A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Sin – now there's a word that goes down like a lead balloon. It's a bit … well for many people, it feels like some old fashioned religious concept from the past. But the facts are that even though it's become something of a four letter word, sin is the greatest malady in this world today. It's Monday again and the weeks march by inexorably, don't they? Amazing. Now something that strikes me as I look around the world in which we live, is that we live in a world where just about anything goes. Even in my short lifetime – just on a half a century which in the overall scheme of history is like a drop in the ocean – things have changed radically. Let me give you an example. When I was young, falling pregnant outside of marriage was a matter of great shame. Today, it's a lifestyle choice that many women make. Many, many couples choose to live together without making the commitment of marriage. And just in case you think I'm plucking that out of the air, the statistics tell us that in Australia at least, cohabitation before marriage has increased – wait for this – from18% of couples in 1975 to almost 60% today. It's gone from being the exception to almost being the norm. Just the way things are these days. And divorce rates, again using Australian statistics, the number of divorces has jumped radically in my life time, from around 7,000 in 1959 to around 50,000 this year, with some 43% of marriages ending in divorce. Things have changed. Definitely changed. Question is: what's going on? You know sometimes you hear people thumping the table telling us how bad things are these days. "Not like the good old days when I was young!" The implication is that this younger generation is … well, you know, they have no discipline and standards and … if only things were like they were back in the good old days. Problem is, the good old days weren't really such good old days. Husbands still beat their wives back in "good old days". Children were still abused back in the good old days. Bad still happened in the good old days too. Let's be honest. So the last thing under the sun I want to be doing is suggesting that we somehow turn back the clock to the things will be fine again just like they were in the good old days. Because a) we can't turn the clock back and b) if we could, things weren't necessarily so grand back in those "good old days". And there's a reason for that. Because from the moment Adam and Eve took their first bite of that apple from that one tree, the one tree that beautiful, abundant, peaceful, God said, "Don't eat the fruit of this tree", from that moment, there's been a whole theme going on in this world and it's called "sin". Let's listen to the story. Genesis Chapter 3: Now the serpent, he was craftier than the other wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?' But the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you will die"'. But the serpent said to the woman, 'You won't die because God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes and the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of it's fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and make loin cloths for themselves. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said, 'Where are you?' He said, 'I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.' And God said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat?' The man said, 'The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit from the tree and I ate.' And the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is it that you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent tricked me and I ate.'  Now you see, things have changed in the world. We live in a world where anything goes, right? Well just about anything. Many a moral standard of yesteryear seems old fashioned and irrelevant and too many downright offensive. We're a whole bunch more relaxed about things these days compared to those rigid old rules from last century. So this notion of sin – of rebelling against God, of eating from the wrong tree – it's seems kind of outdated. A throwback from the church of the 1950's. It feels … well, irrelevant in the age that we live, doesn't it. And there are some things from the past, the way woman were treated as chattels almost. They were terrible. It still happens in places around the world today. Or treating differently because of their skin colour or nationality. So many faults and flaws in the rigid rules from the past to be sure. And that, that's why this short three letter world 'sin' is something of a four letter word these days. A dirty word. A nasty word. A word that implies moral judgement against the standards of some rigid and flawed rules from our childhood. But I'm not so much talking about those, about man-made rules. The thing that ushered pain and suffering into this world was our rebellion against God, starting with Adam and Eve in the garden. Read along in Chapter three of that book of Genesis and we find that there were some serious consequences for their actions. Painful consequences. So, while "sin" is a word that seems to carry a whole bunch of religious baggage around with it, actually it speaks of our rebellion against God, and that word "sin" as it's used in the Bible means literally "to miss the mark", "to miss the whole point", "to miss out on your share". And that's the consequence of our rebellion against God. It's not this thing that there a whole bunch of rigid rules we have to follow to get our tick and dots to get into heaven. That's not it. The point is that God is a God who loves us. He loves you, He loves me beyond anything we can imagine love to be. Writes the Apostle Paul to his friends in Ephesus. Ephesians Chapter 3 verses 18 & 19. He says: I pray that you might have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. You know, He loves us so much, more than words can ever say. So when we turn our backs on Him, when we decide to live our lives our way, when we adopt this "anything goes" attitude, there are consequences. Simple things. Eat too much of the wrong stuff, it will ruin your health. Work too hard and don't get enough rest, it will ruin your life. Play too hard, drink too hard, it will ruin your health and your relationships. Cause and effect. Come on. This is not rocket science. It's as plain as the nose on your face and mine. There are consequences. As much as we try and kid ourselves, as much as we try to tell ourselves we can have anything, be anything, do anything, it will all be okay – we know that's a lie and we know that there are always consequences. We've been duped into thinking that sin is some old fashioned, irrelevant, religious word from the past, when all along it's the greatest malady in our lives. When all along that rebellion is robbing us of the fruit of a good and healthy relationship with God. A God who loves us so much, that He sent His only Son Jesus so whoever believes in Him wouldn't perish but instead would have eternal life.

Where I come from meekness is just another word for weakness.  So why did Jesus say – blessed are the meek?  And is meekness a quality that you and I should search out, or shun? Can I tell you one of the most exciting things that I've discovered in life? It's this, that when I just get on and do the good things that God's called me to do day after day, not perfectly mind you, not always brilliantly but just doing them quietly, I get this deep sense of satisfaction from just doing those things. Now that doesn't sound like a particularly earth shattering insight until you understand that for most of my life, at least the first 36 or so years I was flat out chasing and achieving success and recognition and reward and I can truly say that not once during that time did I taste the sweet delight that I know today. It's like night and day, once the world was kind of a murky monochrome, today I get to live life in a full vibrant technicolour. I can't begin to put words around the difference and in a sense it's taken me years to kind of reflect on that and figure out what was going on. To tell you the truth I didn't like everything Jesus had to say right from the beginning. Like this one: Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Well meekness, from where I come from, is just another word for weakness buddy, I mean it's a "dog eat dog" business world and you have to claw your way to the top and tread on other people and make it and reap it and spend it. It's all about fame and fortune buddy, it's all about making it and I had those things. At least in the sphere in which I worked. I travelled the world speaking at large IT conferences and I had a big car and a big salary and I could eat at any restaurant I wanted to and basically I could buy just about anything I wanted to and yet the sweet delight of fulfilment in life eluded me. I was getting it all, it just wasn't satisfying me and then I became a Christian and started reading some of what Jesus had to say and this saying: Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Well it was definitely not on my hit parade. Why? I didn't want to become some mealy mouthed meek little mouse, some sort of weakling. You know wearing boring clothes, smiling lamely, letting people use me as a door mat; you go to Church on Sunday morning with an ever greying congregation. Meekness was some kind of whimpishness and failure and capitulation and then one day I read the definition of the Greek word in the New Testament that we've translated to read "meek". Let me read it to you word for word because it's not very long: Meekness is mildness of disposition, gentleness of spirit. Meekness towards God is that disposition of the spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good and therefore without disputing or resisting. In the Old Testament the meek are those who wholly relied on God rather than their own strength to defend them against injustice. So meekness towards evil people means knowing that God is permitting the injuries they inflict, that He's using them to purify us and that He'll deliver us in His good time. Hmm … meekness. Meekness may not be about being a wimp but about accepting everything that happens to me as being from God and so not fighting it. Now that, that really fits with what we've been talking about this last week, flying under the radar, ditching this addiction to worldly success and recognition and having my way and reaping the reward and just quietly getting on with life and honouring God and doing the stuff He's called each one of us to do. And when people come after us with a meat cleaver and you know, they inevitably do, just relying on God to keep us safe rather than retaliating in our own strength. Phew whee, man that is going to be hard, the more I thought about it the more I came to realise that meekness actually requires an enormous strength and self control, a meek person is someone who keeps their strength in check. I constantly have people come against me in ministry and in life and it's amazing how many people don't understand what God's called me to do and I'm sure you have had the same from time to time. My old way of handling was to saw them in half; I mean my tongue can make a grown man cry at 30 paces. I tell you, it's a scary thing. I can be a very scary person and I used to tear people apart limb by limb with words and with logic. Meekness … meekness is the exact opposite of that; meekness says 'I don't have to win' and that's so counter intuitive isn't it? Yet Jesus says: Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed, happy, joyous because instead of winning the odd battle today they end up winning in the long run, they inherit the earth. You see an inheritance is not something you get now; it's something you get later. Jesus is saying, "Blessed are those who lose now for they will win later." Jesus put it another way too, we looked at it yesterday on the program, He said: Truly I tell you unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed but if it dies it produces many seeds. If you love your life you'll lose it but if you hate this life in this world you'll keep it for eternity. See again, Jesus is talking about reaping a harvest of inheritance, we're not now, later and that takes such enormous faith. It takes such enormous courage to rest in God and let other people do things and behave badly and for us not to attack them back, for us not to get our way, for us not to say, "You know something, I have rights, I've got to win here." No, Jesus wants us to leave them alone and to reap the harvest later. And so you know when I started to live my life that way, as I said I didn't do it perfectly, I still don't do it perfectly, we all have our days but just living like that with all my heart, deciding I don't have to win anymore. Just doing the best I could knowing that day by day God would bring me battles where I'd have to lay down my right to win and it would hurt and it would be hard. Honestly each one was difficult at the beginning but little by little I've withdrawn from being Berni the bully. My name Bernard literally means, "to be as strong as a bear". And I am, one of the strongest people you'll ever meet, mentally tough, geared to success and God has called me to lay down the winning and just day by day follow Him. And sometimes, you know, people do things and say things and they hurt so much and that's the time when I just go to God and just say, "Lord, I just believe in your word that you've called me to lay this down. It's not about my success, my lime light, my being seen by people to win. It's about dying to self, giving up the success and the recognition for me." You know what I've found even though it's hard, this sweet delight of trusting in His protection, in what He brings day by day and His provision. Just quietly getting on with life without fanfare or drama is such a sweet thing. Well that's my story, what's yours?

We're all programmed to win – at school and at sport and at life.  But – well, what if winning is not what life's all about?  What if God has a plan that is so much deeper and richer than just "winning"? You know something in this "dog eat dog" world that we live in it seems that there's plenty of dog to go around. It's as though winning is everything; plan, do, succeed and reap the recognition and the reward. There's a lot to be said for that lot, I mean money and possessions and fame and recognition, that's what life's all about. If only I could buy a bigger house or a better car or a new outfit then I know I'll be happy, I know I will because then people will look at me and say, 'boy, he's made it' or 'she's made it', right? Yeah right (sarcastically). But sadly it's a treadmill that so many people seem to be on, clawing their way to the top, getting their own way, standing up for their rights. There's a whole bunch of different ways we can say it but the bottom line is we just want to be seen as winners, we're recognition junkies. I mean, okay everybody likes to win and we all like to see out sports men and women win too, our tennis players or our swimmers or our football team. We live in a society that has a 'win at all cost' mentality because the winner takes all. Then God comes along with this crazy plan that, well it's basically completely the opposite of that. Have a listen to how James puts it in the New Testament, James chapter 3: "Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbour bitter envy or selfish ambition in your hearts, don't boast about it or deny the truth because wisdom like that doesn't come from heaven, it's earthly, it's unspiritual, it's from the devil." "For where you have envy and selfish ambition there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure then peace loving and considerate and submissive and full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." "Peace makers who sow peace raise a harvest of righteousness. What causes the fights and the quarrels amongst you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but you can't get it so you kill and you covet but you cannot have what you want; you quarrel, you fight, you don't have because you don't ask God. When you ask you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives or you may spend what you get on your own pleasures." You see, that first kind of so called wisdom he's describing is the selfish kind of wisdom, the world's wisdom, we've all been on the receiving end of that. Ever been stabbed in the back? Ever been walked over and treated like a door mat? It really hurts doesn't it? You can truly say that it does come from the devil, this wisdom of the world, win at all costs. So much is done out of selfish ambition and greed. You can see it in the Stock Market, a company declares a healthy profit and a dividend to shareholders and yet the share price drops because the market was expecting so much more, they wanted double digit growth. It's an economic model based on greed. You see it in the work place; boardrooms are dominated by profit motives. Safety's sometimes compromised or the bosses vote themselves these huge bonuses and pay rises and the workers get nothing. And sometimes you see it on the shop floors, the shoes on the other foot, the workers are lazy, they don't put in the effort or a full days work. You see, where there is envy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and every evil practice. We can all relate to that, some people succeed at the cost of the well being of others, it's a win-lose proposition, a win-lose mentality but then, then James talks about a different kind of wisdom: .. The wisdom that comes from heaven" he said, "is first of all pure and peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peace makers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. They're interesting adjectives he uses here with this kind of wisdom; peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy. Now that's the sort of wisdom we all want to be on the receiving end of right? But giving out that sort of wisdom, handing out that sort of wisdom to others, that turns the tables. Peace, consideration, submission, mercy. You know something; when we hand out that sort of wisdom it costs us big time. When someone deserves our retribution for what they've done and yet we show them consideration and mercy in order to have peace that costs us, we have to lay down our right of revenge and that's hard. It means not getting our own way, it means not winning, it means not getting the recognition, not having the satisfaction of revenge. It means sowing before we reap, that's a faith thing. In other words, when we have a quarrel, when we have a desire to win and instead we forgive and we make peace, we lay down our rights, it's sowing a seed. We won't get the benefit then, you see what it says: Peace makers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. You don't reap a harvest the moment you sow a seed, it comes later at due time in the season of harvest. It's so contrary to the world's ways, so counter intuitive. This flying under the radar, giving up our right to public adulation and victory and success and the lime light and all the things that the world says we're entitled to, it feels almost like God's saying become a loser. To live it God's way, plant a seed and believe in faith that God will give you a harvest in due season. Now Jesus explained this paradox another way, He said: I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed but if it dies it produces many seeds. If you love your life you'll lose it but if you hate this life, in this world you'll keep it for eternal life. Jesus is talking about dying to our selfish desires, dying to the right to have recognition and just quietly getting on and following Him. No matter where it takes us, no matter what the cost, no matter how hard it is, no matter that someone's hurt us and we just want to beat them back and Jesus says, "Be a peace maker, be loving, be considerate, be submissive, be full of mercy and good fruit. Sow peace now!" It's such a sweet delight, in my experience, that dying to myself, to our own selfish ambitions and deceit and all that stuff. You see that's the problem, James goes on to write in chapter 4: What is the cause of fights and quarrels? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something; you don't get it so you kill and covet but you still can't have what you want. You quarrel and you fight. See, it's about getting your own way and when we don't get our own way we get really ugly. It's so difficult, it's so difficult to fly under the radar and give all that up and yet there is such a sweet delight in that. There's such a wonder as we live our lives day after day just quietly following after Jesus, laying down our rights, sacrificing when He calls us to sacrifice. It's not about winning, it's about honouring God with a goodness inside that will stand and remain no matter what the cost.

While the rest of the world is off chasing recognition and success – one of the most wonderful things we can get involved in is –secret service – just flying under the radar into people's hearts. Sometimes in a quiet moment over a cup of tea in that comfortable chair in my study I get to thinking about my life and the people along the way who've really mattered. You know the people who've had an input into my life and whom I hold dear and special and amongst all those people there are just a few, just a handful who are so incredibly special to me. My wife of course, some close friends, my mentor of 20 years, Graham, the pastor of my first Church I ever attended, Phil. Less than a dozen of them, I'm sure you're the same, they're just a few really special people in your life whom you hold dear. Anyhow I was sitting and thinking over my cuppa, 'what makes them so special?' I mean, what's the common thread that runs through each of those relationships? Why is it that those people are so special to me? In a sense the answer to that question is not surprising but it is profound. You see the answer is that each one, in their own way, have served me so powerfully, they had an input into my life, a secret service hidden away that other people haven't seen. Jacqui is the most wonderful wife to me; she supports me in so many ways. I have to tell you; you would never get her into the studio, you will never get her to speak on a mic, you'll never get her up on a stage to speak, it is just not her but every time I get behind the mic she's part of that. See, her service is a secret service, her support and her encouragement and all the hard work and all the organising she does. It's hidden, you don't get to see that, it's secret. Pastor Phil, the pastor of the first Church I attended, served me so incredibly, so sacrificially. God used him to lay the foundations of my faith, not just through what he taught from the pulpit which was brilliant but just how the man lived his life, how he sacrificed, how humble he was to serve me and all the other members of the Church. Michael Graham my mentor of twenty years who came into my life when I was a very bright and precocious twenty something and moulded me and shaped me and imparted his wisdom to me. I could go on and over and over again it's the same with each of these really special people. They've done things to serve me in secret; they were instruments in Gods hand that God used to mould me and shape me and turn me into someone that was useful to Him. It's a service they performed in secret, no public recognition, no trumpets, no fanfare, no lights, no lime light, they just did it and they keep on doing it. They're people who are prepared to pay the price to serve me and to support me and to be honest with me and you know something; there was a cost to that for them. There's always a cost when we serve people in secret. See, let me tell you a little secret, I wouldn't share this with anyone else, just you, don't tell anyone. I am not always so easy to serve; you see I am a human just like you. I have my good days and my not so good days and when those people just get on and quietly and faithfully support me and encourage me and have input into my life and give me frank advice and care for me as a person, they demonstrate something. A kind of faithful love and they don't do it for recognition. See I really believe in our society, we are such recognition junkies. We're into success and reward and achievement. We set goals, we plan, we succeed, we reap the rewards. That is so at odds with this notion of, of secret service, flying under the radar of public recognition into the hearts and the lives of the people around us. One of the best known things that Jesus ever said was this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Just about everyone has heard that: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And it sounds simple enough but what an incredible cost there is to that. My mum for a couple of decades now has been caring for my sister who suffers from schizophrenia. Now my mum is well into her 70's, what a cost, or a parent who persists faithfully with an incredibly difficult teenager or a work colleague who stands quietly up for someone who can't defend themselves or compensates for someone's failure, quietly without anyone noticing. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is such an easy thing to say yet such a costly thing to do. Isn't it just easier to step over the top of someone or get your own way or get the recognition and success and reap the rewards? I mean after all 'to the victor go the spoils'. The apostle Paul put it like this, he said: You my brothers and sisters were called to be free but don't use your freedom to indulge this sinful nature rather serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, "Love your neighbour as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other watch out for you will be destroyed by one another. See, that's why I just don't think this whole recognition junkie thing works at all. I know it's on just about on every TV program and every TV advertisement and the movies we watch, they all scream at us, "be who you want to be, do what you want to do, achieve, succeed. Be beautiful and wealthy and …" all that stuff but if I have a "me at the centre of the universe" attitude and you have a "you at the centre of the universe" attitude, well you don't have to be Einstein to figure out its going to be a pretty ugly world and it is out there. There are so many people who are into life for just for what they can get out of it, just for the success and the recognition and the reward and the fame. See my hunch is that this "zeit geist" (spirit of the times) of "me, me, me" just doesn't work, it's a con invented by human greed, it's insidious, it's something that grabs each one of us at times in our lives. My life was completely turned around by Jesus, the Son of God who said: I didn't come to be served, I came to serve. That was the most amazing revelation for me, when I became a servant, that all of a sudden my life was fulfilled, there was a richness and a meaning and all that time I'd been trying to fill myself up with stuff and success and recognition and I had all of those things, it just never filled me up, it always left me with that hungry empty feeling. See, my service is doing exactly what I'm doing now, not chasing the big dollars at the top end of town in my consulting practice but using the gifts that God's given me to serve you, today and tomorrow and the next day and I tell you, there is such an incredible joy for me in doing that. In flying under the radar of the big fanfares and the big conferences, all that stuff, into the hearts and the lives of people that God's called me to touch with His love, this secret service. It's so contrary to the fame and recognition that the world offers but you know something, it rings true doesn't it? It rings pure and true in our hearts, do unto others as you would have them do unto you no matter what the cost, it's exactly the kind of Jesus thing I think.

Isn't it funny how good we are at comparing our lot in life with the circumstances of the people around us?  The grass is always greener right?  But what if – what if we're exactly where God meant us to be? I'll tell you something that we're all really good at; it's making comparisons between ourselves and other people. We look at our lot in life, our circumstances and we compare that with the next person and ours always looks so crummy and hopeless. We look in the mirror and we see ourselves warts and all and then we look at our friends and we think, "Wow, I wish I looked like them." Or we compare our abilities with theirs or our marriage with theirs or our house or our car or our status with theirs, whatever it is and we think, "I would love to be doing as well as they are." You know I think, I think this is a symptom of a deep sickness in our society, an addiction. An addiction to recognition. We've become a bunch of recognition junkies because that's what they feed us on TV and the celebrity magazines and the songs that make the hit parade. It's all about clamouring for recognition and success, whatever that is, and being noticed and rewarded. At home and at work, on the sporting field and then someone else seems to be getting just a tad more of the lime light than we are, we feel so incredibly wounded, any, any of this sound even vaguely familiar? I remember this routine so well; I used to hate it when someone else succeeded. School friends or work colleagues, I wanted the glory and the recognition for me, I didn't want them to have any of it. It's really sad. I mean I can talk about it now quite dispassionately but back then, this would eat away at me like a cancer. See Berni was the quintessential recognition junkie, it's a sign of never growing up, it's a sign of not making the transition from being a child, and children rely on the recognition and approval of their parents, to being an adult. Sure we all need encouragement but that's different, that's healthy, encouragement is affirming but when we need it to survive, when we hunger after it, when it motivates what we do, then we're getting it all wrong. Let me give you an example. Numbers and statistics. Ministries like ours on the radio are reaching millions of people around the world each week, touching lives through the media. How do you measure the effectiveness of what we do? Well some people write or call to tell us the impact the programs have had on their lives and you know that's a real encouragement, just to hear someone's story how God used the program last week to unlock something in their hearts. Can I tell you? That gives me an incredible sense of satisfaction. But last year, last year I was at this seminar and they suggested that we establish "performance based reporting". How many people are responding to your program, how many people are coming to Christ, how many people … ? Kind of reducing Gods work down to a bunch of statistics. You see success is based on the quantification of recognition, that's what they were saying. See how easy it is to fall into this recognition trap. Can I tell you? If in His day, Jesus had done performance based reporting He would have flunked because in the end they all deserted Him and left Him to die on the cross. And you know something; I know that certain series that we produce will have a stronger response from people than others. A "what's in it for me" kind of title like "Reaping God's Harvest in My Life" will always have a stronger response than something like 'Flying Under the Radar' which talks about sacrifice. And if I danced to the statistics of recognition I would just tickle your ears with stuff you'd like to hear rather than the stuff that God wants you to hear and that you need in your life. And you know it's the same in every part of our lives. We can become recognition junkies, looking for recognition whether its in statistics or whether it's pats on the back, whatever it is but flying under the radar is not about recognition, its about being the person that God made us to be and doing the things He called us to do and just honouring Him and living our lives for Him. The apostle Paul knew that, on death row in a Roman prison, in chains, have a listen to what he writes in his letter to the Church at Philippi: Now I want you to know brothers and sisters, that what's happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result it's become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains most of my brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly. Now it's true some of them preach Christ out of envy and rivalry but others out of good will. The latter do so in love knowing that I'm put in here for the defence of the gospel, the former though, preach Christ out of selfish ambition not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I'm in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached and because of this I rejoice. Imagine, he's been ripped out of the lime light, he's staring down the barrel at death, people are taunting him, they're going out and doing what he used to do, preaching the good news of Jesus Christ and they're doing it to stir up trouble for him and to taunt him out of selfish ambition. And his response? His response is, "I don't care because it's not about me, as long as someone's out there telling people about Jesus Christ that's fantastic." There he is in a dungeon on death row. You know, recently I was flying between Australia and New Zealand, I was up at 35.000 feet in a 747 and I pulled out my PDA, you know the phone and hand held computer and it has an electronic version of the Bible on it and I was reading this passage out of Paul's letter and I thought, "Here I am 2,000 years later, 35,000 feet above a part of the world that Paul didn't even know existed, reading what he wrote in that Roman dungeon. He could never have imagined how powerfully God was going to use him." And that's the point for me. You see the flashy things that I can do in my own strength to get recognition, to get a laugh then nothing compared to what God can do when He gets a hold of me and uses me in His power. And you know it's the same with you. Sure, you've got some abilities that I don't have and sure, you could use them to get some flashes of recognition but when you place those abilities in Gods hands He multiplies them with a power and an impact that will take our breath away. It's not about you and I comparing our lots with another, it wasn't about Paul sitting in that dungeon on death row comparing his lot with the people that were out there taunting him, it's not about that. God takes us through dungeons from time to time. Yours are going to be different to mine. And then He shapes us and moulds us and uses us for His glory and the way He uses you will be different to the way that He uses me. It's not about recognition. It should never be about recognition and numbers and statistics and, and, it shouldn't be. People whom He uses powerfully are those that co-operated with Him in that dungeon, just kind of faithfully following Him, flying under the radar of public recognition, being there, standing there, doing what He's called you to do for His sake – under the radar.

God does some strange things sometimes.  He leads us into hidden places – lonely places, dark places and seems to leave us there.  What's He up to?  Why does He do that? I love the term, "flying under the radar" and it's become incredibly special to me as I read a book of that same name written by one Douglas Webster. The whole notion is that sometimes, in combat, aircrafts fly so low, literally just feet above the ground or the sea that the enemy's radar can't detect them. They're invisible as they fly along until they reach their objective and that's the idea of "flying under the radar". It's an idea that's so important, it turns out, in life as well. See we live in a world where people are clamouring for recognition, to be noticed, to be valued, to be rewarded, to be thanked. And in fact, it seems we're a generation of recognition junkies. I think that's what the whole celebrity things about. And yet you look around at the people that you and I really respect, I mean people of substance, people of real achievement and by and large those kinds of people, few and far between as they are, they want little to do with worldly success and recognition. It seems that they're prepared to fly under the radar. Now I have to tell you, I am your quintessential recognition junkie. I mean most of my life, the first 36 years of my life, this manifested itself in so many different ways. In the cars that I drove: I always chose the most expensive flashy good looking car that I could possibly afford. The houses that I lived in: it was always important that they were big and pretentious and they said something about who I was and what I'd achieved and the success that I had and the money that I had. The way that I dressed: I always dressed, you heard of the term "power dressing"? You put on the really bold coloured tie and a dark suit and a white shirt and you know, to look like you're powerful. The priorities I had in life: in being noticed, being seen, going to the right functions, mixing with the right people, mingling. Always making sure that at work the boss knew who was responsible for all that good stuff that came across his or her desk and taking every little opportunity, subtly, to undermine my work colleagues just so that people knew who was on top and who was the top dog. You recognise any of those? It's a subtle thing this addiction to recognition but it's there in so many ways. I mean recognition is really important for children because that's how they build their self esteem. Parental approval is an important component of the emotional growth of a child, they need to be patted on the back often, that's how they grow. But like mothers milk, it's something we're supposed to be weaned off. As we grow and mature we're supposed to become people who don't survive on recognition, who don't perform for the crowd. The problem is, for a long time at least, I never grew up and you know something; there are lots of people like that, they're still addicted to recognition. It's a sad addiction because its something you can never get enough of, it's like heroin; we're worried about what people think of us. You know what weaned me off that? It was suffering in a hidden place. I look back on when I became a Christian fifteen years ago and it was at a time in my life of pain and distress. There were major things going on in my life, I still had the expensive flashy car and the high flying job and all that stuff but I was in a dark and lonely place. It was so black that words can't describe it. It was so lonely. It was a pit so deep that there seemed to be no way out and at the time I was just starting to come to grips with who God might be, if He existed at all and like everyone who ends up in a place like that, I said, "God why? Why do I have to go through this? Why?" We all ask that question don't we? Why? And heres what I've noticed about God, He inevitably does His greatest miracles in our lives in those dark lonely places. Joseph ... Joseph was Abraham's great grandson. Abraham has a son called Isaac. Isaac had a son called Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons one of whom was Joseph. You may have heard the story of Joseph and the Technicolour Dream Coat, Joseph had these dreams about how all his other brothers were going to bow down to him one day, he was dads favourite. I tell you, his brothers wanted to kill him, literally, but instead of killing him ultimately they double crossed him and sold him into slavery. Can you imagine? Your own brothers trap you in a pit and they sell you as a slave, I mean that's incredibly unfair and so these slave traders took him down to Egypt and he was sold in a market to a man called Potiphar but Joseph was a class act and ultimately Potiphar put Joseph in charge of all of his affairs and obviously young Joseph wasn't bad looking either because Potiphar's wife wanted to drag him into bed. And when he refused she accused him of rape and Joseph, who did the right thing, ends up in prison. See, life is so unfair sometimes. Now Joseph went on to become the prime minister of Egypt, second only to pharaoh but that time in that dungeon was so important, it was the place where he grew up, it was the place where he learned wisdom. He was the youngest son, he was dads favourite, he had delusions of grandeur, he was this little recognition junkie. And God had to deal with that and He did, by putting Joseph into slavery and then into that dungeon. See this didn't last for hours or days or even weeks, this went on for years that God had Joseph in those incredibly unfair dark and lonely places. See, it seems that so often this is Gods way, to take us, to mould us and to shape us in those hidden places. Have you ever noticed, in Gods creation, that new life always seems to happen in hidden places? A child is conceived and grows hidden in its mother's womb. This little green grub crawling around on the leaves becomes a beautiful butterfly hidden away in its cocoon. You know what? Those hidden places are where God takes us and where we suffer alone, they are the exact opposite of the limelight of recognition. They are exactly the places He needs to take us to change us, hidden away from the worlds gaze and recognition, adulation and praise and rewards, like a heroin addict going through withdrawal but the end of it we have a new freedom. Jesus said: I have come to set the captives free. And again He said: If I set you free you will really be free. When we don't live our lives for recognition and reward anymore we are finally free, we're finally at rest, we finally feel safe. I look back on my life and I know that in that dark place God did His greatest work in me. He set me free from me, from being my own "little tin pot god", from the fear and the insecurity of always needing the next fix of recognition. He works in mighty and mysterious ways, not always obvious, not always pleasant but always, always with one goal in mind – to set us free.

After we've been serving God for a while – well, we get to feeling that we're entitled to be special in His sight.  And the real temptation – and it's a temptation of pride – is to put God's love to the test. You know we all need encouragement and validation and when we're travelling down a certain path in life it's great when somehow people confirm that we're on the right path, someone looks at the career you've chosen and they say to you, "Gee you do so well at that." I mean that's a wonderful thing isn't it? And so often we want God to confirm that we've chosen the right path too. It would be great to have His confirmation and encouragement but sometimes, you know sometimes at those times God just remains silent, have you ever noticed that? Sometimes we want the Lord to confirm that we're on the right path and He just doesn't say anything and you know, when we're walking in faith and putting it all on the line for God, it would be really nice for Him to whisper, "Well done good and faithful servant, keep going." And yet so often He chooses to remain silent and those times, it can be a real wilderness experience. Why does He do that? What's going on? We like to live life on the surface, you know the externals. The recognition, there's the success and the things we can buy and the comfort and the travel and the holidays, you know all that stuff but God, God wants to go to a much, much deeper plain with us, much deeper way below the surface and that's why this week we've been talking about the hidden things of God. Hidden because it's wisdom that lies below the surface, hidden because it's often not until we have a spiritual wilderness experience that we discover them. This week we've been looking at the wilderness experience of Jesus Christ. If you were with us earlier in the week you would have heard me talk about His public baptism, He went down to the Jordan River, He was baptised by John the Baptist, He comes up and heaven opens up and God speaks down and says: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. What an awesome thing and immediately following that God picks Him up and throws Him out into the desert where He starves for forty days and the devil comes after Him with a pick axe. He goes from the middle of the river of God out into this desolation, this wilderness and its Gods way to have Him starving for forty days and He's tempted by the devil. Over the last few days we've looked at the first two temptations. The first one was after forty days; the devil tempts Him to turn the stone into bread, to end the suffering for himself, to end His hunger, to meet His needs in His own strength rather than in Gods strength. After all why not, He was hungry? Because that would be turning your back and the will of God for your life even if that will involves suffering and Jesus turns round to the devil and says, "hang on": Man doesn't live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. He rejects the devils temptation to take matters into His own hands. The second temptation we looked at yesterday. The devil took Him up to a high mountain and said: Worship me and I'll give you all of these kingdoms. It's about chasing after worldly success, about taking the world and leaving God behind and that's so easy to do too because there's such a fine line between serving God and falling in love and worshipping the works of our own hands instead of God and Jesus said: No it is written, "You will worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone. For Jesus it was so much more important that He be found humbly serving His Father instead of being given all the kingdoms of this world. Today we're going to look at the third temptation; it's something that Douglas Webster in his book, "Under the Radar" called "The Great Performance". Have a listen: The devil led Jesus to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you're the Son of God' he said, 'Throw yourself down from here because it is written, "He will command His angels concerning you to guard you carefully. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone".' And Jesus answered the devil, 'It is written, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."' In his book, "Under the Radar", Douglas Webster puts his finger right on what's happening here when he writes this: The career path for Christian leaders is marked by the cross, an incentive that doesn't have much cross-over appeal into the corporate world or our post modern society. Self-denial is a difficult concept to translate into today's leadership literature. The path leading to a cross is far more humbling than it is heroic and all true leaders are led along this path but the temptation to avoid the path to the cross by trying to achieve something great for God confronts us as did Jesus. We're tempted to escape the cross with our spiritual pride intact; we want to feel enthusiastic about Jesus while avoiding the way of Jesus. You see that's the temptation. You get to a point where you've been walking with God for a while and you've been sacrificing, you've been suffering and you get to figuring, "Well God you know, I've earned something here. I've earned a short cut, it's time for you God to validate me, it's time for you God to do some miracle. To say, 'You're heading down the right path, you're special to me.'" And so we get to asking God for something impossible. Not for the right reasons, not because we want to serve Him and bring glory to Him but in order for Him to validate that we're something special. In a sense we want God to start being our servant rather than us being His servant. This temptation is about turning the created creature relationship on its head and putting us on top of the heap and that that is why Jesus names it for what it is, putting God to the test. Growing old is great as long as it involves growing wiser and wisdom, in Gods economy, starts and ends with one thing. You can read it in Proverbs chapter 1; verse 7 where it says: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and discipline. In other words wisdom is based on a right relationship with God and when, when you've been doing stuff for God for a while this is a really easy temptation to fall in. And it's the temptation the devil fell into when he tried to put himself above God. To believe in Jesus is to follow Jesus, He's not only the truth He's also the way and in this wilderness we discover the hidden things of God. When we're under pressure and hungry and tired and the devil pulls along side and tempts us … tempts us to provide for ourselves, tempts us to chase after worldly success, tempts us to make God our servant rather than our Lord, this is when we discover who we are, this is when we discover what we believe and this is the place that God would teach us these lessons in a powerful way that would shape who we are. When we are shaped on the anvil of the wilderness and abandonment and vulnerability, we learn the most amazing lessons. This is where we discover the hidden things of God. We discover in the wilderness what humility and persistence and prayer is. In the wilderness we discover who's Lord. It's a special, special time.

