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. 1D AGO

    I Find Myself with a Dilemma // Discover Your Destiny, Part 5

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

    10 min

  2. 2D AGO

    A Plan Just For Me // Discover Your Destiny, Part 4

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

    10 min

  3. 3D AGO

    The Perennial Pollution Problem // Discover Your Destiny, Part 3

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

    10 min

  4. 4D AGO

    Before Time Began // Discover Your Destiny, Part 2

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

    10 min

  5. 5D AGO

    Lost Without a Passport // Discover Your Destiny, Part 1

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

    10 min

  6. APR 17

    Receiving God's Word // Power Unlimited, Part 10

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

    10 min

  7. APR 16

    Getting Practical - Useful Resources // Power Unlimited, Part 9

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

    10 min

  8. APR 15

    About the Bible Old and New // Power Unlimited, Part 8

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

    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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