Christianityworks Official Podcast: Recent Episodes

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Sometimes, to be honest, life can feel really dry. You look out across the landscape of your life and all you can see is dry bones. You know there’s more out there, but right now you just can’t see how it’ll ever feel “alive” again.

Valley of Dry Bones Have you ever noticed that some people seem to go on with God in a really powerful and exciting way and other people who say, "well I’m a Christian"; I don’t know, they tend to be, if I can use the term "puced", as you know, some people just don’t seem to be living out the joy and the power and the victory that a Christian life should represent. I wonder why that is?

Well ... Jesus called us to go and make disciples; He called us to be disciples, not just believers. I think there is a distinction; a difference. A disciple, well, there’s something resolute, there’s something firm in their direction, they have a sense of where God is taking them and they’re radical believers with their lives, in who Jesus is and what Jesus says. So they "hear" the Word of God but they also "do" the Word of God. Someone who’s a believer and yet not a disciple, well, that person can believe; that person can live the story of Christ intermittently, but there is a sense of floating, there’s a sense of they’re not really deeply committed to be followers of Jesus Christ.

There’s a wishy-washiness about just being a believer and not a disciple; being just a believer is like hearing but not doing and as I said, the Lord calls us to be His disciples. The Lord calls us to go on in strength and power and victory, to live an abundant and exciting and amazing life. I really get excited when I think about what God has called us to. Now I’m not saying that somehow, a disciple has it all together, but they’re on the path, they are committed to the journey with the Lord, wherever He wants to take them. A believer has a sort of an intellectual ascent to the Word of God but they are so often controlled by feelings and circumstances and we know that feelings are fickle; we know that circumstances blow an ill-wind today and a good wind tomorrow. We can’t predict circumstances – we can’t rely entirely on our feelings.

Jesus is about making disciples and not believers. That is why we are going through a series of teaching at the moment that I’ve called, “Taking God at His Word,” because it seems to me that someone who is committed to Christ, committed to walking the walk with Jesus, is someone who takes God at His Word. God has some amazing promises in His Word, the Bible.

Last week we looked at the promise that He will take us just as we are. He will take us with all our weaknesses and frailties and even despite that we can come boldly before His throne of grace. If you have a Bible, let’s go quickly back there because it’s an awesome Scripture; in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 15 and 16, where it says this.

We don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one, who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. In other words, because Jesus knows what it is like; because He has walked in our shoes on this earth as a man, because of that He can sympathise with our circumstances and because of that, we should come boldly before the throne of grace.

In other words God’s having a party and it‘s come as you are. We don’t have to get all dressed up; we don’t have to get our lives sorted out to come before God. That’s what happens when we have a relationship with Him, through Jesus Christ.

Today we are going to get on with the next message, which is called, “Can these bones live?” Have you ever looked across at your life and thought, “My life is so dry, it shouldn’t be like this, but as I survey the landscape of my life, it’s like a valley of dry bones? It’s like – can it ever get any better, can I ever have a real sense of vibrant abundant life that I know my relationship with Jesus should bring me?” We all get to that point at sometime. We all get to that stage where we think – my life is just so dry. How’s that going to change? Well, it’s time to take God at His Word.

If you have a Bible, grab it and flip it open to Ezekiel chapter 37. Ezekiel is one of the books of the Old Testament and it comes just after Isaiah, Jeremiah and then the Book of Ezekiel. We are going to chapter 37 and we pick up the story of Israel here, when they have been in exile in Babylon for almost seventy years. This is about the third part of the Book of Ezekiel. The first couple of parts are oracles of judgement against Judah and all the other nations surrounding them but this passage that we’re about to look at, at the beginning of Ezekiel chapter 37, is really early on in the third part and the third part of the book is the book of hope. It’s about the restoration of Israel because as I said, at this point, Israel has been in exile in Babylon for almost seventy years.

God made them a promise; God promised them when He brought them up out of Egypt – remember they spent almost four centuries in slavery in Egypt, after Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. Joseph was a Jew who became Prime Minister of Egypt and so all the tribes of Israel thrived in Egypt and became so populous they were enslaved by Pharaoh and there they lived until they cried out and God heard their cry and sent Moses to bring them out of Egypt. But they lived four hundred years in Egypt and then went through the exodus of forty years through the desert and finally past into the Promised Land – the land of milk and honey, but they didn’t stick with what God called them to do – they didn’t obey God and God’s promise was, “I’ll bless you in your land if you obey me but if you don’t, you’ll lose your land.”

