A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Berni Dymet
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God has a habit of wanting to speak right into the circumstances that we're travelling through here and now; the very issues that we each face in our everyday lives. Everything from dealing with difficult people … to discovering how God speaks to us; from overcoming stress … to discovering your God-given gifts and walking in the calling that God has placed on your life And that's what these daily 10 minute A Different Perspective messages are all about.

  1. 11H AGO

    A Tough Decision // The Long Road Home, Part 3

    Sometimes we get to a point in life where we have to admit to ourselves that we've taken a wrong turn. That's not easy – and the decision to turn around – well, that's harder still. We've all had that experience of trying something, committing to it, believing in it, publicly promoting it, and then flop, we fall flat on our faces. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt! It's not a nice feeling, is it? On the one hand there's the public humiliation but even worse than that, is that deep loss inside of having wanted something, believed in it, committed to it emotionally and then failed. Sometimes we're angry, other times we deny it, and then we just hope it'll go away and nobody will notice. You can tell, can't you, that I understand this pretty well? But when it comes to our life choices, sometimes we back the wrong horse and we let the failure linger on and on, and eat away at us. Because going back to what we know is right in the first place, well, that can be a long road home. There's something that's fun and exciting about rebelling, about turning our backs on things and thumbing our nose at authority. Just recently we had a bit of fun in our Ministry, we redeveloped our website, www.christianityworks.com. And all of the developers, (the team there are in their early 20s), and if you go there, there's a video image of me on the homepage. And during the development time before the whole thing went live, some of the developers put a little halo above my head! You know what I mean, it was fun, now not withstanding it was theologically correct because of course we all are saints in Christ Jesus! I had to tell him to take it off, you know a bit of disrespect but it was fun, you know we all had a good laugh. And so there are times when it can be fun but if we go on and on, and on, and we rebel, and we turn against things, life gets unbalanced, and there are consequences. There are so many people who think, "well, I can have fun all the time, I can joke all the time, I can reject all the time, I can rebel all the time, I can do what I like." And as they try and pour gratification to themselves, as they try and chase that illusory oasis in the desert, what they discover is actually, it's a mirage. Actually as we try and pour things in, we find ourselves in a spiritual wilderness. Jesus knew that, Jesus told a story, it's the story of the prodigal son, which we read yesterday and the day before, and we're going to look at for the rest of this week. He told a story about this spiritual wilderness and what the road home looks like. Let's pick up the story. A man had a couple of sons, the younger of them said to his father, "Dad give me my share of the estate that I have coming to me" so the dad distributed the assets to them. Not long after the younger son gathered all the stuff that he had and traveled to a distant land where he squandered his estate in foolish living. After he'd spent everything, a severe famine struck the country and he had nothing. And then he went to work for one of the citizens of that land who sent him out to feed the pigs. He longed to fill himself with the carob pods that the pigs were eating but no one would give him any. When he finally came to his senses he said: How many of my father's servants have more than enough food and here I am dying of hunger. I know what I'll do, I'll get up and go to my father and say, 'Father I've sinned against Heaven and against you, I'm not worthy to be called you son anymore, just make me one of your servants'. And so he got up and went to his father. See it all begins with rebellion. It all begins with this illusion that we can spend our lives having fun and partying and doing what we want, and if it feels good do it. I mean morals are old-fashioned and, it has consequences, life isn't like that. There is a reality to life; enjoyment is much deeper than partying and doing what feels good. It's an interesting cycle. It begins with rebellion, we reject something, we reject God along with it and we all do that sometimes. And then we think we can kick up our heels and do what feels good. And people do drink and drugs, and they have attitudes that are against God, and they have mindsets that are strongholds against God, and "Ah! Sure, have an affair, the world's saying it is ok." And yet there are consequences. People go and have affairs and it hurts. There are divorces; there are kid's lives that are often so deeply impacted by all of that stuff. And on the one hand people are saying, "No, no it's alright, what if it feels good, go and do it." And yet this whole rebellion, kicking up our heels thing is linked to the consequences, but we deceive ourselves, we don't connect the two at all. And that was the cycle for the prodigal son in that story. Dad and the farm, and the work, and the brother, compared to parties and an exotic far off land. Well, which one do you think looked more appealing to the young man at the time? There were consequences, he had to get up and look at those pigs in the eye morning and night with hunger in his belly and all of a sudden, it wasn't very hard to connect the two, the rebellion and the consequences. That is when he came to his senses. That was the turning point. It was a pragmatic decision, this coming to his senses. He had choices: On the one hand he could stay here with porky the pig and starve, and look at this pig in the eye every morning and every night when he went out in the field to feed them the food. Or he could suffer the humiliation of going back home as a servant in his father's household, and at least have some food in his stomach. That was the choice and he weighed them. Which one is more in my interest? This wasn't some altruistic decision to return to the fold and his father, and his family, and the honour, and no, no, no … this was a pragmatic self-interested decision. That when something like this, you know something, the choice that I have made is not working, my only other choice is to start on that long road back home again, albeit that I have low expectations, albeit that I'm going to go to my father and say, "Father I have sinned against Heaven and you and I'm not worthy to be your son, make me a servant just as long as I have enough food to eat." So here we have God in one corner and us over here somewhere else. I don't know what the shape and nature of your rebellion looks like. I know what the shape and nature of my rebellions look like over the years. As we live out rebellion in life, in this spiritual wilderness, just like this son was in a wilderness out there with the pigs, we've got to ask ourselves, is it working? Has the rebellion delivered what I expected it to deliver? Has it lived up to the expectations? What form has that rebellion taken? Or is it a bit like staring at Porky in the eye morning and night? It ain't working! There's hunger in our bellies, there's a loss and a sense of "something's not working, something's missing, I know Dad's out there, I know there's a road back." Is it time to make a pragmatic decision about that rebellion in your life? Is it time to say 'it ain't working!' I'm far better off with Dad where the riches and the privileges, and the benefits, and the blessings of God in my life, because as long as I continue to rebel, I'm not going to experience those. Or, would I rather hang on in pride to my rebellion and spend the rest of my life feeding Porky the pig? Benefit versus embarrassment, and often it's the embarrassment that holds us back from coming to God. The price is humbling ourselves and then all the blessings of heaven can be poured out on us. I can't make that decision for you, it's not my job. It's my job to present you with a choice. Your part is to look at rebellion if it happens in your life, and for you to make the choice between benefit and embarrassment.

