatever I have. Whether I have a lot or a little, whether I am happy or sad, whether the world is good or bad. I'm going to be content anyway. And then he reinforces it with this, he says: You know why, you know why I can do that? I can do all things through Christ Jesus, who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13) He can do this stuff. He can be sitting there on death row and instead of grumbling, he can be saying to his friends, who are free, "Think about good stuff, do good stuff. Don't get tired of doing that." Why can Paul do that, on death row, in the dungeon? Answer, he tells us. Because he can do anything, he can do everything through Jesus. He can give this good advice to someone who is lonely and disappointed. He can give this advice because, and only because, he has a real relationship with Jesus Christ. I would challenge you… pick up a Bible or go on the internet, and read the letter in the New Testament called Philippians. It's Paul's letter from the dungeon to some dear friends of his. You will not find a more encouraging, upbeat piece of prose than those four chapters of that letter written by a guy on death row. What does that tell you? We can choose to exercise our mind in disappointment; or we can decide to consume good things. We can choose to let our heart rest in loneliness and fear; or we can choose to give our heart over to Jesus Christ. That positive language and positive sentiment wasn't coming out of positive thinking, it was coming out of a mind and a heart given over to Jesus Christ. It was coming from a heart flooded with the presence of God. The dungeon of loneliness can be a reality. But it's an opportunity to get to know ourselves, to get to know God, to reach out to other people with our gifts and to consume goodness and grace and peace and joy from the one person that will never disappoint – Jesus Christ.

When we're going through a lonely patch in life, the most common response, is introspection. We withdraw into ourselves and have a pity party about how terrible things are. Well, as it turns out, that's absolutely the worst thing you can do, because it just makes things worse. What we really want, is something that makes things better, right?! Loneliness – that deep hurt inside, that rises out of the painful realisation that we're not connecting with other people. And a key part of that downward spiral of loneliness is a sense of powerlessness, a sense that we're not good enough, or worthy enough, or important enough to do anything about it. That's why this week we're looking at dealing with loneliness. I really believe that if God is God, He doesn't want us to be lonely. If you've missed any of these programs this week on loneliness, I'll let you know at the end of the program how you can listen to them again online. You know when we're lonely the last thing we think we can do is to help other people, but amazingly reaching out turns out to be very much a part of the solution. Go and stand in the local shopping centre and just watch for five or ten minutes, you see people rushing around, doing stuff and not connecting. Now my local shopping centre is a really large, new, flash shopping centre. And you almost never see people stop and recognise each other and connect. A century ago and more, communities had like the village square, you know that green patch and the houses were all around the village square and families connected. That's been replaced by the shopping centre, the shopping mall. The connection and community have been replaced by lots of lonely people wandering around aimlessly, in and out of shops. Here's a tough reality … the world is not going to stop and help you or me just because we're lonely. Let me say that again – the world, the way it is today, is just not going to stop and help you and me because we feel lonely. It's true in many families, it's true even in many churches, not all but in many. That's painful but it's not our fault, it's not your fault, it's not about you or me, it's just the way the world is. Probably, this is not what you want to hear if you happen to be feeling lonely and powerless right now. But the fact is that Social Darwinism is alive and well. It is a jungle out there and it's all about the survival of the fittest. It's not that people are horrible; it's not that people don't want to help; it's not that everyone is nasty; it's just not a neighbourly kind of world anymore. People are too busy. Great, so now what? If I'm lonely in a world where everybody's too busy to stop and connect with me, what's going to happen to me now? With loneliness, with a sense of being desperately alone and not connected with people, comes a sense of helplessness – I can't do this; I can't change this; I'm no good; no one's going to want me. Now that's understandable but it should be temporary. Unfortunately, the further people go down that downward spiral of loneliness, it sets in and becomes permanent. Some people just plan on being perpetual victims for the rest of their lives. Maybe you are walking through loneliness right now? Maybe someone that you know is walking through loneliness right now? And this sounds particularly tough. It is, it has to be. Here's the rub, maybe being the victim would've worked thirty or forty years ago. But it's not going to work today. No one has got time. Bottom line, wallowing won't