And sure enough, Babylon rose up against them and in 586/587BC, the Babylonian empire over-ran Jerusalem; burnt it, destroyed it, killed a lot of people and took the rest of them into slavery in exile in Babylon. And so these people were thinking, “Woe, what about God’s promises? The temple’s been destroyed – that’s where God lives. Now we’re exiled and Jerusalem is raised to the ground, what about God’s promises?”

So there’s a sense of hopelessness and despair after generations. Living again, in exile in another country, in Babylon and this is what God says into that situation. It’s got powerful implications for us today, but let’s just see what happens. Ezekiel was taken by God – have a listen. Chapter 37 beginning verses 1 and 2. Ezekiel says this:

The hand of the Lord came upon me and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley – it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley and they were very dry.

And here’s this valley full of dry, dead bones. Ezekiel was a priest and he knew the importance of burial. I mean these bones weren’t buried and the reason it happen is they had a treaty with God and they disobeyed God and so the armies of Israel were killed and bodies were left to wild animals and it was God’s punishment. You can read about it – we won’t go there now but in Deuteronomy chapter 28, verses 25 and 26, it explicitly predicts that if Israel doesn’t obey God this will happen – their armies will be destroyed. We find out later in this passage, in verse 11, that these are the bones of the House of Israel.

But what about your house? What about your dry bones? What about the relationships and the sin and the wallowing and the drifting that we sometimes experience in our Christian walk? Sometimes we don’t even know why it is. The thing that God does here is He shows Ezekiel the dry bones, He walks him around. He says, “Get a grip on reality.” Well maybe He’s talking to us today – “Get a grip on reality! What are the dry bones in our lives; the things that are coming to ruin our walk and our relationship with God and the wonderful life that God has planned for us; the dead stuff? What are the dry bones? We are going to look at what God does with the dry bones next.

Life in His Word Ok, so we’re living life and we feel that it’s like this valley of dry bones that Ezekiel is talking about here. Well, what does God do with those dry bones? Let’s pick it up in verse 3 of chapter 37. God says to Ezekiel:

"Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “Lord God, you know.” Then He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Oh, dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, “I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live, I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord you God.”

So this is the first recorded tennis match in the Bible. God serves up and says to Ezekiel, “Can these bones live,” and Ezekiel returns the ball across the net and says, “Well, God, it’s really up to you.” I mean, they’re dead, they’re dry, it’s devastated, it’s hopeless, they’re crunching around together,” God and Ezekiel in this death valley and the truth is that it looks impossible to Ezekiel, but he daren’t say that.

Well, let’s come back to our valley of dry bones; the broken relationships, the persistent sin, the dryness, the drudgery and God asks you or God asks me, “Can these bones live?” How do we answer that? I think we return that to God and say, “Lord, Lord you know.” Israel was in a hopeless situation, the world power of the day, Babylon, had them in slavery, they were spiritually and emotionally and morally and nationally bankrupt. They didn’t know whether God would ever do anything to save them. They didn’t even know if God had the power to do that. Well what does God do? He returns it back to Ezekiel. He says:

"Ezekiel, prophesy; speak over these bones."

What does He return; does He return love or grace or touchy feely or mushy? No, He returns with the Word of God, because the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword. He says:

Ezekiel, prophesy; speak my Word over these bones. Say to them, “Thus says the Lord God, “I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live and I will lay sinews on you and I will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you will live and you will know that I am the Lord your God.”

God’s Word is powerful and mighty. God spoke creation into existence, He said:

Let there be light.

God calls things into existence that don’t yet exist. You can read that in Romans chapter 4 verse 17. Well, what happens? Let’s have a read – verse 7. So Ezekiel writes:

I prophesied as I was commanded to and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked and there were sinews on them and flesh had come up on them and skin had covered them, but there wasn’t any breath in them yet.