    10 min

  2. 1D AGO

    Partying Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be // The Long Road Home, Part 2

    We all love to kick our heals up every now and then. Problem is that the more you watch TV, the more they seem to tell us that life is just one long party. We all like a good party from time to time, the chance to kick up our heels, let our hair down, relax and enjoy, it's a part of life. In fact, it's a very necessary part of a balanced life. Now the advertising industries figured that out, that's why they use images and stories that tap into our desire to kick up our heels, in order to sell whatever it happens to be they're selling on any given day. And so we get bombarded with these images of freedom and rebellion and success and leisure and partying, not just in the advertisements, but the TV shows themselves, basically tell us anything goes. So before you know it, you turn around and we've shifted from a post-war puritanical extreme of the 1950's, to an anything goes "if it feels good do it" society just half a century later. But more than ever people are finding themselves in their own private spiritual wilderness. Doesn't matter what they tell us on TV, why is that? There are so many people wandering around in a spiritual wilderness, the TV's and the advertisers, they're all saying, "It looks like an oasis, it is an oasis". But when we're in the spiritual wilderness, you know something? It feels like a desert. Jesus knew that, Jesus told a wonderful story, it was a parable it's not a real story, it was intended to illustrate His point. And it's the parable, the story, of the prodigal son, began with a rebellion. Let's have a look. A man had two sons, the younger of them says to Dad, "Dad give me my share of the estate that I have coming to me." So, the father distributes the assets to them. Not many days later the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country where he squandered the estate on foolish living. After he'd spent everything, a severe famine struck that country and he had nothing. Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country who sent him to feed the pigs. He longed to eat his fill from the carob pods the pigs were eating but no one would give him anything. Here's this young man, you know, he's living on this farm with Dad, he's bored, he wants to see the big smoke and do the things and have the parties. Maybe he's been watching too much television, I don't know. So he decides to go somewhere exotic, he decides to say, "Dad give me all my inheritance, I'm taking it with me." And he goes to some far distant land where he parties, where he does the whole "if it feels good, do it thing". Does it sound familiar to you? It's exactly what Jesus was talking about. But not long into that rebellion reality sinks in. You know, this guy's spending money as though there's no tomorrow, on anything he can think of he's spending money, and all of a sudden a famine hits the land. Now, it's not like a famine in a rich developed country. This is like a famine in a subsistence farming country, and when his money runs out, the things that (I don't know) this exciting living promised, the things that all these glossy ads on television promised him turned out to be hollow and empty, and he was hungry. That was a reality. Here's the paradox, the more you pour in to fill up, the emptier and the shallower life becomes. I wonder as each one of us looks at our lives, how much they mirror this story of the prodigal son. The parable is this: A home, Dad, the farm, that's God. Now to this young man they looked boring they were constrained, there's something in him that wanted to kick up his heels and rebel against all of that and so he left home. The place of privilege, the place of plenty of food, the place of wealth, it was boring. He wanted to go and do it his own way. He did that. He went and partied. You know something, any life that's out of balance will come crashing down around our ears. That's the problem with constructing our reality from all these flashing images on the television of success, success, success; party, party, party; freedom, freedom, freedom; life's not like that. Don't know about you but I have responsibilities, I have a family, a mortgage to pay and food to put on the table and ministry things to do, we all have those responsibilities. Life is not about partying even though relaxing and enjoying life is a normal part of a balanced life. But when we have an unbalanced life, when it's out of kilter, out of whack, things come crashing down round our ears, reality sets in. We all do our rebelling in a different way. But after a while, we discover that partying 24 by 7 ain't all it's cracked up to be right? So let's look at our own lives just for a minute. It's possible, you know, even for someone who says, 'Well, I'm a Christian' to have some form of rebellion going on in their lives. I was at a Christian Bible study some years ago and we were talking about things, there was a young woman there who was working in the church and she was doing all sorts of things and she expressed a very strong opinion. She said, "Look, I agree with just about everything that God says, but I don't agree with this abortion thing. Like it's a woman's choice, you know. If a woman wants to have an abortion she should be able too." Great, that's an opinion, that's a view. But if we really listen to what God is saying, really go and read about what's going on in the mother's womb. It tells us God is putting that person together. We can't take a part of what He says and reject the rest, that's rebellion. People want to accept God on their own terms. I don't agree with that bit about God. No, God can, I'll have all of this bit of God but I won't have that bit of God. People go to church and put on the façade and yet there's a cold war there's a détente going on between husband and wife. I wonder if we can just take a few minutes, each one of us, to think about what rebellion is going on in my life really? What are the areas, what's the one thing, what are the multiple things, how am I rebelling against God? Because as sure as God made little green apples, if there is rebellion there will also be symptoms that are causing us pain. What's hurting? What's empty? They're a cause and effect relationship, the prodigal rejected his Dad, he squandered the money and now he's starving. You and I reject Dad, and that's what Jesus calls Him, through our attitudes or through the things we do or whatever it is, and there are impacts. They're there, they always are, they hurt, they rob us, they steal life away from us. It's just one of those natural laws of life. God is God. God made the world, God made us to love Him and to enjoy Him and to be blessed by Him. And when we reject Dad and the family farm, when we reject our birthright and try and take a grab on our inheritance and run off in the other direction, let's not be surprised, when there are consequences. When partying 24/7 falls down around our ears and all of a sudden, we're in the trough with the pigs, yet we hold on to those bags of rubbish for dear life, while they eat away at us like a cancer. Come on, what are they in your life? They're inside, is it time to name them? Is it time to shame them? Is it time for you to look at what you're missing out on, for me to look at what I'm missing out on in this rebellion? Instead of slopping it with the pigs, tomorrow, tomorrow we're going to look at the turning point of the story, but it all began with a son's rebellion against his Dad.