work and that's a good thing. It's a good thing because if you're someone that's lonely, one of the biggest needs that you have is to get over self-pity; is to get over that sense of powerlessness; is to get over this reality that "I can't do anything and it won't work". What you need is to reach out. Maybe you know someone who is lonely and who feels powerless, they need to take this step and reach out. They need to connect. If you're lonely you have this deep need but how, how do you do that when everyone is just too busy? Comes back to something we were talking about the other day – loneliness gives us a time and a space to discover who we are, what we enjoy, what we're good at. Maybe that's basketball or maybe you're like me and you're vertically challenged and you'll never be any good at basketball. Maybe your gift is sitting down and talking to people and making them feel better, drinking coffee. Maybe you've got a coffee ministry coming up, maybe your gift is serving. We don't discover these things until we've had time and space in a period of loneliness to explore them. I truly believe that's true. It was true in my life. I had some things I was good at but I never really had time to develop them and to nurture them and to come to grips with them. Me, I discovered in that time that I was good at story telling. So, in the period of loneliness we have time to discover our gifts and what we're good at. And we can now go and take those gifts and add value to someone. Busy people don't notice victims. Busy people do notice other people who add value, that's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is lonely people need to develop their self-esteem and they can do that by adding value. I don't know about you, but it seems to me, like those two things are made for each other. When Berni was lonely and single again ten years ago, God was doing stuff in my life so I ended up going to a church. It was a little church in a place called Oyster Bay, in the southern suburbs of Sydney, in Australia. There were only about 30-35 people in this church and I went along all broken and lonely and not knowing whether anyone would ever think anything of me again. And I discovered they only had one piano player. Well, I can play the piano and so I practiced and practiced and practiced and I ended up playing the piano during the services. And people noticed that I seemed to be good with words and so I was asked to lead worship. And so the pastor of the church asked me to preach. I'd been a Christian for five minutes and this guy said to me, "Hey Berni, why don't you get up and preach one Sunday?" All of a sudden, I discovered I could contribute to other people's lives using my gifts. Have you noticed I'm still doing that? Right now, I'm doing the thing that I discovered when I was lonely. Isn't God fantastic, isn't God just wonderful? And that was great for me; I needed to have a sense that I could add value to other people's lives. Wallowing won't work, adding value will. Jesus was just a crummy carpenter. He was misunderstood, misinterpreted, mistreated. He often went to lonely places to pray, but that loneliness didn't debilitate Him; that loneliness didn't stop Him from doing what God had called Him to do. That's the picture, that's the model! Are you in a world that's too busy to notice that you're lonely? Well get up, take up your cross and follow Jesus – not to be served, not to be the victim – but to serve. And as you take the gifts that God has given you and you serve other people with those gifts, you're going to bless your socks off. You're going to do things in your heart and your soul and your spirit that you never dreamed that you could possibly do, because God is a God of grace. You get up and follow Him and watch out what God does with that.

When loneliness strikes, it can be the bleakest, darkest, most inhospitable place on the planet … in the universe! If you've experienced loneliness, you'll know what I mean. But in that loneliest of places, at that loneliest moment, as things turn out, you and I – we are never alone. I wonder on a scale of 1-10 how content you feel in your relationships; zero is desperately lonely, ten is stunningly fulfilled. This week, we have been looking at loneliness from A Different Perspective. Because loneliness is a disease that is afflicting people in plague proportions, more work, more money, less time with the family, less time being part of a community. So we have a silent social pandemic that is sweeping the globe. The question is, what to do about it? Yesterday, we talked about the first of two people who can help you with loneliness – that person is you. If you missed that program, you can listen to it again on our website, I'll let you know how you can do that at the end of the program. Today, I'd like to introduce you to the second person who can help you with loneliness without ever having to make a phone call, or open the front door. This man, a carpenter by trade, knows all about lonely places and what to do with them. Have you ever thought about Jesus being lonely? Now here is the Son of God who becomes a man … little boy, grows up as carpenter's apprentice with his Dad and He becomes a carpenter. And then His public ministry begins around age 30. He has a dozen or so close disciples, many more who follow him around, huge crowds, who