You know something – worldly success and recognition are a seductive thing.  Even as we go about God's business.  It turns out though that there's a fine line between serving God and chasing after recognition. Things are not always what they seem, have you noticed that? With people and, you know, so often with God. I don't know if you do this but sometimes I think I have God in a box that's way too small for Him, He just doesn't fit. My thinking is narrower than His and so often I'm focused on the small picture when He's working on a much bigger picture. I'm focused on how I feel and what my needs are and He, He's focused on developing my character and on drawing me closer, on pruning me back so that I can flower and blossom. Is it just me or do you kind of relate to what I'm saying? Sometimes I plan on achieving this or achieving that for God and His plan, His plan is for me to wait humbly at His feet. God can be so frustrating at times don't you think? This week on the program we're digging a bit deeper to discover the hidden things of God. I mean, we're people and each of us is different and we all have needs and hopes and ambitions and dreams and even when those things involve God, it's so easy just too kind of wander off and leave Him behind, to start pursuing our own plan instead of waiting on His. You know something; wait is a word that appears an awful lot in the Bible and no more beautifully than in Psalm 5, verse 3 where it says: In the morning O Lord you hear my voice, in the morning I will lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. And you know, invariably when God's word talks about us waiting on God it means exactly what the psalmist just wrote. Waiting with expectation – not waiting impatiently, not waiting miserably, not waiting saying, "You know something; this is never going to happen," – waiting in expectation or in other words, in faith. I wonder sometimes whether we're not more focused on becoming achievers, on being self reliant than on humbling ourselves before God and waiting on Him and becoming God achievers, God reliant. Over this week we're looking at the great temptation when Jesus was led into the wilderness. He was baptised in the Jordan by John and when He came up out of the water, at that moment heaven was opened up and He saw the spirit of God descending on Him like a dove and a voice from heaven said: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. What a stunning baptism and straight after that God picks Him up and throws Him out into the desert. Luke chapter 4: Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the spirit into the desert where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them He was hungry. I bet He was. Here's one of the hidden things of God and it's the things that we discover about God in the desert, in the wilderness, are so much deeper than when we're just racing around being successful and happy. It's really important when we start walking around in a wilderness to know what God's up to. Douglas Webster, in "Under the Radar" writes this, he says: Contrary to the popular notion that links fullness of the Spirit to worldly success, Luke relates the fullness of the Spirit to Jesus' wilderness experience and stresses Jesus' extreme vulnerability in the Spirit before the devil. Jesus, full of the Spirit, is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, a place of testing and utter weakness. There is a close correlation between the Spirit's presence and power and Jesus' vulnerability and weakness. Yesterday we looked at the first temptation, the temptation for Jesus to turn the stones into food; I mean to end the suffering in His own strength, apart from God. It was the logical thing to do; it was the devils logical delusion. Wasn't really a temptation, I mean after all, Jesus was famished, Jesus was the Son of God and Jesus answer was: Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. In fact it was a firm "no" to the devil, "I will wait on God for my provision, I will trust in Him even if I have to starve to death." It puts pay to any notion of self reliance. Today we're going to look at the second temptation and you can read it if you want to in the Bible in Luke chapter 4, verse 5: The devil led Him up to a high place and showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and he said to Jesus, "I will give you all their authority and splendour for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone that I want. So if you worship me it will all be yours." And Jesus answered, "It is written worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone. You see the devil led Jesus up to a high place and showed Him the most seductive prize of all, all the kingdoms of the world and the devil said, "Worship me and I'll give all this to you." Now there's a huge jump here from the basic need for bread which was the first temptation, to the greatest thing that he could show Jesus, all the kingdoms of the world. And note Jesus doesn't debate the devils authority to say this, Jesus speaks to the devil not with sarcasm or scorn but with respect and here's the temptation for us. The temptation is that we go after worldly recognition and worldly success, that we achieve what Gods called us to do, in affect, idolatrously. That we end up worshipping the works of our own hands instead of God Himself. Much of what's being said today about the vision of the Church seems to fit with this second temptation. Take a serious long look at what's projected as a compelling vision with hype and excitement and delusion and success. Every Church seems to have its own personalised, customised vision, where do you find that thinking in the Bible? And this fits right into the second temptation. There's a lot of second temptation Christianity going on, Christianity without Christ, what a sharp contrast between that and those beautiful words of Psalm 5: In the morning I will lay my request before you and wait in expectation. Jesus had it right, Jesus went to the devil and said, "No! It is written, 'worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone'." You see the devil offered Jesus all and with the word 'only' Jesus defeated the devil. Jesus said, "I'm not chasing after worldly recognition, I don't want to be in charge of all these kingdoms, I don't want people to think well of me. That's not what this is about; my life is about worshipping God and serving Him alone." It's so easy to worship what we do for God and then leave Him behind. It's so easy to chase after the recognition and the praise of other people and forget that what we're doing is meant to be for God's glory and not our own and I don't care what it is we do or who we are, we all suffer this temptation. Can I tell you, the temptation is the greatest when we're in the wilderness like Jesus was? How tempting must it have looked to be given all those kingdoms, all He had to do was worship the devil once. I've decided there's something so much more important than what I do for God and that's my relationship with Him. That's what this wilderness is about, learning those things, the hidden things of God in a way that we somehow just, just can't forget.

When the going gets tough, it's so much easier to sort things out for ourselves – than to rely on God.  Really…..in fact, when we're hungry, why shouldn't we feed ourselves? It's a funny thing that from time to time God leads us out into the wilderness and then, it seems, He leaves us there to fend for ourselves. When I think of Jesus out there for forty days in the wilderness without food, He must have been starving, literally. Forty days with nothing to eat, He would have been feeling dizzy and weak and completely vulnerable. All His natural support mechanisms and defences stripped away. I mean, if that had been me I wonder whether I wouldn't have been sitting there after forty days thinking, "All right God, so You told me that you'd called me and you told me you had some bold plan to use me to change the world and you told me that I'm Your Son so, so why aren't You providing for me? Why have You thrown me out here into the desert to starve and the only person you've given me for company is the devil himself?" Imagine you're out there in the burning sun starving, what's the most logical thing for you to do? I remember a time when I was training to be an officer in the Australian Army, it was four tough, hard years and on more than one occasion they took us out on survival exercises and we didn't eat for days and there we were carrying a heavy pack and a machine gun and ammunition and everything it seemed except for food. And they'd give us a map and a compass and they'd say, "Well we can't get food through to you here." So they'd give us a grid reference over the radio and we'd have to navigate 25 kilometres over hill and dale where there would be a food drop. So over you go and you get there and there was no food and you'd radio in and they'd say, "Oh look sorry, the truck couldn't get through, we'll give you a new grid reference, 32 kilometres over hill and dale." And this went on for days. And then every now and then you'd get a food drop by a helicopter and they'd drop like half a ration pack for 4 men when you're supposed to have 1 each every day. And we had no idea when it would end. We'd get grumpy and hungry and weak and our moral was pretty low, we'd sit there at night with our stomachs, well our stomachs had given up rumbling we were that hungry and we were a small squad of 4 men and we sat there and talked about these mongrels who were doing this to us and, "Let's walk out to the nearest highway and hitch a ride home." I look back on that experience now and it was so hard back then but it built our characters. It's something that's hard to explain but when you go through something like that it teaches you things in a way that you don't forget. And the obvious temptation in the middle of all of that was to grumble and complain, to do something to provide for ourselves, to go out to the highway to hitch a ride home, to go and buy a pizza, you know. And its exactly the same thing when the Lord puts us into a spiritual wilderness, the most tempting thing under the sun is to provide for ourselves, to seek provisions separate from God rather than relying on Him and so it's no surprise that when Jesus was led by God out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, the very first temptation of the devil is where he tried to hit Jesus in exactly that spot. Have a listen, Luke chapter 4 it comes from: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them He was hungry and the devil said to Him, "If you're the Son of God tell this stone to become bread." And Jesus answered, "It is written, 'A man does not live by bread alone. Douglas Webster in his book, "Under the Radar' writes this, he said: The popular, easy to read books on leadership are of no value in the wilderness. They're not the kind of books you want to read when you're lonely and suffering. Titles like Developing the Leader within You or Leadership 101 or Success One Day at a Time, well they never make good reading out in the wilderness. Seminary degrees and graduate programs may help but they don't produce leaders. The best networking and mentoring in the world doesn't compare to the importance of the wilderness experience. You see, what God was wanting to teach Jesus here in the desert was not self reliance, it wasn't ingenuity or innovation or imagination or invention. It wasn't the ability to forage on the land; it was none of those things. For forty days Jesus was famished, He was weak, vulnerable before the devil and the greatest temptation of all was for Jesus to meet His needs in His own strength. After all He was the Son of God, I mean He was entitled, I mean what the heck, why not? He was hungry, He was in need, He was the Son of God no one could deny that. In fact, that very first temptation, it probably didn't feel much like a temptation at all, it was purely and simply providing for His own needs. In many respects this first temptation was a logical seduction, the temptation to meet our needs, even the most acute need of starvation, in our own strength rather than waiting on God. Wow, that's a strong temptation, to end the suffering because we can. It happens in our lives when we're in a situation perhaps a relationship and its hurting and we go and do something that we know isn't from God but we just want to end the suffering in our own strength. Again, Doug Webster relates this story in his book when he was pastoring a Church and all the people in the Church were giving him a hard time and his temptation was to run away, to throw it in, to say, "That's it, I've had enough, I'm going to go and look for another Church." But he went to a man by the name of Eugene Peterson who's the man who translated the Bible into the translation called, "The Message" and Eugene Peterson gave him some godly advice that went something like this. He said: As I've continued to think and pray I want to urge you not to be too eager to solve the problems and get rid of the suffering that is coming from the murmuring congregation and to believe that God knew what kind of congregation it was when He called you there and that perhaps the pain that they inflict is being used for God's purposes of Holiness in you. See, when we are in the desert and we've been hungering for forty days we've got this acute need, this acute pain. What we want to do is to end the pain but God's view, God knows that: … suffering produces endurance and the endurance produces character and the character produces a hope and its a hope that doesn't disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that's been given to us. That's what Paul writes in Romans chapter 5, verse 3. God is teaching us not to rely on our own goods, not to rely on our own abilities, not to rely on other people, not to rely on the devil, not to rely on ourselves. God wants to teach us in that wilderness this wonderful lesson to learn to rely on Him so that when things get bad, when things get beyond us, when things are so much bigger and harder than we can ever imagine, we can think back to that wilderness and remember the last time God provided for us. He never leaves us there longer than we have to be there, this is the wonderful hidden thing of God, that He wants us to learn to rely on Him and when we go out there and try and provide for ourselves that's the great temptation, the logical seduction of the devil himself.

If I were God – the last place I'd send my Son would be into a desert to be tempted by the devil.  But fortunately – I'm not God and it turns out that the wilderness was exactly where Jesus needed to be. In this day and age success is something that we can see on the outside and by and large people mostly want to be successful. A bit like that time when Jesus was baptised and the heavens opened up and God spoke: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now that didn't happen when I was baptised but if it had I would have known that I was on a fast track to success in the Kingdom of God. But what God did next with Jesus was to lead him out into the wilderness. God does some odd things sometimes; at least that's how it feels when we look at it through our human eyes. He doesn't think the way we do, He doesn't behave the way we do and when we find ourselves out in that wilderness, that mismatch in expectations, means that often we just don't understand what He's up to. That's because success in our eyes is an outward thing. You see it in the secular market place and, let me say, you often see it in Churches too. A guy called, Doug Webster in his book, "Under the Radar" puts it this way, he says: For all practical purposes the fullness of the Spirit seems to mean realising your full potential, becoming the kind of person everyone else wants to follow, being someone who makes things happen, competing to win and being able to prove your success by numbers. Many popular Christian writers on leadership don't even bother to distinguish between worldly success and spiritual success because in their mind the two are virtually one and the same. Today we're going to draw that distinction and it's a sharp distinction indeed. Here's the picture, Jesus gets baptised, we looked at this yesterday but we're going to have a quick look at it again today. He comes down to the Jordan River, it's flowing, it's full of life giving water, there's a crowd and have a look at what happens when He goes to be baptised, Matthew chapter 3 if you want to have a look, in verse 13: Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John. As soon as Jesus was baptised, He comes up out of the water and that very moment heaven was opened up and He saw the Spirit of God descending on Him like a dove and a voice from heaven said, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'. That's an awesome thing, that's an incredible picture and throughout the whole Scripture there's nothing else like it, it's completely unique but what happens immediately following that, we can read it in Luke's gospel, his account, straight after this baptism, straight after this miraculous event, he goes: Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returns from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them He was hungry. Hungry, He must have been famished, He must have been starving. I mean I've gone without food for a few days and I tell you, you start getting dizzy and weak. The contrast between this spectacular baptism and the wilderness couldn't be more stark. The Jordan River with its crowds and Gods amazing deeds on the one hand and the desert, the wilderness on the other. It's so counter intuitive, it's so not what we would expect God to do but this wilderness for Jesus was an essential wilderness. You see we expect success to follow success. We expect to go forward and up and up and up and up and up but Gods plan goes much deeper than that and if we were to discover the hidden things of God then the wilderness, the wilderness is essential. Let's have a look at what happens to Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit. Now that's something we kind of equate with someone being charismatic and successful on the outside but He was filled with the Holy Spirit when He was baptised to equip Him for this time in the wilderness. The crowds have gone, the audible voice of God is gone, the dove is gone, that lovely flowing river has gone and it's replaced by a desolate wilderness and the devil tempting Him and hunger and temptation and weakness and vulnerability and trial after trial. Forty days without food, weak and needy, God takes a step back to prepare His Son. See Jesus learns obedience through what He suffers and look at who took Him out to the desert; it's easy to misread this passage. The devil? No. Look again: Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert. This was Gods idea, in fact in Marks account in Marks gospel; he puts it this way: At once the Spirit threw Jesus out into the desert. Literally, threw Him out there. In other words this wilderness was essential at the beginning of Jesus ministry; it was the sovereign choice of God to throw His Son out there in complete vulnerability. Into that deserted lonely place, deprived of the help and the protection of others, kind of like a sheep deserted by his shepherd, thrown out there by God Himself. Just Jesus out there on His own to be tempted by the devil. You see, God wants to go so much deeper with us than some worldly veneer of success. He's not interested in our popularity, He's not interested in how successful we are at work or in ministry, He's not interested in other people patting us on the back. No, He has a hidden plan to forge our character, a character that will stand completely alone in the midst of that wilderness for Him. A character that will rely wholly on Him no matter what the world throws at us, a character that's forged in the furnace of the wilderness ready to be about God's business. When we look for a leader, when we look for a disciple so often we are looking for people who are successful with a demonstrated track record who seem to have all the outward skills and appearances. How often do we ask about humility, endurance, suffering, prayer life, trials, character? These are the things that Gods interested in; these are the hidden things of God that He wants to forge in the furnace of that wilderness. All the self help books out there describe a trajectory of success but the Bible doesn't, it marks our lives with the cross of Christ, sacrifice and suffering. Its Gods choice, Gods choice as Webster writes in his book is to forge us in the wilderness of solitude, not in ivory towers, not on dream teams but on the anvil of loneliness, abandonment and weakness. You see Israel in the first century were looking for a messiah. They were occupied by the Romans, they were suffering but they weren't looking for Jesus, He didn't look like anything what they were looking for. Here some bedraggled guy, nothing much to look at who wanders out of the desert after forty days of being tempted. He's hungry, He's vulnerable, He's been tempted. He's got none of the trappings of success, nothing to commend Him except this. That in that hidden place He withstood the devil, in that wilderness all alone, hungry and weak he relied on one thing and one thing alone, the fullness of the Spirit of God within Him to get Him through and then and only then was He ready to begin His journey to the cross. Then and only then did God release Him to bring the good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind and bind up the broken hearted. That's exactly the same with us, the Lord leads us into the wilderness, that essential wilderness and then, then He seems to desert us, to leave us all alone except for this. That for each one of us who's placed their faith in Jesus Christ, He has left His Spirit in us, the Spirit who will sustain us, the Spirit who in our weakness and vulnerability will defeat Satan and in that place we discover the hidden things of God.

We like surface things, comfort, recognition…worldly success.  We just do.  But as Jesus discovered, as He starved in the wilderness – during those tough times….it's about something much deeper. I wonder if I ask you to define success, exactly how would you go about doing it? I mean what does success mean to you? I know that for a long time success for me meant recognition, wealth. Whatever I chose to do, being the best and reaping the rewards and then when I had the rewards, spending them in ways that demonstrated that indeed I was successful. Success meant achieving, being seen to achieve and in every way reaping the rewards and that's pretty much the way of the world. Everything the advertising industry does reinforces that image of success, it's a surface thing and by implication the things that constitute success, according to the world's rules, those outwards signs of success, they're supposed to make us happy on the inside. Well, at least that's the theory. I read a book recently by Doug Webster and it's called, "Under the Radar". It's one of those short books that just blew me away. This week on the program we're going to unpack that a little bit to see what he has to say. He makes the point that some of the most successful leaders he knows are people who have achieved so much but they're people that you or I will never, never know. In a sense they're men and women who followed Gods call on their lives and flew under the radar of public recognition into the hearts and the lives of men and women and children around them. And it challenges our worldly images of success. Inevitably these great leaders are people who have spent time in the wilderness, people who have struggled and been vulnerable and allowed God into their lives in the midst of that wilderness. Webster challenges me with this statement: We shouldn't be surprised that the Bible calls for leadership that the world doesn't recognise as leadership. We have trouble identifying the 'David' type leader whose character and leadership have been forged in the wilderness while caring for the sheep. It makes you think. We're going to look at this week, Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus in the desert, being tempted by the devil. Here's the Son of God and He ends up in this dark and lonely place but just before we go there, I'd like to share with you what happened to Jesus immediately before He ends up in the wilderness being tempted by the devil and it's the story of His baptism, it's pretty spectacular story. Matthew in his gospel chapter 3, verse 13 puts it this way, he says: Jesus came down from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John the Baptist but John tried to send Him away saying, 'Look I need to be baptised by you Lord and you come to me?' But Jesus replied, 'Come on, lets do it, its proper for us to do this and to fulfil all righteousness.' So John consented. And as soon as Jesus was baptised He came up out of the water and at that very moment heaven was opened and He saw the spirit of God descending down on Him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, 'This, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'. Now I want you to think about that for a moment, is that success or what? I mean you go down to be baptised, you're coming up out of the water, the heavens open up, God speaks: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. This man is special, I tell you what, if I was in my baptism and that happened to me I'd be thinking, "Man I have arrived, I have made it, I am on a fast track to success in the Kingdom of God." Wouldn't you think the same? And if we were standing there watching this, seeing Jesus come up out of the water and hearing that, God speak and the heavens open up and the spirit of God descend down on Jesus like a dove. We'd be saying, "now here's a man who's successful, here is a man worth following. This is exactly the sort of man I'd want to appoint as the head of my dynamic, fast growing, successful, contemporary Church. He's got all the outward trappings of success." And you see that in so many Churches, again Webster writes: Pastors and lay leaders alike judge success by worldly standards. The allure of great numbers and grand visions and expensive budgets and creative programming but it's only a matter of time before they become disillusioned with the experts and the consultants and the executives whom they've chosen to run their Church according to a competitive business model. Has a bit of a ring of truth about it doesn't it? Because in Gods plan, well in Gods plan there's something more something much more, something deeper. This baptism of Jesus going into the Jordan and being baptised by John, it signalled the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. You see, the first three decades of His life, He was an apprentice carpenter in His dads carpenter shop in Nazareth, making chairs I guess and coffins and doors and God wasn't in a hurry with Jesus but now, now Jesus is about to be launched into public life, into public ministry and He ends up with a stunning ministry. We can read it in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, He heals people, He does amazing miracles, He does all sorts of things and ultimately He's crucified on the cross and rises again. So this was a fitting ceremony, a great rite of passage, pretty showy stuff to launch Jesus in His public ministry and if you or I were God, my hunch is we would have said, "right He's ready, lets send Him out to the temple or the synagogue or lets go and do miracles. Let's get Him out there, let's get the recognition, let's get Him on the circuit. Maybe He should write a book or two and publish and have a radio program." Surely from there, Jesus was on a fast track to success but look what happens next, immediately following that baptism. Luke's gospel says this, Luke chapter 4, verse 1: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them He was hungry. Well some fast track, I mean Jesus had a wilderness experience ahead of Him; He got led into the desert. I mean I don't know if you've ever been in a desert, maybe you live near one. I mean Australia is 80% desert and what I know is when people get lost in a desert for a few days they can end up dying. I mean it's a harsh, horrible place, extremes of temperature, hot during the day, freezing cold at night. If I was God I wouldn't have sent my Son there, I would have put him in somewhere comfortable and set him up for his ministry. Fortunately I'm not God. Jesus had a wilderness experience starving, bedraggled, alone, vulnerable. In fact there couldn't be a starker contrast between His baptism in the Jordan, fresh flowing living water, all these crowds, the public shows up, God shows up. Compare that to the wilderness, this place of desolation, completely alone except for the devil. Some fast track, some, some plan God, what were you thinking? But this was Gods chosen way and we're going to look at that over the next few days on the program. Jesus full of the Holy Spirit comes back from the Jordan and was led by the spirit into the desert. You see it wasn't the devil that took Him there, it was God that took Him there because God had a plan, God knew that Jesus needed to spend some time in that wilderness, vulnerable and weak being tempted by the devil before He would be ready for the ministry that God had planned for Him.

There are so many good things out there in life.  And it's great to get our fill.  But what's even better, is when we're so full of goodness – that we overflow – right into the lives of other people. I love to see other people doing what God made them to do. Being who God made them to be. It's awesome when they excel at that. A brilliant musician or a sports person or someone who's great at caring for other people. Someone who can just lead an organisation, somehow make it sing. It never ceases to amaze me how different we all are and how when someone discovers their unique gig, whatever that is, what a wondrous thing that is to behold. For me it leaves me in awe of God, His grace to let us have gifts like that. His imagination. His plan to bless each one of us through the gifts and the abilities of other people. Sometimes we get all silly and we compare ourselves to other people and go, "Oh well, I can't do that." Of course we can't, it's not what God made us to do. He made us to be, well you and me. To be and to excel at whatever He's gifted us in our DNA. In fact it's a real passion of mine. To see people living out who God made them to be and the plan that He has for their lives. And when we're right in that sweet spot there's just nothing better. That's why I enjoy doing what I'm doing right now. I'm custom made for this gig. A whole bunch of other things I can't do but I love, I love sharing the good news of Jesus with you. This week we're looking at Jesus' ideal plan for our lives. A plan to use us as the entry point for His flood-tide of blessing into this world. Yesterday we looked at this passage, I want to look at it again today. It's John chapter 7, verse 37. And Jesus is talking at a time of a festival where they celebrate the enactment in a temple of the flowing of the Holy Spirit into the land. He says: If anyone is thirsty (anyone, that means, you know that's for you and me right? This is an invitation) If anyone is thirsty (Are you thirsty?) then let them come to me (Says Jesus) and drink because whoever believes in me streams of living water will flow out from within them. By this He meant the Holy Spirit whom those who would believe in Him were later to receive. This picture for the "anyone" and the "whoever", for you and for me, is for God to fill us to overflowing. When we're thirsty go to Jesus and we drink and we believe and then rivers of living water, His Spiritual blessing flows out of us. The Bible says literally: From our bellies into the world around us rivers, a flood-tide of blessing. You know near the delta of a river, when there's a flood all the wonderful silt goes out into the land and makes the land rich and fertile and things grow and they come to life. That's the picture. It's almost like we're a channel, an entry point for Gods blessing, a vessel used in His service. When I look around at the people I know it never ceases to amaze me how different we all are. A friend of mine, Bob, who's a counsellor, he sits and listens to people and empathises and helps them think through and work through their problems. I couldn't do that. Another good friend of mine, Lawrie. He's a gentle man, he has a special ministry. When Churches are going through hurts, sometimes when they go through splits or they sack their pastor or whatever went on, his ministry is to go and to be their pastor for the next few months or even the next few years and bring reconciliation and forgiveness and healing into that place. It's a really special ministry. I couldn't do that. Another friend of mine, James, he's the baby boomer social director at our Church. He's always organising for us to get together or to go away for weekends and he ushers in a sense of community. He loves doing that, he's passionate about it. That's not me either. The people I really admire, teachers. I spoke recently at a gathering of 300 high school teachers. Now those people, I reckon they deserve a medal. I mean I definitely couldn't do what they do. You know by now I could be tearing my hair out, I could be feeling really insecure. Wow, I can't do any of those things that those other people can do. What good am I? Me, I just sit in a radio studio behind a microphone. How boring is that? But you know something, when I'm doing what God made me to do it's such an incredible joy. It is your decision and my decision to draw close to Jesus and to get to know Him and to be filled by His Spirit. And when we're thirsty to go to Him for our spiritual nourishment, that's the inflow, it's an awesome thing. I was worshipping at Church recently and it was such a delight to sing praises and to bow down my life before God but if that's all I did with my faith it would get boring. You fill up and you fill up and you fill up with God and you never spend any of that and you never let any of it flow out, I think we'd explode. You know where there's as much, in a sense, an even more delight for me? When I see those rivers of living water flow out from me from who He made me to be with my gifts and my limitations, from my belly and my heart, rivers of living water. When I'm doing what He made me to do and that's exactly what I'm doing right now, I'm sharing Him with you, I love this. I get into a studio and I start doing this stuff and it's such an incredible joy. It doesn't mean I don't have challenges in my life. It doesn't mean that there aren't some days that are really, really hard or I'm tired or I'm sick. All of those things. Those things happen in my life and they happen in your life. We all have pressures and tensions and there are conflicts some days. But I think we need both to be filled and to be fulfilled. The Holy Spirit in and rivers of living water out. On the one hand you see faith without works is dead. That's the in without the out. If I were just to go and pray and to worship God and say, "God you're a wonderful God" but I never lived that out, that's dead. On the other hand works without faith, well they're dead works, they're hard work. We end up pedalling and pedalling and pedalling and doing this stuff and getting dry and burnt out. But when we're receiving from God, the very Spirit of God, the very fullness of God. The joy, the knowledge, seeing His face, worshipping Him. When we're getting that from Him and then we step out of that quiet room and we just see how God uses our gifts and our abilities and our joy and He overflows through us into the lives of other people, that is such a sweet delight. It is such a joy. It is so fulfilling. And God uses you so differently to the way He uses me. People often respond to these radio programs and they say what an impact they're having, what a difference they're making in their lives. And my response is it is such a joy, I love doing what I do and then the Holy Spirit just takes that and fills you with Himself through what I do so that a flood-tide of blessing, in turn, will go out from you to other people. See that's God's economy and what you do and the things I couldn't possibly do, what you do is so special. It's so unique to you. So much part of God's plan for who He made you to be and what your life is going to be, the plan is simple. To fill us to overflowing so that we're full and satisfied and out of that abundance rivers of living water, the Spirit of God Himself, flows out day after day. There are going to be stresses and strains along the way but as many hurts as there are He brings healing, He changes us and He moulds us to be even more perfect for His plan. And the hurts, well He knocks the rough edges off us and we just go back to Him, let His Spirit pour in and pour out through us. And you know, when you're using His special gift, what He gave you, the ability He gave just to you that is such a sweet thing.

Ever been so thirsty you think you're going to die.  And then – then you have a deep drink of fresh, cool, clear, living water.  Awesome.  In fact Jesus talked a lot about water. I remember when I was training to be an officer in the Australian Army. We used to go out on exercises for weeks at a time, war games and we'd be fighting this imaginary army and learning, I guess, how to fight a war. Back in those days the army was heavily into water rationing. Two water bottles per man per day perhaps. And that was for shaving, washing, cleaning your teeth, cooking and drinking. So those hot summer months with all the physically heavy work that the battle entails, it was never enough. Many a time we'd finish an attack up a steep hill in the middle of the noon days sun or be digging a trench and all I wanted to do was to guzzle down a whole bottle of water. Of course you couldn't do that and I'd close my eyes and I'd imagine that I was swimming in a nice cool river with stacks and stacks of water. When you're that thirsty what you really want is water in abundance. You want to be filled to overflowing. This week on the program we're looking at what it means to be filled by God to overflowing. Not just half full, not just three quarters full, not just full to the brim but filled so that we overflow all His goodness and all His blessings and his Spirit. When we're really thirsty we have a deep longing to drink. It is such a satisfying thing when we drink. I mean our need for water is one of the most basic of all needs. 70% of the human body is water and after oxygen water is our most important physical need. You can't go for very long without water. The body starts closing down some of it's functions and depending on your condition you can be dead in just a couple of days. Or if you're stuck in a hot car without water you can be dead in a few minutes in extreme heat. It's interesting that when Jesus was talking about His plan for our lives He uses thirst and water to explain what He means. I think it's because it's something we can really relate to. He meets a woman, a Samaritan woman, at a well and He says to her: Everyone who drinks out of this water will be thirsty again but those who drink the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up into eternal life. See life gets thirsty and this week on the program we've been looking at what it means to be filled to overflowing 'cause that's Jesus plan. No ifs, no buts. "Oh well, that's not my experience'". Maybe not but its Jesus promise. Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water I will give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up into eternal life. I wonder sometimes whether in life we don't make things just a bit too complicated. For me, faith is a simple thing. I read what Jesus says. I hear what God has to say to me and then you say, "Well okay, if that's from God that's what I'm going to believe even if my circumstances are screaming at me saying that's never going to be possible. You're never going to have a fountain of spring water gushing up in you." And every time my feelings or the things that are going on around me scream at me, "God's a liar, God's a liar, God's a liar". I'm just going to pick up that Book and go to that passage again and read what Jesus had to say again. I'm just going to believe in Him and not all these other things. Now you might say to me, 'But Berni that's unrealistic. I've been trying to have a life of peace and joy and abundance. It seems like forever and it's just not happening for me'. Look at His promise again friend. Let's read it. John chapter 7, verse 37: If anyone (not some special people). If anyone is thirsty let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me (not just the special spiritual people). Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from them. By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Jesus were later to receive. There are three parts to that promise. The first one is, "if you're thirsty get a drink". When life is dry and parched and empty, if anyone is thirsty. You know what anyone means? Anyone means anyone. Come to Jesus and He will fill us full of His water. A water that when we drink it, a living water, we'll never be thirsty again. The second thing He says is, "and whoever believes in me". You see, it's a faith thing. When He says, "whoever believes in me" that word "in" means literally "into". So it says whoever believes into me. You may have heard me say this before. I can look at a chair in the distance and believe that it will hold me and I'm believing in it. But if I want to believe into the chair I walk over and I sit down in the chair and I say, "you see, the chair can hold me". I've put my faith into the chair. My trust into the chair and so Jesus says, "whoever believes what I say, whoever reads what I said and says you know something, like a little child I'm going to believe and accept that from Jesus". Whoever believes into me from their belly rivers of living water, not just a trickle, not just a steam, not just one river, rivers plural, get it? An abundance, a flood-tide of blessing of the Holy Spirit. Whoever believes into me from their belly rivers of living water will flow out. The last few days of the program we've looked at some of the things that can stop that from happening, the blockage, our own rejection of God, the compromises, the sin, the devil in the spiritual realm robbing us of what God wants us to have. And you might say, "Berni, I think you're being unrealistic. Well I have problems and stresses and strains in my life." Absolutely, Jesus promises those too. Look at how He trained His disciples. He promised them all those things and He never promised them that He would somehow lift us out of those difficulties and trials and exempt us from suffering. To the contrary, He promised the absolute opposite. He said: In this world you will have tribulation. But in the middle of all that He also promised that He would fill us to overflowing in this thirsty, parched, dry place. He would let us experience the incredible satisfaction of a deep drink of His Spiritual water of Him Himself. Now we might be spiritually or emotionally thirsty or parched or dry and Jesus says, "Come to me and I'll give you the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. I'll fill you with Him to overflowing." And we're all different. We're all close to God in different ways. Some people do it by singing, other people like me get up early in the morning and pray. Other people love to read, other people find Jesus just most in the middle of life. And there are combinations and permutations of those things but the consistent message of Gods word is this. When we draw close to Him, He draws close to us and that's a special thing and there is an incredible satisfaction of being, not just fulfilled full of Him but being filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit. He fills us in ways that nobody else, that nothing else can. The problem is so many people have been living so dry for so long they've accepted that as being normal. I mean so many spiritually dry people. We think everyone else is like that. We can't imagine how God could ever fill us with His Spirit. How He could ever make a fountain of living water bubble out so that other people can come and meet Jesus and drink from that fountain 'cause that, my friend, is the normal Christian life. Can I encourage you? Don't accept second best, don't accept a dry, parched land, don't accept anything else, don't settle for anything less than the fullness of God in your life. The very presence of Jesus through His Spirit in us. Thirst then wait to be filled by Him and just don't take anything less.