    10 min

  3. 2D AGO

    It's Time to Party // The Long Road Home, Part 1

    There's a streak in each one of us that wants to rebel. You know – kick our heals up and just party. But you can't live like that all the time without there being some consequences. My hunch is that there are a lot of people on this planet who are wandering in some kind of spiritual wilderness. It's a wilderness experience that looks something like this: I've been wandering around here for what seems like years. I know … I know it's out there somewhere but I just can't find it. Well, well probably … probably I can. I just don't think I'm ready, I just don't think I'm good enough. Besides, when I find Him, He'll want me to change. He'll want me to give up this and that and then life won't be fun anymore. So, I'll keep on wandering through the wilderness, that's fun, at least it used to be. But now, now I don't know anymore. It's a dilemma faced by a lot of people. When it comes to God, when it comes to Jesus, some of those people may never really have bumped into Jesus out there at all. Maybe some of those people wandering in that spiritual wilderness have and they've walked with Him for a while, but then they went their own way. And maybe some of them, well they thought they were walking with Him but He seems to have wandered off somewhere while they were busy doing something else. And what started off feeling like an oasis, what started off feeling like it was fun, what started off feeling good, after a while it just feels a bit like a desert, it feels like a wilderness because it is. I think I'll stay here, I don't think I can go back, I don't think I can go looking for Him, if I take that first step back towards Him, oh man … It could be a long road to home. And it doesn't matter from which direction we've come, it doesn't matter where we started from, we can all end up in this same place, in a spiritual wilderness. In a place where, I don't know, there's no fulfilment there's something empty, there's a hole, we're looking for something we can put our finger on it, maybe we've met Jesus somewhere along the way before but we don't know whether He's real or whether He's for us. We all face that dilemma at some point in our lives. What do we do? Where do we go? How do we deal with that dilemma? This week we're going to look at that dilemma from A Different Perspective through a story that Jesus told. It was a parable, not a real story. It was a parable to illustrate what He was trying to get across. And it's a story about the prodigal son. Maybe you've heard about it, maybe you've never heard about it. Today and the next four days on A Different Perspective, we're going to work our way through that story and say, "What was Jesus trying to say to the people He was talking to, and what's He trying to say to us now about this spiritual wilderness experience?" I've called this little series "The Long Road Home". It all starts … starts with an impulse we all have at some point – It's time to party, it's time to kick up our heels, it's time to rebel against authority, against structure, against routine, against norms. Whatever it is, at some point in our lives we all want to kick up our heels. My aunty who's something of a bush philosopher, she would always say, "You know if your kids are kicking up their heels you should thank God because we all kick up our heels at some time in life and its better they do it when they're young than when they're old." You know, I think maybe she's got a point. But we have this impulse to rebel, that's why young folk put studs in their eyebrows and have orange or green hair. Back in my day it was jeans, you know denim jeans in the 60's and 70's were a sign of rebellion, that's why most of us baby boomers, even thought we're in our forties and fifties and dare I say it, even in our sixties, still wear jeans. It was our symbol of rebellion. As adults we rebel against authority in the workplace, maybe we rebel against a marriage relationship and people go out and have affairs. I just don't want to play this same game over and over and over again anymore. I've had enough I want to stop the merry-go-round and get off and do something different. So often people go through a stage whether they're young or whether they're old – a stage of rebellion. You often see it strongest in young folk whose fathers have been Ministers because they've grown up in an environment that's organised, it's Godly and it's all of those things, and they come to that point in their lives when they just want to rebel. Jesus put His finger on that in this parable, this story to explain the wilderness experience. Don't often do this on A Different Perspective but I'd like to read you that story, if you have a Bible, if you'd like to look it up later you'll find it in the New Testament; it's in Luke Chapter 15. This is what Jesus said, we're only going to read a little short part of it today and we'll follow it through during the rest of the week. This is how the story goes: A man had two sons the younger of them said to his father, "Dad, give me my share of the estate that I have coming to me when you die." And so the father distributed the assets to them, and not many days later this youngest son gathered everything he owned together, all he had and travelled to a distant country where he squandered his estate on foolish living. (You may have heard the term prodigal living; we'll look at what that means in a minute.) So here we have the younger of the two sons, he had enough of Dad, he had enough of the life on the farm working with his brother, day after day, the same thing. He was a young man, he wanted to go and experience what's going on in the world, he wanted to go to some far distant land, so he rebelled and he said, "Dad, you know you're going to fall off your twig one day well you might as well give me the money now, and I want to spend it the way I want to spend it." I often look at the decision but his father said, "Well, here is your inheritance go and do what you think." And off this young man goes, partying, drinking, wild parties, prostitutes; you name it he was into it. Now over the course of this week we'll see how this plays itself out, but it began with a rebellion. Jesus tells this story to explain the long road back, but it begins with a rebellion. It begins with saying to Dad, "I've had enough of you! There is a lure of life out there of me doing it my way." As people wander through this spiritual wilderness maybe they can ask themselves a question, maybe that's you, maybe you can ask yourself some questions. At what point did I rebel? What does my brand of rebellion look like in life? What form does it take? Because we hang on to it, there's a pride about our rebellion, we don't want to admit it, it ain't working. But we don't want to let go of the things that we've put this emotional investment in to. We'll talk about that a bit tomorrow that whole thing that I've made a choice, I've gone and done it my way and it's kind of … well … it's embarrassing when we have to say, "I got it wrong." And so often people are wandering through a spiritual wilderness, aimlessly and they have a sense that there's some root cause that there's some root rebellion, there's something that they got wrong but they don't want to let it go. And as long as they hang on to it there's that lostness and emptiness inside, however successful they might appear on the outside. The very first step on that long road home is seeing the wilderness for what it is, seeing that original rebellion for what it is, naming it, owning it, saying it, saying, "Yep that's me! I've done that, I'm the one that's rebelled. I'm the one that told Dad to take his farm and look after it himself, I'm going to go and live my life my way." There are always consequences to that sort of rebellion. What does it look like in your life? What does it look like in my life? Over the next four days we're going to work our way through this story and see what Jesus was saying about the long road home.