flock to see him and hear him speak and be healed by him. There are people clamoring to get a piece of him. This Jesus had rock star status. There was one time He healed a leper and said to the leper, "Look, just go and show the priests, don't tell anyone". (Yeah right!) Luke in his Gospel, (Luke 5:15, if you want to look it up), Luke writes this after the healing of the leper: Even though He told the leper not to tell anyone, obviously the leper did. And the news about Jesus spread more and more, so that crowds of people came to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Isn't that amazing? By choice, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. That word lonely means solitary, desolate, uninhabited places, to pray. Jesus knew exactly what it meant to be lonely. Here is the Son of God, He has been with God and in God, and part of the God Head, part of the Trinity for all eternity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit. He steps out of that and becomes a man. He was surrounded by people who didn't understand. God was doing a new thing through this Son of His, Jesus, a new thing of grace. Jesus would go to the cross and be beaten and reviled and crucified and killed. The religious hierarchy, they hated Him, they plotted against Him. In fact, they were so threatened by this radical Jesus, eventually, they killed Him. The disciples (well most of them, most of the time), they just didn't get it. Jesus was misunderstood, misquoted, misrepresented and mistreated. Jesus, of course He experienced loneliness. He was called to do something radical that people didn't understand. Imagine being surrounded by these twelve Disciples who, who you know will be the foundations of the church when you go. And for the whole time, they just didn't seem to understand. Every now and then, they'd have a flash of insight but most of the time they didn't get it. Who did Jesus have to talk to? Who was His peer? Who was His equal? Who was His support? He experienced everything that you and I have to experience and loneliness is one of them. Jesus has been lonely in a crowd and He makes a decision, a decision of choice. He withdrew often to a lonely place and prayed. Why did He do that? Well, despite His superstar status, the one relationship that gave Him His strength (to give out all that He gave out) – the one relationship sustained Him, the one relationship that gave Him wisdom and love, and grace – was the relationship with His Father, God (in that lonely place). I mentioned yesterday that I went through a lonely time in my life about ten years ago, when I went through a marriage breakdown and divorce. And I experienced loss, and betrayal, and hurt, and fear, and loneliness … what a poisonous cocktail! I was in a new city with new people around me, a new empty house. And I remember meal times, sitting down at the dinner table that used to have a family around it, and now there was just me. At the dinner table, my aloneness became so desperately lonely. And in that lonely place, I got a growing sense and a knowledge that Jesus was there. And I prayed, I talked, I listened, I read, I learned who I was and enjoyed my own company (I talked about that yesterday). That was great, but in that dark and lonely, and desolate, isolated place there was one light shining – and that light was the presence of God. That light was Jesus in that place with me. A Jesus who Himself had experienced the loneliness, who himself had prayed in lonely places. "Berni what do you mean, what did it feel like? How did you get that?" Well, the best way I can describe this is, in the bitterness of betrayal with a fear of the future, lamenting the loss, in that bitterness of fear and lament, the sweetness of His presence was so piercingly sweet. I just knew He was there. It was such an incredible joy. It took my breath away. In the lounge room, in the dining room, in the kitchen, the bedroom, God's presence, His presence just filled the place. Wherever I went, whatever I did, He was there just whispering in my ear, "I love you, I will never leave you, I'll never, never forsake you". And that was ten years ago. Now that I talk about this, just like it was yesterday. As I speak about it, it's though, I am there. And I remember the pain and I remember the enormous joy of God's presence in the middle of that loneliness. Have you noticed right now that He's here? Why am I going through this? Why am I so lonely? What's going on? Why is it so dark? Why is loneliness so painful? Why can't I do anything about it myself? Well, God didn't cause your loneliness. God didn't cause my loneliness. But when I was there and when you're there, He is there. Because in the middle of that loneliness, sometimes that's the only place that's quiet enough for us to hear Him. Sometimes that's the only place that He can get our attention. Sometimes (as much as it hurts), that place of loneliness is a place that Jesus Christ touches us, and reaches out, and loves us in a way that we cannot … we cannot miss or mistake. Loneliness can be the biggest opportunity that God ever hands us. It was certainly the biggest opportunity that He ever gave me. And that time that I had with Him, during that lonely period, I remember as if it was yesterday. I have a wonderful life now, but I remember that time. And even now, in the dark times, He sustains me.