Sometimes, it's the things that we can't see, that can have the biggest impact on our wellbeing.  Our blood pressure.  Our cholesterol levels.  The supernatural realm.  All things we ignore – at our peril. It's true that the things we can't see are often the things that end up ruining our lives. There are no symptoms for high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels but if we have either of them, well they dramatically increase our chances of heart attack and stroke. We can't see them, we can't feel them but when they hit the impact is devastating, often fatal. There are no symptoms for glaucoma before people notice they've lost a fair chunk of their eyesight. There are no symptoms for bowel cancer or cervical cancer until it's too late. The hidden things, the things we can't see, the things we ignore, they're often the ones that take people's lives. We know that's true physically, but it's also true spiritually as much as we might try to ignore it and deny there's a spiritual dimension to life. Makes sense, God is spirit and it's what happens in the spiritual dimension that impacts what's going on here in the physical. I spent a greater part of my life trying to ignore the spiritual dimension. But if God is God, well there must be spiritual dimension. The Apostle Paul, and to me he's really interesting this guy, he has a real insight about this. Now remember Paul is as practical as practical can be. He's not some kind of airy fairy spiritual fruitcake. He's down to earth, he wrote almost half the books of the New Testament and by and large he dealt with really practical issues of life. But have a listen to what he says about the spiritual dimension in Ephesians chapter 6, beginning at verse 10: Finally let the mighty strength of the Lord make you strong. Put on all the armour that God gives you so that you can defend yourself against the devils tricks because we're not fighting against human beings, we're fighting against forces and authorities and against rulers of darkness and powers in the spiritual world. So put on all the armour that God gives you then when that evil day comes you'll be able to defend yourself and when the battle is over you'll still be standing firm. You see my friend, we can see people. The weather, we can see the weather. The stock market, we can see the stock market go up and down but Paul's saying here that that's all well and good but there's a spiritual dimension that you can't see. The devil is alive and well, he's full of tricks, there is a battle going on in the heavenly places for my soul and for yours. And he says, when that battle is over you're meant to still be standing. And the things that rob us, and not so much the things we can see, the flesh and blood, tangible, physical things here in this world. It's what's happening in the spiritual world, the unseen world. We are fighting against forces and authorities and against rulers of darkness and powers in the spiritual world Writes Paul. Now that's hard to come to grips with. I mean in the west almost 75% of us believe in God yet less than a third believe in the devil. Whereas you go to parts of Africa or Asia and the demonic is alive and well. Idolatry and witchcraft and devil worship are all happening there. In the west though, let me tell you, you don't have to look too far to see the devils fingerprints on all sorts of things. Albeit it's a little more subtle. It's the hidden things in that super natural dimension that can end up killing us. Jesus said, we looked at it the last couple of days, John chapter 10, verse 10: The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come (said Jesus) that you may have life in all its fullness and all its abundance. You see, what Jesus is saying is the things that happen in the super natural dimension, the thief, the devil, that's what robs us of the life that Jesus has planned. A life in all its fullness and all its abundance. So, what do we do about it? You know when I pray I pray into the super natural. Sometimes I see spiritual attacks happening to me or the people around me and I pray to God about the battles happening in the spiritual dimension. When I claim that territory, that spiritual territory in Jesus name, the devil and his demons have to flee. At the name of Jesus every knee must bow, every tongue must confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. My experience is that every time I wake up in the morning and I put my feet on the deck and I step out in Jesus name to live a good life or to tell other people about Him, the forces of spiritual darkness will come against me and it's all sorts of different ways that that happens. The first time I lectured at a Bible college, in just 200 metres that I drove from my house to the traffic lights I almost had three cars run into me. People just came out of nowhere to try and crash into me. Sometimes when we're close to a break through here in our ministry, maybe we're talking to a new radio station to take our radio programs and if we get onto that station lots of people are going to hear about Jesus Christ. I've almost come to expect at those times that I'm going to be attacked or a board member or my family through sickness and something snaps in one of the board members businesses. You name it, however the devil can disrupt Gods goodness, he's going to try. Sometimes Gods up to something good and Jacqui and I will start getting a bit scratchy with one another and what we need to do is name it for what it is, the devil trying to drive a wedge between Gods plan, Jesus plan for an abundant life, and us. Sometimes amazing things are happening through one particular radio station and all of a sudden that relationship is under threat, maybe they might take us off air for a few weeks. The devil will try to rob our peace and our joy and our abundant outlook on life and the mighty things that God wants to do through us because he knows that when we're flowing in Gods plan we're full of Gods joy and the joy of the Lord is our strength. You know when I was in the army and we were training in war games, we would probe and attack and surprise the enemy and create fear and doubt and the devil does exactly the same thing. He sends his demons to disrupt and to rob us. Now people sometimes look at me and say, "Why is he talking like this? What's the matter with him? Is he whacko or something?" The devil, friend, is alive and well. You look right through Gods word, you look at Jesus, you look at Paul, this is the reality. There is a spiritual dimension and the battle in the heavenly places is as real as high blood pressure or high cholesterol even though we can't see it all. Now I'm a simple guy. I just believe Jesus and take Him at His word. His plan, very clearly, is to fill you and me to overflowing with His Spirit and when that plan is interrupted by the devil through a heaviness or a hatred or a temptation or a fear or doubt or attacks on the ministry or attacks on our family. I don't know, I'm just a simple guy. I sit down and I pray and say: Father God,I don't know what's happening in the spiritual realm. What I do know is there's a battle going on. What I do know Jesus is you died and you rose again to give me victory so that I can have victory in that battle. I claim victory in that spiritual battle in the heavenly places, in the spiritual dimension. And time and time and time again I have seen the devil come to try and attack me with a meat cleaver and he has to flee when I pray in Jesus name 'cause Jesus gave us victory on the cross. Jesus gave us a victory over death, over the devil in the empty tomb. Father,I ask you to give me this victory in Jesus name. Now does that sound whacko to you? I tell you what, it works. It's simple. We don't have to have long complicated incantations and prayers. We don't have to be complex about it. I just have this simple little faith that says, you know something, when I ask God for something in Jesus name He may not do it right away or now or the next day and He may not do it quite the way I'd like Him to but when I ask for good things in Jesus name my Father in heaven answers and there's one thing He doesn't want. He doesn't want me to fall to the temptations of the devil and He has already defeated the devil for me and for you through Jesus Christ. It's that simple.

Fathers are funny animals.  They want the best for their kids.  But when their kids rebel, when they don't play the game, that blessing dries up quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. I was listening the other day to a well known actor, Alan Alda, being interviewed by an equally well known interviewer called Michael Parkinson in the UK. Now Alan Alda, of course, became famous as the character Hawkeye Pearce in the long running TV series MASH. Alda's now over 70 years old and he was telling us how a couple of years ago he was travelling in South America and he had the most incredible pain in his stomach. They rushed him to a Doctor who detected a blockage in his intestine. Now unless the Doctor operated immediately and cut that part of his intestine out he was going to die. When it comes to life and living blockages in any part of our body are almost always deadly. In our airways, in our bowels, in our eyes, something that can send us blind. And it turns out that spiritual blockages are just the same, they're deadly. Our lives can sometimes be full of tiredness and worry and we're running out of steam and we're running out of puff and our batteries are flat. Okay, sure we have our ups and downs but sometimes our lives seem to be on this downward spiral. Day after day after day we've got this sub-optimal thing happening and that reality in life can sometimes dominate our vision. We think that that's all there is, we think that it can't get any better but that reality stands in such stark contrast, let me say, to the promises Jesus made to us, if only we'd believe in Him. Have a listen to some of those promises again today. John chapter 10, verse 10: The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life in all its fullness, in all its abundance. In fact, literally in it's super abundance. Matthew chapter 11: Come to me if you're weary and burdened because I will give you rest (said Jesus). Take my yoke upon you and learn from me because I'm gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. John chapter 7: If any of you is thirsty come to me and drink because whoever believes in me as the scriptures have said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. By this He meant the Holy Spirit whom those who believed in Jesus were later to receive. And then just before He was handed over to be crucified, John chapter 14, verse 27 He says to His disciples: Friends, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I'm not giving the way the world does. Don't let your hearts be troubled, don't let them be afraid. Jesus promised us super abundant life. Rest for the weary, drink fullness to overflowing for the thirsty, peace for the troubled. The problem is that it doesn't always work out that way in our lives and so either Jesus is a liar or there's something else. S D Gordon, around the late 19th or early 20th century wrote a fabulous book called Quiet Talks On Power. He's one of my favourite authors and he kind works on a similar premise to what I'm working on with Jesus' promises except he looks at it from a perspective of God's power and he says, "Look, the natural life as a Jesus believer is to have God's power to accomplish the things that God calls us to do." And he tells this great story at the beginning of the book about a blockage. He talks about a mid western American town in the late 1800's. It was a dry area and it relied heavily on water from a dam up in the hills. Water after all equals life – no water, no town, no life. Now the town grew and prospered and filled with people until one day the water pipes ran dry. People went up to the reservoir up in the hills and it was full but there was just no water flowing down into the valley to the town. No water – no life. So people began to leave the town and the tumble weed was blowing through the main street and it became a veritable ghost town. Then one day they received an anonymous note, somebody had sabotaged the pipes right up near the reservoir. Someone had put a small plug into the pipe and the authorities went up there and checked it and sure enough they found it. They removed that one small blockage and the water started to flow again. Life came back, the people returned to the town because that little blockage stopping the water from flowing had been removed. A small blockage can have such a huge impact. Can I tell you? There are so many people missing out on Gods abundance because of blockages in their lives. They may only be small, they may only be tiny compromises, "Well I believe in God but not in this area of my life. Well you know, I believe in God but I don't think He'll ever fill me to overflowing", some people say. There is a simple name for that, it's called sin. I know it's not a popular word. I know these days people say, 'Oh come on Berni, sin, that is such an old fashioned concept'. Maybe it is but it only takes the smallest blockage to stop the water from flowing. Listen again to Jesus, John chapter 7, verse 37: If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within them. What's Jesus' plan? Jesus planned the normal Christian life is a flood tide of blessing, full to overflowing. And you see, that's His plan, not just for Mr and Mrs Super Christian, not just for some hot shot preacher or worship leader, if anyone is thirsty let them come to me and drink and whoever believes in me from their belly will flow rivers of living water. This is all for us and when we do it our own way, when I decide I'm just going to grumble and go my own way, I'm going to cheat or lie, I'm not going to believe in Jesus blessing, you know what it does? It blocks the flow. It's deadly. Sin is like that plug in the pipe. God is a fantastic God. God is a holy God. And when we rebel against Him, even in those hidden places, in those little things. In fact, especially those little hidden things, that sin becomes like a blockage, it stops the natural flow that Jesus has planned. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. Even though the reservoir is full of fresh, clean, life giving water. Even though Gods plan for us is for His Spirit to pour down into us in abundance. To fill us not just to the top but to overflowing. To have a flood tide of blessing that enters into this world through us, our sin blocks that plan. His plan is to have us full to overflowing with abundant life. With joy, with peace, with rest. Sin blocks His plans and there is only one way to fix it. It is to unblock the pipe. Jesus said "Repent". Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand. Do you know what repenting means? Repenting is turning away from the sin and back to God. It's saying, "I am going to look at that little blockage, that little compromise, that little hidden thing that no one except God and I know about. I'm going to look at it and I'm going to call it what it is. It is sin. It is anti God. It is blocking Gods plan for my life and I'm going to turn away from that and hand that part of my life over to Jesus. I know I've been holding it back. I know I've been kind of denying it. I'm going to hand it right now over to Jesus in humility and obedience." I guarantee you, when we take that step, when we hand that blockage over to Him and say, "Lord, you know something, I don't even know how to get rid of that blockage but You do. Take it away." I guarantee you that the Spirit of God will start flowing and fill us absolutely to overflowing.

Let's face it – life can be a bit dry.  A bit on the parched side.  Maybe we have an inkling that it shouldn't always be like that, but somehow that can be so hard to believe. I don't know if this has ever happened to you but sometimes we feel like we're running out of steam. You know what I mean, whatever it is we do in life, at home or at work or maybe at some community group, we give and we give and we give and little by little it saps our energy. All that giving drains us. And even if we have a bit of a holiday to recharge the old batteries somehow emotionally, even spiritually, there's still this tiredness, an emptiness, a sense that, well I'm not sure if I have a whole bunch more to give. You're a mum with a difficult teenager or a sick child and maybe juggling a job. Or you're a dad, the bread winner if you like and you've been grinding away at this job for what seems like an eternity and one day you wake up and the river has just run dry. There is just nothing left to give. It doesn't have to be a full blown burn out you know, even though that happens sometimes, there are so many people out there living, let me call it a sub-optimal life. A life that is not everything it could be or should be. People who are tired and listless. People with a sense that life is drifting or just slipping by. People who are stressed and carrying around these heavy burdens worrying about this and that. Fears a big problem you know amongst men and women and it all starts to affect your health and your sense of well being and we don't sleep well. And it seems that all we can do when we open our mouths is to whinge and complain about this or that. You'd be amazed how many people on paper have everything you could hope for. You know, a good family, a loving husband or wife, great kids, a career, a job, financial security. Yet they're living lives of stress and worry and fear. I called it sub-optimal living or you can just call it unfulfilled or you can call it stressed and tired and irritable. Call it whatever you like but it's a life where it doesn't seem to be what it's meant to be. Now I'm not talking about the different seasons we go through in life, we all know we go through seasons, we all go through ups and downs and summers and winters and bright sunny days and cold howling brutal days. I'm not so much talking about that up and down. I'm talking about this ongoing sub optimal inner life, whether or not the circumstances on the outside are good or lousy. I'm talking about having a life inside that's worth living. I was challenged the other day by a good friend of mine, Max. Now let me tell you about Max. Max works with me here in the studio. He's a silent partner in all these radio programs. He produces hundreds of programs each year with me. Max would have to be one of the most preached out guys on the planet earth. I mean he's involved in other ministries, one called Ellel Ministries, a healing ministry that does great stuff. And Max gets preached at day after day after day after day after day, bless him. Over a cup of tea and toast with honey the other day he says to me, "Berni, you know you talk as though having peace and joy in your life, 24 x 7 is a normal thing, like everybody should have that? Well ... maybe God's done some amazing things in you and fast tracked stuff so that you can be some high flying preacher but maybe it's not like that for the rest of us." That really challenged me. It really got me thinking. Is that what I believe? You see I see myself as just an average Joe Blow who gets behind a microphone and shares Jesus with people. Am I talking about something that's realistic or is it a pipe dream? Am I talking about reality? You see I spent the first 36 years of my life without God. At least I hadn't turned my life over to God. I did it all on my own or so I thought. I was competent, I was surgically ruthless as a businessman yet I had no real joy in my life. Now I met Jesus along the way when I was about 36 years old and I decided to take to heart what He said. I didn't want a religion, I was after a relationship. Not a bunch of rules, it had to be something real, something that worked. And that's why today I'm working in this ministry called Christianityworks producing these radio programs. The bottom line is, if Gods real and Jesus is who He said He is, He has to make a difference in my life and so I read about Jesus and what He said and just accept Him with simple child like faith. I think that's the key. Some of the things He had to say really struck home for me. John chapter 10, verse 10: The thief (talking about the devil) comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come, says Jesus, (get this) that you may have life in all it's fullness and abundance. In fact the word that John uses there for abundance literally means "super abundance". We just don't have a word that's an equivalent in the English language. And then again in Matthew chapter 11, verse 8. Jesus said: You who are tired, you who are weary, are you burdened? Come to me and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me. I'm gentle and humble of heart and you'll find rest for your souls. And again, John chapter 7, He said: If anyone's thirsty (I love this because this is for me because I was really dry). If anyone is thirsty let them come to me and drink because whoever believes in me, from them rivers of living water will flow deep from within. By this He meant the Holy Spirit whom those who believed in Jesus were later to receive. And then, when the disciples were going through this turmoil, Jesus said: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I don't want to give to you as the world does, don't let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid. You see, Jesus never promised that bad things wouldn't happen to us. He never said, "no one's going to persecute you, no one's going to hurt you, no one's going to be rude to you. You'll have this wonderful life, you'll have 2.4 well adjusted children, you'll live happily ever after into old age." He never promised that kind of sugar candy coated life. In fact the opposite was true. He said to His disciples, "They persecuted me, they're definitely going to persecute you. They killed me, they're definitely going to kill you. Take up your cross and follow me." Jesus would not have got a job as an executive in a PR or marketing agency I have to tell you. He told it the way it was. No spin, straight up and down and you know, that reality of life that you and I experience, the ups and downs stands in such stark contrast to these wonderful promises I just read out. Life super abundantly. Rest. Peace. You're thirsty, come to me, fill up, drink and it will overflow out of you. Now I believe we all have a choice. We can look at our circumstances and say, 'I'm going to believe that these things that Jesus promised never could happen to me 'cause you know something, my life's so bad, the people around me are so bad, it's so tough, I've got this hangover from the past. No, those promises from Jesus aren't for me.' We can put our faith in bad things, in our circumstances, or like a child in the midst of all those difficulties we can say, "You know something, Jesus promised this stuff to His disciples and those guys were going through some really tough times. And I've given my life to Him, I'm one of His disciples and those promises, those promises are for me. I'm going to believe it like a child." I believe that faith is a gift from God and maybe God wants to give you the gift of faith today, simply to believe like a child in the promises that Jesus made. I have come here (He said) that you may have life and have it super abundantly. Does that mean the sun's going to shine every day? No it doesn't. Does that mean we're not going to be afraid some days? No it doesn't. But I believe Jesus Christ wants to make a difference in my life and He wants to make a difference in your life.

It's easy for someone to say, "You should be a blessing to other people"  But what if we're too busy, or we just don't have anything to bless other people with?  Really – then what?!! When we talk about God's blessing, what we discover is that it's a two sided transaction. Jesus made it really clear that when God blesses us, the whole point is that we're meant to be a blessing to other people. We are blessed to be a blessing. People sometimes ask me, "Berni, what does that mean? I mean, let's get practical here, what does it mean for me to be a blessing to someone else?" That's a good question. I don't know what sort of life you lead, some people lead extremely busy lives and other people lead quiet, even lonely lives sometimes. Whichever end of the spectrum we're on, the notion of us being a blessing to other people can seem, well, kind of impossible. How could that ever be? Throughout the program on the week, we've been talking about living out God's blessing in our lives. God is a god of blessing, you can see that right at the beginning, Genesis, chapter 1, that story of the whole of creation. God created it all, he gave it to you and me, we are co-owners, joint owners in creation because God said, "Here it is, it's all yours, I bless you with it." And then, just a chapter or two later, in that book of Genesis, we see Adam and Eve. God's given them the whole garden and blessing and they've got a relationship with God and then they do the one thing that God tells them not to do, they turn their backs on God. And as a result they usher in suffering into the world. The rejection of God, the rejection of God, has consequences but still God has a heart to bless us. We looked the other day at the prayer of Jabez, if you've missed any of these programs hop onto our website, www.adifferentperspective.org and you can listen to it again and we saw how Jabez went to God and asked God specifically for his blessing. And then Jesus puts blessing into perspective, he says it this way. He says: Give and it will be given to you. A good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. You can read that in Luke, chapter 6. For with the measure that you use it will be measured to you. You see Jesus said being blessed, and blessing other people are two sides of the one coin and if you really want to live out God's blessing, sure go to God and ask him for his blessing and say, "Lord, bless me." And then let that blessing pour out through you to other people around you. You know when we're close to God we have so much to bless other people with. The danger is though, that we talk in concepts and theory and not in practical realities. What does all this mean? Okay, I accept that God is a god of blessing. Okay I accept that it's a two sided transaction, in from God and out through me, but how does all that work? Can I share again how it works in my life? Over the last dozen or so years I've been walking closely, but let me say imperfectly, with Jesus in my life. I make mistakes just like you do, I have good days and bad days and I'm hoping that where I am now is much closer to God and looking much more like Jesus than it was five years ago. And I've learned about God's blessing in two ways. Firstly, through His Word the Bible and I thank God I have had some really good teachers, and secondly, by living it out in my life and seeing that it's actually how life is. What God and what Jesus talk about in the Bible, is actually how it happens and when Jesus promises something like: Give and it will be given to you. A good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured to you. When Jesus says something like that, they're not just idle words, these are the words of God. He means this stuff and so what I'm sharing with you today is just my experience. You may have a different experience and other people will have different experiences but when it comes to God's blessing pouring out through us, I only know one way to share that with you and that's from life itself. The one thing that makes my world go round – everything else revolves around that – is the time I spend with God each morning. Before you tell me you're too busy to spend time with God, if you're that busy then I would suggest you don't have time not to spend with God. What happens to me is that I pray and I read God's word and He speaks to me, sometimes He gives me impressions, sometimes there's a chapter in the Bible I'm reading and it leaps out at me and I walk away from that half hour or forty five minutes or hour with a peace and a calm delight that I can't put into words. For me it happens early in the morning because I'm a morning person and everyone else is in bed and it's a wonderful time for me. Now, okay everyone's different, some people aren't morning people, for some it will be late at night, for others it will be on the train or on the bus, whatever. But when we carve out that time with Him, He shows up and honours that and delights us, and deals with the things in us that He wants to deal with, and puts his finger on the issues or the hurt or the sin that he needs to deal with that leads us gently and firmly forward. And the biggest part of the blessing of God in my life flows in through those times. First, absolutely first and foremost it's about having a relationship with Jesus Christ and then during the day things happen, difficult situations or a tension, or I just feel a gentle prompting of the Spirit, instead of cursing the person the Spirit of God helps me to bless them, instead of judging them I pray for them. Now for me that stuff doesn't happen if I'm not spending time regularly with God. And every now and then I notice God tee's up a divine appointment with someone who needs his blessing and he chooses me to deliver that blessing, and sometimes I'm not even aware that it's happening. There was a man I was dealing with last year and didn't believe in God. Tough negotiation to get our programs on that particular radio station, it was just not a comfortable time at all. And I prayed my way through it and I did it and we moved on. And so at the end of last year I sent him an email just to say, "thank you", and he sent me an email back praising God, he'd given his life to Christ. It was just the way the whole interaction happened and the way God used me. I had no idea but Jesus did and the programs that he was putting on his station impacted on him and his family. I always feel like I'm a bystander when that happens. You know God's up to something, the Holy Spirit is moving and I was clueless but he used it anyway. Can I encourage you to take an inventory of the blessings, the gifts, the skills, the money, the possessions, the time that God has given you. What blessings has God dropped in your lap that you can bless other people with? Everyone's got them, maybe you've got to be creative but everyone has them. I was talking to an elderly widow, a pensioner, a grandmother and this is a woman of humble means and she said, "What do I have, I don't have anything to give?" And I talked a little while and it turns out her kids were grown up and they had families of their own and they were working so hard and they were so busy. And I said, "What about just spending some time with your grandkids? All this time that you have, time where you're lonely and just go in blessing your kids by taking the grandkids off their hands for a few hours, doesn't have to be big but I have to tell you, your children who are now working hard and have a mortgage and they're struggling under the pressure would be so blessed if you just took the grandkids off their hands for a little while." It's not rocket science is it? Let me get right in your face. You and I have so many things that we can bless other people with but here's the rub, it's not always convenient, we don't always feel like it. But when we take the blessings that God has given through Jesus Christ and we share them around in little practical ways, it magnifies God. Just remember the words of Jesus: Give and it will be given to you. A good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure that you use, it will be measured to you.

One of the things that Jesus always managed to do – was turn everything on its head.  Love your enemy, is just one of his startling sayings.  And the same is true, when He talked about God's blessing. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a man called S D Gordon. Sometime in the late 1800's or early 1900's he wrote a book called Quiet Talks on Power. In that book he uses a simple and powerful example to describe the consequences of expecting all of God's blessings to flow into our lives without letting any of them flow out again. He uses the picture of the Dead Sea. Now the Dead Sea is that body of water where all the rivers flow in but none of them flow out and as a result it's dead. Nothing can live in it, not a thing; no fish, no plants, no birds, and the water is incredibly hard and brackish. He makes this point in his book, that if we expect all of God's blessings to flow in and none of them to flow out then our lives become like the circumference of that Dead Sea. It's an interesting point. This week on the program we're talking about God's blessing, getting it balanced, and a powerful understanding of exactly what God means by blessing and how it works in our lives. Now our generation is born to consume. We are consuming the planet right down into the ground, we just can't help ourselves. I know lots of people who try and buy their way to happiness. Hey I used to be one of them. God blessed me with a new car, God blessed me with a salary increase, and I'm going to believe God for more. No doubt God does those things. God's blessed me with things that I've needed along the way and even things that were just kind of 'icing on the cake' kind of things because he felt like it. Now that's nice but they're not the main thing. The Bible says: The love of money is the root of all evil. I regularly speak on this subject because quite frankly our failure to get a grip on what God means by blessing is one of the greatest maladies in society today and let me say it really bluntly, even amongst God's own people, people who say, "Yep, I believe in Jesus." If we think that God's blessing is all about stuff flying to us and stopping there, we're missing the whole point. Over this week we've seen that God started His plan for blessing right from the beginning, right from creation. You know he created all of creation and then he created male and female, man and woman, and he gave everything to them and said, "Here, it's yours. Bless, prosper, go for it, it's all yours." But it didn't take Adam and Eve long to interrupt that blessing. They rejected God, they turned their backs on him and so now we live in a fallen world. We're living out the consequences of humanity's rejection of God. Why is there suffering? Why is there pain? Because way back then we turned our backs on God and you and I, we've done it too, in our own ways we've turned our backs on God. And yesterday we saw that for blessing really to be a blessing, for Gods blessing really to be Gods blessing, it has to flow in and out. Now I want to continue on with that a bit more today and unpack it a bit more. If you were with us yesterday you heard me read this passage from the 6th chapter of Luke: Blessed are you who are poor because yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you'll be satisfied. Blessed are those who are weeping now because you'll laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject you because of me. Rejoice in that day, leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven for that's how their fathers treated the Prophets but woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you for that is how their fathers treated false disciples but I tell you, listen to me, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. You see, this is the heart of Jesus; this is the heart of God. It's not to have a whole bunch of wealthy people running around saying, "I'm wealthier than you." It's not about people having a big party and say, "Life's good." While there's poor and hungry and starving out there. It's not about fame and fortune and recognition. We're missing the point. Particularly, let me say this, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others, we are blessed in order to be a blessing. You know something? it's like a double sided book-keeping transaction. And when you're doing book keeping (if you've ever studied book keeping) double sided entry into the book, if the two sides of the ledger don't balance, the whole thing's out of whack. And it's a bit like that with God's blessing. If we think it's all about God pouring his material blessing into us, even his spiritual blessing into us but us then not sharing that out, the whole thing gets out of whack. I know people who believe that their relationship with God is about getting the next BMW or Mercedes. Now I, per say, don't have a problem with people having BMW's or Mercedes but that's not what God's blessing is all about. Jesus, after he said those really challenging words about the poor and the hungry and all these people at the same time going off and having parties, he said this: Give and it will be given to you. Just again: Give and it will be given to you, a good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap for with the measure that you use it will be measured to you. In other words Jesus is saying, "You are blessed to be a blessing". He said it over and over again, he said it another way, you can read it in John, chapter 7, verse 37 in the Bible: On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice," listen to this, "He stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within them." By this he meant the Spirit. Can you see it? It's in and out, "If anyone is thirsty, come and drink and if you believe in me streams ..." in fact it literally says, "Rivers of living water will flow from within you." Are you thirsty, looking for that something, you're parched and you're needy? Come to me, says Jesus and drink, put your faith in me and rivers of living water will flow out from you. One of the greatest passages of the whole Bible. It's powerful; it's the crux of being a Jesus follower. It's saying, "You are blessed to be a blessing". Not just one little river, not just one little creek, it says literally, "Rivers of living water will flow from you" – a Nile and a Ganges and a Murray and a Mississippi and a Thames and a Rhine and a Yangtze and an Amazon. Rivers, huge flood tides of blessing will flow from you. Get this, it is not always convenient to be a fountain of God's blessing. Have you ever noticed that? It's not, it's not for me. I have to say, leaving my consulting career and a six figure salary, at the time, was a hard decision you know, it wasn't particularly convenient or easy. And some days, shock horror, some days I don't feel like coming to the studio and other days I have to deal with difficult people in ministry and that's life. But here's the rub, the bottom line is that I wouldn't be doing anything else. I am so blessed because I get to do this. because when I let those rivers flow out through me, there's a flood tide of blessing to other people and it's such an incredible joy, I wouldn't change any of it. The joy for me is telling people about Jesus, loving him and telling people about him, that's the blessing. Nothing, nothing is more important than that. Whoever we are, whatever our gifts are, when we let that blessing flow through us to other people then we really experience the blessing of God.

When we hear someone talking about God's blessing, it's easy to think "You beauty" – and we unroll our shopping list for God.  But if we want to experience God's blessing, we need to understand how He works. We're talking this week on the program about God's blessing. And I've called this week's series, "Blessed to be a Blessing". We can get a crazy mixed up view of what blessing actually is. You have a look around at the advertising on television, the billboards; everything is screaming at us, "If you buy me you'll be happy. If you buy me that emptiness you feel inside will be gone." Sure it can be fun to buy things and to have things but they never, never fill that inner void do they? They never satisfy. The advertising industry just keeps on chanting it's mantra, "Buy me and you'll be happy," knowing that if that thing ever made us contented and happy, if it ever filled the void, we wouldn't buy anymore and they'd go broke. God doesn't bless the way the world does, God's blessing is something entirely different, it fills, it lasts and most importantly it overflows. Let's get together for a few minutes and check it out. We have a natural tendency when we think about God's blessing, "Wow, things are going to get better for me. After all, blessing is divine favour, now, what do I want? New job, a promotion and that would be good, a husband or a wife or a better husband or wife. I know that shiny new car I saw in the glossy weekend magazine last Saturday, that's what I want. I want a holiday; wow I'd like to go business class for once. I'd like to pay my credit card off." We have our shopping lists don't we? Here's the danger, as we think about God blessing us, we believe the advertising industry and we reduce God's blessing down to some narrow, materialistic, sugar daddy level. It's so easy to do, the me, me, me thing. Let's put that right into perspective, I'd like to read you something that Jesus said, you can find it later in the Bible in Luke, chapter 6, verse 20. Looking at his disciples He said this: Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of me. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven for that is how their fathers treated the Prophets. But woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you for that is how their fathers treated the false Prophets. But I tell you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek give him the other also. If someone takes your cloak don't stop him from taking your tunic as well. Give to everyone who asks you and if anyone takes what belongs to you don't demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Wow, I think Jesus would have failed Marketing 101 here. Does this sound like some sugar daddy version of God's blessing to you, some new car or a bigger house? God has a heart for little people, this stuff that Jesus is talking about here is edgy, it is bad marketing, if you were trying to make a pitch for disciples the marketing machinery would have this sugar coated wouldn't it? They'd sit him down and say, "Look here Jesus …" But Jesus said, "If you want to be a follower of me, it's a tough gig. There's suffering and there's pain and there's rejection and that's a promise of God, hallelujah." So Berni, what's this got to do with blessing huh? Come on, tell me about the next big flash car and the next big flash house and the promotion and the status and the recognition and the fame and the adulation, where the heck is God's blessing in all of this Berni? Well just a few verses on, in the same breath, Jesus puts the blessing in perspective, he says this: Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap, for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Mmm, blessing has to do with giving, in fact it's a promise of Jesus. This is how God works. Take the blessings that you already have, take what God's already given you and give it away and with the measure that you give; God will give back to you. You see, here's blessing in action, blessing involves sacrifice and what Jesus is saying in this stuff is that it's not about having a big party now. No, no, no! It's about giving away your blessings to other people and God will bless you back. Whatever we have, whatever we have to give – maybe it's time, maybe it's money, maybe it's concern, maybe it's compassion – all of those things cost us. When I came to Christ twelve years ago, I was pretty wealthy, not mega rich but by any global standard you'd have to say I was very well off. Pretty flash house, a car, a job and I lost most of it in marriage breakdown and divorce. But what I still had was a good income earning capacity. I was a consultant in the IT Industry and there's good money in that. Now I wasn't comfortable at that stage giving my money away, I just didn't do that. I wanted to hang on to it. I wanted to grow my wealth and get wealthier and wealthier and have a bigger house and a flashier car. And I learned what it meant to lose everything. You may have heard me once tell the story that there was one week there, early on, when I was going through the whole marriage breakdown thing where I didn't even have enough money to buy food for the next week and the Church that I started going to had a car boot sale, you know, you opened your boot and you had stuff and people came and you sold it and what I sold at that car boot sale paid for my food for that week. My, how I'd fallen and then I really thanked God because the pastor we had there, a guy called Phil, gave me some really good teaching about blessing and giving and the link between those two and I made a decision. I decided that the resources that I had, that I'd always hung on to and clung on to, in fact they had failed me. All my money, all my skills, all my gifts, there's none of those things that I have that weren't given to me by my Father in heaven, nothing and so I put them at his feet. I decided to radically give my life and what I had. I mean, this whole wealth thing hadn't worked for me so I thought this makes sense to me. Now I'm not some super good Christian guy, I'm not that at all, it just kind of made sense to me and what I'm sharing with you is the lessons that God taught me in my life. I learned to give radically, firstly of my finances. When you're earning a lot of money and someone talks to you about giving a tenth of it away, a tenth of it happens to be an awful lot when you're earning a lot of money. My gifts, my abilities, I left the consulting job to go onto a ministry salary, you don't get rich doing that. But this is what I discovered, God's abundant blessing in my life started chasing me down the street. Not success and fame, career and wealth, not that at all. God met all my needs and he's thrown some extras in along the way too but there's something much bigger, much bigger than that; a deep and intimate and personal relationship with God. As I sit down in the cool of the morning as I did this morning and had fellowship with God, I am so blessed; I would give up everything else just for that. For me, that puts life into perspective that puts life into balance. Jesus said: First seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be added afterwards. And they were, as we give blessing out, God pours blessing in, it's as simple as that, it's God's way.