    10 min

  4. 5D AGO

    Forgiving the Really Big Things // Forgive and Forget, Part 5

    You have a son. He's out walking one night. A car hits him. Leaves him for dead on the freeway so that a few minutes later, the next car on that dark road kills him. Imagine. This week on a different perspective we've been talking about forgiveness. In a world where we often experience emotional bumps and bruises it turns out that forgiveness is as important to our emotional well being as physical healing is to our bodies. But every now and then in life a tsunami hits, something so incredibly overwhelming that we could have never predicted it or imagined how we would cope. I always thought that the most incredibly difficult thing would be to bury your own child. To stand by the graveside and look at that wooden box and think, "It should be the other way around." What if someone killed your child? How would we get on and live life? I'm joined again today with Lorraine Watson who's going to take us through exactly that, Lorraine, welcome. Lorraine Watson: It's good to be here, Bernie. Berni Dymet: So Lorraine, your son died recently. How long ago was that? Lorraine Watson: Just over 18 months. Berni Dymet: That's pretty close; it's not that far. Lorraine Watson: No, it isn't. Berni Dymet: How did that happen? What happened? Lorraine Watson: Well, my son was running across a motorway where he shouldn't have been running in the middle of the night and the car hit him. The man left the accident without stopping and left him lying on the ground. Subsequently some minutes later another big BMW hit him and killed him. Berni Dymet: Can you remember when you got the phone call when they told you? Lorraine Watson: Yes, we got the phone call from his wife and I can still remember the absolute horror in her voice as she kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" as if it was her fault. When we heard the news it was the worst thing that you could imagine. Berni Dymet: Yes, it must be a tough thing to try and even get your mind around that. Lorraine Watson: Well, for quite a period of time we couldn't move, we just sat. It is almost impossible to imagine. He was our eldest son. Berni Dymet: He had kids himself? Lorraine Watson: He had two little boys that he left behind. Berni Dymet: How did they cope? Lorraine Watson: It was very difficult for them. They were four and five and the little boy particularly, the four year old was very, very angry and he kept saying, "I'm sick of this, I just want my daddy back!" So that was really hard. And because they look very like him it's very hard to see them as well at that time. Berni Dymet: What's his name? Lorraine Watson: Chris. Berni Dymet: Tell us about him. What was he like? Lorraine Watson: Chris was a very active person. He was a runner and just enjoyed life really. He was a businessman and a very successful one and he just liked doing all sorts of different things really. Berni Dymet: So did they catch the guy that knocked him down? What happened there? Lorraine Watson: Well, the first guy took his car and hid it at a people's place and they saw the crime watch program that featured the accident. They knew that this car had done the damage so they rang into the police. So he was found almost immediately, but he denied it. And for 12 months we had court case after court case trying to determine what had actually happened. Berni Dymet: And the outcome has been? Lorraine Watson: He admitted it at the last moment that he had used the car. Berni Dymet: So justice has taken its course presumably. Lorraine Watson: Well, he only got some hours, community service and $10,000 to his children because they couldn't, in fact they didn't prove that he killed him because he didn't. Because the second car actually did that. Berni Dymet: Wow, how does that feel? Lorraine Watson: It was really horrific. I think the worst part during it all was the thought of Chris lying on the road in the dark on his own alive waiting. Berni Dymet: So just the simple act of him having stopped and pulled Chris off the motorway would have saved his life. Lorraine Watson: The coroner said it was quite within the realms of possibility. Berni Dymet: Were you angry? Lorraine Watson: At the time, dreadfully angry. It was a needless sort of a thing for me. And if he had stopped, then he would not have been even charged. And if he could have reached out to us in any way, we would have been very happy to let that incident go. But he couldn't do either of these things. Berni Dymet: So how do you move on from that? I mean, how do you stay on the track? You obviously have been through a horrendous ride with your husband and your family. Have you done anything to move on from that? Lorraine Watson: Well, one of the first things we determined was that we were going to grieve loud and long, as we needed to do. And Allan and I both did that. In the process I thought I would go mad. It was just as if insanity was just a heartbeat away. If I hadn't chosen, I could have just flipped over. And it was a real temptation, I might say. I forgot all the rest of the children; it was only this darkness in my life really. And then what I talked about on yesterday's program came back to mind. How God had healed me through forgiveness and how He had forgiven on the cross. And it was like a light turned on for me and I knew that I needed to forgive this man, Jeremy. And so I also knew that I could not do that in my own strength. Berni Dymet: It's a big ask, isn't it? Lorraine Watson: It was huge and so I just had to ask God and the Holy Spirit to give me that forgiveness for him. And He did. And it was such a release; such a freedom came in my spirit, when I could not worry about that man's sentence or lack of sentence. That man Jeremy; he's not that man to me anymore. He's Jeremy. That I could see the pain that he was in and the fear that was in him. And so I said to God, "I would like this man as a son to replace the son that has been taken, in a spiritual sense, not in a physical sense because we have no contact with him. He does not want that. And so I pray for him and I believe the Lord will save him and bring him into the family really. Berni Dymet: There was something that you said, that when you forgave him you no longer were worrying about the sentence that he got. It's interesting to me that as we forgive someone our sense of justice, our sense of this person should be punished for leaving my son on the road to be killed by someone else. We do have a deep sense of justice, don't we? It's probably one of the biggest pains you went through; I hear you saying. Lorraine Watson: Yes, it definitely was. Berni Dymet: And yet this act of forgiveness takes away our need for retribution. Lorraine Watson: It's true. And that surprises me too. It still surprises me that I don't have that need to keep poking around and complaining about and pulling this man down really. Berni Dymet: If you could say anything to Jeremy today, what would you say to him? Lorraine Watson: I would say to him, "I care about you. I care about your life and I will go on praying for you until such time as you find the peace that you need. " Berni Dymet: Wow! Do you think praying for Jeremy has changed you? Lorraine Watson: I think so, because when I pray now it's with a sense of almost anticipation and an excitement that God will do something that I can't possibly do. And that leads me on to a sense of victory over something that I couldn't possibly have managed myself. And the scripture that has always been mine is that "All things work together for good." And God has proved himself yet again. Berni Dymet: Amen. Lorraine thank you so much for sharing that with me; it can't have been easy. It's only 18 months ago but it's a testimony to the amazing healing that God brings when we let go of something and we just open our hearts to this whole thing of forgiveness. As we forgive others the way that Christ forgave us on the cross. Lorraine thank you so much. Lorraine Watson: Thanks Berni.