Loneliness isn't an easy thing to deal with when it strikes. When we're alone, it seems as though there are no answers, no solutions. But actually, nothing … could be further from the truth. Whether you live in China surrounded by 1.3 billion other people, or the Pitcairn Islands (in the Pacific), surrounded by just 44 other people, you can feel lonely. We can be desperately lonely in a crowd yet be delivered from loneliness by just one other person. Today, if it's okay with you, we're going to continue looking at the whole question of loneliness. I'd like you to meet the first of two people who can help you with loneliness, without you ever having to pick up the phone or open the front door. We'll meet the second one in tomorrow's program. Today, we're going to meet the first one. Someone you've known all your life, someone who's with you constantly, every minute of the day – that someone … is you! The problem with loneliness, it's not so much in being alone, we all want to be alone (sometimes). The problem is feeling alone. The problem is feeling that terrible sense that I'm not connected in a meaningful way with another person. It's painful, you can get angry, you can get distressed, you sense this loss. And the other thing about loneliness is that often, it's accompanied by a sense of powerlessness. We end up in a passive state. I remember ten years ago being single again. One minute, I was surrounded by a family – you go out, you go out with your family, go out with your wife. The next minute, not only is there the pain of a broken relationship, but you see all of these other people in relationships. I truly hated seeing couples together; their enjoyment seemed to hurt me. You know, you see a man and a woman walking hand in hand down the street. And I'd just been through what I'd just been through and it was painful seeing them enjoy themselves. You feel so powerless when you feel lonely. I felt like a second-class citizen, I felt like a failure. It's like it wasn't okay for me to be alone. It's a state that I felt I couldn't change. Have you ever felt like that … "I'm the only one?" I'll let you into a secret, we all do that sometimes. We're not Robinson Caruso. Everybody at some stage in their life feels devalued because they're lonely. We feel rejected because we're lonely. Part of the loneliness trap says, "I can't function unless I have other people around me." Well in part that's true; we certainly all need to have meaningful relationships with other people. But the idea of "I can't function without other people," misses something. It misses an opportunity – an important opportunity. When we go home, you know at the end of the day or (I used to do this when I was going through my lonely stage where I was on my own) at the end of church, you know I'd go home on a Sunday and all these other people went home with their husbands or their wives or their children. And I went home alone. When we go home, whether we go home to a family or whether we go home alone, you and I are home in our space, maybe people there, maybe not. Whether there are people there or not, it can be a lonely place. Well for me there were no people there at the time. And what I discovered in that place was to my surprise … I enjoyed my own company. Now that might seem trivial and trite to you. But in my life where I'd been a busy business person and working long hours and working hard and having people around me all the time. Here I was, at age 36, alone for the first time (in a very long time). All of a sudden, I had time and space to figure out, "Berni, you enjoy your own company." The first thing I had was time to think, time just to sit at nights and let the imagination roam across the hills. Time to dream, time to hope, time to contemplate the day, time to plan for tomorrow. What an incredible gift! And even though we all do that to some extent, you know something, when you're on your own (particularly when you feel lonely), it's somehow sharper, somehow it's more important to be able to do that. It's so evident in a lonely place that time to think and imagine and dream and hope and contemplate is a wonderful gift. And it was in the middle of that … that I learned to turn the TV off. It was still. It was quiet. And in that place I discovered I liked myself. It's one of the biggest gifts I ever received out of that time of loneliness. And you know this is a habit that has never left me. Today, I'm wonderfully, happily married to the most beautiful, lovely women on the planet and have a wonderful family. Yet, I still draw away into my own space – into that quiet peace to enjoy me, to spend time with me, to discover who I am, to think and dream and hope. We are created in the image of God. And God looks at us and He delights in us. So why shouldn't we delight in ourselves? Why shouldn't we like ourselves? The second thing that … that period of loneliness gave me was time and space to do things I had never had time and space to do in the past. I discovered I really loved walking. I've always played the piano but I'd never had time and I relearned the playing of piano. I love to read, I love cooking. Some people say, "Well, it's not worth cooking for one". What they're really saying is, "I am not worth it, I'm not worth cooking for". Yes you are! The third thing was that I decided I liked my own company. And the step that precedes that – I liked me. It doesn't mean I can't improve. It doesn't mean that there aren't some things that I'd change. But basically, in that time alone, I decided I like me. That brings some serious healing. I realised I wasn't a second-class citizen. I realised the real joy of discovering me. Now, there was another inseparable part in that healing process … another person that we'll talk about tomorrow, when I introduce you to the second person, who can help you and me in a period of loneliness, without ever picking up the phone or opening the front door. Loneliness … absolutely, we need to get connected meaningfully with other people. But a time of loneliness is a huge opportunity to connect meaningfully with ourselves. Have you ever been travelling through a lonely patch? Maybe, you're travelling through one now. Go look in the mirror. You are a beautiful person. You are so wonderfully hand-carved by God. You have some abilities and talents and humour in you that other people don't have. And sometimes God takes us through times of loneliness to help us to discover that. It's no substitute for relationships with other people; it's no substitute for having family and friends around. But you know what I think? I think for us to really enjoy our relationships with other people, to really connect with other people, first – we need to connect with ourselves. If God is God, if God made you and me the way we are, if God delights in who you are and who I am, isn't that a valid thing that we should delight in who we are? Isn't it a wonderful thing to have time and space to enjoy our own company? To think, to go and do things and develop skills and develop talents that sometimes we never realised we had? I learned to play the piano when I was a young boy and I'd almost forgotten, and I relearned that in that time of loneliness. And it's such a wonderful blessing. You are made by God … go on take the opportunities He gives you to discover yourself.