They say that God is a God of Blessing.  Hmm.  So how come there's so much suffering in the world?  What went wrong?  How come I have to suffer?  Where's God's blessing then? The classic dilemma when we talk about God's blessing is, "Well okay, so if God is a god of blessing, how come there is so much suffering in the world? How come I've had to go through this and this and that? How come there are natural disasters? Come on, how come?" And you know something, that's a very real and a very reasonable question. How come? And it's something that's always in the back of my mind when I talk with people about God's blessing because chances are someone who is listening is going to be suffering right at the moment. And that person may well find any notion of God being a god of blessing, pretty difficult to swallow just now. So let's unpack that just a bit today. How come? Right from the beginning God was a god of blessing. Yesterday on the program we had a look at the very, very first chapter in the Bible, Genesis chapter 1. And when God creates the first living creatures he blesses them and gets them to multiply and fill the earth. And when God creates us, male and female, he blesses us by handing over the whole creation to us. "Here, take all the birds and the fish and the beasts and have it all, it's yours to use, subdue them, fill the earth, multiply." And when you look through the Bible, the whole concept of blessing, the word bless, appears over 350 times but at the same time there's plenty of bad stuff that happens to people right through the Bible, and plenty of bad stuff that happens to people today, here and now. Sometimes we look at them and quietly think, "Well, you know, he deserved that." But other times they're innocent people – really bad things happen and we wonder, "Well, if God is a loving God like those Christians say that He is, this God who wants to bless us, supposedly, if that's who He is, how can He let those things happen to people like that?" That is a really good question. One of my favourite actors, (I grew up as a baby boomer) one of my favourite television shows of all time is MASH. It's an American program and it ran for, I think, 11 seasons. And the star of MASH is a man called Alan Alda, an actor whom I just enormously admire and respect. He played Hawkeye Pearce in MASH and played a whole bunch of things afterwards. I saw him recently interviewed on a program called, "Inside the Actors Studio". The interviewer was a man called James Lipton and he asks Alan Alda a question like this, he says, "If there is a God, what do you want to say to him when you get to heaven?" Now, Alan Alda is a really friendly, warm, engaging kind of guy and it's been a really warm and friendly and engaging kind of interview until Lipton asks this question. And Alda's face goes black and dark and serious and he says something like this, "God. God, tell me about the earthquakes and the tsunamis and the suffering. Tell me all that was just a bit of a joke." And a lot of people feel like that about God. Christians talk about a God of blessings, Christians talk about a God of love but there's a whole bunch of bad stuff happening in this world. How do you explain that away? Okay, why? If God is a god of blessing, how come all this suffering is going on? So we've looked at God's own account of his creation in Genesis, chapter 1. The very first living creatures he creates he blesses them and says, "Go and multiply and fill the earth." He creates us and he hands the whole thing over to us, enormous blessing. And here are you and I, joint owners in creation because God created us in his own image and he handed the whole thing over to us. And when you stop and think about that that was a huge blessing. Right at the point of creation, God was in the blessing business. It's profound. It's a plan for us to live in relationship with him. But then something happens. Even though God has given Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden, to keep it, to till it, to be blessed there – He has this perfect plan of blessing – Adam and Eve rebel! They do the one thing that God says, "Don't do this" but eat the apple from this one tree. And there were consequences. Rebellion against God always does have consequences. And God to the woman said, "Well, I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing. With pain you will give birth to children, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." And he turns to Adam and he says, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field, by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return." Enter pain and suffering into the history of humanity and it's been there for all of humanity ever since. Now you might say to me, "Berni that is just so insensitive. What about when there's a still-born baby? What about the tens of thousands that are killed in a tsunami? What about the young teenager who gets raped and murdered? How can you say that it's sin? How can you say that it's punishment from God? How can you say that?" Here it is, God made us in His image but when we don't like who He is, when it doesn't suit us, we try and remake him in our own image. God's a god of blessing but that blessing happens when we're in a relationship with Him. It's really well laid out in a part of the Bible and I encourage you to go have a look and read this, Leviticus chapter 26. It's one of the first books of the Old Testament. It's a perfect summary of where God stands on this. The old covenant was the promise between God and his people of Israel and he lays that out in this chapter, let's go there beginning in verse 1. He says: Don't make idols or set up sacred stones and bow to them because I am the Lord your God. Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary because I am the Lord your God. If you follow these decrees and you are careful to obey my commands, I'll send you rain in its season and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting and you'll eat all the food you want and live in your land in safety. I'll grant peace in the land and you'll lie down and no-one will make you afraid and I'll remove the savage beast from the land and the sword will not pass through your land ... You'll pursue your enemies and they'll fall before you. Five of you will chase a hundred and a hundred of you will chase a thousand and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I'll look on you with favour, I'll make you fruitful, increase your numbers and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last years harvest when you will have to clear it out to make room for the new. I'll put my dwelling place with you, I'll be among you, I'll walk among you. I'll be your God and you will be my people because I'm the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you wouldn't live in slavery anymore BUT if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, if you reject me and my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out my commandments and so violate my covenant then I will do this to you. I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases, fevers that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You'll plant seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. I'll set my face against you so that you'll be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee even when no-one is pursuing you. You see? God is a god of blessing. God wants to have a relationship with YOU and with me and that's the greatest blessing of all. I was talking to a man recently, my own age, he's a really good businessman. He has three adult sons and he wanted to bless his sons, form a company with them and do this and do that. One by one they rejected him, they turned their backs on him and they walked away and he said, "I wanted to bless them but I couldn't." The greatest sadness of his life and that's what God's like. God is a god of blessing but when we reject him, when we turn away from him, there are consequences. Now, how do God's blessings still fit into this world that's turned its back on him? Well we'll look at that tomorrow on the program.

They say that God is a God of Blessing.  Is He?  I mean – does God really want to bless you and me and if He does, how does that happen? The words "God" and "Blessing" somehow seem to go naturally together. In fact, God is a God who wants to bless us … or is he? Each one of us can look back on our lives and point to some times of great joy and blessing, and times of hurt and disappointment and sorrow and loneliness. When it seemed that if there is a God who blesses, well he must of deserted us or at least that's how it can feel. What do you think? If God is God, is He a God of blessing or is that just some unbalanced kind of secular view of God that's crept in? Or is God a god who really doesn't care about us? For me at least getting a real handle of what God's up to in my life, what his plans are, is kind of where the rubber of faith hits the road of life. Why is this whole thing of God's blessing so important? I think, at least I see a lot of misunderstanding about God and his heart and where He stands on blessing us. There seems to be two extremes, two opposite ends of the spectrum where people take extreme views. At one end it goes something like this, "God wants to bless me therefore I should believe him for the next new Mercedes and the next million dollars and the next bigger house". In effect, "God is some sort of sugar daddy, it's all about me, I am at centre stage, I name it and I claim it". And you know something? Lots of Christians teach it and lots more believe it! The problem I have with that is, when I compare that on the one hand to Jesus on the cross – He lost everything for you and me, even the clothes on his back; beaten and brutalised, he lost his life. And this sort of 'God is a sugar daddy' end of the spectrum really jars with the cross, doesn't it? And it leads to some of the worst excesses – the telly-evangelists pressuring people for money and flying around in private jets. Is that where this understanding of blessing should end up, do you think? Now the other end of the spectrum says you have to be poor to serve God. Money is evil! We just had someone ring up at midnight the other night and leave a message on the phone to say, "How dare you sell a CD and then how dare you ask for support for your ministry. Money is evil; people who have money are evil." I was talking to a man in India recently and of course India is a land of huge extremes; you have the very rich and you have many, many very, very poor people. And he was very critical of this particular Christian leader who just had a nice house in a nice suburb, he believed it was wrong. You see, I look at that end of the spectrum and I go to the Bible and I read about Abraham. Abraham was the man that God chose to engage with first. Abraham was rich, King Solomon one of the wisest men that ever walked the earth, he was very rich, he was full of God's wisdom. You can see the problem. At the one end you can have people getting these extreme prosperity views in their heads. Thinking it's all about them and their material wealth and it plays right into the hands of the world – me, me, me! The next plasma TV; the next big car; if you don't have that then well ... obviously you don't have enough faith. On the other hand this perception that you have to be poor to be a Christian, well if that were the case, who would ever fund the work of the Lord on this planet. I mean, God has always chosen to fund his work through his people. I know some very, very wealthy Christian business people who do an enormous amount to fund the work of the Kingdom of God. Talk of the pure monetary thing is the reality of tragedy and pain and suffering and a lot of times it's indiscriminate. Earthquakes, tsunamis, a young person who loves Jesus and dies at the age of eighteen with cancer, car crashes and divorce and retrenchment, all that stuff of life, we all experience those things, are you with me? So what's Gods plan? Does God want to bless you and me or not? Is it okay for us to ask for his blessing? Is it okay to expect his blessing or is that just presumptuous? This is an important question because it is where the rubber hits the road. You get up in the morning and you maybe pray and you look forward to the day, how do you pray? What do you give thanks for? What do you ask for? Is it okay to ask for God's blessing in this difficult situation that's going to happen at work this afternoon? God, where are you in all of that? That's why we're having a little series this week on the program that I've called 'Blessed to be a Blessing'. I'm a simple man. I just open the Bible, I see what God's saying on the subject, get it in balance. God's Word empowers us and the problem that I often see when people look at this subject of God's blessing is that you can take just one verse and say, "Oh, that's it." And you end up with one of those extreme positions that I was talking about before. But over the course of this week, on the program, we're going to get to look at the whole thing from God's perspective. Is God a god who blesses? What does blessing mean? The main connotation is God's divine favour – God intervening to make something better or to give us something that will bring joy or happiness. There's financial blessing of course, there's spiritual blessing, there's physical blessing like healing, anything and everything, God's divine favour, his blessing becoming active in our lives. Question is, is God in the blessing business? When I see the word "bless" or "blesses" or "blessed" or "blessing", 358 times in the Bible and the very first time it appears is in the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, verse 22. Let's go there and have a bit of a look. This is where God creates all of creation. He makes light out of darkness and the heavens and the earth and the oceans and the dry land and the plants and the first time he creates a living creature, this is what He says: So God created the creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teams according to their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind and God saw that it was good." Now look at this, "God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water and the seas and let the birds increase on the earth. And the second time the concept of blessing happens in the Bible is just a few verses on in that same chapter, that first chapter of Genesis, verse 26: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish in the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." And then God said to them, "I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They'll be yours for food and to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food. And it was so. Let me ask you something: Do you think God is in the blessing business? The whole creation thing, the whole idea of creation is that God created this wondrous, wondrous universe and then he kind of comes along and makes you and me and he makes us part owners, joint owners in the whole of his creation. He gives the whole thing over to us and says, "Look it's yours, you own it, you subdue it, you use it, it's my blessing to you." But as we'll see tomorrow on the program there was something we did that interrupted that blessing, that broke that blessing. And even after we do those things, even after we rebel and turn our back on God, you know something, it doesn't change who God is.

Insecurity. It's out there in plague proportions. Ruined relationships.  Ruined lives. If you know someone who suffers from insecurity – what's the greatest gift that you can give them? Over the last few days on A Different Perspective we have been looking at this whole issue of insecurity. We all have some insecurities, some areas in our lives, work or personal, or emotional that we are sensitive about. When someone treads on that spot it hurts and we withdraw or we come out punching. Over the last twenty years or so I have worked in about 200 organisations across Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand right across a lot of cultures and I am here to tell you that insecurity is universal problem. I have enough stories and examples to write a book on the subject, a really thick book. Over that time I have come to the conclusion that our failure to deal effectively lovingly, sensitively, kindly with insecurity, other peoples and our own, is one of the biggest sources of pain, conflict and disappointment on this planet. If there were just one thing that you and I could do to alleviate that, what would it be. Insecurity is actually about fear. Often it is quite narrow and specialised in people's lives. And it's different for each one of us. Different people have insecurities in different parts of their lives. Some of them are worried about what people think, others feel insecure about how they look, or what they sound like. And insecurity features differently in terms of magnitude. Some people are really insecure. Others just have the odd little bit of insecurity here and there. But when we have fear, fear is real. My fear is real to me. When I was in the army one of the things that we did in training was to repel out of helicopters. And you were flying along in the helicopter sitting on the floor. You got the signal to go out onto the skids, which meant you had to roll over on your stomach, dangle you legs out of the helicopter while it was still flying along. And then you had to stand on the skids. But Berni's little legs were too short so I had to jump out onto the skids. And that was a scary thing and standing there on the skids and then going down into the position where you would repel out of the helicopter. I have to tell you it was kind of counter-intuitive to my understanding of heights. And I was pretty scared each time that I had to do it. Not withstanding the fact that when I had done it, it was quite a buzz. And no matter how you dismiss my irrational fear of height, it's real. It forms a part of my reality. You can talk to me about me, you can get me to the point of accepting that the fear is irrational, you can get me to agree that I need to something about it. But I tell you that the next time in that helicopter, the next time I get in to that situation again, the insecurity and the fear can be there. And when we experience fear, we have a natural instinct to protect ourselves. I believe that there is a gift that we can give to someone around us who suffers from insecurity. A gift worth more than gold. A gift that they will treasure for the rest of their lives. The gift comes in two parts. Part one: is to understand their fear. I read a quote once, I can't remember who said this but they said something like this: If we only knew and understood the hurts and the pains in the past in the lives of our enemies, it would be enough to disarm any intention of hostility in our hearts. Think about that … as we are walking through life and relationships, and we run into someone's insecurity and they react and they blow up like a land mine, that we could never have seen or predicted, and these people explode in our faces. We have a choice to make, we can pull them apart, we can talk badly of them, we can cut them off, we can have enough with them. We can just stop and choose not to react. We can choose to regroup, to investigate, to figure out, to understand, to discover what their insecurity is. When people are afraid, when people are feeling pain, no matter how irrational you and I think it might be, right. But when that person is feeling pain or feeling threatened, their natural instinct to protect themselves is going to come into play. An instead of punishing them maybe we should understand them. Jesus said, Love your enemy. It not a platitude, it's not a rule, it's not some anachronistic thing written in a book 2,000 years ago. It's real. And I believe that a big part of loving your enemy is doing exactly that. When someone reacts badly to us and attacks us, or talks behind our backs, or does what ever it is they do. We can choose to punish them by cutting them off or doing exactly the same back to them. Or we can say, "Hmmm, I wonder why they did that. I wonder what it is in their make up that caused them to do that." And we can take it as an opportunity to get to know them. So that we can understand what little insecurity in the recesses of their hearts and minds causes this sort of behaviour. The second part of this gift of life, is now supporting them through that fear. If insecurity is about fear and reacting to irrational fears, maybe it is a bit like a car accident. You know when someone has a car accident, and they have to go through rehabilitation, sometimes, months just to learn to walk again, or to learn to use their arms again. They do exercise over and over and over again. It's challenging, it's painful, they need people who's specialise in rehabilitation. And sometimes they feel defeated. Sometimes they need support. So often insecurities come from emotional car crashes. They come from bad things that have happened to people in the past. They come from ineffective behaviours they have learned from their parents or their teachers or their work colleagues. When someone reacts badly because of an emotional car crash, is it any different. If low esteem is about dealing with fears and insecurities should we punish and reject people for that? Or should we suffer through it with them. Help them to get over it. Help them to get through … just accept them just as they are. And love them unconditionally. Love your enemy. What a gift, what a breath of life that would be! Now, there is a warning here, don't try this at home. You need to be an expert … c'mon, there is a cost. Rehabilitation is a long haul thing. And along the way an insecure person is going to hurt people. An insecure person is going to lash out at people. An insecure person will have a go at us and try and hurt us and probably will hurt us. But steadily day by day, week by week, what they get from us is love. Straight talking, faithfulness and love. How many times, how long? Seven times? No seventy-seven times! A hundred time, a hundred and seventy-seven times! It's hard, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of guts. But what a gift. Insecurity is about fear, about reacting and protecting ourselves from harm. It can be irrational, it can be unbalanced, and it ruins lives and ruins relationships. What's the one thing, the only thing that can rehabilitate someone from that place. Love, faithfulness, unconditional acceptance day after day, so that deep in their soul, they learn for themselves that there is no reason to fear. God's like that. He is slow to anger, full of compassion, and abounding in love. In our fast food culture, hanging in there with someone, accepting them, and helping them through their insecurities is grossly counter-intuitive. There are so many people, so many relationships, so much entertainment, so many things that we could be doing that instinctively the moment someone displays bad behaviour through insecurity we just cut them off. And yet, Jesus said love your enemy. Hang in there with them. Be that source of perfect love for them that teaches them through life that they don't have to be afraid anymore. If we search deep inside, if we really think about that … go on … tell me God's got it wrong.

Relationships – at home, at work, with friends – well they can be like walking through a mine field.  Everything's fine – and then you step on a mine….. It's a funny thing, but a relationship can be going along just fine, work, home, friends, just ticking along. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, this person comes out punching. Whoa! I didn't see that coming. Like a curve ball to the solar plexus, they just attack us or spit out some angry words or say something that just blows us out of the water. And as we pick ourselves off the floor we are thinking, "I just didn't' see that coming. What was that about, I mean what did I do to deserve that?" And sometimes it's the other way around we just lash out at someone and afterwards we think, "Why did I do that?" you know what I mean. I was visiting a radio station recently, an executive in a different country. And I had a morning meeting scheduled with him to talk about a few issues. And while I was on the way in, in the car, and he range me and he said, "Look, I still really want to meet with you but I have this problem, there is this really big human resources problem that has blown up in my face at work. Can we meet at a little bit later?" Well I had some flexibility that day, my plane had been delayed so we were able to meet later. Turns out that he was having some real conflict with one of the staff there. Something, it just exploded, and if I told you the issue you would fall of your chair, so I won't. It seemed so minor, so small, so insignificant and yet there was a huge conflict over the issue. Do you enjoy conflict? Most of us don't. I certainly do not enjoy conflict. Yet so often it is a bit like that movie, "The Truman Show". You would be walking along on a sunny day, along the road and someone movie director somewhere presses a button, and without warning a bomb goes off right next to us! Have you ever wondered why? Well there are a lot of reasons, but one, one happens time and time again. It is the issue of insecurity in peoples lives. This week on A Different Perspective I have called this little group of messages, "Getting over it!" we are looking at the subject of insecurity. Have you ever asked yourself, "What is it? What is insecurity? We need to stop and thing about that. We bandied the word around, but what exactly, what is it? We all have as people a life preservation instinct. If we are driving along in a car and all of a sudden a car pulls out in front of us. We slam on the brakes and the adrenalin pumps through the veins. And we try and save ourselves. And the same is true emotionally. When something comes out of the blue that we find threatening, we either decide to fight it and come out punching or we've run away. We avoid it, we don't confront it. We just stew inside and it eats away at us. There is something built into each one of us. Which is about self preservation. And that's ok, that's normal, but sometimes there are things inside us that create irrational fears. Fears that don't make any logical sense. I don't so much as have a fear of heights, but I know that when I am standing on a balcony several floors up, if there is no roof above me and I look up at the sky, I find that really scary, unsettling thing. I feel as though I am about to fall off the balcony. It doesn't make sense, it is just there. Some people have an irrational fear of spiders or sharks. We all know that there are far more chances of being run over by the proverbial bus than there is by being killed by a spider or a shark or a snake. Some people are petrified about flying in planes. None of those fears are rational. But they are very real. And these irrational fears can go into our emotional dimension as well. We can be unduly concerned about what people think of us. What they say of us. We can be really touchy about people stepping on our turf. Maybe we are bucking for a promotion. Maybe we are worried about job security. Maybe we are a bit touchy about being overweight. The list goes on an on. Whatever it is outside when people look at us they don't always know what things we are precious about. Where in our lives we are insecure. Either that or they know and they think it is stupid, I mean, they just dismiss it. "Ah she's just worried about what the boss will think." Insecurities in other people well they are like a minefield. We can be walking along through this field, through a relationship, everything is ok. BANG! And there is no sign to say, "Don't put your foot here, there is a mine under this bit of dirt." So what can we do about it. The minefield picture is a useful framework to have in our hearts and our minds. One of the things that we can do is to watch people, to observe them, to get to know them, to start to figure out where their insecurities are. I was doing some consulting work as I used to do over many, many years, with a government department. And the man that I was working with was a really cool, balanced, intelligent man. But as I saw him in meetings and working with other people in the organisation, there are a couple of things that he reacted really badly to. I thought, "That's really interesting" I mean on the surface he is so competent, he is so intelligent, he is so well collected and has himself sorted out. He has been around this organisation for a long time. He knows the people, he knows the terrain, he knows the issues. Why did he react so badly to those issues in those meetings? As I got to know him and had coffee with him and worked with him, one day it came out. The organisation had just had a restructure, and as a result of that restructure the one job that gave him a promotion after all these years in the organisation, had been restructure right out of the organisation. So his career path was gone. After 25 years, his hopes, his dreams for promotion were gone. Well would you be cheesed off at that, I would. That would get me going I think. And so I just found a land mine. And once I knew where it was not only could I avoid stepping on it, but I could also behave and act and help through that little bit of insecurity. Because it's not always possible is it? Sometimes you are just walking along and … BANG! This person blows up in your face. And then we go, "Alright, now I am threatened." I remember once having a client yelling down the mobile phone, yelling abuse down the mobile phone at me. Well what do we do? We can either, run and hide, or we can go BANG right back. There is actually a third option. We can not react at all. We can just let them go, take it on board and resist the urge to rip their heads off their shoulders. The apostle Paul in a letter that he wrote to the church in Corinth, almost 2,000 years ago. It's a verse that is really well-known, often quoted at weddings, he wrote this: Love is patient and kind, it is not rude, it is not self interested. It is not easily angered. And it doesn't keep a list of wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13:4-5) Elsewhere throughout the bible in fact throughout the whole of the Old Testament, 8 times it says that God is slow to anger. And each of those 8 times it finishes the sentence with this, "and He is abounding in love and faithfulness." God is slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness. The flip side of that is being quick to anger. And when we get angry quickly at people who have reacted badly to something we don't understand we are doing the opposite of abounding in love and faithfulness. I wonder if the next time someone blows up in our faces, I wonder if we remembered, "Hmm maybe something or someone has just trodden on some insecurity that I can't see. How about I just let it wash by me. And then try and understand it a little bit later." I wonder if we responded that way if we were slow to anger when someone goes off in our face like a cracker. I wonder how much better life would be.

Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me. Not much.  In fact the things people say can leave lifelong scars. People say – just get over it?  But can we? "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me." So the saying goes. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. When people call us names. When they hurt us. Or reject us. Or abuse us. Or talk behind our backs. Those things can really hurt us. And for many people, they carry those old injuries around with them. Often not really knowing it. And it robs them of the life that God always intended. If your Dad didn't encourage you, chances are you'll have low self esteem. If you were abused as a child, chances are you'll feel like a victim for much of your life. So is it possible to be set free from the hurts of the past? There's something really important that we need to know about the past. It's past. It's gone. There are lots of things out of our control. The past is one of the biggest ones of all. Doesn't matter what we do. How much we wish we could change it. How much we try. What's done is done. We can't change the past. We can only change from hereon forward. Well why is this so important? I mean it's blindingly, glimpsingly obvious. Yet so many people live in the past. They live today constrained by the hurts of yesterday. "I didn't have a happy childhood. I was abused. I was hurt. The kids at school weren't nice to me. The teacher …" I mean, recently I was overseas with my wife. We were in Canada and we were talking with our daughter who was staying with a friend for the couple of weeks while we were gone. Our daughter Melissa is 14. And there was one particular teacher who said something really hurtful to her. And so, of course, I rang the principal and I talked to the principal and dealt with it. But just one harsh word from an adult when we're growing up as teenagers, just one, can leave a mental scar. It can happen from parents. It happened to me when I was growing up. It's just the way I am. And we look back and we lament. We wish it was different but it's not. And we turn it over and over in our mind. Like a cow chewing its cud. Here's this crazy idea that I have. When Jesus died on the cross for me, He purchased for me a new future. If anyone believes in Him, they are a new creation. Everything old is passed away. Have a look. Everything else is new. And Jesus said, If I set you free then you are actually free. (John 8:36) You listen to the apostle Paul: We are more than conquerors if we believe in Jesus. I can do anything through Christ Jesus who strengthens me. Okay, so there are some words on a page in a book called The Bible, that tell us some things but what do they really mean for life? Well, here's the crunch. And if you are someone who is struggling with the hurts of the past you may not like what I have to say. But I have to say it to you anyway. Here is the crunch. You can live your life with the hurts of the past and believe that you can't change it. Or you can decide to believe what God says about you. You've got a choice. I often joke. I mean I would not make a good counsellor, you know. It's not my gift to sit with people. One of the people who helps me on this program, Max Harding, who is a great guy and as well as being a fantastic producer, he also works in a counselling ministry. And he has a wonderful job at that but that is not what I do. And I often joke that my form of counselling is to listen to people for 30 seconds then say, 'that is great, just get over it'. In a sense that doesn't help. And of course when we have issues and hurts and problems from the past we do have to bring them out and talk about them and deal with them. But some people talk about them and talk about them and talk about them and talk about them for the rest of their lives. They whinge and complain about some bad things that happened to them when they were children. Even people, let me say, who have said, "look I've seen what God did for me through Jesus Christ. I believe in Him." And yet somehow, these same people still want to live in the hurts of the past. The past is past. It's over. It's gone. Can't change it. Can't undo it. Can only come to grips with it and leave it behind. If it's past, shouldn't we leave it behind? Do you have some hurts? Let me ask you really kindly but yet very directly, are you still wallowing in those hurts? If that's you, I have a word from God for you today. And that word is this: get over it! It is time to move on. I don't say that lightly, I don't say that with a smile on my face. It is time to move on. Let it go. Jesus bought you and me an eternal future. And it doesn't matter where you go in the Old Testament or the New Testament, what you see is a God who wants to bless us. Now, a lot of Christians in the New Testament went through a whole bunch of persecution, and you could say that they were victims in a sense. But when you look at Paul, locked up in jail, singing and praising God, writing letters of encouragement to his friends in Philippi, you think, I don't think Paul was really a victim here. Would he have preferred to be doing something else? Probably, Paul would probably have rather not been in jail. But there was no way that the Apostle Paul was living his life as a victim. He'd come to grips with what was happening to him very, very quickly. And quickly he got over it. When we have hurts from the past sometimes it's time to take the garbage out and let it go. If the past is past maybe we need to get over it! If Jesus bought us a future. Of course the devil, well he's happy for us to live wallowing in the pains of the past. He's only come to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus said I have come that you would have an abundantly blessed life. (John 10:10) So which one will it be? Will we continue to wallow in the pain and the hurts of the past or will we decide to believe what God says about us and get over it? But hang on Berni, you don't understand my past. You don't understand how much it hurts, you just don't understand. Well maybe I don't, but here are the things that I do understand. You are an incredibly beautiful person in God's eyes. And when he sent Jesus to die, he had you in mind. He had me in mind. He had his love focused on us. And maybe some tough things have happened in our lives, but listen, show me just one person, just one person, who's had a perfect life. Without any hurts, without any disappointments, without anything to look back on and regret. I don't know anyone like that do you? Now look at this Jesus on the cross. The price that he paid to purchase a future for you and me, and tell me that there is something to be gained by hanging on to the past that he dealt with on the cross for us. Today I believe you and I are together for one reason, Jesus has an invitation for you to live this abundant life. We all have decisions to make, and today I challenge you to make a decision. Either choose to wallow in the past and let it rob you of your future, or choose to accept once and for all the abundant blessed life that He came to give us. The decision is yours. Which one will it be? And if you're tempted to hang on to those past hurts, if they're hard to let go, give me just one good reason for you to hang on to them. I believe we've each been made to live an incredible life. Maybe today you can take that simple step of faith, and say that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Ever compared yourself to other people and come to the conclusion – you just don't stack up? We all have.  And when you're carrying that around inside – it's so hard to have strong relationships. So many diseases seem to be on the rise in our society – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia. The list goes on. But deep inside many, many people is a quiet killer. An emotional disease that's robbing so many people of the life that God intended for them. Yesterday, on A Different Perspective, we began looking at the whole issue of insecurity. The symptoms are clear. People who are insecure are touchy you have to walk on eggshells. They have a deep sense of inadequacy, a string of broken relationships often. They can't give credit to other people. They can't enjoy other people's successes. It's a debilitating, lonely disease. But so many people have lived with this disease for so long, they can't see it let alone admit it. But before an alcoholic can receive help. First they have to take that big step of admitting they're an alcoholic. Turns out that the same is true in dealing with insecurity and low self-esteem. Do you know anyone with low self-esteem? Someone who's suffering from insecurity? It used to be me. I couldn't enjoy my life. I couldn't laugh at myself. I couldn't lose at a card game. I couldn't experience the rich pleasure of delighting in someone else's success. The great author and playwright Gore Vadal said, "Every time a friend of mine succeeds, a small part of me dies." Well I know exactly what he was talking about. I needed to be in the limelight. I needed to be the best. I needed to be recognised. I needed to be the centre of attention. And when I didn't get those things. When those things weren't there to feed my deep, inner emptiness and insecurity, it hurt, it really hurt. It was so real. Outwardly I was a very confident, articulate, apparently smart person. But inwardly I was like a drug addict who needed a fix. And when you're in that state, when you're a heroin addict, when you're an addict of recognition (which is what insecurity is all about) you can't collaborate. You can't love. You can't enjoy. And I thought it was only the sharpest observers who knew what was going on. But actually, I was driving people nuts. When you're insecure it's like not having enough food. If you know ten other people who need food and you don't even have enough for yourself, even though you may be good enough to share that food, they'll still all be hungry. It's not until you have enough food and you can share with them out of your abundance and your overflow that you can all have enough food to go around. And insecurity is like that. We just have to keep feeding it. It's never satisfied. It goes on and on and on and on. And because we're never satisfied, there's no overflow of our satisfaction of our joy, of our peace, of our excitement at living a great life that can bless the people that are around us. Today I don't really like the limelight. In fact radio suits me just fine because people can't see who I am. I love it when other people succeed. I'm not touchy anymore. I'm not bothered by people talking behind my back. In fact, to tell you the truth, by and large, I don't really care what people think about me. I don't mean that in an arrogant way. I don't mean it in a wrong way. When I have criticism come towards me, (which I do sometimes) I listen to it, I evaluate it, I think, 'Hmm, they've got a point. I've got to change something here.' But it doesn't worry me. It doesn't eat away at me. There is this deep, deep sense of security in my heart. And when I look in the mirror, I'm happy with who I am. With a deep contentment with my strengths and my limitations. I just don't need to impress anyone. Nothing to prove. Are there things that I'd like to improve in my life? Absolutely. So what happened? When Jesus was crucified there were two criminals crucified with him. And they were hurling insults at Jesus and taunting Him. And then one of those criminals, something got to him. He must have looked in Jesus eyes and he said, "Lord, Lord remember me." And Jesus looked at him. Remember this criminal could do nothing for Jesus. This criminal couldn't even pray a prayer. And Jesus looked at him when no-one else would have given him a prayer and said: Before the day is out you'll be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43) Jesus accepted this nobody, who could do nothing for Him. Without an eloquent prayer. Without a life of doing good. Without any benefit that he could have given Jesus at that point in time. Jesus accepted this criminal just as he was. And when I got my mind around that story, it was as though some steel bands around my heart were burst open. I was set free. Something happens when we get our hearts around Jesus dying for us. It's so deep and profound because it is an unconditional acceptance and forgiveness. No matter what we've done. No matter who we are. And when I look in the mirror and I see some black spots and I think, "Something has to happen with that. I have to deal with that issue. That problem. That sin in my life." I can do it from a sense of, "I'm accepted by God. I don't have to scrub this sin off my skin myself. I don't have to get it out myself." The reason I see it so clearly is because I'm safe and secure in a relationship with Jesus. And this Jesus who sends His Holy Spirit to live in anyone who'll accept Him, who'll believe in Him, who'll put their trust in Him. Jesus is the guy that points this stuff out to me. He's the one that helps me to deal with it and scrubs me clean. We are adopted as children into His family when we believe in Him. We become co-heirs with Jesus Himself. And when that sunk in I realised something. If God accepts me as I am maybe it's time for me to accept me as I am. In one sense, when we realise that, there's an instant release. And in another, as we live in it, day after day, week after week, we live in that love and acceptance. Over months and years, it changes us. All that time in my life I tried every self-improvement program and I never succeeded because any self-improvement program can never really deal with that sense of insecurity. It was Jesus. His acceptance and His love that set me free from the insecurity of my limitations. Free to let Him change me by His love. That's what happened and it's still happening, on and on and on and on. It's a deep work. It's a work that God sticks with. When He begins something good in us He sees it through. He never leaves us half way along. He never pulls back and says, "You are just hopeless. I've had enough of you. I can't help you anymore." No, no. Not when He sent His Son. This Jesus who created all that there is – the whole universe. He's the King of kings. He's the Lord of lords. He became a man. To His friends He became a guy. Someone wrote in recently after a program where I referred to Jesus as a guy and said, "You can't refer to Jesus like that. He's the King of kings and the Lord of lords." He is. But He was also a man. He was also a mate – a friend to those 12 disciples who travelled around with Him. He was human. He cried for people. He laughed. He loved. He made wine at the wedding. He healed. He gave people security when no one else would. Maybe it's time for you today. To admit that there is a deep insecurity that we can't do anything about on our own. And accept the solution. The solution of a deep love. And to live in that love and let Him change us. If God is God, He made us the way we are. And He's come to set us free. Love your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:31) That love that Jesus was talking about there was unconditional love. What do you think?

Insecurity is a social disease running at plague proportions.  And like every other plague – it has dire consequences.  Hmmm.  What if you have the disease? Is there a cure? Probably one of the things that we'd all like to do is to grow as people. Hopefully today, we're a bit more mature and balanced than we were, say 5 years ago. And in 5 years time, we'd hope that we've learned a bit more. That the years have brought some wisdom and some insight compared to who we are and how we behave today. That's what we'd like to think. But it's not always the case. The reality is that there are some things in us, sometimes, that hold us back. That constrain us from being all that we can be. They stop us from living life to the full. One of the things that many of us struggle with and I certainly have in my life, is a deep sense of inadequacy and insecurity. So is it possible to deal with this personal and social disability? Other people around us, well they seem so confident of themselves and their own abilities. Have you noticed? Especially young people these days. Look at them. They're so talented. They're so confident. While everybody else is busy putting their best foot forward, sometimes we're dying a quiet death inside. "Somehow, I don't feel as good. I'm not as articulate. I'm not as talented. I'm not as bright. I'm not as good-looking. I'm not as fit. I'm not as significant as they are. I don't make as much difference in the world as they do." We can often have that sort of a view of ourselves. And the worst bit about it is you can't easily admit that to someone. You look at a photo of yourself and you think, "I look ugly". Or maybe you see yourself on a video and you think, "surely I don't look like that." Or you hear your voice recorded and you think, "I don't sound like that. That can't be me can it?" It's a quiet, lonely hell. Is this something you might relate to? Over 50% of all women in western society chronically suffer from low self-esteem. And it happens to men too. But in a sense it's almost worse for men because the whole macho image thing, well you can't admit that to someone. So what are the symptoms? What does somebody look like who's suffering from insecurity? Well the first thing is they're really, really touchy. When you're around them it's like walking on eggshells. You have to be careful where you tread. Because you don't know when they're going to go off like a cracker. Someone who's insecure worries about what other people think about me. What will they think when they know this? What are they saying behind my back? What are they doing to me? How does this impact on me? Somebody who's really insecure sees themselves at the centre of the universe. And they're really hard people to be around. But what if that someone is you or me? As we sit here talking about deep insecurity, I wonder how many people would love to be healed? To be set free. This week on A Different Perspective, I've called this little series of five programs – Time to Get Over It. Because I'd like to look at this subject of insecurity from a different perspective. Dealing with hurts from the past. Getting a right and balanced attitude towards ourselves. Let me tell you something. I have a crazy notion. I have this crazy notion that Jesus died on the cross for me and for you, to set us free. And Jesus said: If I set you free, you'll be free indeed. You'll be really free Well … let me ask you a question. Do you like yourself? I mean, you strip off your clothes and you stand naked in front of the mirror and you look at yourself. And you think, "do I fundamentally like this person?" And there's an emotional equivalent too. You strip off all the pretence and all the faces we put on when we go out in front of other people. And we look at ourselves as a package. Me inc or you inc. This package of physical; his package of emotional; this package of spiritual; of talents and strengths and weaknesses and limitations. You look at this package and let me ask you to give yourself an honest answer. Do you really like you? Are you happy with you? Sadly, the answer for a lot of people is "no". Sadly, the answer for me used to be "no". Now I'm not asking any of us to have a swelled head. But Jesus said, "Love your neighbour as yourself." Now that's great. We always focus on that first bit, of loving your neighbour. And there's probably none of us that would say that's a bad idea. I mean, to love, to be good to the people around us. Friends, family, work colleagues, people at church, people at the club, whatever we're involved in. To love our neighbour seems to be a really good thing to do. But just let's think about this because it's a two-part sentence. "Love your neighbour as yourself." Love yourself – now that's an interesting thing. We don't expect Jesus to say that. We think it's all about loving your neighbour. But He's saying: Love your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:31) Question: what if we don't have a right attitude towards ourselves? What if we don't like ourselves? What if we don't love ourselves? Well in this two-part sentence Jesus is saying, "Well if you can't love yourself properly, you probably won't be able to love other people properly." Look around. Look at insecure people. They're always feeding their insecurity. They're never content with who they are. They're never content with their lot in life. Me, I used to hate when other people succeeded. Others were in the lime light. When you're in that space, how can you love other people? How can you be good to other people when the only thing that you really can deal with is this deep, nagging, painful, insecurity thing? And then one day God switched a light on in my heart. I came to the understanding that this Jesus whom He sent, His Son, who died on the cross, died for me while I was still all those rotten things I knew I was. Just as I am, naked in front of that mirror, complete package – good and bad, beautiful and ugly, with all that rotten stuff in me. The naturally consequences of which are shame and insecurity. Jesus said, "Give me all that bad stuff. All that stuff about you that you don't like. Give me that black box full of all that rubbish. And I will take it and I will take it on me." We see that Jesus became sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He took all that rubbish that makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed and paid for it. Full payment. No more payment required. No more need for justice. He paid for it. So I became white, pure. A slate wiped clean. And it doesn't matter where we are in our walk in life. You may have been walking with Jesus for 40 years. You may never have accepted Jesus as yours and put your trust in Him. But let's just contemplate that deeply. Just for a long time, try and wrap our hearts and our minds around that. And my prayer for you is, that as you do and as I do still in my life too, as we live our lives trying to come to grips with His grace, that it changes us. That it takes away our need to feel insecure. I can honestly say today that I don't have insecurity in my life. And it used to be such a cancer. I remember visiting a school friend just a few years after we had left school. And she was telling me how Bill, a friend of ours, was doing really well in his business and they were going well and it was like something inside me died. I couldn't cope with someone else doing better than I was doing. That's gone. God's healed that. And the whole source, the whole root of the healing is right there on that rough wooden cross on that hill, just outside Jerusalem, called Calvary. Where Jesus made a statement to you and me. Where He said, "I love you this much." And if anyone loves me that much, if God loves me that much, it's not a glib, trite thing. It's not a "oh well, God loves you." This is a profound statement meant to strike at the heart of my insecurity and yours.