    10 min

  5. 6D AGO

    Forgiving Brings Healing // Forgive and Forget, Part 4

    How do you get over the hurts of the past? You know, really let go so they don't hurt anymore. Well, today, we're going to meet an amazing woman – Lorraine Watson – who has a real story to tell. These days psychologists and psychiatrists talk about the fact that the act of forgiving someone often results in healing. On Monday I talked about some research with some incest survivors. Fifty percent of them were asked to participate in some workshops on forgiveness. The psychologists who conducted the research concluded that the forgiveness resulted in dramatically reduced anxiety and depression. I quote, "We've never seen such strong results." Abuse, sexual, physical, mental, emotional is actually much more common than we think. You probably don't know Lorraine Watson, but as someone who's traveled down that road I was interested in talking about this whole forgiveness thing through with her. Lorraine, welcome. Lorraine Watson: It's good to be here Bernie. Berni Dymet: Now tell us a bit about your earlier years. You had a tough time of it. Lorraine Watson: Yes, I was born the sixth child in a family of nine. Berni Dymet: Obviously New Zealand. Lorraine Watson: Yes, the first daughter after five sons. So that in itself was a problem. But it was an extremely dysfunctional family as well. Berni Dymet: In what ways? Lorraine Watson: We had no money and we had no emotional things going on in the family. We had no support and there was also sexual dysfunction, as well. Bernie Dymet: Now you are saying that you went through some abuse. What form did that abuse take? Lorraine Watson: It was sexual; it was within the family and without. There were people like my father's friends and other people in the area. It was a very small area and it was a very, I would say, incestuous area. Berni Dymet: How did that feel when you were growing up? I guess as a kid you don't know any different. Can you remember the sort of emotions and the feelings you were going through with all of that? Lorraine Watson: I did know it was different. I did know it wasn't safe to bring my friends home and when I went to any other person's house it was like I lived on a different level to them. There was just no recognition for me, that I was a person in my own right really. Berni Dymet: So, you grew up and you came out of that. What impact did that have on you as an adult? Lorraine Watson: Well, the first thing I think was that it was being sexually dysfunctional myself. I did not know how to relate to people on the level that was healthy. I didn't know how to form relationships. I longed for them, but what I really found was that I wanted to be loved in the way that I knew love, it was definitely sexual and nothing else. Berni Dymet: Ok, so you got married, had a husband, you had kids. Did this affect your relationship with him? Lorraine Watson: We married very young and for all the wrong reasons, but we did love each other and because of my faith, that my mother had passed on to me really, I knew that my marriage was forever. And so we worked very hard on our marriage. But we had six children very quickly and I definitely was not a good mother. I did not know how to relate to them either. I just did not have relationships skills at all. So that was very hard for me. But I worked very hard. It was what I thought that you did to get on was to work hard. Berni Dymet: So how does all this come to a head? I mean you sit here and talk about it very calmly now. What happened to you? Lorraine Watson: Well, I was always a churchgoer and my husband also had joined the church. I had a belief in God, not a personal belief, but I knew He was there. But during the pregnancy of my sixth child my body started to really dysfunction physically. So my back started to act up, I could not sit down often. They had me in a surgical corset. Berni Dymet: It must be hard when you're pregnant. Lorraine Watson: It was very hard when I was pregnant and there was a lot of pain. But if I stopped it would be worse so I pushed myself very hard. But during the later stages of that pregnancy my back stopped functioning altogether. Berni Dymet: What does that mean? Lorraine Watson: I just sat down one day and couldn't get up. And the pain was horrific but then I lost all feeling from my waist down. At this point I had cried out to God. If you are there God, and I knew He was, but it was certainly desperation, if you are there somewhere there must be something more than this. Berni Dymet: It's kind of a difference between knowing in your head and knowing in your heart, isn't it? Lorraine Watson: It was really. So when I lost the feeling in my body they took me off to the hospital in an ambulance with oxygen and all the bells and whistles. And when I did arrive there they found that I was having labor pains. Berni Dymet: It must have been pretty scary; you're losing the function of your legs and your feet. You've got five kids, one on the way. That would be exciting. Lorraine Watson: It was really bad because that's the only thing I remember about David's birth was that, how on earth am I going to look after six children from a wheelchair. Berni Dymet: OK, so you cry out to God. What happens? The baby is born… Lorraine Watson: I'm not sure of the timing really, but somewhere among that God heard my prayer and I found Him in a new way through a pray group, through a Pentecostal prayer group. And I gave my life to Him in a new way and I was baptized in the Spirit. Now that brought a lot of joy. I was very excited about that and thought that life was never going to be difficult again. But six weeks down the track everything fell apart and the first thing the Lord did with me was through His word showed me the power of forgiveness; that I needed to forgive every person in my life. Berni Dymet: How do you do that? Lorraine Watson: Well, really it was a decision to start with. But I was very sure that this was God's word and that somehow I needed to do it. So, I really, in my head really, made that decision and sat down and went through every single thing that I had gone through and consciously forgave. I said the words that "I forgave these people." Berni Dymet: What happened next? Lorraine Watson: Then I had a real sense of God saying to me that if I was willing to forgive totally my father then he would find God, which subsequently he did forty years later. But it wasn't an emotional decision really, but there was a lightness in myself after I had done that. But then the unexpected happened that my body healed. My back was totally healed. I have had no problem with the back since then. Berni Dymet: So you forgave, how long after that forgiveness, active forgiveness did you become well? Lorraine Watson: After the forgiveness it took a long period of time because it kept on coming up, other incidents kept coming up. And so I guess the process took a few months really; gradually my back just got better and better. And then I realized I didn't wear my corset and there was nothing wrong with my body. Not only my physical body but there was something happening emotionally for me. Berni Dymet: People say, "Oh Ok, she had a sore back and it got better. Is that a real healing?" Lorraine Watson: I know it was a real healing because there was no pain at all and I can't remember not having pain in my back from a teenager. The only time I might get a twinge is when I know my stress levels are high and I need to deal with something. And it's just tiny, not an ongoing problem at all. Berni Dymet: That's really great! Thanks so much for that. I'd love to catch up with you again tomorrow. We're going to talk about a different sort of forgiveness to do with the death of you son just not that long ago. So it will be really great to catch up tomorrow. Thanks so much for that. Lorraine Watson: Thanks Bernie.