Loneliness. When we experience it, it's as though we're the only one on the planet that's lonely. I guess that's the definition of it – because we feel all alone. But the truth is, that loneliness is a global pandemic. And it's time we did something about it. I was doing some research the other day on world populations. And discovered that the current world population is just a tad under six and a half billion (6.5 billion). Every second that ticks by sees that number grow by another 2.3 people. So in one year from now, there will be an additional 75 million people added to our number. By 2050, they're saying there should be around 9.2 billion of us. The most populous nation in the world is China, with just over 1.3 billion people. But what's the least populous nation? It's the Pitcairn Islands, and it has exactly forty-five (45) people in it. Amazing! Yet, with a world population that's never been higher, loneliness is running at epidemic proportions. There have never in all history been more people on the planet. Yet, as people we have never been more lonely. Doesn't that strike you as odd? My hunch is that it's just as easy to feel lonely in China surrounded by 1.3 billion people, as it is to feel lonely in the Pitcairn Islands surrounded by just another forty-four (44) people. Why is that? Well, it's important for us to understand that loneliness is different to being alone. We all choose to have some time alone. One of the things I love to do on the weekend, is just read the paper over a cup of tea or coffee on Saturday morning. And you know something? As much as I love my darling wife and my beautiful daughter, I love to do that on my own. So being alone is not loneliness. Loneliness is that feeling of being alone and being sad about it. It's like a painful awareness of a lack of meaningful contact with other people. You feel empty inside, it's like there's a hole in your chest. You can be utterly desolate and lonely in a crowd and yet, be delivered from that loneliness by just one person. That's the China/Pitcairn Island's thing. In the developed world, single person households have increased from 10% of all households in 1950 to around 30% today. So almost one in three households that you drive past or walk past only have one person living in them. The Boston Globe reports that 36% of people, over one-third, feel lonely. But have a listen to the impact, the statistical impact, of loneliness. People who are isolated by health are twice as likely to die over a period of a decade as those who are not isolated. A study showed that the more isolated men are up to 25% more likely to die of all causes, at any age, versus non-isolated men. Isn't that amazing? And the odds for women are up 33%. Living alone after a heart attack significantly increases your risk of dying. People with heart disease have a poorer chance of survival if they are unmarried or don't have a partner to assist them. Women who are alone and have breast cancer live half as long as those who do not. What does that all tell us. What does that tell you? Well, I think they're compelling statistics and they point to a crisis of loneliness. Why are we so alone? I mean those figures tell us we need one another. We need other people around us. Being alone is a precursor to loneliness. Why? Well, the more money we have the more choices we have. Divorce rates are up for a whole range of reasons, but one of them is the fact that women can now be financially independent. They have a choice, whereas 50 or 60 years ago there was just no choice to divorce. Single parents, well those numbers are up too, they have a choice to be single. In those circumstances, relationships become less enduring. The less we feel we desperately need each other for physical survival, well, the less enduring relationships become. Why not end a marriage? Why not terminate a long-term relationship? You think of a subsistence farming community, I visited some not long ago in India. And what really struck me in the subsistence farming communities was people, by and large, people were well dressed; looked pretty happy, were pretty healthy even though they had very little. You go to the cities, however, where they don't rely on each other in the same way to produce the food together so that they can survive, those people were not happy. They were not well connected. They were poorer. And so there's this amazing breakdown that's happened over the last century as our economies have "developed" (I use that word in inverted commas!) where we tend to be far less connected. We use cars instead of public transport. In the past, before people could read and write, we needed each other to learn. We needed each other to communicate; well we don't anymore because we can read. We watch TV, we get isolated from one