Yep, yep.  I believe in miracles.  I believe that God will do a miracle for me.  But – well, what happens when He says no.  What happens when I have a heart for this or for that – but He closes the door.  Slams it in our face. This week on the program, we've been talking about miracles. This series is called "I Need a Miracle Please". How many times have you and I been caught in a tight spot and thought to ourselves – nothing short of a miracle is going to save me from this one. Or, or there's something on our hearts. We have this desire. A good desire. A desire perhaps to serve God and yet things just don't seem to be working out. We can't talk about miracles without talking about the fact that sometimes, sometimes, we go to God and ask Him for a miracle and that miracle seems to be denied by God. How can that be? Jesus Himself said: If you love me and my word abides in you and you abide in me, you can ask anything that you wish in my name and it will be done for you. (John 15:7) How can it be that God would deny me miracle that opens the door to me doing some good work for Him? How can it be that God denies me a miracle of healing – healing a sick child, or healing a loved one. How can it be? I've heard people preach that the only circumstance in which we miss out on something that we ask for, is if we don't have enough faith. Frankly – I'd love to ring their necks. Because that just isn't true. You may think that's pretty strong language but I get really angry with people who twist the truth. Now a lack of faith, that sometimes is the reason we miss out on things from God. Yes. It is. Listen to what James writes when he talks about going to God and asking for wisdom. James chapter 1 beginning at verse 6. He says: But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. See, God rewards faith, that's what we've been talking about over these last few days. But He doesn't demand complete faith, or perfect faith. In fact, the last time that I checked, faith the size of a tiny little mustard seed was enough to tell a mountain to go jump into the lake. It's not the size of our faith that matters. Not the perfection of our faith. See sometimes, my heart is deeply troubled. Sometimes, I'm afraid to stand in a place that God's called me to stand. Sometimes I'm afraid to step forward and do the things that God's called me to do. How do I know that I have faith? I'll tell you. If I stay in that place, and do the things that God's called me to do, if I'm prepared to fail unless God shows up, no matter how much my emotions are on that roller coaster ride, if I hang on to that tiny little seed of faith somewhere in my heart then I know I have faith. But if I run and hide to protect myself then I don't. Sure, faith is important but sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we don't hear God properly. And sometimes we ask God for something that isn't in His sovereign will. I've written a book recently called 'Unlocking the Power of Prayer' and I've devoted a whole chapter to this question. You know, when my children were little, I wouldn't give them a sharp knife to play with. It's only when they grew up into young adults that they got to use the carving knife. Sometimes we ask God for things that we're not mature enough to use or to do or to cope with. And so the reason I get so upset by people that somehow seem to preach that we can expect God to deliver on any outrageous request that we make and that if He doesn't it's because we lack enough faith. That's not only a lie, but it condemns those who listen. It blames them for something that's not their fault. And I just feel today that we need to deal with this decisively because when we ask something of God and His loving, perfect answer is no, then we naturally feel condemned. We do and that's not what we're meant to feel. There's no better way of tackling this subject than through the Apostle Paul. Now Paul is definitely one of your biblical 'A' List. One of those great characters of the New Testament. In fact, he wrote almost half the books of the New Testament so God entrusted an awful lot to this guy, Paul. He was a passionate fellow. He had a heart to tell as many people as he could about Jesus. Travelled all over the place for years and years. Right across the known world, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news. Sometimes, in fact quite a few times, his heart raced out there ahead of God to do this or to do that but he was prevented from doing so. Have a listen to what he writes to the church in Rome, in Romans 1, chapter 13. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I have often intended to come to you but thus far have been prevented, in order that I might reap some harvest among you as I have amongst the rest of the Gentiles. See, he's writing to them, "I really, really, really have wanted to come to you, to tell you about Jesus, to reap a harvest for God's glory." You can just imagine Paul praying and imploring God, "God let me go to Rome. Let me go to them. God, let me go and tell them about you. Father God, please, please let me go in Jesus name!" Pouring his heart out to God over this. Now this is a good, honourable thing. This wasn't for Paul's comfort or luxury or glory, far from it. Travelling to Rome in those days was not an easy journey, as he was later to find out when he was shipwrecked along the way. No, this was for God's glory. Paul's intentions were Godly and good in every way. But listen to what he says, "Thus far I have been prevented." In other words, to that point, God had not answered his prayer. God had not let him pursue the desires of his heart. God had not opened the door. God had not made a way for Paul to go and fulfil his heart's desire. So what, did Paul lack faith? Was Paul double minded? No, he was a great man of God. He gave his life to the service of preaching the Gospel. He was responsible for planting so many churches. He was used mightily of God. God just said no that time. In fact, later in the book of Romans Paul tells us why: Thus I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build up someone else's foundation, but as it is written, "Those who have never been told of him shall see, and those who have never heard of him shall understand." This is the reason that I have so often been hindered from coming to you. That's Romans chapter 15. In other words, the Romans had already heard about Jesus and there were other people in the world that hadn't. And God had something better for Paul to do right then with his time than go and tell people who'd already heard about Jesus, about Jesus. Paul had a heart to do one thing, and God had a plan for Him to do something else. Paul wanted to go to Rome but God had other, more important things for him to do and that's okay because Paul did what God had told him to do. Eventually he did get to go to Rome but on God's terms, in chains, on death row. See how plain and simple this is. It's got nothing to do with lack of faith on Paul's part. And again of Timothy, Paul and Silas we read in Acts chapter 16: They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. Sometimes God just has different plans. And that hurts. That can be confusing. Sometimes we wish it was different. As I've said many times, God isn't some performing poodle that dances to our tune. He's a sovereign and mighty God. And when we pray, "Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name, your will be done, your kingdom come … " What we're saying to Him is this. First and foremost, no matter what the cost to me Dad, I just want you to know that I want your will to be done. And you know something, when we're in that will, there's a peace and a rest and a trust and a joy that happens. Because He is going to get it right.

Sometimes, we expect God to show up with a miracle in our lives, kind of like the pizza delivery man at the front door. But God – well, sometimes He has a different plan.  Sometimes He wants us to grow the sort of faith that's going to blow a hole in the roof. It never ceases to amaze me how different God's ways are from our own. See when I want something from God – when I go to him and pray and ask Him for something, I kind of expect Him not just to say yes each and every time, but I expect Him to deliver me the answer on a platter. I kind of imagine that it's like when I ring up to order a Pizza home delivery, and the little man shows up on his motorbike and delivers it to my front door. I mean – isn't that how it should be? Isn't that how we expect that God should operate? Come, putting up on His little motor bike and knock on our doors and say – here it is, just sign here? Now, I know that sounds a little crazy, but the truth be known, that's how we expect God to operate. I mean why wouldn't He. He's our Dad. He loves us. Surely He wants to bless us. But then again, I'm a dad too. And there's one thing for certain – I have never delivered breakfast in bed to any of my children. Because (a) I wanted them to learn how to be responsible and to get up out of bed for themselves and get breakfast for themselves and (b) in any case, I'm their father and they should be delivering breakfast for me in bed. I'll do the things they can't do for themselves, I'll help them and I'll encourage them and I'll discipline them, but they need to learn to do the things that they have to do. And on top of that, I as a dad, will sometimes put them under pressure, or set them tasks that are difficult – because unless I do that, where are they going to learn that stuff from? So why is it that we would somehow imagine that God would be any different? Why do we imagine that He'd be in the business of delivering breakfast in bed, or pizza to the front door? I'll tell you why. Because we have a consumer mentality. We live in a "me" centred world. God is supposed to dance to my tune. And that's an attitude that we can take into our expectations about miracles. This week we're doing a series called "I Need a Miracle". But I want us to get realistic about this whole miracle thing. On the one hand sometimes we imagine that God wouldn't ever do a miracle for me, hopefully we've dealt with that earlier in the week. 'Cause that's a load of rubbish. God is a miracle working God. He was 2000 years ago. He still is today and nothing's changed. But on the other hand, we can get this spiritual couch potato view of the world and expect miracles to be easy. But I have to tell you, my experience is, sure some miracles from God are easy. But some are a long time in coming and take a lot of perseverance and trust through difficult times, before they actually happen. And that bit kind of jars with our sugar daddy view of what God should be and how He should deliver miracles. So today I want to share with you a story that could well be familiar to you. It's the story of a miracle. And yet it wasn't an easy one. It took quite some effort. Let's take a look. It comes from Mark's Gospel, chapter 2. When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralysed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, "why does this fellow speak in this way? What a blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God?" At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and He said to them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Stand up and take your mat and walk?" But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins" – he said to the paralytic – "I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home." And the man stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!" Sounds easy to skim over this and say, "oh yeah. This is just Jesus doing another one of His miracles." But here were these people, four of them carrying this one man. Let's take a look at this miracle from their perspective. This man who couldn't walk, now that was a big deal in those days. Not just that he couldn't walk but he couldn't earn any money. He was a burden on his family. There were no social security cheques arriving in the mail every two weeks. So it was a big deal not being able to walk. Now they hear that Jesus is coming to town. I remember when I was a kid, when the Beatles came to town. And I was watching them on the old black and white TV. And the crowds were cheering and pushing. Each one of them hoping to get a glimpse. The idea that any one could ever even get close to the Beatles, well that was beyond imagination. Bit like when Jesus came to town. So these four friends saw an opportunity for a healing. They heard about Jesus and his miracles. So they arrive carrying their friend on a stretcher only to be confronted by crowds. They couldn't move, they couldn't get near Jesus. Their hearts sank. The disappointment would have been overwhelming, they were human. Do you think they're any different to you or to me? Now how easy would it have been to give up dejected? How easy would it have been to think, "oh well, if Jesus had meant for our friend to be healed, He would have come out or something or He would have been easy to get at or … " Instead, they stood there and they thought to themselves, "we are going to get this miracle. We are not going to give up this easily. We're here now and we're going for it. Now, what's another way to skin this cat?" "Oh I know", says one of them, "why don't we rip a hole in the roof. Let's climb up there with our friend on the stretcher, lift the tiles off the roof, and then, knock a whacking great hole in Jesus' roof. I mean, He's only the Son of God, why not? Do you see how audacious their faith was? Not some pizza delivery model – but a faith that went hard after God Himself. A faith that was prepared to claw through clay, baked dry and hard, with their bare hands to get this miracle. A faith that was prepared to blow a hole in the roof. And Jesus, He didn't care that they'd knocked a hole in the roof, someone could fix that later. He was blown away by their faith. Do you see how different God is to us? And they got their miracle. Not only did they get their miracle but the crowds and the religious leaders received a lesson that day about who Jesus really is. Wake up! It is time for us to realise that our faith is like a muscle. And God knows that unless we use our muscles they have a way of getting weak and flabby and giving up all together. God is a great Dad. And see, He's like any Dad, He looks at us and He wants us to grow and to be strong and to develop. And so He is going to let us go through things so that we can learn to use our faith, to strengthen our faith. To look at Jesus and to follow a heart after Him and develop the sort of faith that's prepared to knock a hole in the roof to get to Him. And then, we know when God's got us in that place, when that muscle of faith is growing, then just watch the miracles start to flow.

Sometimes, we think that, well, we have to be perfect to receive a miracle.  Never mind that we desperately need God's supernatural helping hand, never mind that He's a God of grace and mercy – we kind of figure that we have to get our act together first. There's something about God that I sometimes find difficult to come to grips with. It almost seems as though there's a contradiction.On the one hand, when you read Gods Word, the Bible, it's pretty clear that God honours those who honour Him. In fact there's a specific verse in the Old Testament that says that. 1 Samuel 2:30, God says: I will honour those who honour me but those who despise me will be treated with contempt. That kind of makes sense doesn't it? But then, then you see God do things, good things, miraculous things for people who never asked and who never particularly seem to deserve a miracle. And you think to yourself, well this honouring God and Him honouring us is one thing. But sometimes He kind of just zaps people from on high and does amazing things in their lives. Me on the other hand, I just plod along, day after day, put up with all the stuff I have to put up with.Clearly, I'm not one of those special people. And clearly I don't deserve a miracle – so I'll just keep on plodding along. Well, maybe today, maybe today we're going to discover something that will just blow us apart. I want to make something clear before we start talking about miracles today. I'm definitely, absolutely definitely NOT one of those people that we all look at and go – well he deserves a miracle. He's one of those Christians that God would definitely bless. ABSOLUTELY NOT. In fact, if I could only show you the total disastrous mess that my life was in when I finally turned it over to God, you'd pick me as one of those people where you'd think "Well, God would never want that guy in His kingdom!" It's really important for you to understand that. When Berni Dymet came to Christ he was just your average punter with his life in a mess. And yet, I've seen miracle after miracle in my life since I gave it to Jesus. To be sure – not every miracle that I've asked for I've received. Sometimes, God had different plans. But so often, God's stepped in with miracles that I didn't even ask for. For example I was called to go to Bible College. Now I went part time because I was a business man and I was jetting all over the world all the time. I was always on a plane to somewhere. I said, "God, how am I going to make lectures? I mean I'm never there. This is never going to work." But I just had a deep sense of God's calling and I took that step to go and I just felt God saying, "you go and I'll figure the rest out." So I embarked on a 6 year part time degree, a Bachelor of Ministry. Now I was running an international IT consulting firm. Figure that out. So I took the step, I signed up. Not only did I finish the degree in just 4 years – but I only ever missed one lecture. That was the week that I was in New Zealand on my honeymoon with my now wife. Amazing. Somehow, I always made it there. Once I was sitting on a tarmac in a plane that couldn't take off. I was overseas, they needed to fly in a spare part from another city and the Captain came on and suggested that we may not be able to take off today. I just smiled to myself and thought, "you just don't understand. I have a lecture at Bible College at 2pm this afternoon." And sure enough, I walked into the lecture room with just a minute to spare. Or the time that an atheist program director on a huge radio station in Africa agreed to take our programs and air them to a weekly audience of millions of people. Or the time that … well I could go on. And you know, the problem with hearing some bloke talking about all the miracles God's done in his life is that, to anyone listening, it can be just so disheartening. Well, well - I haven't seen those sorts of miracles. Isn't it funny how other people's testimonies can do that to us? To tell you the truth – I've been there too. So I want to share a story with you today, a story of a woman who asked Jesus for a miracle and didn't get quite the response that she was looking for. Have a listen. This story comes from Matthews's gospel, chapter 15, starts at verse 21: Jesus left that place and went on to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was instantly healed. See she was a Canaanite, not one an Israelite, not one of God's chosen people. But a Gentile and the Jews hated the Gentiles. They often called them dogs in those days. But she needed a miracle. And she'd heard about the miraculous things that Jesus has been doing. Maybe she'd even seen one or two. So she comes and kneels before Him. Get it, she's lowering herself to a Jew. She is a gentile. This is a bit like an Irishman bowing down to an Englishman, or an Australian bowing down to a New Zealander, or a Tutsi bowing down to a Hutu. It's an unbelievably amazing thing that she did in public. And Jesus gives her a response that fitted in completely with the animosity between Jew and Gentile. He answered: It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. (Matthew 15:26) That is really rude, she could have been very offended. She could have spat something back in His face. She could have just left. See, she didn't fit the mould for someone who deserved a miracle. But instead, she said: Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table. (Matthew 15:27) She crashed through this test that Jesus was laying out before her because He, He wasn't being deliberately rude, He loves her, He's the Son of God. He was wanting to see how she would respond and she responded rightly. And so Jesus answered her, verse 28 of Matthew chapter 15. And so Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was immediately healed. We can tell ourselves we don't fit the mould for a miracle. We can compare ourselves to other people and think – nope, definitely not me. Or we can just say to ourselves – you know something, I've been asking Jesus for this miracle for years and nothing's happened. And so, we can end up just giving up. Or…or we can listen to this story of the Canaanite woman who just believed in Jesus despite anything and decide that it tells us something about Jesus. With just the smallest mustard seed of faith, we can believe that if she can have a miracle in her desperation, well, I'm just going to believe in Jesus for my miracle too. That's it. No ifs. No buts. Not going to let anyone talk me out of it. Not going to let my circumstances talk me out of it. I'm just going to believe in this Jesus with all that I am. Sometimes, He's delayed. The other day He gave me something I've been waiting for, for three years. Sometimes, He says 'no' to something that I've wanted desperately. Like I said, He hasn't given me every miracle I've ever asked for. But on the other hand, I've discovered that when I believe doggedly and tenaciously for a miracle, I end up seeing more miracles than my fair share.

It's easy to imagine that God will do a miracle for other people, but never, ever for me.  Sure I believe God can do miracles…just not for me.  I mean, if I believe in a miracle and He doesn't show up, I'm going to look like a fool. How often in life do we think to ourselves – I just need a miracle. Nothing but a miracle is going to get this done. And you know the struggle with that? We just don't know when, or even if, a miracle is ever going to happen. Is God going to step in this time, or not? I mean, if I believe in God for a miracle and it doesn't happen – I'm going to look like an idiot. And you know something, so often that's exactly what stops us from believing in Him for a miracle. What will other people say? What if I believe God for this or for that and I tell someone else and then God doesn't come through and then I look stupid. Well maybe, maybe it would be safer not to believe God for that breakthrough. Maybe I should just shut up and stay in my little box and put up with the misery that's going on in my life and let other people ask Jesus for stuff. Do you see the mentality? Do you see how pride can stop us from asking and receiving? Jesus once said to his disciples, "The reason you haven't received anything, is because you haven't asked me for anything yet." But … well, anyone who's ever dared in their heart to believe God for a miracle will know that feeling, that niggling sense of "what will other people think?" This is real life. I don't want to dress up the idea of miracles. There are two equal and opposite mistakes in talking and thinking about miracles. The first one is to under spiritualise. We can think and act and behave and believe as though miracles never happen. I have to tell you something – if miracles never happen, I wouldn't be sitting here with you right now, I just wouldn't. I wouldn't even be on air on this station. I would have gone broke ages ago. The other end of the spectrum is too over spiritualise. This kind of drifting on cloud nine kind of spirituality. As if nothing ever goes wrong in life if you believe in Jesus. What a load of rubbish. Of course things go wrong. Of course we make mistakes. Of course people get cancer. Of course children die. But somewhere in the middle of all that, the notion that I might be embarrassed if I believe in God for a miracle and He doesn't show up. Well … that sort of thing niggles away at our minds, doesn't it? I want to introduce you today to a couple of men – men at the bottom of the social ladder who put everything on the line. And a third man, right at the top of the social ladder who did the same. The first of these two men are blind beggars. They heard that Jesus was in town. Here's what happened. You can read about it in Matthew, chapter 20:29-34. As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed Jesus. There were two blind men sitting by the roadside. When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they shouted, "Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!" The crowd sternly ordered them to be quiet; but they shouted even more loudly, "Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David!" Jesus stood still and called to them, saying, "What do you want me to do?" They said to him, "Lord, let our eyes be opened." Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him. See, these were two blind, beggarly outcasts. There was no social security safety net in those days. No cheque coming in the mail every two weeks. They were blind, they couldn't work, therefore they were poor, therefore they were ostracised. Therefore they weren't part of the crowd following Jesus. They were sitting on the side of the road And these crowds were milling around Jesus. They were normal people. They were the beautiful people. They were the people who had a right to be there. Would have been so easy for these beggars just to say to one another: Hey Fred, Jesus is here. Yeah, I know Dave, but look at us. Do you really, really think He'd ever do one of those miracles for the likes of you and me? Nah – you're right, it's a complete waste of time isn't it? Can you imagine? Can you imagine if they'd had that attitude? They'd have died blind. What a complete and utter tragedy that would have been. What? There aren't any words to describe it. I'm not good enough! Let's not go! They would have missed out, wouldn't they? Do you get it? And look at what they did, they shouted out in public. The crowds told them to shush. But they went public anyway, they went against public opinion. They went against conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom was, "Jesus won't do a miracle for you because you're not one of the beautiful people, right?" And yet, they got their miracle. But, I hear you say, but they were outcasts. When it comes to reputation, they had nothing to lose. Well ... maybe you're right. Perhaps they had nothing to lose – they were, after all, at the bottom of the social register. So now let's look at a man at the complete opposite end of the social scale. A man by the name Jairus. When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue a man named Jairus came and, when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." (Mark 5:21-23) This was the leader of the synagogue. This Jairus guy was really somebody. Jesus, on they other hand, even though He was drawing big crowds, already had a dodgy relationship with religious hierarchy in Jerusalem. But this man's desperation outweighed his concern over his reputation. He threw himself publicly, in front of the crowds, in front of the people who attended his synagogue, down at Jesus' feet. He would have looked pretty stupid if Jesus had ignored him or turned him away. And there it is. There's the answer. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, any one of the historical accounts of Jesus life, and tell me if you can find one instance where Jesus turned away just one person who came to Him and asked Him for a miracle. And I've got to tell you, I'm going to save you some time. There's not a one. Tell me the one time when Jesus admonished someone for having too much faith or for calling on Him in public – NOT ONCE!That's why people did it. That's why they weren't concerned with looking stupid – because He never turned them away. Didn't always give them the answer they were looking for but mostly He did. Jesus never, ever turned them away. Jesus never made them look stupid. He always rewarded their faith. You know what I've decided – I am happy to put my faith in Him and believe in Him for a miracle when I need one, even if I end up looking stupid. I'm sorry, I just don't care what other people think. I don't mean that arrogantly. I just don't care what you think. Actually what everyone else thinks is absolutely irrelevant. I'd rather look a fool, sure people think that sometimes, than miss out on the miracle working power of God in my life. And you know what happens when we abandon our reputation. When we stop worrying about what other people think and put our trust in Jesus, you know what happens? We end up seeing more than our fair share of miracles. I had one just yesterday. God opened a door that had been firmly shut to me for years. Should never have been opened. But it was. More than my fair share of miracles? That works, doesn't it?

It's easy to imagine that miracles don't happen anymore these days.  But God is a miracle working God – he was 2000 years ago and He is today. Nothing's changed and I for one, still believe in miracles. Have you ever needed a miracle in your life? Have you ever wondered even what a miracle looks like? Well, I decided to go to Wikipedia – the internet based encyclopaedia to find out what it says about miracles. Well, here's the definition it came up with: A miracle is an event believed to be caused by the interposition of divine intervention by a supernatural being in the universe by which the ordinary operation of Nature is overruled, suspended, or modified. A bit dry and clinical isn't it? But it's pretty much bang on the money. Except – I happen to believe not in the divine intervention of a super natural being in the universe, I happen to believe that the only God that performs miracles, real miracles, the sort that speak of His love for us – is the same God who sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for you and for me on that cross. Now, that was a miracle, not just the dying bit – as if that weren't enough – but the being raised from the dead bit. That is one major miracle. Now it's easy to believe in miracles, until we desperately need one for ourselves. Until someone we love has cancer. Until we're the ones in the jobless queue. Until it's our marriage that's in trouble. Then all of a sudden, it becomes incredibly hard to believe in miracles. Miracles are a difficult subject for us to talk about. Because I know that there's someone listening today who believed that God would do a miracle for their loved one who was dying – and they died anyway. And there's someone who believed in a miracle when they lost their job and couldn't afford to pay for their mortgage and they lost their house anyway. And there's someone today who believed … you get the picture? God doesn't always do miracles when we want Him to? Why? Because He's God and He gets to choose. See the statistics are that we live in a world where, the last time I checked, out of every 100 people – any 100 you'd care to choose – out of every 100 people – exactly 100 will die at some point. The body gets old, it wears out and it gives up. Either that or Jesus will return first. It's just the way things are. I watched my dad die over 10 years ago, he was only 74. A good friend of mine in Africa, his brother was killed by rebel fighters and his father was injured in the fighting and died because of the lack of medical care. Now this friend is a humble, powerful man of God. He believed for miracles. We live in a world that rejected God and the result of that is that people suffer and people die. Look around, there are billions suffering in the world today. People who believe in Jesus and people who don't. Jesus suffered. Jesus asked for the suffering to be taken away – but it wasn't. But still, still I believe in miracles. Sometimes God steps in for no reason that's particularly apparent to us and performs a miracle. The first time I prayed for someone to be healed was a woman at church. She had bad knees, they were painful, I prayed. Now I didn't really expect her to be healed and I kind of avoided her after that. Months later she told me that she had been healed. I was shocked. Back then I thought it had something to do with me. And that – that's the mistake that's so easy to make. If I'm really, really, really, really good, God will give me a miracle. If I believe until I bust, if I clean up my act, if I do this or do that or say this or pray that … then, then I'll get the miracle I've been hoping for. See, that completely and utterly misses the point. Let me read you something, a letter that the apostle Paul wrote. This comes from Galatians chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. He writes: You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited and crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing? – if it really was for nothing. Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by you doing the works of the law, or by your believing in what you heard? Pretty simple isn't it. If we think we can get miracles by working our way into God's favour, by playing the game, ticking the boxes, getting it all right. Paul's saying, "you foolish Galatians! Did you see miracles happen because you did the right thing or because you believed in what you'd heard?" See, doing the right thing and ticking the boxes doesn't deliver miracles. Now Gods not a sugar daddy. He's not a slot machine. You don't put the coin in, pull the handle, and watch the dials spin and see the cash fall out to the bottom. It's not how it works. Not some formula that we apply and hey presto – out pops the rabbit from the hat! If there was – then God would be reduced to a performing poodle who does tricks on our command. It's not it at all. Somewhere deep inside God has a plan and sometimes that plan includes miracles, sometimes it doesn't. But the thing that causes God to perform a miracle is not what we do but what we believe. Faith, the faith to believe, come what may. Irrespective of the outcome – I'm gonna honour God and I'm going to obey Him and I'm going to love Him and I'm going to bow my life down to Him and I am going to believe in Jesus for a miracle. Just believe – call me crazy. Call me simple. Call me whatever you like. I just believe. Like the three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They refused to bow down and worship an idol that King Nebuchadnezzar wanted them to worship. He threatened to throw them into a furnace and this is what they said: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defence to you in this matter. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up. (Daniel 3:16-18) And they were thrown into the furnace and God did deliver them. But even if he hadn't, they still weren't going to bow down to any other god. Sometimes I've believed mightily for a miracle and God hasn't done it. And I remember on a few occasions how painful and distressing that was. Like having my heart torn out – but God had something different planned. Other times, just recently in fact, I've under-believed in God. I had low expectations and God has done such mighty miracles, opened doors for the Gospel that for years have been tightly shut to me. Moved the hearts of people that I've never even met to grant me favour. And I've stood back in awe of what He's done. Why? I don't know, I'm like you, I'm just some little guy. I believe in Jesus, I worship Him, I do my best every day to honour Him. I fall flat on my face some days. And every now and then, He does something amazing – and you know what I've noticed? It's invariably for His glory not mine. His name is lifted up and yep, it helps me sometimes, but that's a side benefit really. Do I believe in miracles? Absolutely! Do they always work out like I've planned – not on your nelly. It's just the way it is.

Maybe you've been listening to the messages on this program during this week, we're we've been chatting about getting rid of fear and worry out of our lives – and thought, well, OK – but I just don't have enough faith to do that.  Well – if that's the case then his next program is definitely for you. We're talking this week, on the program, about banishing worry and fear from our lives. Five practical things that we can do. And my hunch, my hunch is that there'd be a few people. Maybe one or two. Sitting there, listening to it all, saying, "Well, I'm not sure if I can believe that". The guy is saying pray and let God take the worry away. That's what His word promises (Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7). Replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts (Philippians chapter 4, verses 8 and 9).  Believe that you can do all things in Christ Jesus who strengthens you (Philippians chapter 4, verses 10 to 13). And get still before God. Let Him give you gladness and peace (Psalm 46). It's all really good stuff. That's what we've looked at over the last four days on the program. But there is someone saying to themselves right now, "Yeah right. That all sounds really good but I'm not sure that I can believe that it works. Maybe it works for other people who have more faith than me. But I just don't think it's going to work for me. In fact, I know it's not because I don't have enough faith." And if that little thought is running through your mind today, it's okay. Because you are not alone. Truly. Lot's of us have those thoughts from time to time. If you want to get rid of the worry and fear and stress and anxiety in your life. If you kind of believe that maybe, just maybe this stuff might work but you don't feel as though you have enough faith. Then this program today, well it's just for you. Each one of us has at least a few issues in our lives causing us stress. We do. No-one's immune. Sometimes they're external. Sometimes they're internal. And sometimes, in fact, most of the time it's both. It's not just the circumstances we're faced with but how we see them and process them and react to them and deal with them. I don't have to go through some exhaustive list. You know exactly what they are in your life. And I know what they are in my life. And we know them because they tower above us like, like big mountains. So big and so dark and so impossible and so immovable. The person who hurts us who's just never ever, ever going to change. The sense of inadequacy and inferiority that we have inside that it's just never ever, ever going to go away. The anger we feel, the resentment. The financial hardship. There I go, I'm making a list. Couldn't help myself. These are dirty great immovable mountains. They just won't move and budge out of our lives. They're too tall and steep and frightening to climb. They're too wide to go around. And as for shifting them out of the road. Well that's completely and utterly impossible. Got the picture, right? And as we each survey the landscape of our lives. The relationships, the circumstances, the situations. Pretty quickly we can spot those mountains. Two, three, four, perhaps a half a dozen. Maybe even a mountain range where they're all kind of linked and we can't really tell where one of them stops and another one begins. And it's those mountains that we worry about. The thought of what they mean that strikes fear in our hearts. They rob us of sleep as our minds look at them. Just the sight of them. Just the thought of them. You can feel the knife of fear stabbing in your heart. And even when we turn our backs on them. Or shut our eyes. Or pretend that they aren't there. The worry eats away inside us like a, like a worm eats away inside an apple. And that joker on the radio has the hide to get up and say that we can be free from fear and worry in our lives if we do this or do that. I just don't have enough faith to believe that. That's good. Because nor do I. Truly. Invariably we start off with just a tinsy winsy little bit of faith. It's all we have. There was a time when Jesus saw a fig tree and He was hungry. So He walked up to it and there wasn't a single fig on it. And the reason was, it wasn't fig season. So He curses the fig tree. Now, it's not exactly what we might expect the Son of God to do. But He does. And the next day, He and His disciples are walking past that very same fig tree and it's all withered and dead. And Peter says, "wow, look at that! That fig tree you cursed, it's dead." At this point, Jesus stops in His tracks. Turns around to them. And as if to tell them the blindingly, glimpsingly obvious. As if to say, "You still don't get it do you?" This is what He says, Mark chapter 11, verses 22 to 24. He says: Have faith in God. Truly I tell you. If you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea', if you do not doubt in your heart but believe what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours. Now you and I, we find that pretty hard to believe. We've heard this extreme faith preaching. Name it and claim it. Blab it and grab it. So what we do is we say, "Mmm, I know it's in the Bible but actually, I can't cope with that. It doesn't work. So mentally I'm going to strike it out. At the very least I just don't have enough faith. I can't believe it in my heart. So it's no good for me." Well evidently, His disciples had the same problem. Because in another particularly impossible situation, He explains it to them in a slightly different way. In a way that would have made a whole bunch more sense to them. See, they asked Him why it was, that this boy they tried to heal but they couldn't and Jesus turned around and healed him. And they thought, "well, how come we couldn't heal him?" And this is what Jesus told them in Matthew chapter 17, verse 20. He said to them: Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain 'move from here to there' and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. Now my Holman Bible Dictionary says this about the mustard tree and it's seeds. Let me quote it directly. "Mustard – a large annual plant which grows quite quickly. Its seeds were once thought to be the smallest seed in the world." See, I have this tiny little mustard seed in my hand. Insy winsy little thing. We have them in our spice cupboard in the kitchen at home. The thing you see is not so much the seed but the empty hand. What you see is how much faith you don't have rather than the faith that you do. But there are two things about this mustard seed that the people that Jesus was talking to would have understood. Firstly, how small it is. And secondly how quickly it grows when you put it in the ground. Jesus is saying something powerful here and we all need to get a handle on it. He's saying you only need the smallest amount of faith to get started. When we put that in the ground, when we put it to work, not only is it enough to move those mighty, immovable, impossible mountains. But as sure as God made little green apples, it's going to grow quickly. And you know, that's exactly been my experience. We can sit there and bemoan the fact that we only have a small amount of faith. Or, we can take Jesus at His word. That this little mustard seed is more than enough and start praying with just that amount of faith. Plant it. Put it in the ground. Put it to work. Come on, just don't sit there: I can do all things in Christ Jesus. Put the faith to work because faith without works is dead. Do It! And when we do that. We get up in the morning. We take those Scripture verses. We read them. We say them. We memorise them. We stop still for a moment during the day. We remember them again. We rest in them. Before we go to sleep we do the same thing. Let me tell you, two things are going to happen. Firstly, one by one, our mountains will be lifted up and will fall into the sea.  And secondly, our faith is going to grow so quickly. Just as sure as God made little green apples.