    10 min

  6. FEB 11

    When God Forgave Us // Forgive and Forget, Part 3

    We all know that we need to forgive people. That's the theory, But let's now put the shoe on the other foot and talk about God's forgiveness. Does He really need to forgive us?  Really? Forgiveness is one of those fluffy words that quite often we pay very little attention to. But when you think about it, it's pretty obvious that without forgiveness, we can't have effective relationships. Without forgiveness on a daily basis between husband and wife a marriage falls apart. And they do in epidemic proportion. Without forgiving our work colleagues for their shortcomings and failures, workplaces become a sieving bed of politics and strife. And you know, they are. We can't do anything really effective in a relationship when there's resentment and strife. Forgiveness is the first and only real step towards really dealing with issues. But what about God? I mean, if God's God, why is forgiveness really such a big deal for him? Surely none of us is really that bad. For me this whole issue of God forgiving us is one of the toughest issues I've ever had to get my mind around. Now I'm the first to admit I have faults and mistakes. Absolutely. And you can too. We all say, "None of us is perfect." But if there is a God. If God is God, all powerful, all loving. Why doesn't He just look at me and say, "Well there's a guy who's trying to live a good life. He's not perfect, but hey, who is? He's in. Heaven, eternal life. This guy is trying to live a good life. He's good enough." Have you ever wondered that? I mean, come on God, if you make the rules, if you can do whatever you want, why don't you just accept me for who I am. And yet, we turn around and we watch the evening news. You know, the latest drunk driver who's killed a young kid. The latest sex abuse scandal, the latest corporate executive who's taken a short-term unauthorised loan and neglected to pay it back. And something rises up inside us . You know, they should be punished. That drunk driver who walked out of the pub and got in his car and ran over that kid. He deserves to be locked up for life. That's our reaction isn't it? Are you with me so far? On the one hand, we all have in-built innate sense of justice when it comes to other people. On the other hand, when it comes to us, to you and me, we want to rationalise our mistakes, explain away our selfishness, ignore some of the destruction that's left in our wake. I remember thinking, well that's all well and good. I'm not a drunk driver who's killed a kid. I'm not a murderer or rapist. I'm not any of those things, so why should God have to forgive me? I'm just human. Hmm. But imagine. Imagine if His standard is one of perfect love. A love that never fails. A love that never stops searching for, caring for us. What if this God has a love so wide, so wide, so deep for us that we can never fathom it. Just imagine you go outside at night away from the smog and the light of the city and you look up at the sky and you see all the stars of heaven lighted above, and God says to you, "Compared to the vastness of the universe that I've created for you, you are so much more important. Those things are just a drop in the ocean in my heart. I love you. I love you with a perfect love." Imagine if that's the standard that God applies. Now let's apply the same innate sense of justice that we feel when we're watching the evening news set against this standard of perfect love. And anything short of that perfect love, well, it just falls short in this deep and mighty Father-heart of God. There are two things. There is love and there's justice. Both need to be satisfied. It's in our nature. So why wouldn't it be in God's nature? If we really, truly love someone, we won't sweep their selfishness, their failures, their rejections, their alienations, their addictions, their anger, their resentment, their hatred – we won't sweep those things under the carpet. If we really love someone, we'll do whatever it costs. You know when we look at God and we say, "Well why doesn't God just accept me the way I am? Why doesn't He just accept me and give me eternal life and say, 'Hey, this person is human?'" When we look at God like that, we're judging God by the wrong standard. We really need to judge God, if I can use that term, by the standard of His perfect love. A love so great that He would send His Son Jesus Christ, the most valuable person in His life, and allow Him to be beaten, to be spat on, to be abused, to be nailed to a cross to die for you and me. God is a just God, and justice needs to be satisfied. But God is a God of grace, a God of love. And when He looks at you, when He looks at me, His heart just overflows with love. There are no words to describe this. And so He sent Jesus His Son to die on a cross for me so He can look at me, He can look at you and say, "There's a person who has placed their faith in my Son. There is person who has said, 'I fall short of the glory of God. I fall short of God's standard of perfect love. Nothing I can ever do will ever bring me up to that standard. And I know that God has to judge by the standard of perfect love, and so what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to look at this Jesus who died for me on the cross, and I'm going to place my faith in Him.'" What the world says is, "Hey, I'm beautiful. Hey, I've got some mistakes, but go out there and have fun. Go out there and enjoy life. Do what feels good." That's fine, until you look at Jesus hanging on the cross. That's fine until you encounter a love so tender, so beautiful, so high, so wide, so deep, that we just can't fathom it. And as we walk through that love, as we look at God, as we look at the pain that Jesus suffered for us on the cross, we can do nothing but come to the realisation that we fall short of that love. And more than that, Jesus went to the cross. God sent His Son to die on a cross for you and me, knowing full well that when you and I came into this world, we'd reject that perfect love on a daily basis. While we were still out there rejecting Him, in a sense, Christ died for us. Sin is such an old-fashioned word. We talk about low self-esteem. We talk about selfishness or poor choices or whatever we use. Whatever term we use, we fall short of that perfect love, a love so great that it's not in the business of sweeping those things under the carpet. It's a love so great that it's in the business of dealing with our failures to set us free, to live a life eternal, free from those things. We need to call those things in our life exactly what they are; wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, whether we've never believed in Jesus, whether we've been walking in faith with Him for 50 years, let's call sin, sin. Let's name it and let's judge it by the perfect love that God has for us. And then let's say, "Hey, I can't do anything. I can't please God because I know that I have sinned in my bones." But what I can do is look at this Jesus hanging on the cross for me and say: Father I believe. I believe in this Jesus. I accept this Jesus as my Savior. And I want to experience and taste the perfect love that you have for me today tomorrow, and next week, forever.