another. We use the internet. A man who I really respect, a man by the name of Peter Webb, I heard him speaking at a conference once. I used to work with him in the Information Technology Industry. And he made the observation that every radical invention or development in communications technology has been designed to let us communicate from further and further away. Just think about that for a minute; every invention in the communications industry has been designed to let us communicate from further and further away. You think about it … before there were telephones and internet and satellites and all the stuff we have today, if you wanted to communicate with someone you had to see them face to face, or at least you had to be in earshot of one another. Then we invented letters and postal systems. Well, maybe it took two years for a letter to travel from England to Australia but it was an amazing invention. You could write and maybe months later someone would pick that up and read it, and you could communicate. When two-way radio and telephone came along, all of a sudden you could talk to someone without the displeasure of having to look at their faces. Have you ever wondered why video-phones have never happened? Because we don't want to see the person! We enjoy the fact we can talk without looking at them. And now with email it's even better because we can type something and tic-tac at different times of the day and night right round the world and be a long way apart and yet – communicate quickly. And so the nature of our world is a slow downward spiral in community. It's a gradual slide to isolation, punctuated by the odd critical life event, like divorce or death or retrenchment. We have a misconception about loneliness. We think that being alone equals loneliness. I'm not alone therefore I shouldn't be lonely. That's simply not true. And sometimes we say, "Well it doesn't effect me, I'm okay". Are you? We often don't use the label lonely but you stand back and you think about it, are you? If you go through a crisis like divorce and you see a happy couple enjoying each other, you feel lonely. I heard the other day of a woman who was dying of cancer whose husband left her when she was in remission. And two of her best friends came over with their new baby and she said to them, "I don't ever want to see you again, because I can't bear to see you so happy." And if it's not a crisis, maybe it's just a dull ache. But stand back and really examine our hearts. Are we lonely? Maybe, that guy's right. Maybe, I am. Maybe, the pain and resentment and sadness I feel is because of no real connections. Come on! If it hurts, are you lonely? The rest of this week we'll be looking at what to do about loneliness – from A Different Perspective. I really hope you can join me.

When you're travelling through the dark days in life – it's one thing for someone to say to us "Don't worry God will come through in the end."  But it's another thing entirely, when we discover the refuge of the Lord. I want you to imagine that you're out one night walking along a dark and lonely street and all of a sudden you see some drunk and unruly men coming towards you, they're swearing and they look to be wielding knives. You take a quick look around and there's not another soul in this street and just then you see a house to your left, you look in the window and you see a family sitting down to dinner. What do you do? I know what I'd be doing, I'd duck in, I'd knock on their front door as quickly as I could and I'd ask them if I could just step inside until those men disappear, wouldn't you? Now there's a name for that, it's called, "seeking refuge". It's not a sign of weakness, it doesn't mean that somehow we're a loser, it just means that in that dark and dangerous place we just need somewhere that's safe; we need a refuge. The problem is that in this world, when we're going through difficult times in dark places, so often it doesn't seem to be a refuge to be found. Refuge is a word that appears over and over and over again right through the Bible. In fact just in the Psalms it's used 48 times and of those, 46 times "refuge" is talking about God himself. Have a listen to just a few, Psalm 36, verse 7: How priceless God is your unfailing love. Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 62, verses 7 and 8: My salvation and my honour depend on God. He is my mighty rock and my refuge. Trust in Him all times O people, pour out your hearts to Him for God is our refuge. And in Psalm 119, verse 114: You are my refuge and my shield O God; I have put my hope in your word. Now I'd like to spend a bit of time looking at this, this "refuge" thing today because when we're going through tough times in dark and dangerous places, a refuge is exactly what we need. Over these last two weeks on the program we've been working our way through a series in, just around Psalm 34 called, "Dark Night, Bright Light". This psalm is written by King David with the wisdom of hindsight. Having been through lots and lots of dark and dangerous places, here in this Psalm David praises God because what he discovered is at the end of them all God showed up and delivered him; God came through. No matter how grim or how dark or how dangerous it appeared. That's great stuff and if you have some time, can I really encourage you to get aside and have a really good read of this short psalm, Psalm 34. But it's one thing for David to pen Psalm 34 and tell us his experience and say, "you know what I discovered? I discovered God delivered me every time." That's cool David, that's really great but it's so easy for us to respond to that and say, "well that's fine for you Davo; brilliant. Glad that God came through for you but right now I'm in a dark place and I'm petrified and the fact that God showed up for you doesn't help me much." That's a pretty natural human response. When we send out an S.O.S. to God it may well be that God will come through some time but what about the mean time? Well, have a listen to the end of this psalm of David's, Psalm 34. We're just going to read the last few verses, verses 19 to 22 because in the very last verse God answers that question for us. Let's have a read: The afflictions of a righteous man are many but the Lord delivers us from them all. He protects all his bones, not one of them will broken. Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems His servants; no-one will be condemned who takes refuge in Him. There it is, that word "refuge". It means to flee to Him for protection; literally to resort to Him. Now we understand that in a physical sense, that little story that I started off with at the beginning of the program. Well it makes sense that in a dark and dangerous place we would want to flee to some sort of refuge. But when something in our lives is scary, when you've been diagnosed with cancer or your finances have fallen in a heap or your marriage seems to be falling apart or one of your kids is on drugs, what does it mean to take refuge in God then? That's a good question because this is where the rubber hits the road. Well, here's what happens when we take refuge; we feel safe, the fear is gone. That's the point, along the journey through a dark place in life we want to know that we are safe. The story at the beginning of the program of you or I walking down a dark and dangerous street and seeing these drunken youths coming towards us with a knife, the idea of being able to knock on the door of a family and go inside means that you are taken away from the danger and that you experience the peace of safety. That's what refuge means. The way that God best explains this through any part of the Bible is through a passage that I come back to again and again and again and again. The apostle Paul wrote it about 1,000 years after King David wrote Psalm 34, he's locked in a Roman dungeon on death row and he writes these words in Philippians chapter 4, beginning at verse 6: Don't be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Don't be anxious about anything, take it to God and put your trust in Him and pour your heart out to Him and say, "thank you God that you're here; thank you God that I'm going through what I'm going through but here's my need and I'm afraid and I need you to help, "and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." You see, that's refuge language, that's protection language. We experience fear in our hearts and in our minds, do we not? And you see, this is the other meaning of the word "refuge"; to put your trust in someone or something. Out there in a dark place, I put my trust in you God. I just go to you and I pour it out and you know what happens, God does something, He fills us with His peace. Have another listen: And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. God's peace. Now it doesn't make sense, that's why it surpasses all understanding, it defies human reckoning and logic and the only way I can describe it because I've been in that dark place time and time and time again, is it's like a light. Darkness is scary and God comes and shines His light, His bright light, this refuge where He protects our hearts and our minds from the fear and the light shines inside, the light that says, "you just know that He's there", and the darkness isn't scary anymore. God is in the refuge business; God is in the light business. When it's dark, when it's scary we can come to Him and pour our hearts out and He will put His protection around our hearts and our minds and give us refuge. We just end up knowing that He will deliver us. Dark Night, Bright Light.