So many people out there are running round like chickens with their heads cut off.  Flapping and carrying on.  And we wonder why stress and anxiety are the scourges of our lives.  It's time to sit down and shut up. This week on the program we're looking at five practical ways to banish worry and fear from our lives. Today is the fourth of those and it's really simple. It's this. Sit down and shut up. Sorry to be that blunt and that direct. But sometimes I think that what happens is that we get so caught up in the hurley burley of life that we never stop to rest and reflect. You know what happens. Everybody else is so caught up racing around and doing this and doing that. And so we all go racing around and crashing into one another. It's like a pressure cooker without a release valve. And that pressure causes stress and anxiety. Worry and fear. We lose sight of the big picture. And there's something very special that happens when we just get still for a bit. Just pull away from it all and get still before God. So if you remember just one thing from today it's this. Sit down and shut up. Get still. Get still before God. That's what we're going to be talking about today on the program. And I can tell you, from my life. Which is far busier than I would ever like it to be. This really, really works. God's peace. God's rest in our hearts. How do we get our hand on that? How do we actually experience that amidst a busy life? Well the answer is in one of my favourite psalms, Psalm 46. Let me share it with you: God is our refuge and strength. The very present help in time of trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth should change and the mountains shake in the heart of the sea and the waters roar and foam through the mountains. Though the mountains tremble in it's tumult.  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. The holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of that city. It shall not be moved. God will help when the morning dawns. The nations are in uproar, the kingdoms totter. He utters His voice and the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Come; behold the works of the Lord. See what desolations He had brought on the earth. For He makes wars decease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire. Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted on the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. See the psalmist here, at the beginning, with the earth-shaking and the mountains shaking and the sea foaming. He's painting a picture of uproar and tumult. I mean the Hebrews love picture language like that. Now when it comes to fear it seems that we have short memories. We go through something scary and God shows up and somehow it works out fine. Perhaps, maybe we remember to say, "thank you God". Maybe we don't. And then things calm down again. And they go along just brilliantly for a while. And then BANG, the next storm hits. And it's raging and we're afraid and we're fearful. And life's a mess. We're running around like chooks with their heads cut off. And we're living through that excruciatingly, debilitating, immobilising fear that comes when the ground moves beneath our feet. And we forget. We forget to look back and remember all the times that God's brought us through those storms before. And even if we don't have many of those to look back on. Let's say we have none of those to look back on. Let's assume, worst case. Let's assume that you and I have just, this moment, given our lives to Jesus Christ and come to faith in Him. Just this moment, we've put our lives in His hand. So we don't have a single experience to look back on. Where we know without a doubt that He's stepped in and saved us. What we then do, we forget to look back on the God of the Bible and see how many times He's stepped in to help His people. It's what He does and that's what the psalmist is reminding us here, with these words: Come, behold the works of the Lord. See what desolations He's brought on the earth. He makes wars decease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow. He shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire. God's saying, "Don't you realise, this is what I do? I protect my people. I make sure it all works out. Get a handle on this." But God, how? How can I get a handle on this? You don't understand. I've got all this pain happening. I've got all this fear happening. People are after me. My finances are in a mess. My loved one is sick. My emotions are on a roller coaster. The mountains are falling into the sea. The sea is angry and foaming. The ground is shaking. The nations are raging. How can I get a handle on what You want to do for me? Here's the answer. Here it is. Right here in God's word. Listen to it. Remember it. Let the Spirit of God write it on your heart. Psalm 46, verse 10: Be still and know that I am God. For I'm exalted among the nations. I am exalted in the earth. Sounds so simple. Be still and just know. But you know something. When we're afraid, often the last thing we do is to get still before God. Even when we're praying. We rant on. We don't shut up for long enough. We don't stay there for long enough to hear God speak. Over and over and over again, I've had to learn this one. I'm like you. This doesn't come naturally. It's something I've had to learn. When I'm travelling through fearful places and situations and times, more than ever, I take the time to get still before God. I open a few simple passages. This psalm is my favourite one. And Philippians chapter 4, verse 13, that we talked about yesterday: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Romans chapter 8, verse 31: If God is for us, who can be against us?  I let these passages just rest on my heart. And just sit still and focus on God and wait. Draw away from the noise of the day. Get alone with God. Remember these passages. Say them out loud: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can do ALL things. If God is for us, who can be against us? Because what Psalm 46 tells me is that there's a reality of a God of gladness and power and protection that is so far above my circumstances. Psalm 46 promises me that. And then tells me just to sit still and wait. And you know what happens when I do that. I just sit and wait on God and His Spirit touches me. And I experience the confidence that I need to make it through. Not self-confidence but God confidence. I get a handle on the great unseen reality - God Himself. His power flows into me and through me. All of a sudden the panic goes away. All of a sudden the fear is replaced with faith. God does that. We don't do it. He does. But we just have to sit down and shut up. All of a sudden I have the clarity to think through the problem. To face the realities and to do what I have to do and to trust God for the things I can't do. Oh, and let me tell you. 10 minutes later, half an hour later, half a day later, the panic wants to come back, it does. The fear wants to come back. And when they come knocking on my door I just get still with God again. I go back to Him, wait on Him. Expecting and waiting. That's what it means to live in that city and drink of the streams of that river that make glad the city of God. We need to drink, to drink Him in. His presence. His Spirit. His word. And then a peace that surpasses all understanding guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Be still and know that I am God.

Fear and worry and stress and anxiety are out there in plague proportions. But there's one thing – just one thing – that can make a huge difference in this area of our lives. In fact this one thing is the most important thing I know about banishing fear from our lives. Isn't it amazing what a difference a comforting word can make from a friend. You know, when you're under pressure and stress and racing around. And someone just gives you call to say, "I was thinking of you. How are you going?" Or they see the pressure you're under and they say, "Have you ever thought of this?" Or they just give you different slant on things. And in an instant, a word from a friend can calm the spirit. It can set at rest the racing heart. Its like it's a word in time. Just at the right time. Problem is, in this busy hectic world that we live in, it seems to happen less and less these days, doesn't it? But fortunately God hasn't stopped speaking. Fortunately He has some words of wisdom. And encouragement. And comfort. And when He drops them into our hearts, just at the right time, they have this incredibly calming, healing effect. Even for the most harrowed of souls. A word in time from God. That's what we're going to be taking a look at today. I want to share with you the most important thing that I know about banishing fear and worry from our lives. The most important thing. The most affective thing. And it comes from the last part of chapter 4 in the Book of Philippians. It's what we've been looking at this week on the program. It's the apostle Paul. He is on death row. He is writing to his friends in the Church in Philippi. In the process he's sharing his experience and teaching us how to banish fear from our lives. From the most dire circumstances, you or I, could ever imagine. He's on death row. Here's what he says. Philippians chapter 4, verses 10 to 13: I rejoice in the Lord greatly but now, at last, you have revived your concern for me. Indeed you were concerned for me but you had no opportunity to show it. Not that I'm referring to being in need for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry and of having plenty and of being in need. For I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Paul was an itinerant minister who travelled across much of the known world and a good part of that time he spent in jail. And he's writing here, to his friends in Philippi, about his physical needs. Obviously they've cared for him and provided for him. And sent him money and resources when he's been in need. And he's been saying 'Thank you', that's a good thing. I love how much of God's word, you know, is about real practical things in people's lives. But even in this he takes the opportunity to teach them something. And I believe that God, today, is taking this opportunity to teach us something. Here it is: For I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have a little, I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry. Of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Paul's saying, "You know something, it doesn't matter what circumstances I'm facing." How often do you and I think that our joy and our peace depend on our circumstances? Paul's saying, "No, no. Forget the circumstances. Doesn't matter what's going on in my life. Good or bad. Plenty or little. A full stomach or starving. I have learned, learned practically in my own experience, how this works. I have learned the secret. The secret of getting through any or all circumstances and that secret is this." I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Paul's saying, "It doesn't matter what the world throws at me 'cause God is the one who strengthens me. And when I'm hanging close with Him. When I'm relying on Him, He comes through. He does the things I can't do. He saves me. He encourages me." And Paul had been through this so many times. There were so many riots. So many people tried to hurt him. So many people criticized him and misunderstood him. And rejected him when he was telling them about Jesus. Over and over and over and over and over again. He learned this truth in his life: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. And do you know why this is so important? Because whenever I feel a sense of despair, I come back to this Scripture. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or hurt or rejected or alone or distressed or afraid. I stop. I clear my mind and I speak this passage of Scripture: For I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. This is the word of God. And what I've discovered is that when I rest on the word of God. I'd say this three times out loud. I use it as an offensive weapon against fear, against disappointment, against destructive thoughts. God gives me peace. In fact, I've made it a habit in my life. Every day I get up. I do the best I can. This may shock you. I get things wrong a lot of days. But I do my best. I pray. I rely on God. I honour Him. And you know what, that means I'm one of His kids. And that means I can rely on Him. And I have a number of Scriptures. Some of them I've memorised. I don't find it easy to memorise them. Some of them I have on my mobile phone. One that I have memorised is Mark, chapter 11, verses 22 to 24: Jesus answered them, 'Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, be taken up and be thrown into the sea and if you do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.' I go to God's word, these particular Scriptures that speak powerfully to me and encourage me again and again and again and again. In the times when it's scary. In the times when I'm dejected and all I want to do is sit there and mope. I have disciplined myself to say, "No, I am not going there for I can do all things in Christ Jesus who strengthens me." And the more I do this, the more I find myself able to do all things that God calls me to do. Through Him who strengthens me is absolutely the most important thing that I know about living the life that's free from fear and worry. When the company you work for is retrenching people. When you lose your job and think you might lose your house. When your wife or you husband's had an affair. And I know there's someone listening today who's been through that. When it feels like the sky is caving in. Let me tell you this. Philippians 4:13 says that you: Can do all things through Him who strengthens you. The most important thing I know about dealing with fear is to fill your mind and your heart with the word of God because it has a healing power. It builds your faith. It changes your outlook. It is the stuff of healing and transformation. Go grab some Scripture verses that really speak powerfully to you. Put them on some cards or in your mobile phone or memorise them. Go to them again and again and again. I tell you something, if you do this just for a week or two, you will learn what Paul learned through the school of hard knocks. That: You can do all things through Him who strengthens you. God does not want us to be afraid. God has not stopped speaking. His word is here for us to use. Not to leave on a dusty shelf somewhere.

The experts tell us that each of us has about 70,000 thoughts each day.  That's rather a lot.  And it's what we do we our thoughts – our think time – it's the thoughts we have, that have such a huge impact on the lives we lead. Worry and fear are a plague on the lives of so many people. Oh sure, we don't like to admit it. We don't like to show it. Although the reality is, you can't really help it. Ever sat on a train or a bus or even on a park bench for that matter, and looked at the faces of the people around you? Some of them are bored but many, many others have a furrowed brow. And when they move, you can just tell, through their body language, that they're suffering from stress. In fact, stress is one of the greatest ills in our society. Depending on where you live, the surveys tell us between 1/2 and 3/4 of all people suffer from unhealthy levels of stress. Stress is just today's word for worry and fear. So today, today we're going to take a look at just one thing. One really practical thing that you and I can do that will help banish worry and fear and the stress that comes from those two, from our lives for good. I have to warn you, this actually works. So if you don't want to get rid of fear and worry and stress, do something else right now. If you talk to a pastor, he'll probably tell you that the thing that you have to do to get rid of fear and worry is to have faith. That's what you need. Trust in God. It will all work out. Actually, I agree with him. But there's something else. It's knowing how to have faith. It's knowing how to apply our faith to the realities of life. Today I want to share with you, one very practical 'how to' tip. We're going to do that through the apostle Paul. Locked in a dungeon on death row. And if anyone had any reason to worry it was this man, Paul. We're going to look at what he wrote to his friends in Philippi. It was a letter that he wrote. We now know it as the Book of Philippians in the New Testament. We'll have a look at what he wrote about this whole subject of not being afraid. It comes from Philippians chapter 4, verses 8 and 9. He says: Finally my beloved. Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, pure and pleasing, whatever is commendable. If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you. Now I want to start with that last bit first. And there's a reason for that. Because what Paul's telling us here, is that he himself has discovered how to have God's peace. How not to be afraid. How not to spend his life worrying. See, this is not some theory lesson. This is a guy on death row explaining how to have peace. He says: Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you. So Paul's saying, 'You guys know my life. You know how often I've been threatened. You know how often people have risen up against me when I got up to speak and how often they've wanted to harm me and kill me. You've seen all of that. You know that. You've seen me in action and you've seen how I coped with the pressures and the threats. You want to have the same peace as I've got? You want to have a life free from fear and worry? Then do the things that you've seen me doing and the things that I'm telling you about now and you will have that peace too. God's peace.' I think that's fantastic. Because what we're about to look at is proven. It works in the direst of circumstances. Doesn't that excite you? You know, there's not a one of us who doesn't have some reason to worry. There's not a one of us who isn't going through some storm right now. And just in case there's the odd person who isn't. Just recognise that it's only because you're between storms. The last one's blown out and the next one hasn't swept in yet. So what's the practical guidance that Paul gives us in this passage about how to dispense with fear and worry out of our lives? Let's take a close look. Philippians, chapter 4, verse 8: Finally beloved, 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 these things. You know what he's saying here? What we do with our mind matters. A man by the name of Norman Vincent Peale, in 1953, wrote this book. The Power of Positive Thinking. And I used to be really skeptical about this. Because my attitude was, faith in God is not about positive thinking. Positive thinking has a self-help connotation for me. It's like, I can get out of all my problems, without God, by thinking I can. All I have to do is think positive. But that's not what Norman Vincent Peale meant. And actually, it's not what Paul means here either. Paul's just setting out a simple truth. We only have so much brain band with each day. We only have so much time that we can spend thinking. Only so many hours to think. Some of that time we spend sleeping. Some we spend doing things that require our total attention. So we don't have time to think about much else. I guess some of us spend time vegged out in front of a TV show, not really thinking about anything. And then there's the rest of the time where we have time to think. And we either think good thoughts or bad thoughts. Encouraging thoughts or discouraging thoughts. We can think thoughts that look at our situation. Which may be difficult. Which may be scary. Which may be whatever. And we can think good or bad thoughts. And the way we think is going to influence how we see things and how we feel things. The human brain, believe it or not, has about 70,000 thoughts each day.  Busy little thing isn't it? And what Paul's saying here is, 'Look, spend your brain time, your 'think' time thinking good thoughts. True, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent. Thoughts worthy of praise. Think about these things.' You know what, that makes a lot of sense. And it's something we have to learn. We have to teach ourselves. Because if our mind is used to thinking bad thoughts, unhealthy thoughts, destructive thoughts. If that's our habit, we need to break the habit. We need to get into Paul's habit of thinking. Here's how it works for me. A negative thought comes into my mind. "You know, that guy over there, he doesn't get it. He's never going to get it. He just drives me nuts." Well maybe he doesn't get it. Maybe he has some issues but I've decided something. If I think that way, it's going to influence how I treat him and how I feel. So when one of those thoughts comes floating in, I just boot it out. It's not that I'm unrealistic. I'm not sweeping things under the carpet but I replace the bad one with a good one. I think to myself, "Okay, I'm not thinking that. Instead, how can I care for him today? How can I support him today? God, you love him just as much as you love me. Show me Father how I can build him up and develop him and grow him. Father, be my God, help me with this." Does it make sense? This is a discipline, it's a habit we need to learn. And the more we do it, the more we come to a habit of booting out the destructive thoughts and replacing them with good thoughts – God thoughts, here's what happens. Our whole outlook changes. God honours it. And where things once threatened us. Now God gives us solution. Where things once scared us, He gives us faith and peace. And all of a sudden, we find ourselves in the habit of resting our mind in the good things. And good things grow from that. Peace is one of them. Joy is another.

What if you and I could discover a way to live, so that we don't worry about anything?  Not necessarily changing our circumstances, but changing the way we live them out. We'd want to know how, right? So many people spend so much time being afraid in their lives. Maybe it's a crisis. Or just a sense of this nagging, ongoing thing that something bad is going to happen. A negativity. A pessimism. Always thinking the worst. Always imagining the worst. Always expecting the worst. That's why, last week on the program, we looked at this whole "fear" thing. The reality that scary things do happen to us in our lives. And they're going to happen again. And the reality, whether we care to believe it or not, that God's heart is for us not to be afraid. So often we put on a brave face. Or a cool, calm exterior. But inside, inside so many people are torn apart. Shaken to the core by fear and worry. So this week, we're going to do some "rubber hits the road" stuff in a series that I've called "Five Ways to Overcome Fear." Five very practical things that you and I can do to banish fear and worry. Now let me make this clear. I am talking about living a life that, by and large, is free from fear and worry. Scary things will still come at us in life. It's about living through them with a calm delight and resolve. With a deep knowledge that actually, God is in this place with us. The first thing I want to share with you today is that our mind matters. What we do with our thoughts really matters. Back in 1953 a bloke by the name of Norman Vincent Peale wrote a classic book. It's called, "The Power of Positive Thinking". And for a long time, I have to tell you, I pooh-hooed it. "It's not about positive thinking" I said. "It's about trusting in God". Even when I started reading this book, not so long ago, I was pretty skeptical. But what he expounds in his book is exactly what God talks about in the Bible. Our mind matters. Let me take you to a passage that I personally often go to. It's the apostle Paul, on death row, writing to his friends, the Philippians. Listen to what this man writes from his dank prison cell. This comes from Philippians chapter 4 beginning at verse 6. He says: Do not worry about anything but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just and pure and pleasing and commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you've learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you. I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now, at last, you have revived your concern for me. Indeed you were concerned for me but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I'm referring to being in need for I've learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little. I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry and of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Let me just start with the first 2 verses here. Look at them again with me. Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7: Do not worry about anything but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. How do we not worry? Let me ask you that. You see, in my experience, worry is something that just happens. I've wanted to turn the worry tap off so many times. But this stream of worrying thoughts just keeps on flooding into my mind. Now I'm as strong-willed and as disciplined a person as you'll find anywhere. When I've set my mind to achieving something, invariably I do. It's been like that all my life. But you know something, I am powerless to turn off the worry tap. It's horrifying when you worry. It grips your whole life. You wake and you sleep and you toss at night and, have you ever noticed that? And it's believing in these 2 verses that's enabled me to end the worry in my life. And you know something, when you stop worrying, you have peace. And that's exactly what Paul tells us. That's exactly what God wants to tell us today: Do not worry about anything but in everything ... How do I stop worrying? Not by turning the tap off myself. But by replacing it with something else. With the 'but in everything' that Paul writes about: Do not worry about anything but in everything ... So what's the but? What's the thing that we should replace the worrying with? All that time, that energy we spend worrying. What do I do with it? I transfer it to something else. To what else? ... but in everything .. Now that means everything. In everything that's causing me worry: ... by prayer and supplication ... What does that mean? By praying and entreating and asking God, seeking Him. So instead of wasting all that time and energy on worrying. Spend it instead on praying and asking God. Imagine how different our lives would be. Every time a worrying thought comes to haunt the deepest recesses of our minds. We say, "Hang on a minute. Stop. I am not going to think on that. I am not going to dwell on that worry. I am not going to brood and worry. But instead, I am going to pray." How? With thanksgiving. "God, I thank you I'm in this place. You know something, I thank you that I have an opportunity to trust you. I thank you, that unless you show up here, I'm in trouble. Now Lord, here's my problem. Here it is. Will you help me? Thank you God." If every time we go to worry, instead of worrying we do this instead. Here is what the Bible promises us. Now listen very carefully to this promise because it's a promise that's going to change your life: Do not worry about anything but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. Now here comes the promise: ... and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. There it is! And you know something, that is exactly, exactly what happens. I'm going to challenge you. If you've got worries in your life. If you've got fears in your life. Try this for just a few days. Every time you start worrying, go to God. Stop worrying, go to God and do the "but" thing. "But instead, in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God." And here's what happens. He's going to turn the worry tap off. See, no amount of strength or resolve or anything else that you and I can do is going to turn that worry tap off. Only God. And He's going to replace it with an amazing peace. An incredible peace. So the storm can still be raging, the circumstances could be getting worse but you've been praying and entreating and thanking God instead of worrying. And you think to yourself, 'I can't explain this. I have this peace. How? Why? How can it be?' That's why Paul calls it a: ... peace that surpasses all understanding ...  God turned the worry tap off while you were praying. And He did what you and I couldn't do: ... and the peace of God, that surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. It's because the worry just can't get in. This is where the rubber hits the road.

When we're afraid, it seems as though nothing anyone else says or does can make a difference.  But – well, what if God has something to say?  And what if it does actually make a difference? Would it be worth listening to? You know what I've noticed about those times when I am truly, truly afraid. It seems that nothing anybody says or does can make a difference. When you're going through some really tough times. And you just don't know what the future holds. And everything looks bleak and grim. Every eventuality we imagine has a bad outcome. Because when we're afraid, it seems to me that we lose hope. And hope is being able to see into the future and believe that something good is going to happen. A place without hope is a dark and dangerous place indeed. And yet that's where we so often find ourselves in life. Yesterday on the program we saw how one of Israel's kings, Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, was faced with overwhelming odds. A massive army. Three nations coming against him at the same time. There was no way that his small army could ever win that battle against this mighty enemy. No way. Or was there? Now old Josh, he didn't panic. Nor was he frozen with fear. He went to God and told God just the way it was. 2 Chronicles, chapter 20, verse 12: O God we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do but our eyes are on you. There you have it. Well, right now, we're going to take a look at what happened next. Did God respond? Did He? And if He did, did it make any difference? Because, as I said right at the beginning, so often when we're afraid, it seems that nothing anybody else says or does ever makes a difference. Well let's have a look. We're going to read the next part of the story. It begins in 2 Chronicles, chapter 20, verse 13: Meanwhile all of Judah stood before the Lord with their little ones, their wives and their children. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, the son of Zechariah, the son of..." (a whole bunch of lineage). Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, the son of Zechariah, one of the Levites in the middle of the assembly. He said, 'Listen all of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat. Thus says the Lord to you. Do not fear or be dismayed at the geat multitude. For the battle is not yours but God's. Tomorrow, go down against them'  'They will come up the ascent of Ziz and you will find them at the end of the valley before the wilderness of Jeruel. This battle is not for you to fight. Take your positions, stand still and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not fear or be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them and the Lord will be with you.' Then Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face to the ground and all of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshipping Him. And the Levites stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice. They rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. And as they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, 'Listen to me O Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God and you will be established. Believe in His prophets.' When he had taken council with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and to praise Him in holy splendor. As they went out before the army saying, 'Give thanks to the Lord for His steadfast love endures forever.' If you didn't know better you would say they're nuts. I mean, right in the middle of this frightening time, God ups and speaks through this man. The Spirit of God falls on this man, Jahaziel. It wasn't such a funny name to them back then. And what does God say? Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed at this great multitude. For the battle is not yours, but God's. Again, in verse 17: This battle is not for you to fight. Take your positions, stand still and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf. Do not fear or be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them and the Lord will be with you. Now I want to just think through that for a bit. Because this is so important. This is the crux of the whole story. You see, we think in our human thinking. We've always been taught to be self-reliant. God helps those who help themselves, right? But here, God is saying exactly 180 degrees the opposite. This nation of Judah. God's chosen people. The remnant of Israel. The rump if you like. These people who've put their faith in their God against overwhelming odds. In fact they had nowhere else to go. They are facing certain, absolute annihilation. Remember, we're not talking about some football match here. This is not like your team annihilating my team on the weekend and on Monday morning we talk about it. This is complete death and destruction. So they turn to God with fear in their hearts. That's what it said right at the beginning. It said: Jehoshaphat was afraid. And just like you and I would be. But he set himself to seek the Lord and he proclaimed a fast through all Judah and they waited on God. They could have panicked. They could have been immobilised with fear. But instead, he waited on God and God spoke. And God said, "This is my battle and not yours." We don't expect that do we? Oh sure, we expect God to do it for other people but not for us. Let me give you an example. You're married. Your wife or your husband seems to have drifted away from you. You long for them. You yearn to be close. But it doesn't matter how much you try or what you say or do, it just doesn't happen. You can see your soul mate drifting away from you and from God and you start thinking the unthinkable in your heart. This is going to end in divorce. How do you respond? Panic. Frozen in fear. Start behaving badly yourself. Or do you set yourself to seek God, to enquire of Him, to discover that what God really wants to say to you is: This battle is not for you to fight. Take your position. Stand still and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf. Do not fear or be dismayed. Tomorrow go out and the Lord will be with you. Come on! This is where the rubber hits the road. And look, look at how Judah and the King Jehoshaphat responded to this incredible message from God. Did they scoff in disbelief? Did they have a Church council meeting to debate the matter? How did they respond? Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face to the ground and all of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshipping the Lord. And they all sang. They went out to meet this massive army, singing God's praises. Come on! This is where it's at. God is a mighty God and He's a loving God. And when we go and enquire of Him deep within our fear, He'll take charge. He fights the battles we can't fight. And sometimes it's not about defeating some enemy out there. No, sometimes He has to do a work of grace in our hearts to change us and heal us. So often we think we know what the answer should be but actually we haven't a clue. So often we plan this victory or that. But when we put it in His hands, His victory and His outcome are so perfect. We don't have time right now but if you read on in this chapter, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, you will discover that God won a mighty victory against the impossible enemy that day. And God's chosen people just stood there and watched. They didn't have to lift a finger. It was God's battle and God's victory. He wants to do that sometimes in our lives. And when we're racing around panicking or when we've closed our ears, frozen in fear, we miss out on that. On that day, God's chosen people discovered that the battle truly belonged to their God.

We've all heard someone scream out "Don't Panic" – it's normally when they're panicking. But panic, as natural a reaction as it may be to fear – panic is pretty useless. And it burns up a whole bunch of energy! In this day and age, one of the things that they teach us is to be self-reliant. To have confidence in our own abilities. Well, it's okay to a point I guess. But what happens when the situation we're in or the circumstances we face are so far beyond our own abilities to deal with them?  That any notion of self-reliance is completely ridiculous. I mean, what happens when the tsunami hits our lives? What do we do when the enemy that gathers around us, completely outnumbers and outguns us? What do we do? And this isn't some theoretical exercise. It's life. It's my life and it's your life. Because this happens. It's real. There are many times, in our lives, when the enemy, whoever or whatever that is. When the enemy is so much bigger than our ability to survive. It happens in families. It happens in work places. And it happens in our hearts. When depression hits for no good reason. When a loved one is taken in their prime and the grief overwhelms us. It happens when retrenchment hits us. When the economy takes a nose dive. When there isn't enough food to feed the family. When sickness strikes. This is life. It's real life. Let me ask you something. When the enemy is so much bigger and so much stronger than anything you could ever handle, what do you do? Well, some people panic and run around in ever decreasing circles. And that is a waste of their precious energy. I mean, panicking takes a lot of energy. You've seen it. I've seen it. We've both been there. Some people, they pull over and stop. They're immobilised by fear. That's what happens you know. But neither of those things cut the mustard. Neither of them help. Running around like a headless chook is exhausting. And wallowing in self-pity is destructive. What do you do? I want to introduce you today to one of the kings in Israel's history. Actually he was the king of a couple of the tribes of Israel, Judah and Benjamin. His name was Jehoshaphat. That's a long name but he was one of the good guys. And there was a time when he was confronted with an enemy that was way, way beyond his ability to fight. Have a listen. This story comes from the book of 2nd Chronicles beginning at chapter 20: After this the Moabites and the Ammonites and with them, some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat for a battle. Messengers came and told Jehoshaphat, 'A great multitude is coming against you from Edom, far from beyond the sea. Already they are at En Gedi.' Jehoshaphat was afraid. I just want to establish here that Josh was human just like you and me. Not some super human king. Armies were coming against him. He was completely out numbered. This was a life and death situation and he was afraid. He's just one of us but it was what he did in his fear that made all the difference. He didn't let fear immobilise him. He didn't get into a flap and a panic. Have a listen. We'll read on in 2 Chronicles, chapter 20: Jehoshaphat was afraid. He set himself to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord. From all the towns of Judah they came to seek the Lord. Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem. In the house of the Lord before the new court and said, 'God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand a power and might so that no-one is able to withstand you. Do you not, O God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people of Israel and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? They have lived in it and in it they have built your sanctuary. If disaster comes upon us, the sword of judgement or pestilence or famine, we will stand before this house O God and before you. For your name is in this house and cry to you in our distress and you will hear and save.' 'See now, the people of Amon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt and whom they avoided and did not destroy. They reward us now by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. God, will you not execute judgement against them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do but our eyes are on you.' In the face of overwhelming odds, Jehoshaphat turned to God. Sometimes that's the only way. By the way that God can get our attention. I'd like to tell you that I first turned to God because I was wise and loving and prudent and understood that Jesus was the Son of God. But that would be lying. I turned to God because I was facing overwhelming odds. That's what did it for me. Now a king is supposed to have all the answers. A king like Josh should have a powerful army and contingency plans based on a detailed threat assessment. He should have been self-reliant. But listen again to what Josh says when he's praying to God: O our God. Will you not execute judgement upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do but our eyes are upon you. I really relate to this story. When I stepped out of a secure, well paid job as a consultant into full-time ministry. It was leaving security behind to serve God. And I cannot begin to tell you how many times, since then, I've been in that place that Jehoshaphat and his people were in. I started out with this naive notion that if I was going to go about God's work it would have to be easy. And yet, so many times people and circumstances have conspired to be against God's work. Every couple of years our board gets together to do some strategic planning. That's good. It's important. It always looks good on paper. And then, it seems that all hell breaks loose. That's what's going on here against Jehoshaphat and Judah. Remember they're God's chosen people. They're in God's Promised Land. Now Jehoshaphat is a king who honoured God. By all accounts, he is wise and prudent and competent. But in the face of overwhelming odds, he admits to God, 'I don't know what to do. All my plans. All my strategies. All my contingency plans. I don't know what to do.' So what was his solution? How did he cope with this? In the same breath he said, ... but our eyes are on you God. I wonder sometimes, when I see people who profess to believe in God, running around in panic. Wasting so much of their energy. Complaining and worrying and being afraid. It takes a lot of energy to be afraid, do you realise? I wonder if they spend even half that amount of energy having their eyes set on God, how much better off they'd be. You and I, we can't help but be afraid. Jehoshaphat was afraid. It's a natural human reaction. I'm not here to tell you somehow to pretend that you're not afraid when fear is rocking you to the core. But it's what we do when fear strikes that makes all the difference. You can panic and burn energy. You can freeze and be immobilised. And that's probably the end of you. Or we can just look at God and say, "You know something Lord, this is so huge. I don't know what to do but my eyes are on you. I'm just going to wait on you. I don't know what you're going to do. I don't even know if you're going to show up. But my eyes are on you." Tomorrow we're going to come back to see what happened. Did God do anything? Did God say anything? Or was Jehoshaphat's faith just a fantasy? See, that's the question that we each have to face when we dare to look to God from the midst of our fear.

It's great for people to tell you that when you're afraid God says, "Do Not Be Afraid." That's great. But, well, when I am afraid, what do I do with that feeling? How do I make it go away? How do I get back on an even keel? Fear is a subject that frankly, we don't much like talking about. But that's exactly what we're talking about on the program this week. Because fear, fear is something that we all go through. You know when there's that 800 pound gorilla in the room. It's hard, it's incredibly hard to believe that God is bigger than the gorilla. Of course He is but it just doesn't feel like that when that gorilla is so up close. And the hardest thing, I think, in overcoming fear in life is actually getting to that point where we have a high level of confidence in God. Where we put our confidence and our trust in this God who says, "Do not be afraid." Instead of in the gorilla, who's so here and now. Where we put our confidence in who God is. What He's done. His might and His power and His sovereignty. They all sound great in theory. God created the universe. He's all-powerful, great. That's the theory but what about in practice? What about when the rubber hits the road? Then what? See, I used to think that it was up to me and I guess, in part, it is but not completely. Just as well. You and I, we're human. I can't conjure up confidence. I can't take this theory about who God is and let the theory wipe away the fear. Because fear is real. I need something more than just theory. I need more than promises on a piece of paper. Yesterday on the program, we looked at what God had to say to His chosen people, Israel, when they were afraid. They'd lost their Promised Land, they were slaves in Babylon, in exile. Yeah, God's chosen people. It sort of seemed that God had deserted them. When it feels like the Babylonians, who after all were the dominant world power, well it felt like they were more powerful than the God of Israel. So God, as we saw yesterday, points out creation to them. The heavens, the trillions of stars. The stars that the Babylonians, by the way, worshipped. He said, "I made them. I made the heavens and the earth. Don't you think I can save you from the Babylonians?" You see, for the Israelites, the Babylonians were the 800 pound gorilla in the room. It was seemingly impossible. And if it were left up to the Israelites to work up the courage to believe that God would save them from the Babylonians, it was never going to happen. They didn't have that much faith. They were slaves, they were in exile for 70 years. No, God had to do something. God had to help them. God had to change their hearts and touch them deep inside. And fortunately, that's exactly what God had planned to do. He didn't want to leave it up to them and here and now, He doesn't want to leave it up to us either. He wants us to actually experience His peace. Not our strength. Not some confidence or peace that we wave up with a magic wand. But a peace and a strength that come, only, from God. Let's pick up the rest of the story. We began in chapter 40 of Isaiah yesterday and we'll begin at verse 28: Haven't you known? Haven't you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn't faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. Great, there it is again - the theory but now, watch what comes next. In Isaiah chapter 40, verse 29: God gives power to the faint. He strengthens the powers. Even youths will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted. But those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength. They'll mount up with wings like eagles. They'll run and not be weary. They'll walk and not be faint. Do you see the point? The power and the strength, where do they come from? Do I conjure them up? Do I somehow magically work hard enough to be confident? No. God gives power to the faint. God strengthens the powerless. See, even young people will faint and be weary. Even the strong will fall exhausted. But, and here's the but, here's the glorious, wondrous, powerful "but": But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not grow faint. You know what it means to wait? When we wait, you know when we're in a tough place. When we're afraid and scared and uncomfortable. You know what we want to do? We want to grumble. We, I got to tell you, we want to grumble. 'God, what are you doing? Why are you letting me go through this? Can't you deal with this? Look at that person over there, they're doing all the wrong things and you're blessing him.' We can find so many things to grumble about can't we? That's not the sort of waiting that God is talking about here, you know: But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. You know what that word "wait" means? It doesn't mean to wait with a bad attitude. It doesn't mean to wait with grumbling in our hearts and on our lips. It means to wait expectantly. To wait on God with the expectation that He is who He says He is. That He will do what He says He's going to do. To wait there right in the middle of our fear with the 800 pound gorilla in the room and say, "You know something, I can't do anything about my slavery in Babylon. I can't over throw the Babylonians. I can't do anything and God seems like a million miles away. But I'm just going to wait here expecting God to do something. Expecting God to show up. I know other people will tell me I'm a fool for doing that. I know it's not rational. I know it's not logical. But God's word says that": Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not grow faint Right with our emotions on that roller coaster ride. With our enemies around us. With our hearts cast down. To wait with an expectation somewhere deep inside that God's going to act. That God's going to show up. And you know, I've been in those places so many times and it invariably doesn't feel good. It's easy to listen to some guy with a smooth voice on the radio and think, "Well it's okay for him. You know, he's in a nice safe radio studio. And it's nice and clean and clinical. And, what does he know?" No, I've been in those tough places. I've wept over this scripture and waited and it never feels wonderful and spiritual. It always feels hard. But God means to do what He says He's going to do. Who knows? Will God give us victory over our enemies or not? I don't know. More Christians have been martyred in the 20th century than in the 2000 years before that combined. We all die sometime. Is He going to deal with this cancer or let it take its course? I don't know.But there's one thing I know. God is saying, Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. God gives us His peace and His strength when we wait expectantly on Him. It doesn't matter how big or ugly or bad the enemy is. It doesn't matter how fearful we are. Why? Because He gives us His peace. That's the promise. My friend, do not be afraid. Let your confidence rest on God Himself. And then, let Him do the rest.