    10 min

  7. FEB 10

    Forgiving is Accepting // Forgive and Forget, Part 2

    Every person we will ever meet, is going to annoy us at some point. Something in their personality will grate, something they do will hurt … so what's the secret of having a great relationship anyway? It seems that there are really only two types of people in this world: those who love getting up early in the morning and those who don't, those who love cats and those who hate them. Or, you know what I mean. It seems that different people just come out of different moulds. We have different likes and dislikes, different strengths and weaknesses. And as much as those differences make life interesting, they make life fun. They can also just plain get on our nerves. So how do we make sure that for our part, the differences between us and other people become a source of pleasure instead of pain, richness instead of resentment? As I've watched people over the years I've come to the conclusion that with every strength in a person, there's an equal and opposite weakness. It's like Newton's Law of Physics. You know, you meet someone with really good insights. You know they see things so clearly; they articulate a situation so well. And you go, wow, you know that person's clever. But often on the down side, they can be judgmental and blunt; they can be intolerant of other people's opinions that differ from their own. When you meet a person with a real servant heart. My wife's like this. They're the sort of person that always gets up to get the coffees. When you're out at dinner, they always get up and help the hostess and say, "Let me help you clean up." They're always the first to volunteer for something. It's wonderful being around someone like that. But on the flip-side, people like that can be critical of others who don't help as much as they do. They can be pushy or interfering in their eagerness to help. Or when you meet a strong and capable leader. You know, someone with real vision and that gift and ability to get other people just to follow them. But on the down side leaders like that can become upset with people who don't share the same goals and visions. They can regress into using people to accomplish their goals and visions. And have you ever met the sort of person that's got what I call a pastoral gifting? You know they're just the sort of person that will pull alongside someone else who's struggling with whatever. And they'll just spend whatever time is needed talking, having coffee, visiting them in hospital. Have you met those people when you think if I was ever stranded on a desert island, that's the sort of person I'd like to be stranded on an island with. The flip-side though is that people like that are really good managers of their time. They're rarely people who can force a whole bunch of things into a given time because the whole point of their gift and ability is that they don't worry about time as much as they worry about relationships. There's a pattern isn't there? Every strength seems to come with a corresponding weakness. I wonder if any of those ring a bell for you. For me, absolutely. My gig is insights and teaching and leadership. That's, I guess, what I do. And as I came as a businessman, someone who'd worked in business and commerce for sixteen or seventeen years, into Christian ministries, people saw some skills and abilities and thought, well gee I could use that skill in my ministry. I could use that ability that Berni has in my ministry. And they asked me to do a whole bunch of things like pastor a church. Can I tell you something? I think I would be hopeless at pastoring a church because I don't have the heart to do it. I don't have the sort of pastoral giftings, the gift to want to sit with people for a long time. That's just not me. And so it's really easy to look at someone and only want to harvest the things that are good about them. And yet, when you interact with them on a day-to-day basis, it's the other side of the coin. It's the weaknesses. It's their failures that hurt us, that grate on us, that ultimately drive us nuts. Reality? You and I are a package of strengths and weaknesses. I know I am and it's very true of me. I have some strengths but I also have some weaknesses. And the person that knows most about my weaknesses is obviously my wife. She could sit here for quite a long time and share with you all of my weaknesses. You wonder why I never have my wife on the program! And you know if it's true of me it's true of you too. But the funny thing is, we are so quick to justify our own weaknesses. Well you know, it's just how I am. I just can't change that thing about me. But then we look at other people. And even though it's true about them too. Even though every other person that you and I will ever meet is a package deal of strengths and weaknesses, what we want them to do is we want them to be only strengths. We don't want to accept the package deal that comes with every person that we meet. And as we get to know their weaknesses and limitations just that little bit better, we go from boy what a wonderful person with all these strengths, to a state of mild annoyment, to a state of anger, to a state of resentment as we get to know their weaknesses better and better. Question: Who right now do you resent? I mean who's driving you just crazy in life right now, grating on you? If you look at that person, my hunch is that you would be able to come and sit here behind this microphone and list their weaknesses down to the 'nth detail with at least three case examples of each weakness. But probably at the same time if I asked you, "Well list their strengths as well," maybe the way that you describe their strengths wouldn't be as full and complete and with quite as many case examples as their weaknesses. Because when someone's driving us nuts, we focus on their weaknesses. We don't focus on their strength. Yesterday we talked about forgiveness as something that we do after the event. You know when someone's hurt us or someone's done something wrong, we know we need to forgive them in order to still have a relationship with them. In order for us to get on with it, to get over the pain, and to be able to live our lives free of the hurts from the past. But there's another form of forgiveness that happens before the event. And that forgiveness is called acceptance. It's saying, this person whom I know is a package deal. And you know something? Just like I accept everything I like about them, I am also going to accept their weaknesses. Maybe it's someone at work, and before you walk into the room and have the meeting, you know exactly how they're going to react. You know exactly what weaknesses are going to emerge. You just know because you've seen the pattern over and over again. And you decide to forgive them before you walk into the meeting, so that when they happen, you can let it wash straight past you. We grow and we become mature when we are able to apply the same excuses to someone else's weaknesses that we apply only too readily to our own. Maybe wives it's when your husband comes home, and he just doesn't want to talk, and he sits down in front of the television, and you get so angry with him because he doesn't communicate. And right then there's a decision to make. You can either nag him. You can give him the silent treatment on the one hand. Or you can say, hang on, this is just the way that my husband copes with stress. And he needs my help. I might just show him some love, some affection. I might just give him a bit of space and then come and just stroke his cheek. You know how many husbands would die to have their wives do that for them. And husbands and maybe, you know, when your wife is scratchier, and she's got PMT, and it really hurts because she's ignoring you. And you feel like she's emotionally not there. Well, is it her fault? Or can you say, well that's something that I just have to love her through, and I will accept her as a package deal with that included because she's my wife and I love her. The Apostle Paul, two thousand years ago, wrote a letter to a church in Corinth and he said: Look, we're like a body. And a body has a foot and hand. If the foot said, 'well the hand's not like me. The hand can't make the body walk around.' And the foot said, 'I don't want the hand.' And if the ear said, 'well I don't need the eye. Let's make the whole body an ear.' Where would we be? It's a good picture isn't it? I can point back to some clear decisions of accepting people in my life as a package deal. Can I tell you something? The people whom I have accepted as a package deal, I have a great relationship with. Because when the weaknesses surface that I know are going to surface. You know something? I can smile to myself inside and say, "I'm going to love them anyway".