It's tough when bad things happen to good people – especially when we see good things happening to bad people – God what is going on here?  Why are you letting this happen to me? There are times in life when bad things happen to good people and perhaps you're someone who believes in Jesus and you've been living your life the best way you know how and just day after day walking with Him and all of a sudden – whamo! Something happens! The sky turns dark and all of a sudden you're in one of those dark, black times that we can go through in life. A time of loss or pain or sickness or whatever it is and you kind of look around and think, "What is going on here God? I mean I know I'm not perfect but everyday I just get up and I just do my best and I walk with You; now this!" My hunch is that there are a few people who relate to what I just talked about and so I want to deal with that today because when bad things happen to good people it's such a shock and it seems so unfair especially when we take a look around and we see that there's a whole bunch of good things happening to some really bad people out there that we know. What is going on God? King David, as I've said over these last couple of weeks, is a man who went through a lot of dark times. You read about his life and sure he made some mistakes but right from the beginning God had him picked as a man after His own heart and yet he lived through so many dark and difficult times, scary times, on the run for his life. Battles with enemies that it looked like he was going to lose and God showed up just at the last minute. You take a look at his life and if you weigh his life, kind of on our human scale of justice you'd probably come to the conclusion that, well David wasn't perfect but he was definitely one of the good guys. He tried with all his might to honour God even though some days he blew it big time. And I'm sure if David looked at his life he'd come up with the same conclusion and yet this man went through so many difficult things, so many dark and lonely times. Times when people criticised him, times when he was in fear of his life, times when he felt that God had deserted him. So God, what's going on? Why is that? I mean this guy was a good guy, how come bad things happen to good people? Now I'm not sure I can answer all those questions, God is God and He decides those things but as we walk through Psalm 34, which is what we've been doing over the last couple of weeks, it's a Psalm where David looks back on those dark times with the benefit of hindsight. Let me share with you David's own wisdom, this is what he writes is Psalm 34, verses 15 to 19. It says that: Eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their cry but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers them from them all. Well David doesn't even bother with the "why" question does he? When we're hit with those dark times the first question we utter is, "Why me God; why me?" Right, and the second one is, "How long is this going to go on for God; how long?" Well David doesn't carry on with any of that. He looks back, he accepts the sovereignty of God and after all he's been through in his life, he draws this obvious conclusion. Verse 19 of Psalm 34: Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. In other words; stuff happens, it just does. Jesus kind of put it this way, He said: Your Father in heaven causes His Son to rise on the evil and the good and He sends his rains on the righteous and the unrighteous. In other words; good stuff and bad stuff happens to good people and bad people. There you go, it's just the way it is and it seems to be a rule that the more a man or a woman turns their lives to following hard after God, to walking in the footsteps of Jesus, the more afflictions they suffer. It's such an incredible contradiction; on the one hand God wants to bless us, He does. All the way through His word, the Bible tells us, He wants to bless us. On the other, when we set our hearts like flint to follow after Him it seems like all hell breaks loose, the world just doesn't want us to do that. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. Many! One of the promises of God and you don't hear many people shouting hallelujah to that promise do you? But the Lord delivers us from them all, His eyes are on His people, His ears are attentive to their cry. We cry out; He hears us and He delivers us from our troubles. You know what I've learnt, He doesn't always deliver me the way I expect Him to, the way I want Him to, when I want Him to. Sometimes we want Him to do one thing and He does almost exactly the opposite. Sometimes, you know, we cry out to Him and we even go to Him in faith and we say, "Lord, I believe you're here and I believe you're going to deliver me from this." And things go from bad to worse. Sometimes we want Him to do A and He gives us B. "What are you doing God?" And sometimes it seems like His solution and His answer means that we lose and someone else wins but in the wondrous fabric of His mighty plan for our lives, He's so much more interested in our character and who we are and our relationship with Him than He is about our perceptions of comfort and need. He's so much more concerned about His glory shining out into this world than He is about some of the things that, at the time, we think are important but in the bigger scheme of things they're really not. The apostle Paul puts it this way in Romans chapter 5, he says: Suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and it's a hope that never disappoints us because Gods love has been poured into our hearts through His Holy Spirit. And the longer we walk with God, the more afflictions we have to suffer, the more we discover the truth of King David's words in Psalm 34. The Lord hears our cry, He delivers us from our troubles, He is close to the broken hearted and He saves those who are crushed. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him from them all. That is an awesome thing. Now I don't know what afflictions maybe you're walking through right now and can I just encourage you; put away the "why" question, put away the "how long" question and just listen to the word of God again. The Lord is close to the broken hearted. He saves those who are crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. I've only been walking with God now for just on 13 years but I look back and I see the things I've had to walk through, I see the afflictions. Even when those afflictions, can I tell you, have come from my own mistakes and I'm living out those consequences and just somehow, in His own good time, God works it so that I learn and that I heal and that He delivers me from this stuff and even if I have to lose my life serving Him I have all eternity to rejoice in Him. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all.