You know I've heard all the theory – you don't have to be afraid – because God is in that place with you. Hmm. That's the theory. But how do I know – how do I know that I can rely on Him to be there and to be on my side and to act? Well? Fear is something that, quite frankly, we don't much want to talk about. And yet it's something that's so very real for so many people in this world. We don't want to admit, to the rest of the world, that we're afraid. And so we kind of put on this brave face as though everything's fine. But on the inside, fear can be eating away like a cancer. So often it's the case that the things we used to place our confidence in, they're not working anymore. People place their faith in all sorts of things. Their stock portfolio, until the stock market takes a dive. People place their faith in relationships until those relationships fail. And so we lose confidence and when we lose confidence, the deep rot of fear sets into our hearts. Well truly I tell you, God wants to deal with that so decisively in our lives. Now that doesn't mean that we're not going to go through things and situations and challenges that aren't scary. Of course we are. That's life. But God's plan is that, when we do, that we'll be ready. That our confidence will be in Him. Imagine a life where these times of fear are replaced with a quiet confidence in God Himself. That's His plan. That's why He keeps saying to us: Do not be afraid. Us being afraid falls so far short of His plan to fill us with His peace. That's why I really encourage you to stick with me over these next few minutes as we discover how to live out God's ideal of not being afraid. I was talking with a friend recently. Great guy, one of "nature's gentlemen" as the saying goes. He's kind and considerate and competent. He's just a delight. I've worked with him about 15 years but over the last few years our paths have headed off into different directions. Now I had cause to call him about something. Expecting to hear his cheerful, bouncy voice on the other end of the phone. But what I discovered was a shell of the man I once knew. His world had fallen apart. His family was gone, his career seemed over. It was an incredibly difficult and painful time for him. He said, "I'm sitting on a beach at the moment, wondering what, if anything, the rest of my life holds." Now none of us want to have the stuffing ripped out of us. But you know something, it happens to all of us at some point. It doesn't matter who we are, where we live, what we believe. And you know, I've heard some preachers preach as though, "Well if you believe in God, bad things won't happen to you." That's a load of rubbish. Bad things happen to God's people too. In fact, sometimes especially they happen to God's people, they just do. Take Israel, God's chosen people. They found themselves in this scary, fearful place. They'd been in slavery, exiled in Babylon for the best part of 3 generations. It's a long time. Only a handful of their elders can ever remember living in God's Promised Land – Jerusalem. So what does God have to say to these people who are cowering in fear under the yoke of slavery? Have a listen. It comes from the Old Testament, the Book of Isaiah, chapter 41, beginning at verse 8: But you Israel, my servant Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham my friend. You whom I took from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, 'You are my servant. I have chosen you and not cast you off. Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you up with my victorious right hand.' See the first thing that God does is He reminds them of His promises to Abraham. When Abraham stood in that Promised Land, centuries before, this is what God promised him. Genesis chapter 15, beginning at verse 18: On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, 'To your descendants I give this land. From the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates – the land of the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites and the Hittites.' And all the other little vegemites. God gave that land to Abraham and his descendants. It was God's promise. God had chosen them and had promised them the land. So God had gathered them from the ends of the earth and he said: I will not cast you off, I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. The whole thing that God relies on here, in talking with His people and their fear and their despair. Is not in who they are or how strong they are or how clever they are. No, He's saying to them, "look at who I am. Look at my promise. I know it's tough. I know you're confused. I know it's scary but I am your God. I am with you. You are my servant. I have chosen you. I took you from the ends of the earth. Don't be afraid." But how does that help them? See isn't He the God who failed them 70 years earlier? Okay, so He sends them some prophet and he says, "don't be afraid' but He's got more. He's got so much more. See He said, 'it's not just my promises, have a look at who I am." And just in that chapter before, we were looking at Isaiah chapter 41, just in the chapter before, He tells them who He is. He says: To whom will you compare me? To an idol? A bit of mulberry wood made by an artisan? Don't you realise?  Haven't you heard? Hasn't it been told to you from the beginning? Haven't you understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and it's inhabitants are like grasshoppers. Who stretches out the heavens like curtain and spreads them like a tent to live in. Who brings princes to nothing and makes rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely are they sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble.' 'To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?' says God the Holy One. 'Lift up your eyes. Look and see who created these stars. Who brings them out by their hosts and numbers them and calls them by name because He is great in strength? Mighty and power, not one is missing.' 'Why do you say O Israel, My way is hidden from the Lord and my right is discarded from my God? Haven't you known? Haven't you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn't grow faint or weary.' This is powerful stuff: Don't you get it? He's saying, 'I'm the God who created the whole 'shoot and match'. See those trillions of stars up there? I created them, I make them come out each night. I am so much bigger than your circumstances. It makes absolute sense for you to put your confidence in me. I have been in those fearful places in my life. And you know what happens? All you can see it the dirty great big 800 pound gorilla in the room. All you can see are the people or the circumstances that cause us to fear and that's human. We don't know what the future holds. We imagine all the bad things are going to happen at the same time. And then, I don't want to get preachy but I've discovered in my life, that when God steps into my situation, no matter how scary it is. When He steps in and whispers in my heart: Do not be afraid. He means it. Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. My hunch is that today, today He means to whisper those words into your heart and mind. Do not be afraid.

You know something – the world can be a scary place. We all travel through times when fear eats away inside and it's right in the middle of those times, that we need to know what to do. I don't know about you but as I look around, it seems to me that the world can be a scary place. Take spiders and snakes for instance. Depending on where you live in the world, they're dangerous or they're not. Here in Australia we are seriously over-represented in the top ten list of the worlds most venomous creatures. So growing up as a child I had a good reason to be afraid of them. And still today, the idea of a spider crawling into my bed. Well it's one of the scariest thoughts that I can come up with. Let me tell you a funny story. One of the most venomous snakes on the planet is called the Death Adder. Good name huh? When I was training to be an officer in the army, we had not only Australian students but New Zealand students. And if you know anything about New Zealand, you will know they don't have venomous snakes at all. And we were training and we were doing a grenade practice. So we were down in the bunker. And one of the New Zealanders went up, out of the bunker, to throw his grenade. And while he did, we found a dead Death Adder. So we put it down right where he had to sit down. So when he sat down, when he came back, he saw it and I tell you, it was so funny. His legs were going before his backside was up off the seat, running out of the bunker. Terrible stuff isn't it? But there you go. We can laugh but the world can be a scary place. Especially with friends like me. That was a long time ago, I have to say. I was young and stupid then. So this week we're starting a new series on the program that's called, "Do Not Be Afraid". There's a reason for that. There are lots of people in this world who spend much of their lives living in fear. Sometimes it's because they're living in a war zone. I mean there are plenty of people today, listening, who know that only too well. There are people in the Democratic Republic of Congo for instance. And there are parts there where there's war raging right now. There are some people, sitting in their homes, listening to this program today, wondering whether or not they're going to see tomorrow or next week or next year. Other times, life threatening things happen. You have a health scare. The morning I sat down to prepare this message was the morning of the funeral of a good friend of mine. He was just a few years older than me and he died suddenly of a heart attack. It's easy to be afraid of things. And when we're afraid it rocks our confidence. And yet other people, they just kind of live life with a real sense of dread. Always something there for us to dread. Always something lurking out there that we can be afraid of. For me, honestly, if I allowed it, I could be afraid of quite a few things. There are a few things in my life right now that could cause me fear. I mean this ministry that I'm involved in at Christianityworks. It's a global media ministry. We're just a small team of people and we don't know where the funding's going to come from to do all we have to do over this next year. We just don't. So you either live in fear or you live in faith. If God doesn't provide that funding, we'll fall flat on our faces. That's the stark reality. And that's the thing, it doesn't matter who we are or where we live, we can live in fear. And that fear can rob us of life itself. And yet, time and time and time again, you read God's word and these are the words from God, that He speaks to His people. He says: Do not be afraid. And He utters them, invariably, right at the time when the people He's talking with have every reason to be afraid. The people and the circumstances that are confronting them, conspiring against them. We experience fear too and yet God wades in and says: "Do not be afraid." Now if God doesn't want me to be afraid, when I have every reason to be afraid. You know something, I want to have a piece of His brand of confidence, don't you think? I mean, think about it. What's the point of God saying, "Do not be afraid" when we have no reason to fear. It's right in the middle of fear that we need His brand of confidence. I definitely want that, how about you? Well, how can we have that confidence? That's a good question. That's what today's program is about. That's what this whole week is about. It's about discovering, right in the middle of where we live. Right in the middle of all the stuff that goes on in our lives, how not to be afraid. So I invite you to come on a journey with me this week. And we're going to start that journey with an account of a time when God's chosen people, Israel, were very afraid. They had every reason to be afraid. They'd been living in the Promised Land for several hundred years and then, all of a sudden. Because they were struggling with God. They were worshipping idols and other God's. Eventually God lost His patience. And in 586 BC, the Babylonians, the world power at the time, the dominant power, invaded Jerusalem. They destroyed the place. They destroyed the temple, the place where God's presence dwelt. And they took God's people back into slavery, to Babylon. Now talk about a crisis of confidence. Think about it. God makes all these promises. To Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. And then, when Israel are in slavery in Egypt, He sends them Moses and He does amazing miracles. The whole Red Sea thing, the exodus through the desert for 40 years. Everything, and got them finally to the land that God had promised to Abraham centuries before. And once they got into the Promised Land, under the leadership of Joshua. They fought battle after battle against nation after nation that was bigger and stronger than Israel. And yet, God was with His chosen people and they took the land that God had promised to them. And now, now all of a sudden, Babylon wins. God's own temple's destroyed. Where's God? What happened? Is the king of Babylon stronger than our God? Are the Babylonian God's stronger than our God? The Israelites had a loss of confidence. And when we lose confidence, we get afraid. It's a big deal. I mean, you look at share holder confidence, consumer confidence. That feeling when you go to sleep at night, having that falling sensation. You know, you wake up in a panic and you're grabbing onto the bed. Confidence is being able to, to trust the earth beneath our feet. And people trust the stock market, they trust the plane they're flying in, they trust their governments, they trust whatever. And then it's like things get pulled out from under your feet and you lose confidence and panic and fear set in. Because we're no longer safe, we're no longer able to trust what we've always trusted. That's where Israel was. They had a complete loss of confidence in their God. He was punishing them but they didn't see it that way. It's like they were flying along, in a plane, at 32,000 feet above the ground and all of a sudden, all of the engines got switched off. Panic and fear and fair enough too. So what does God say to them in the middle of their fear and panic? In Isaiah chapter 41, verse 10: Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. I often wonder, how can He say that? How can God bowl up to us in the middle of our fear and circumstances where it's logical and reasonable and human for us to be afraid and say: Do not be afraid. How can He do that? Well, that's what we're going to be looking at over the rest of this week on the program. We're going to take a look at fear, well ... from a different perspective.

The seven deadly sins – lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, envy and pride – are tearing this world apart.  Each one of us deals with at least one in our makeup.  But God has graciously given us the power to break free from their clutches. Berni: I'm joined again today by my good friend, Keith Henry. Keith, you've been great over these last couple of weeks. Time has flown; we're in our last day. Keith: Yep, it's been very good Berni, enjoyed it very much. Berni: You know, what's struck me as I've listened to you speaking about our different personality types and our weaknesses, is how complex we are as people. You know, we see people and we interact with them during the day but we never really stop to think how incredibly complex we each are. You know, there are so many layers and as we've looked at each personality type. I'm going to ask you to go through those personality types again and look at the strengths and weaknesses of those personality types, just to kind of tie it all together today. But, you look at all that and you stand back and you think, 'man, these people couldn't possibly have evolved from some primeval slime. You know, if God didn't create us, it just, you know it takes more faith, from me, to believe in evolving from the primeval slime than it does to believe in the Creator who created these incredibly complex people. Berni: We talked about seven different deadly sins. I'd just like to go through each of them again today, and you said, look, each personality type has a virtue, something that they're really good at. Keith: Yes. Berni: And, sort of like a flip side of a coin, which is the down side of that personality type and from what I gather from what you were saying was, that the way that, say a leader deals with his or her lust is by exercising their virtue which is Godly. Is that what you were saying? Keith: That's right. Gods given us a way out for each personality and each sin, out of the seven deadly sins and in terms of a leader, because they have a lust for life, they have an adventurous spirit and it can undo them because they get into all the sins which is quite easy to open to because they are so active and so out there, that they have to react to those things in a Godly way but what do we mean by that? The one, the Godly way that suits the leader is justice and truth. You think of God, He's a loving God so they have to have that love but they really want justice. Berni: Is that a natural inclination for the leader? Keith: It is. Berni: And so, if the leader replaces the down side with the up side, that's how he or she wins. Keith: Exactly. So, they have to look at justice and truth in terms of "what is Gods justice" not revenge in the world. Berni: Okay, so the leader, the down side for that personality type is lust but if we can summarise the virtue corresponding, is Godliness. Keith: Yes. Berni: Okay, that's great. Okay, tell me about the encourager. The encourager's sin is gluttony which was kind of weird. Keith: Yes, they want more of everything and they want to do everything. They just don't settle down, they're forever on the move, life's exciting for them but they have to focus more. They actually have to get one thing that they're passionate about and focus on it. So they become more in moderation, not so many things that they're doing at one time. Berni: Okay, so for the encourager, the sin is gluttony but the strength, the virtue is moderation. Keith: Yes, that's right. Berni: Okay. What about the server, the server is someone who serves. Love being around servers, all you servers can come over to my place. Keith: Well, the server, in this case, we're talking about a server who's got greed and the greed we're referring there is hoarding things. So it's not gluttony as we said, of wanting more and more, it's hoarding things because they don't think they have enough. The hoarding is based upon fear so that what they have to do, the way out is really, they're a knowledge person, so get more word, get more knowledge and then go out and use it. They actually have to put it into action, go out in faith in other words. Berni: Okay, so if they're hoarding their money because they're afraid they won't have enough for tomorrow, the way to deal with that is to, for instance, exercise faith by giving some of that away. Keith: Exactly or entering a new project if they wanted to. Berni: Okay. Keith: Actually going and doing it instead of just gaining more knowledge and being too scared. Berni: The teacher, what's the teacher's deadly sin? Keith: The deadly sin is sloth there or what we call laziness. Berni: I love that "sloth". Keith: Yes but as I said, even the busy can be lazy, right. It's really putting off what should be done today and putting off until tomorrow and the tomorrow and the tomorrow. It's not having priority, it's to do things and sticking to them. So the virtue of that is perseverance. Berni: Okay, so sticking with things and seeing them through to completion. Keith: Yes. Berni: Right. Keith: And having a priority to do the first things first, not to put them to the last. Berni: Alright, the prophet. The prophet's someone who speaks out right and wrong. In fact, the prophet's in the Bible were the people who spoke out Gods right and wrong. What's the deadly sin that the prophet has a problem with? Keith: The deadly sin is anger but it's not an anger that a leader might use in shouting at somebody. It's an internal anger, that they resent things not being perfect, they resent people not doing the right thing. So what they have to do, they have to have integrity of Gods integrity there. They actually look at His standard, God has a standard, these are "standard" people. They like a standard set, a very high standard, so they have to look at Gods standard, not their standard and work to Gods standard. Berni: So the prophet's the person who finds it hard to soar like an eagle when they're surrounded by turkeys. Keith: Exactly, so they have to really, Gods standard is to be patient and understanding with everyone. Berni: Yep, yep, it is. Alright, the carer. Keith: The carer has envy as the deadly sin that they have most of. They love what other people have. The carer's a loving person and they go up and down, their emotions and they want to experience the ride but the way out of it for them and the only way out is to show love to others. They're sensitive, not to their own feelings, become sensitive to other people's feelings and show love to them. Berni: And the neat thing about that is that that's the carer's natural inclination anyway, isn't it? Keith: It is. Berni: Is to show love. So really they're replacing their sin with their virtue. Keith: Exactly. Berni: If they live out their virtue, the sin actually has no room. Keith: That's right, yes, that's right. Berni: That's God's way, isn't it? Keith: Focus on others, not themselves. Berni: Yeah. Alright, the giver. Keith: The giver, it's pride here which sounds very very funny but say I'm supporting your ministry and I'm the biggest supporter, I then start want to expect things from you, I want you to do it my way. I don't want you to do this; I want you to do that. So they, they think, pride can think, "I'm the power behind the throne, I'm the one that has done everything". The way over that is brotherly kindness; they actually have to give, with kindness, without any expectation of return. Just give through a loving heart. Berni: In each case, there's a natural virtue that these personality types have and the natural virtue, if they exercise that, God starts driving out the sin. Keith: He does, we can't do it, there is no way. You can become like a monk, a Buddhist monk and you can become the highest level you want and the peaceful person but you cannot break through the divine nature. Berni: No, that's the thing that God does through His Spirit. Hey listen Keith, it's been fascinating spending these couple of weeks with you and time has just gone out the window but it's been really fascinating and I've learned so much about myself and about other people. Keith: That's good Berni; I've enjoyed being here, thank you very much. Berni: Good on ya, hopefully we'll be able to have Keith Henry back another time and it's been a real blessing. God bless you. Keith: Thank you.

You've probably heard of the Seven Deadly Sins.  Sounds old fashioned, but actually those same seven are tearing people's lives apart. Which one are you most prone to, and how can you break free from its clutches? Over this last week and a half on the program, we've been spending some time looking at what are called the "seven deadly sins". Not because we want to do a guilt trip, not because we want to bandy round some seemingly old fashioned word like "sin" but because sin ruins our lives and the seven deadly sins that we've been talking about over these last couple of weeks certainly do that. Lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, envy and pride; seven of the deadliest. That's the problem with sin, it robs us of life itself. Spend your time being angry all the time, what joy are you going to have? Do the gluttony thing and the weight will ruin your health and quality of life. Lust ruins marriages. On it goes; sin ruins lives, it's plain and it's simple. I just want to spend some time today with Keith Henry again, our special guest, being honest about the consequences. Tomorrow, we're going to look at the wondrous, beautiful solution but today, let's get real about the consequences. What do you think Keith, do you think that we try and sweep them under the carpet, these sins sometimes? Keith: I think we can but also think that we don't know what to do about them and secondly we don't feel we have any power to do something about them. Berni: You see, what strikes me is, let's assume for a moment, God made us, right. Let's assume for a moment God knew what He was doing, didn't make a mistake. Keith: Yes. Berni: Right, what all the experts, including yourself, tell us is that each personality type is prone to a particular one of these downfalls. It's almost like each personality type has a good side but there's an underside. Keith: Yes. Berni: So the sin of lust is one that the leader is prone to. Gluttony, what personality type, remind me, is prone to gluttony? Keith: Encourager. Berni: The encourager. Greed. Keith: Is the server, it's a fear. Berni: Yeah. Laziness. Keith: Is the teacher. Berni: Anger. Keith: Is the prophet. Berni: Envy. Keith: Is the carer. Berni: And pride. Keith: Is the giver. Berni: See, each one of those is prone to one of those sins. What was God thinking, I wonder sometimes, giving us each one of those sins? See, God doesn't have any sin in Him and yet He creates personality types and we all end up with a particular Achilles heel, if you like. Keith: We do but I don't think God made us to actually have these things, it's actually in the form of our culture and our nature that is not divine, we have these sins which manifest in our personality, more so in 1 personality than in another and God provides the way out. Berni: Yeah, we're going to talk about that. I was interested though, one of the passages that's always drawn me to it is in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12 and I want to share this with you. This is the apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 12, beginning in verse 7: Therefore to keep me from being too elated, (writes Paul) a thorn was given me in my flesh, a messenger of satan to torment me and keep me from being too elated.  Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me but He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness." So I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ. For whenever I am weak then I am strong. The fist few hundred times I read this passage I thought this thorn in the flesh must be, maybe he's got a limp or maybe there's something wrong with his hip or maybe he's sick or whatever but the more I read it, this thorn in the flesh and the word he uses there, for flesh, is the same word that Paul uses elsewhere for the sinful nature. Keith: Yes. Berni: Right. "As a messenger of satan to torment me". The more I read that, the more I'm thinking Paul's actually talking about some sin that he's dealing with and we read elsewhere where Paul writes he struggles to do the right thing, same struggles as you and I have and everybody else has and 3 times Paul goes and says, "God, take it away", and God says, "Well no actually, you know what the answer is, the answer is not me taking this away, the answer is that my grace is sufficient for you and my power becomes perfect in your weakness." Isn't that awesome? Keith: It is, isn't it? Berni: And I look at my sins and my weaknesses and the flaws in my character and I think, "You know, God wants to use me anyway even though I have these weaknesses." How do you respond to this passage? Keith: I agree with you, I think "flesh", the word there is referring to his nature and if we think, from reading about Paul, that he really has a prophet personality, he's very black and white, there's one right way, one wrong way. So his real sin there that God could be talking about is anger, where he resents things not being perfect. Berni: And you see him getting angry, in the Scriptures, when he's writing to some of these Churches, don't you? Keith: Yes ... he pulls them up, doesn't he? Berni: I was going to ask you what personality type you thought Paul was, the prophet. He is a pretty "in your face" kind of guy. Keith: He is and I know myself, when I've suffered a weakness, a physical weakness or something like that, you do become strong. You become humble, I often say to my wife, "I'm a better person when I'm suffering." Berni: Yeah. Keith: 'Cause it's not about me anymore. Berni: Yeah. Although you don't want to be there all your life. Keith: No, you don't do you? Berni: No, you don't say, "God, I want to suffer." (Both laugh) Keith: No, you want to be free from it but you want to also have the personality that participates in the nature of God, not in our own selfishness or in Paul's case, that resentment, that anger. Berni: Yeah, I come back to what God said to Paul and I think God's saying it to each one of us. You know, we each have different personality types and we each have an Achilles heel don't we? We each have something, whether it's anger or envy or lust or gluttony or, whatever it is, each one of us, kind of, relates to one of those. We go, "you know something, I really don't want to admit this to anyone but that's me." Keith: That's right. Berni: And God's saying to us here, "I know, I made you, you are no surprise to me", and Paul goes and says, "God, you know the best thing would be if you took this away" and God says, "well no, actually the best thing would be Paul, is if you experience my grace instead and if you start to become like Me because the power that I have for you, that power becomes perfect when you're weak." And Paul says, "zippidy-doo-da", and it's almost, we need to accept who we are, good and bad. Keith: Yes. Berni: I don't want to revel, I don't want to live in my sin, I don't want to, I want God to deal with that but Gods saying, "I'll deal with it, in my way, in my time. In the mean time, my grace is sufficient for you." What an awesome God. Keith: He is, He's the one that provides the way out for everything. Berni: Yeah, and that grace, that grace is hanging there on the cross, that grace is Jesus Christ nailed, His flesh nailed to a cross suffering a painful death to pay for my sin, to pay for your sin, to pay for everybody's sin. That grace is sufficient for Paul, it's sufficient for Keith Henry, it's sufficient for Berni Dymet, it's sufficient for all of us and Gods power is what ultimately changes us. Keith: I think the whole point of the Bible is that we are to become more like Christ every day. That's our nature; our personality has to change to be more like God. We can't do it but God can do it. Berni: We cannot and that's what we're going to look at, tomorrow, on the program. Keith, it's been great to talk to you. Keith: Thank you Berni.

Pride is an ugly thing – but these days, it's almost a virtue. I mean on the one hand should we be delighted when we succeed at something? Sure, but pride takes that delight to a different level.  That's why it's one of the seven deadly sins. And let me tell you, it's still deadly. Interestingly, the other week I was being interviewed by an editor of a magazine, sharing what God was doing through this ministry, Christianityworks, that I'm involved in. And the interviewer said to me, "You must be incredibly proud of what you've achieved!" I was horrified, mortified. I said, "No, no, you haven't been listening to me. It's what God's been doing. I've had the privilege of being involved but most days you know, I feel much more like a bystander than a participant. All the really big things that have happened have been so far beyond anything we could ever have achieved as people." What I experience in my heart, when I look at that, is a quiet contentment and a joy of looking back to see what I have been allowed to have some part in. But not proud. After the interview I had a good think. You see, before I met Jesus in my life 13 years ago, I was proud of everything I'd had achieved. And I had achieved a lot in my business career. Problem is, it all fell down like a house of cards. It seems it's something of a virtue these days, to be proud. It's good for our self esteem and yet, the truth be known, pride is a sin and it's still deadly. Berni: Joined on the program today, again by Keith Henry. Keith thanks for joining us. Keith: Pleasure Berni. Berni: Now listen, you're a bit of a guru. Tell me about this "pride" thing. What's that about? I mean what sort of person is prone to pride? Why do we get proud? Keith: Well, as you said, it's very rife in our communities at the moment. And when you look at pride and you think of, for instance, the Olympics or some sporting event. People who get a gold medal would rightly, you'd think, be very proud of what they've achieved. Berni: Sure. Keith: But it can be a false sense of ability because we all know what you're good at today can be robbed from you tomorrow. We have to give credit to, you know, a lot of other people who got us there as well as what we've done in ourselves. And in Christianity, if you're a big name preacher, well it's not pride in what you're doing, it's "proud", as you said, in what God has done through you and you've been able to be a part of it. And so pride, really is a very worldly sort of terminology. And with pride comes entitlement, right. If I've achieved something therefore I'm entitled to something. Berni: Yeah, it's like all about me. Keith: Exactly. Berni: As though, as though it ever is all about you. It's really quite bizarre. One of the things I really dislike intensely is the tennis players and the swimmers who win and they kind of, you know how they lift their hand up and they point at themselves like, "It's all about me". And I think, "Mate, that is just so not, not the case". Keith: It isn't, they can lose the next point can't they, very easily? Berni: Exactly. Keith: Reality's round the next point. But in the, in the giftings of what type of gift you are, you know. Berni: Yeah, what sort of personality type suffers from this? Keith: Okay, the one that you wouldn't think about is the giver. Berni: The giver suffers from pride? Keith: Yes, that's right. Berni: That's weird. Keith: It is because when you think about it, a giver is a person who is very, very good at sensing your needs and what they do. It's not just giving of money, it's giving their time and their ability. They are the great "behind the scenes" people. Berni: Yep. Keith: You know you might happen to be the Managing Director of a big company, your personal assistant is the giver. Berni: Yep, yep. Keith: And people say you can't get through to the Managing Director unless you go through the gateway. Berni: Yes. Keith: They control everything. They are the power behind the scene. Berni: Yeah. Keith: They are the ones that, they think, can think, that really runs the company. Berni: Yeah, okay, and I guess if you had someone who give financially to support some philanthropic work or ministry, they can ending up saying, "Well actually, if it wasn't for me they wouldn't be in business." Keith: That's right and then they start wanting entitlement, "I want you now to do it my way." Berni: Yeah, okay, they want to control the way in which the giving is used. Keith: That's right. So they actually try and become a "behind the scenes leader" where they want to use power and control but not be out the front. Berni: Now we're not saying all givers are bad. Keith: No. Berni: We're just saying this is, 'cause givers, we need givers in this world, we need people who give of their time and their money and their abilities because it would be a sad old world without the giver but this is the downside of their personality type I guess. Keith: That's the downside. Berni: It's the Achilles heel. Keith: Yeah but here, another really good giver was Mother Theresa. Berni: Right. Keith: You might think she was a carer. Well she was actually a giver because they both come from emotions, the emotional side, so they both have sensitivity, a very high sensitivity. Then Mother Theresa could sense the needs of the people and she went out and physically did something to help them overcome their problems. Berni: Okay. Well if pride is, is one of the 7 deadly sins, how is it deadly? What's the impact of pride? Keith: The impact is one, mainly of payment, "I do this for you, I expect you to do this for me." Berni: Quid pro quo Keith: Yeah. Berni: Rather than giving freely. Keith: Yes. Berni: Giving with strings attached. Keith: Very much so. The more a person starts to give and somebody else becomes dependant on them, then they want. Berni: Okay and I guess that's destructive because that's not what giving should be about, is it? Keith: No, in the Bible in 2 Peter 1, where the virtues are, it actually says that the giver should have kindness, brotherly kindness. Berni: Okay. Keith: So they should be kind without expecting anything in return for their giving. And that's when they're fulfilled. They participate in the divine nature once they use their ability to give. And you and I and lots of people know if you're married to a giver, as we both are, or if you have a giver in your life somewhere, they are the most wonderful people. They can spoil you and make life easy for you. And they love spending time with you, love helping you, they're called the helpers, the real helpers. And so they're so valuable but they're not to look at what they can get out of it. They do it because that's their gift, as we all do, to use our gift. Berni: And I know some givers you know, invariably when you give to Gods work, somehow God just makes it that the timing is so amazing, that it just came at the right time or was just the right amount or whatever it is. And the person who gives, who gives in faith, that must be such a buzz for them when they find that out. Keith: Yes. Well it's the ultimate in non-selfishness isn't it to actually give? Especially money. We're a money society, especially give your money, you know that really is hard and so they find it easier. They can give to so many causes and if they have a sensitivity to sense that this person really needs something at this moment, they can sense it, they can do it. Berni: You know, it just amazes me how, I guess, each of these different 7 deadly sins seems to pop up in the lives of the sorts of people you and I wouldn't expect. Keith: That's right, that's exactly right. It's not always the way it's interpreted if you think of envy and all those other things. It's not really the way it's normally interpreted. Berni: Tomorrow we're going to sort of recap and go through each one of these 7 deadly sins, just quickly to summarise because there's been a lot there for me. And if you've been with us over these last week and a half or so, the insights that Keith's shared with us have been really, truly amazing. So, it's been a blessing, we'll catch you again tomorrow Keith. Keith: Thanks Berni.

Envy is probably one of the most destructive of all emotions.  We see something someone else has and we want it.  Wars have been fought over envy. That's why it numbers amongst the seven deadly sins.  And it's still deadly. I imagine that envy, envy is one of those emotions, no, lets not call it an emotion, lets call it what it really is. Envy is one of those sins that we experience from our earliest childhood. Little Johnny next door has a new toy car and I want it or little Sarah next door has a brand new doll and you want it. So we envy what they have, we want to get our hands on what they have and then we grow up and it's so easy to envy the things that other people have or how they look or who they're married to or what other people think of them, so easy. You may have heard me say this before but I really used to suffer from this, I couldn't stand it, I hated it when someone else had something that I couldn't have. You stand back and you think about it and you realise two things about envy. Firstly, it doesn't have a single redeeming feature, it's just plain ugly and secondly, it's an incredibly destructive sin. While I envy what you have and you envy what I have, we can't have any trust between us. There can't be any closeness or friendship, it robs us of the most important thing of all; relationship. Envy has always been a deadly sin and you know something; today, right here and now, it's still deadly. Berni: I'm joined today again by Keith Henry. Keith thanks for joining us. Keith: Pleasure Berni. Berni: It's been such a blessing. You know, Keith has some real insights about these 7 deadly sins. It's not because he specialises in each one of them or anything like that. Keith's spent the last 10 years of his life, really understanding our different personality types we have and what it turns out is that each different personality type has one particular sin that it specialises in. Now Keith, tell us about envy, what's this envy thing all about, where does it come from, where does it start from? Keith: Envy, I believe, is one of the most misunderstood of the 7 deadly sins and as you said, one of the most destructive. Only because people don't know a way out of it and the secret is, envy is really love of what other people have. It comes back to that 'love' point of view, God is love and in envy, we love what somebody else has. But when you get it, often you don't want it. It's one of those things, 'I want it when I can't get it, when I do have it, I don't want it anymore'. Berni: It's really interesting, envy, I was reading something the apostle Paul wrote in Galatians chapter 5, have a listen. He says: The works of the flesh are obvious; sexual immorality, impurity, licentiousness , idolatry, sorcerery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger. Quite a list: Quarrels, dissention, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and things like that. I'm warning you against them. Interesting that envy numbers amongst those sorts of sins; idolatry, sorcerery, strife, jealousy, anger, envy. It's right up there. Keith: It is. Envy's in the mind, this is what makes it so strong. Envy is a sensitivity to something and people who have envy are very, very much live in their mind, they're thinking and often in the past. Berni: Okay. Keith: They actually re-do or re-think things that have happened in the past and put a different slant on it so that they are envious of, they should have had that, why didn't they have it? What was wrong with me? And it brings about shame and guilt and all the destructive forces. Envy is terrible, all the deadly sins are terrible but this one is the hardest one to overcome. Berni: So what sort of person is more prone to envy than another? Keith: It's funny, when you ask that question, 'cause you don't really expect the answer. In the Bible, in Romans 12 where it talks about the 7 personality types, it's actually the carer and who do we think the carer is? The carer is that lovely, sweet... Berni: That is bizarre! Keith: ... kind. It is isn't it? Because in their personality, the carer wants to be unique, they want to be special, they want to be different and they can see things that are special, that are different that we can't, that sensitivity level is the highest of all personalities and so they actually, Berni: Makes sense. Keith: Yeah and what happens is they can see it, like if you were hurting right now, in your feelings, you have a problem, I wouldn't see it, they would and they'd start asking you questions. They want to help people, they have a natural inclination to help people but when they're not doing that they can get depressed easily, they have bi-polar, they can, they could commit suicide if it got really bad. It's so, so destructive because they're thinking all the time and regurgitating things. Berni: They're emotionally sensitive. Keith: They're very emotionally sensitive. Berni: And there's an upside to that and there's a downside to that. Keith: Well the upside to it is the carer is one of the nicest, happiest, fulfilled people out. The way out of this is, see, as I said at the start is, envy is a love of what other people have and what I don't have. Berni: Before we talk about the way out I want to understand why it is that someone whom we all love, the carer, the one who pulls alongside and spends the time with us and all sorts of stuff, why is it particularly the carer who is prone to envy, why? Keith: Because of their sensitivity. They see things in it, they have a real appreciation for creativity for instance and for music and things like that, that we don't have and they see things in the world that we don't have sensitivity for. Berni: Okay and so I guess, because they see things so deeply they latch onto them and they want them. Keith: That's right, they do and they want to be special. Berni: Okay, so what's the way out, I mean if someone's, it almost must be a Jeckel and Hyde thing, on the outside they're so loving and so warm and on the inside, this envy thing must eat away like a cancer. Keith: It is, it's a bit like the leader is an adrenaline junkie, you know just wants to do things that challenge them and gets adrenaline going. This is the closest, in a way, you wouldn't think it but this is the closest in the way to the leader in terms of that. They want the highs and lows because they have the feeling sensitivity, they want to go up and then come down and realise what it's like again and go up again. They're going, they're sensitivity... Berni: A sort of cyclotronic type of. Keith: Yeah. Berni: Okay. Keith: Yeah and the way out of it is the way that you enter it. Envy is love of other things, the actual way out of it is, being a carer, is love of God but love of others, to care for them. They have the sensitivity to see where you're hurting, they have the sensitivity to help you and so they have to, if they take it away from themselves, this is the only way out for them. They actually have to focus on using that sensitivity to help people and to not take things as "somebody's had a go at me" all the time. Berni: Yeah. Keith: Because they're sensitive, you could say something and not mean it, they take it and they run away. Berni: They're over sensitive sometimes. Keith: Over sensitive. Berni: See, interesting, before I became a Christian I was always very envious. Now I'm not a carer by any stretch of the imagination but I did experience envy. I hated it when other people succeeded and I didn't think about it much but when I became a Christian, God turned my life around and I began to serve other people. Keith: Yes. Berni: It's just what I do now and I get so much fulfilment, envy's just gone, it doesn't exist anymore for me. I love it when other people succeed now and I never thought about it. Keith: That's the divine nature. See the Bible says we should participate in the divine nature. Divine nature is centered on focusing on other people. You've stopped focusing on yourself Berni and now you're fulfilled. You were never fulfilled ... Berni: No. Keith: ... when you focused on yourself. Berni: Never, ever. Alright, we're going to talk tomorrow about another of the 7 deadly sins, in fact, the last one and this one is pride and I've got to tell you Keith, I keep running into these and think, "I remember that one too!" So I'm really interested to see what you have to say about pride tomorrow. Keith: Look forward to it Berni.