    10 min

  8. FEB 9

    Forgiving is Forgetting // Forgive and Forget, Part 1

    When someone does something wrong – something that hurts us, it's easy to say, "I forgive you". But actually living out that forgiveness – what does that look like? In a recent edition, the magazine, Psychology Today, carried an article on forgiveness. In part, the article reports that until recently psychologists regarded forgiveness as the business of the clergy and theologians. But now, mental health experts are subjecting forgiveness to the microscope of scientific scrutiny with no apologies. It goes on to tell of 2 psychologists, Drs. Robert Enright and Suzanne Freedman, working with people who have been sexually abused, found that none expressed any desire to forgive their perpetrator. So in a controlled study, they selected 50 percent of the group to participate in a series of workshops on forgiveness. So, 12 months down the track, what were the findings of the study? What happened with the 50 percent who attended the forgiveness workshops? Not only did all eventually forgive, but a year later they reported far less anxiety and depression than the non forgiving control group. Researchers concluded that they had never seen such a strong result with incest survivors. They go on to say that "forgiving is giving up the resentment that you are entitled to." "The paradox," says psychologists Enright, Friedman, "is that by giving this gift to the other, it's the gift giver who ends up being healed." You know, I wonder whether in our society today whether for too long we've treated forgiveness as something that's fluff. It's one of those "touchy-feely" emotions. Oh well, yeah, I should forgive someone, but it's not really important. But in reality, forgiveness is a really hard thing to do. For those who dare to take that high path, I wonder whether there's something better along that path, something that we could maybe never imagine. It doesn't matter how we look at life. Everyday, everywhere people do things that either hurt us or offend us or threaten us. Sometimes it's people we love. It's the people who are the closest to us. Sometimes it's people we work with. And sometimes it's people that we don't even know. That person behind us in the car that just beeps the horn at us, because maybe we're just going a little bit too slow for them. And the things that hurt us, or offend us, or threaten us, sometimes they're small things. Sometimes, they're things that are quite important to us. Sometimes, they're really really big things. You might have heard me say once before that as a kid at school, I was never one of the beautiful people. I had snide remarks. I was ignored. I was left off the team. Sometimes at work a bunch of people go out for a drink after work and no one thinks to invite you or me. Those things can really hurt and when we feel the pain, we want to retaliate. We want to lash out. We want to pay them back. We want to get our pound of flesh from these people. "Well, if they ignored me, you know something, I can ignore them, too. Maybe those people who went out after that drink last night at work and they didn't invite us. Maybe when they send me an email today at work or need something from me at work, I might just ignore them. I might just frustrate them. I might just play hard to get. I might just completely block them from getting what they want to do." And before you know it, something small, something that somebody did that they may not have met anything by it. It was just an oversight. All of a sudden, something small escalates just like that into something significant in an instant. You know what I mean. Then sometimes we're dealing with significant hurts. With hurts, you know, an ingrained problem with your boss at work. For some reason, the boss just doesn't want to be fair. For some reason, every time there's a promotion, he or she overlooks you and me. Maybe you feel they're lying about you or maybe there's a real problem in our marriage. Maybe the relationship between husband and wife just, you know, over the years, it's tired. Haven't you heard people say "we've grown apart"? These are significant problems, they really get us down. And sometimes we have to deal with major hurts. You know, when people really, really hurt us. Later this week we're going to be talking to Lorraine Watson, we are going to be talking about abuse as a child, about our own children being killed by a hit and run driver. People go through divorce. You know, every now and then in life we have to suffer really major losses. We all deal with these things. Everyday. Whether they're small, significant or major. Whether it is with people we love, we work with, or people we don't know. And it turns out how we respond has a huge bearing on the quality of our life. Lets go back to that study that I mentioned at the outset, of the sexually abused women. The 50% who forgave, remember what the report said, they experienced far less anxiety and depression 12months down the track. In fact that startled the psychologists doing the research. They were surprised. They thought, we have never seen such amazing results with people who have been through abuse. But you know, it's no surprise to God. The apostle Paul, a couple of thousand years ago wrote this, "Never avenge yourselves, leave that bit to God. No, no. If your enemies are hungry feed them. If they are thirsty give them something to drink, don't be overcome by evil. But overcome evil with good." You know, this guy Paul has the habit of putting such profound truths into such a small number of words. Psychologists maybe have just figured out that God has known all along. That avenging yourself, getting revenge, something that we mostly do by living out an active resentment towards someone, you know the sort of thing. The silent treatment. We just ignore them. We just "Deal" with them. And we push them away. It's not the answer. True forgiveness is laying down for good our right to punish someone. And that is really hard. Whether it is being ignored by someone or whether it is something as big as sexual abuse, hurt, hurts. And when we are feeling hurt, when we are experiencing the pain of rejection or pain of abuse or something really little, all we really experience is that pain, right then and there. And to forgive someone, to lay down our right to hurt them back. To ignore them back, to punish them back, my experience is that when I have done that, when I have made a real decision that this person who has just ignored me, I am not going to punish them. I am not going to hurt them back. When I've made those decisions in life, you know something, it has never felt good at the time. It has never been a fun thing to do. You know, the cupboard doesn't open and the orchestra starts playing when I forgive someone. For me it never feels like that. And yet the paradox is that it is the only thing that really sets us free. But wait there is more… you see what Paul wrote there… he said, "Look don't avenge yourselves, don't try and punish people. That's much better left to God, He is a much better judge of character, He is a much better judge of what is going to work and what is not going to work. No, no. If you have an enemy someone that is hurting you, if they are hungry feed them. If they are thirsty give them something to drink. Overcome their evil by blessing them." 99.9% of people respond to being blessed. Maybe not straight away, but eventually they do. And when they do, a whole new world of relationship opens up for us. Not only do we feel better because we have been set free from the pain of what after all, they did wrong. But we have this relationship there to explore. People say, "Forgive and forget." But what Paul is saying here, what I believe God is saying here is, there is a step in the middle… Forgive, it is a decision it is tough… But it is the only way to set us free. Then bless them. And I reckon that is even harder. But it is the action that reinforces the decision in our hearts. Bless them, deliberately step out and support this person when someone is stabbing them behind their back. And then forget. We never forget the thing that they did. What we end up forgetting by blessing them is the pain and the resentment, that we would carry round in our hearts like a cancer.

    10 min
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God has a habit of wanting to speak right into the circumstances that we're travelling through here and now; the very issues that we each face in our everyday lives. Everything from dealing with difficult people … to discovering how God speaks to us; from overcoming stress … to discovering your God-given gifts and walking in the calling that God has placed on your life And that's what these daily 10 minute A Different Perspective messages are all about.

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