You don't have to look very far to figure out that anger is something that's hitting society in plague proportions. Everybody seems to be angry. Anger is one of the seven deadly sins. And it's still deadly. Every now and then we all get angry, we just do. It's a natural human emotion, in fact, you read a bit about God in His word, the Bible, and you discover God gets angry. Jesus became so angry he made a whip and drove the money changers and the traders out of His Father's house, the Temple of God in Jerusalem. So anger is natural, it happens when one person wrongs another person and yet, if we let anger get the better of us, if we live constantly in anger, it's pretty ugly. I have a dear friend and his particular weakness is anger. In fact, I have to say, I used to be a very angry person and you know something, if we're angry all the time we just can't enjoy life. In fact, angry people can't easily have relationships with other people. Angry people, well they tend to be very lonely people because no-one trusts them. People don't know when they're going to be on the end of that next angry outburst. Anger may well be justified, although often it's not, but if that's where we live all the time, it's really very ugly. Today, as always, anger is a particularly deadly sin. Berni: What do you reckon Keith? Keith: It is Berni; nobody wants to be around an angry person. They're very threatening and we try and avoid being around them and you would think the leader personality would be the one that would have the anger, the most anger. Berni: Yeah, you would, I mean because the leader is a sort of personality that's driving towards a conclusion and would get frustrated with people who don't come along. Keith: That's right but it's outside anger right, so they voice it to anybody or anything that gets in their way because they want to get rid of them. But the anger we're talking about today, in terms of the 7 deadly sins, is an internal anger, right. It's given to the, for instance, the prophet. The prophet is likely to be angry because they can see justice or they can see what's fair or what's right, have integrity and things aren't correct. They're very black and white people, the prophet. Berni: Now explain a prophet to me. By the way Keith Henry's joining me this week; I forgot to tell people that you were joining me Keith. Keith's a bit of a guru, he's done a bit of, quite a bit of study haven't you, about personality types and particular strengths and weaknesses, that's your gig isn't it? Keith: It is, for about 10 years, studied that and talk on that but getting back to the prophet here Berni, the prophet is a particular personality type, next door to the leader I call them because they are managers, they can manage. Berni: Right. Keith: Not the leader who breaks down the wall and leads the team out, they're actually the manager who can manage with integrity, right and that's the important thing; a prophet has integrity. Berni: A sort of gyroscope of right and wrong. Keith: Exactly, there's only one right way, there's only one wrong way therefore there's no shades of grey. Berni: I relate to that a little bit. Keith: Well it's next door to you. Berni: Okay. Keith: Right, in personality but when we talk about anger here, both the prophet and the leader come from will, they're strong willed people. But the will and the anger for the leader goes outward, against anything, the anger we're talking about here, the deadly sin, is internal in the prophet. Berni: It's a seething anger. Keith: It is and can build resentment. Berni: Yeah that would be very destructive, wouldn't it? Keith: It can be very destructive. Not only for them but also, if they start letting it out to ... you know "you're not doing it right, you must do it this way" type of attitude; well it puts people down very much. Berni: We all kind of know people who seethe away and seethe way and bubble away and all of a sudden explodes, is that what happens here with that sort of anger? Keith: Yes it is, it is a bubbling away anger, it's an internal anger and because they only, as I said, they only see one right, one wrong therefore you must do it that way. I've got a good example here actually, there's 1 person I know who covers books right. Berni: Right. Keith: At a school and they cover them very diligently, they're a prophet personality and there's only one way to cover a book. Berni: The right way isn't it? Keith: It's the right way and it is perfect, it's the best book cover you ever see. We actually happened to import and sell a book covering machine that can do 80 books an hour, would never even look at it because it's not perfect they way that they can do it. So, would never consider it, that they could actually free the school up, to get all the books covered. Berni: Yep. Keith: They would rather take them home at night and keep doing it because there's only one way to do it. Berni: Yeah, yeah, the right way and of course the hard thing with that is, the rest of the world doesn't function that way. The rest of the world does what the rest of the world wants to do and so this must eat away at the prophet type personality because the prophet type personality is the person that wants to speak out the right way. And if you look at the prophets of old in the Old Testament, the prophets were the people who called Gods people back to God again. Who pointed out the things that they were doing wrong. So that's the prophet's natural inclination. So you've got this bubbling away and you can see how it would hurt them inside. What does the prophet do with this? Keith: How do they overcome it? Berni: Yeah. Keith: They have to stop working in their own integrity or virtue right, they're saying it must be done this way, that's the way it should be done. They have to look at the integrity of Gods word. In other words, not be selfish about 'I want this way because that's the only right way', they actually have to open themselves up to see it as God sees it. So they have to have the integrity, they're integrity people, but they have to have the integrity of God, not of themselves. Berni: Anger itself is not a sin is it? I mean, Paul writes in Ephesians 4, verse 26: Be angry but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. So it seems what he's saying is, we're all going to get angry, God gets angry but what's wrong about it is letting it bubble away and bubble away and bubble away. Keith: Yes and there's a righteous anger but the righteous is according to God not according to your own selfishness. Berni: Yeah. Keith: The prophet has a very righteous anger but who's righteousness is it? Berni: Okay so let's imagine that, that I've got the problem, I'm the prophet, I can see things very black and white and I see the right way and I'm burning with anger, inside at these people who aren't doing it my way, who aren't doing it the right way and after all my ways the only right way. Keith: Yes. Berni: Right, so exactly what can I do with a person that's driving me nuts today? Keith: The only way is to have some empathy with them and to take time to be a teacher. They have to have patience which is the teacher right, the teacher has to have patience and they, even though they're on the other side, they actually have to take time to be patient with that person and to teach them and to show them there's a right way of doing it. Berni: Okay because it's almost like sharing the right way. Keith: It is. Berni: And in that, learning a little bit from the other person as well. Keith: Yes. Berni: 'Cause I guess the process of sharing and all of a sudden we discover that there are some other ways of doing things and some better ways of doing things maybe than the ones we thought were the only way. Keith: They have a closed mind. I've got a son who's a prophet and when he was studying at school, for the High School Certificate, he would put, do 2-hour blocks and maybe half a dozen in a day, 2 hour blocks. They're so disciplined right, they are and they have such high integrity that they actually have to realise there is another life. Berni: There is another life and the way of stepping outside this is to take the time to work with people and to share with people. Keith, that's really good. Listen, tomorrow we're going to look at the last of these 7 deadly sins which is envy.

It seems in this fast changing world, that laziness couldn't possibly be a problem anymore. But certain people are truly prone to this sin. But they are and that's why it is one of the seven deadly sins.  And it's still deadly today. We all have patches in life where we need to take our foot off the pedal, just a bit. That's natural, we can't keep running at a million miles an hour, otherwise we'd burn out. Then we're no good to ourselves or anyone else for that matter. So yes, we all need to take a breather and make sure that we have plenty of rest and recreation. But sometimes, sometimes that kind of slips over the line and too much R and R, well we have a name for that. It's called laziness. Sloth in the old fashioned language. I like the sound of that word, 'sloth'. It's pretty confronting. And as we're going to see on the program today, some people are more prone to laziness than others. And laziness, well it's like a disease or a cancer. Laziness turns us into couch potatoes. Instead of cooking, we watch TV shows about cooking. Instead of travelling, we watch shows about travelling. Instead of gardening, we watch other people doing gardening. Instead of having a life, we watch other people having a life and kind of kid ourselves that we have a life too. But here's the paradox; laziness doesn't revive us like rest should. Laziness robs us. It drains us. It drains the life out of us. Whether in yesteryear when we called it sloth or today we call it laziness, doesn't matter what we call it, it robs us of life and it's deadly. Berni: Well Keith, welcome to the program again today. Tell us about this "sloth" thing, didn't you love that word? Keith: Yes. Berni: They used to call it sloth, laziness. Keith: That's right. Well we're all lazy up to a point. As you said, we have to rest. But laziness, in this term doesn't just mean lying on the couch watching the TV, eating chocolates, right. You can be very busy but you can be lazy. Berni: Explain that. Keith: Well, laziness in this term is more talking about putting off what you should do. You could be something else right, I should go and mow the lawn but I won't, I'll actually do something else. You know, there's priorities in life, there's big things that we should do and laziness is more talking about putting those things off 'til tomorrow. Berni: So you never get around to it? Keith: Yeah and tomorrow comes and you might put it off until the next day. Berni: Okay. So why, why are some people more prone to that than others? Keith: In personality, the one that Romans 12 calls "a teacher" is the one most prone to laziness because their priority is really to relate to people. They're the real relationship people. That's why they're called teachers. It doesn't mean they have to teach or they're the best teachers. But they really relate to spending time with people. Therefore, if they have a priority of having to go to work or having to wash the car or do something and somebody calls up and says, "Lets go for a drink or a cup of tea", they're more likely to take the cup of tea option rather than what they should do. Berni: So it's kind of like they're lazy about the mundane things in life that aren't the relationship orientated things which they enjoy. Keith: Exactly. They're called the "procrastinators" and that's a really good description of them. Berni: Oh, procrastinators drive me nuts (Both laugh) Keith: You're the action person, the leader. Berni: All you procrastinators out there watch out. (Said with humour) Keith: But the funny part about it, you come from will Berni, the leader but they also come from will. Well ... they're wills first. But their will is to get along with people. Berni: Yep. Keith: So they will put off other things and not do what they should do. Now there's, we for instance, have at work, we have a girl who is a teacher personality and she can put things off. Now I told her about her personality the other day and I said, "How do you overcome procrastinating?" She said, "Oh, I make a list every day of what I should do and I put them in priority." Simple thing, we've all heard of and that's what teachers must do. They must have a list and they must do them, one by one, in the right order. Because what they'll try to do is to do the less important things first because they're easier. So it's mere laziness. Let's not take on the hard issues, let's take the soft issues first and we'll work our way up to the hard issues. Berni: But we never do. Keith: Never do, keep putting them off. Berni: I thought you were going to say, when you asked her how she handles procrastination, she answered, "Ah, I'll think about it". (Both laugh) Keith: Well hopefully she doesn't. Berni: That's a hard one because I think we all put off the things we don't enjoy doing so much, don't you think? I mean, we all have things we don't much like doing. Keith: Yes. Berni: If you have a job that really fits your personality type well, 80% of it might but there's that 20% of stuff that you have to do. I mean someone said to me once when I was in business that I'm administratively recalcitrant, I don't enjoy the nuts and bolts of administration right, I just don't. Keith: Too slow for you. Berni: Well, yeah, it just doesn't flick my switch and so I will put those things off because I don't enjoy them so much. Is that what you're saying here with the procrastinator? Keith: That's right. Berni: Keith, I seem to have all of these things. Is there something wrong with me? (Both Laugh) Keith: No, you major in one as we all do, we all major in one. Berni: Right. Keith: And so, the other thing with the teacher, what they can do is, they want to be peaceful and easy going because they like relating to everybody. So if there's some conflictive issue here, they will put that off and put it off, they don't want to face conflict because it robs them of their peace and their relationships, so they won't say anything to anyone. Berni: The laziness thing is a bit cancerous isn't it because; in a sense it doesn't appear like a sin? You're just putting things off but you think about it, you put off your tax return and eventually the government comes knocking on your door. Keith: Yes. Berni: You put off paying the bills and eventually they turn the electricity off. You put off the things that you don't want to do and you don't enjoy eventually it all slips away. There's an interesting passage in Proverbs, chapter 24, have a listen to this: I passed by the field of someone who's lazy, by the vineyard of a stupid person and see it was all overgrown with thorns ... See, that doesn't happen overnight, does it? The thorns don't come overnight, the come in time. ... and the ground was covered with nettles and its stone walls were broken. Then I saw it and considered it, I looked and I received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed warrior. Keith: Yes. Berni: It creeps up on you very slowly, this particular sin, doesn't it? But eventually it bites. Keith: It does and it bites because, one real reason, is they don't want to make decisions. You make a decision that I'm going to pull the weeds out today and you go and do it. They put off decision making. Berni: I can't remember which Charlie Brown character it was but one of them said, "Nothing is so important that it can't be put off until tomorrow." (Both laugh) Keith: That's right. That's a good definition of what laziness is. Berni: So the solution is, that this woman gave you was, she actually does a list and tries to stick by her list. Keith: She does and that's actually in 2 Peter 1, the virtue to overcome the laziness is to have that list and to persevere. It says actually patience but its perseverance, long suffering. And these are, that's why they're very good teachers. They will persevere in showing you what you should do. Great people to show you what to do because they don't get annoyed with you. They'll persevere. And that's in all their life. They have to take on the perseverance and the patience to actually do them until they're finished. Berni: Now Keith, this stuff is really making me think. I'm looking forward to next week. We're going to continue on the program next week, looking at some of the 7 deadly sins. But it seems like we're going under the covers here. And I hope, if you've been with us this week, that you've really been thinking, "Ah, that one's me" or "Wow, I never realised that about myself or about my wife or about my husband or about my friend." And you're seeing how we're differently wired and each one of us has a different one of these 7 deadly sins that we have to struggle with. And yet, each one God gives us a way out. Keith, thanks for joining us, you'll catch up with us again next week? Keith: Love to.

Greed these days, at least in some circles, is almost a virtue, not a sin.  And yet greed is such a destructive force in this world.  That's why greed is one of the seven deadly sins.  And it's still deadly. One of the most fascinating creatures alive on this earth is the stock market because it's a place where people trade shares in companies and it behaves so irrationally. During the so called "dot com" boom, a few years back, people were paying exorbitant amounts of money for shares in companies that were losing money, hand over fist. It was all about getting a stake in the new economy, it was all about greed. And then, during the huge boom that followed, people behaved as though there's no tomorrow. Eat, drink, be merry, they couldn't imagine another recession. But as surely as God made little green apples, it came. And billions, no trillions of dollars were wiped off the stock markets of the world in a matter of days. Now, don't get me wrong, I believe very much in hard work and free enterprise. But if there were ever a beast that was like a massive neon sign advertising humanity's greed, it would have to be the stock market. Fortunes made and lost. It seems that in the good times, greed isn't a sin or a vice, it's almost, well we applaud it. But when the bad times come, as surely they do, what we discover is this; greed is a sin and it's still deadly today. Berni: Keith Henry, what do you think about greed? Keith: Greed is one of those things that is very little understood because what you just described there could also be gluttony, where you want more money at the stock market. Greed, in this context, in terms of our personality, is not so much about wanting more; it's more about hoarding what you have. It's being greedy and not sharing it because you don't think you'll have enough, right. So greed actually, is not gluttony, it's the opposite, it's actually hoarding. The problem here is, greed brings about fear or it's related to fear and with this greed, you hoard it so that you don't give it away, that you'll be able to survive. Berni: Okay, not sharing nicely with the other children. Keith: That's right. Berni: Interesting, some proverbs, Proverb 15:27 says: A greedy man brings trouble to his family but he who hates bribes will live. And Proverbs 28:25: A greedy man stirs up dissention but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper. So it's interesting, it's what you're saying, it's this hoarding mentality that "I won't share and I won't give away" because God does call us to give a lot of what we get away. Keith: That's right and that's where we hold onto it, I know I'll only give ten dollars in the plate today instead of a hundred because I might need the rest, I'll go for lunch, right, I need it for that. So it's not gluttony, greed is something, is based on fear, it's a fear that I won't have enough. It's a fear that actually, in the Bible, says, "if you doubt and have fear, you just won't prosper." Berni: Fear's a destructive thing. Keith: Totally destructive, one of the most destructive things and this is what greed's referring to, the destruction of fear and doubt. Berni: So who, what sort of personality type, because over the last few days, what you've been telling us is, each of these particular 7 deadly sins is kind of hooked to one of the particular personality types. Some people are more prone to this than others. Who's the person who's most prone to greed? Keith: The server. Berni: Now that surprises me. (Keith laughs) Why the server? Keith: Well the server is, comes from thinking, right. First of all they think a lot, more than any other type of personality and when you think, it's very easy to have fear because you think of what could go wrong. It's also, the server's not always the most extraverted people and they're a bit quieter. And some servers need to actually, might be at a party but they need to get away from that, they need to have time alone, in other words, greed to get alone, so they can recharge the batteries. They're just not extraverts; they need to hoard themselves away from everybody for a time. Berni: It's kind of weird because again, I mean yesterday we were talking about the encourager and I made the point, we love having encouragers around and I tell you, I love having servers around too because people who want to serve you, they're a delight to be with are they not? Keith: Oh they are, they make our life easy don't they? Berni: Yeah. Keith: They do have a fear, they come from anxiety and worry. A server is looking at what can go wrong. Berni: That makes sense. Keith: Right, they can see things that we don't see, the potholes and things like that and so, they are looking from a fear perspective all the time. Berni: Okay. And so that's what spills over, when you let that fear grip you too much, that's what spills over into the greed thing? Keith: It does and then you start hoarding yourself, "I can't give anymore of myself. I can't give anything else away because I might need it. The stock market might crash tomorrow. I'll put my money in a bank." Or the parable of the talents, the person who buried the money in the soil. Berni: Because they wouldn't put it at risk. Keith: No, they don't want to risk anything. These are anti-risk people. Berni: So the sort of person you want as an accountant maybe. Keith: A lot of the people are accountants. Berni: Oh really? Keith: They're very analytical type people, they use their mind and analyse. Berni: Okay. So okay, lets say I'm a server, I'm not but lets say I'm a server and let's say this fear is gripping me and let's say I've been listening to Keith Henry today and I'm thinking, "You know something, that thing that he's talking about is exactly what I go through". So now what Keith? What can the person who suffers from this do about it? Keith: There is an answer in the Bible. In 2 Peter 1, which we mentioned before, the virtue is there, that you'll actually gain knowledge because, if you gain knowledge of the word of God, it's got to be the right knowledge, the knowledge can set you free. Berni: Okay. Keith: Right. So they have to actually see what Gods word says. Then the other part, of course, is (we're talking about faith now), how do you get faith? You get it through the word of God, right, knowing more about the word of God. Berni: I seem to get faith dangling off a cliff every time, you know (Both laugh) that's where I get my faith from brother and the word of God. Sorry to interrupt you. Keith: That's all right but once you get the faith, you then set, the Bible says you must put into action; faith without action is dead. Berni: But that's good for a server because a server is an action person, right? Keith: Well they only action to serve you but in their own world, they're fearful or anxiety people, they hoard, the Bible says, 'now have faith and go out and do it'. So buy those shares or go out and see that person or go to that party or go to whatever. So, it has to be faith with action based on knowledge. Berni: Okay, give me a really practical example. I'm struggling to grasp this one. Keith: Take for instance a person who wants to invest in a company or want to start their own company. So what they have to do, they have to have a lot of faith to do that. So often they will analyse and gain more and more knowledge, become more fearful, see all the problems that they can fall into. They actually have to take the step, they have to have faith and take the step. It's not until they take the step that they can overcome their fear. Berni: That's good. That's good, so fear kind of paralyses doesn't it? Keith: Very good way of putting it, yeah. Berni: Fear stops you like (Berni suddenly inhales) and you freeze. We all experience that sometimes and yet, what you're saying for the person who is the server, they just step out, use their gift; take the risk because the risk is not a risk if it's done in faith. Keith: That's right. They analyse enough, they think about it enough but they think about it too much. Berni: This is the "just do it". Keith: Yeah, just do it and so greed is actually, comes from a basis of fear. Berni: That's good. That was really good. Thank you for that Keith. Well tomorrow we're going to look at the next one in the list of the 7 deadly sins and that next one is laziness.

We rarely think of overeating – gluttony – as being one of the seven deadly sins. But it is. People are eating themselves to death.  I know – I used to be one of them.  Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.  And it's still deadly. There's a certain brand of chocolate biscuits that you can buy in Australia, where I live. They're called Tim Tams. Now it's two biscuit wafers with a chocolate layer in between and the whole things wrapped in a casing of chocolate. And if I were to point to any food that I have an addiction to, Tim Tams would be it. Just as I talk about them I can picture them, smell them and feel the taste as they crunch around in my mouth. Now of course, there's nothing wrong with the odd Tim Tam or any other food for that matter. In fact, without food we'd die of starvation and one of the amazing things that God's done, is that He's given us such an amazing variety of food. Cereals, meats, vegetables, herbs, spices in an endless array, I mean incredible. One of the things I love to do is to try and cook a nice meal for my family, on weekends and to be creative. I love Thai food and Hungarian Goulash, fabulous. But, and there is a "but", in western society today, we're eating ourselves to death. Obesity is rocketing and whilst people are living longer, on the whole, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, they're all on the increase. Gluttony is not word we like to use, so old fashioned it seems, so judgemental. But gluttony is one of the 7 deadly sins and whether we like it today or not, even in modern society, it's still deadly. Berni: Well Keith, welcome to the program. Keith: Thanks Berni. Berni: We're talking about gluttony today. Tell us about gluttony, what's gluttony all about? Why, why do we over eat? What's motivating us to do that? Keith: We want more and more and more basically and gluttony is basically about seeking what's pleasurable for you. Berni: Okay, Keith: You become a pleasure seeker so that you want more pleasure and less responsibility. Berni: Well that fits pretty well with the sort of thinking of our times, doesn't it? You watch the ads on TV and it's all about 'you' isn't it? Keith: It is, that's right; what you can get, what you can have. These are the consumers that use gluttony, they want to consume and use everything that they can. Berni: Okay, so are you saying it's more than just food? Keith: Yes it is. If we look at the 'encourager', their 7 deadly sin, the one that they major in, is gluttony because they want to consume as much as they can, they want to have as many ideas as they can. They want to keep moving, they don't want to stop moving because they have to think about what they're doing. Berni: Hang on, let me just stop and think about that for a moment. The "encourager", tell me a bit about the "encourager", 'cause encouragers sound good. Keith: Well they are, though they're happy people, the entertainers, the people at school when you went to school, they were always the stars. They could do anything, they never had to try, they're just good at school, good at sport, friends with everyone. The trouble is, because they don't have to work hard at things, they're usually quite talented people; they want to now enjoy life. They're the "Peter Pans" of this world, never grow up. Berni: Ah, okay, so it's kind of, isn't it funny how the personality type has this particular virtue and when you say to someone, "do you like encouragers?" Our answer is, "absolutely, we do!" I mean who doesn't like to be around an encourager? Keith: That's right. Berni: If I was going to be shipwrecked on a desert island, I think I'd pick an encourager instead of a leader to be around because they're nice to be around and yet, somehow, I just want you to help me make this linkage here between the encourager and this, this sin of gluttony. Why is again, that there's this particular linkage? Why is the encourager so prone to this over consumption, if we can call it that? Keith: They're seeking pleasure all the time, they want to taste life, they want to taste everything that's pleasurable. Unlike a leader, who wants to challenge life, they don't want the challenge. They want the excitement, the taste and they want it to keep moving. Berni: Alright, so the encourager wants all the pleasure, what's the down side of gluttony? What are the consequences of gluttony? I mean, I guess if we over eat, that's obvious. Keith: Yes. The problem is that they never commit to doing anything or to finish everything. They want to, you know, eat as you said, they consume things. Or they come up with a million ideas and they keep running from one idea to the other. They never finish one and, because there's no responsibility there, they can just keep moving all the time and leave somebody else to clean up the mess. In marriages, if you have an encourager, they can commit by the way, they're not always like this. but this is the sin of gluttony. In some marriages you'll have an encourager, they never have a regular job. They don't want to commit to something because it ties them down. Berni: Okay, that's the down side, how do they get out of that 'cause there's a good side to being an encourager and I think this would be a horrible world without encouragers, wouldn't it? Keith: Oh, it would. Everybody, as you said, wants to be around an encourager, they're positive people. They're excitement, as soon as they walk in the room, they're the ones that will make it fun. They're the fun people. Berni: So, how do they, is there some virtue, is there some way that they can channel their energies and their passions and their desires, which kind of works against this sin, which minimises its affect and impact? Keith: The virtue for them, as mentioned in 2 Peter 1, is temperance. Temperance is moderation, so they have to focus more. They're problem is they're not focusing, that instead of running to the next thing, they actually have to stop where they are and finish it. Berni: Okay. Keith: So moderation or temperance. Berni: That must be hard for them to do though. That wouldn't be a natural thing for them to do, the encourager. If the encourager is the entertainer who runs onto the next idea, stopping and finishing would have to be something they learn? Keith: Yes, they would have to learn it. In the Bible, it does say that we can overcome the lusts in the world by actually walking in the Spirit. So we can't do it naturally very well at all. We know what the answer is, we have to go moderation, we have to focus more but it's very hard for us to do and to overcome any of these 7 deadly sins. The only way to do it is to walk in the Spirit. Berni: What does that mean in practical, give me a practical example? I'm an encourager, I work in a job, I have to finish off things before I can move onto the next. It's driving everyone crazy that I'm not doing that. I kind of know that I've got to do it but I just can't bring myself to get stuck in the detail. Is that what you're saying and finish it off? What do I do now? That's my problem, what do I do now? Keith: Well, it's hard to do it, you have to train yourself and it's discipline. They don't have discipline in their lives; they have to start putting discipline in their lives. Berni: Okay. It's not my particular gifting and so it's not my particular area of weakness. I'm someone who really likes to finish something off well. In fact, my school motto, which I've taken on as my life motto, is "age quod agis", "Whatever you do, do well", and so I can't relate to this one. Keith: Well there is one way here, what they have to do. They're passionate people, instead of having 100 things they could do, find 1 thing that they can be really passionate about. Berni: Okay. Keith: Focus on that 1 thing and then, they will be fulfilled, they will complete it. Berni: That is good advice isn't it? That is really good advice. So if you happen to be an encourager out there and this is something you're struggling with, I think that was a fantastic bit of advice. Well Keith, thank you for that, join me again tomorrow and we're going to look at the next deadly sin on the list and that sin is greed.

Some people are particularly prone to the sin of lust. Not just sexual lust – but also a lust after life. And that lust can ruin relationships, marriages and our lives.  That's why lust is one of the seven deadly sins. And it's still deadly. It seems that the more affluent we become and the more powerful we become, the more we think that really what matters is fulfilling our every desire. I was watching a program on TV the other night which was like a panel of advertising guru's analysing different TV ads. And what became evident, over and over again, is how those ads play on this insatiable craving we have to be successful and to have and to consume. Whether it's a 4 wheel drive or a pair of shoes, these experts tap into a rich vein of desire in our hearts. And that's what makes the world go round. When it comes to advertising all the guru's tell you sex sells, right? And pandering to these desires, well not only don't we see that there's anything wrong with it. Well there's an old fashioned word, that word is 'lust', which kind of describes this whole rampant desire thing. I'm joined again today by my special guest, Keith Henry. Now Keith, what exactly does this word "lust" mean? Keith: Well as you said Berni, lust can be sexual but it's a lot more than that. It's really a drive that you have that you want to tackle everything in life Berni. It also includes arrogance. It includes power 'cause you want to control things, you want to try to take on the world, to challenge the world. You want your way. And it's this excess where you're trying to get everything that you want and denying everybody else. Berni: Okay, so there's sexual lust. Keith: Yes. Berni: Now what sort of person is prone to this, this "lust" thing? Keith: In Romans 12, it gives you the different personality types and one of them mentioned there is "leader". So a leader has to be strong, they have to take control. They have to have all these good points that, in sin in the world, we'd also take on the bad points and this is where lust comes in. That they want what they want not what somebody else wants. Berni: It almost sounds, you're right, a leader does have to be strong, has to be very focused. People follow the leader and it's almost as though, if you take those gifts too far, then all of a sudden the virtue turns into a sin. Is that what you're saying? Keith: Yeah. I think, in the world, we do start from the 'sin' point first and we want to participate in the divine nature, which is the proper leadership style in this case but we get corrupted by the sin. And the sin, it's very enticing, you know. You can have power over people, you can control people. You're a leader, people look up to you. Berni: Yeah. Keith: You know it's very enticing. Berni: Interesting. I just want to share a story with you from the book of 2 Samuel in the Bible. One that a lot of people might be familiar with: One late afternoon, King David got up from taking a nap. He was strolling on the roof of the palace. From his vantage point on the roof he saw a woman bathing. That woman was stunningly beautiful. David sent and asked about her and was told, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah, the Hittite? And David sent his agents to get her. After she arrived he went to bed with her and then she returned home. See David was probably the greatest leader Israel ever had. Keith: Yes. Berni: Right, he was the leader, absolutely. Everybody naturally followed David. What was his sin? (Berni clicks fingers) Lust. Keith: Lust. He had the power, he had the control. People looked up to him and he wanted everything. Berni: It sort of explains to me why some of these really high profile, both Church leaders and secular leaders, fall in this area. I mean Bill Clinton is a very obvious example... Keith: Yes. Berni: ... of a fabulous leader who clearly, this sin got the better of him. Keith: It does. And all sorts of evangelists and people prominent. If you're prominent you have to be very careful, especially if you're a leader. These are the people that can tackle anything. They're the people that climb the mountains and you think,"'Why would you want to climb a mountain?" A lot of personality types think, "why would I want to do that?" No, they want to conquer things. See it's in their personality to go out and challenge and take control of things in people. Berni: And you do, you actually want a leader to do that, don't you? Keith: You do. Berni: If you're following someone who is a leader, you want them to be in control. If a leader is weak, I mean you see it in political parties. If the leader is weak the party gets rid of that leader and puts in a new one because they actually want a strong leader. Keith: They do. Berni: So, there's nothing wrong with that is there? Keith: No. We don't have enough good leaders. We need leaders and whatever it is, in the parliament or Church or whatever area, we need leaders. There's not enough good ones and we do need good leaders. There's an interesting verse in Proverbs 6:27 that says: Can a person take fire to the bosom and his garments and not be burnt? These people that play with fire and it can destroy them. Berni: Yep. So what do they do about that? I mean, if you're a leader and you know you have a weakness in this area. Either its sexual and a lot of men do, a lot of men are caught up in pornography, right? It's a massive, in fact pornography, someone said, accounts for 80% of internet traffic. Pretty scary! So, if someone's caught up in that or just the lust of power or the lust for life or for the lust for, 'just go out there and get it', what can they do about that? Keith: Well, the way out is to participate in the divine nature. In this we have to set our hearts on. Now, ours sins are passions. So what's our passion, is our passion worldly or is our passion Godly? And the way out of it for the leader is to focus on becoming Godly and in 2 Peter 1, it does actually have the virtues there and it says we can participate in divine nature and escape the lust in the world caused by evil desire, the corruption of the world. But the way for the leader is to become very magnanimous. In other words, very giving and working for others not for what they want because they'd get anything almost, these are the leaders. Berni: That's the temptation isn't it? Keith: Yeah. Berni: You can get anything because you're a leader. Keith: Yeah, so are you going to work for others or are you going to work for yourself? Become Godly, God works for other people. Berni: Mmm, I was just thinking about that because, I think in the work force where I've worked and there are some leaders and you know they have your interests at heart and actually, they're the ones that you have a real heart to follow. Keith: Yes. Berni: That's what you're saying isn't it? Keith: Yes. Berni: It's the leader who almost sees himself, or herself, as the servant of the people who are following him or her. Keith: Yes, and that's the way, to become a servant or actually, to become more of a giver, you know because you've got lots to give. You know a leader has a lot to give, they have so much more energy, so much more everything than anybody else and they have to give it to others. Berni: That's fascinating! So as a leader, you can decide to go off and manipulate and control and run over the top of people and 9 times out of 10 you'll get your way, yeah? Keith: Yep. Who wants to fight a leader? Most personalities don't. Berni: Another leader. Keith: Only another leader because, you know what? They enjoy it because they like to test things out and challenge things. Berni: Yeah. Keith: And if you, as a leader, walk into a party, you know a room and first of all, you'll sense where the power is in that room. Berni: Isn't that fascinating? Keith: Or in a board meeting, you'll know where the power is and you'll watch and you'll try and conquer that power so that you're in charge. Berni: Isn't that fascinating and the way to change that, the way to deal with this particular deadly sin of lust for power and lust for everything else is to say, "I'm going to take the gifts that I have and become a servant with them." Keith: Not selfish, yeah that's right. Become a server, give it away and give it to others and don't be self focused. Berni: That is just amazing. You know, God does, isn't it amazing, God does things and changes you. When you go after Him and you start focusing on Him and serving others, He fixes a whole bunch of things behind you that you don't even have to think about. He is amazing!