Surprise! Surprise! God said, “Speak my Word over this impossible situation,” so Ezekiel did and through God’s Word, in this vision that Ezekiel had, the bones came together. They had sinew, they had flesh, they had life; no breath yet, but they had life.

God’s Word is spoken and the dry bones become flesh and blood. Our problem, our circumstances, our feelings – when we get hungry in our situation, our valley of dry bones – where do we go? Do we go and feed on the world’s wisdom? Do we go and feed on our friend’s wisdom? Do we pick up the phone and have a whinge to a friend, or do we come to God’s Word and listen to what He has to say about our lives and His plan for our lives and then do we take Him at His Word? Jesus spent forty days and nights in the desert; He was hungry, He was famished, He was thirsty and when the devil tries to tempt Him in His valley of dry bones, this is what He says. He says, “Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Come on! Where do we go?

We can have a junk food diet of TV shows and movies and women’s magazine and gossip, but how much time do we spend on those things compared to time in the Word. We are what we eat. We go to a Sunday sermon, we listen to it once, we don’t take any notes and we think, “Well why am I not growing?”

Come on; let’s get into God’s Word however we can. There’s power in God’s Word. Jesus said:

If you continue in my Word, you are truly my disciples.

You see, He links God’s Word to discipleship.

If you continue in my Word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

We quote the second half of that normally. We say – the truth will set us free. No, no. Jesus said:

If you are my disciples you’ll be in my Word and my Word will be in you and you will continue in it and you will know the truth and by knowing the truth you will be set free.

A disciple is someone who delights in God’s Word; who radically believes it, who does it. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 17, about the sword of the Spirit being the Word of God. It’s an offensive weapon against Satan. It’s in the Word of God that we stand firm and it is the Word of God that changes things in our lives. That’s why we need to take God at His Word. We’ll see how this story with Ezekiel and Israel finishes up next.

But Wait – There’s More Well, how does this story end up? We’ve been looking at how God takes Ezekiel out to look at this valley of dry bones, that represents where Israel is spiritually and emotionally and nationally towards the end of their exile, which really was a consequence of their sin; it was a consequence of them breaking their covenant and their promise with God. Well, we saw that Ezekiel spoke God’s Word over these dry bones and just as God had said, when His Word was spoken, all of a sudden flesh came on them, all of a sudden sinew came on them and all of the bones came together. That happened! But look at the end of verse 8 of Ezekiel, chapter 37. It says:

I looked and there was sinews and flesh and skin had covered them but there was no breath in them.

Now let’s read on in verses 9 and 10.

Then God said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy Mortal and say to the breath, “Thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, oh breath, and breathe upon the slain, that they may live,” and I prophesied as He commanded and the breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet – a vast multitude.

Wow! You see, God’s Word had been spoken and that gave the power to bring all the bones together, but they yet didn’t have breath. And the Hebrew word for breath is "ruwach", which means a rushing wind and it’s the same word as is used for the Spirit. So when we are talking about the rushing wind, this is a symbol and a picture of the Spirit of God – it’s not just the Word of God – we need the Spirit of God too, which brings life and they stood up and they stood as a vast multitude.

Paul encourages us in Hebrews chapter 5 verse 18, to go on being "filled with the Spirit". There are so many people who say, “Well I’m in God’s Word, you know, I believe in God’s Word,” and yet they go to the Word without the Spirit. They go to God’s Word and read it in their own strength, instead of saying, “God fill me with your Holy Spirit, fill me every day. I want to overflow with your Spirit.”

And when we see God’s Word; the power of God’s Word and the life that the Spirit brings, all of a sudden we see here that these bones in the valley, they come to life, through the "ruwach", through the Spirit of God. Now we might come up with a wimpy response that says, “Well, you know, I’ve tried that but I’m so dry and the Spirit never touches me and ah …”

Have a look with me quickly in Luke chapter 11 verse 9 – this is a really well known passage where Jesus says:

I say to you, ask and it will be given you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, because everyone who asks receives, everyone who searches finds, for everyone who knocks the door is opened. Is there any among you if your child asks for a fish that you’ll give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for bread, you’ll give them a scorpion instead? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more ...

Listen to this:

... how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? Jesus said, “knock, persist, ask and you will receive.

And when our hearts are fit to break, to be filled by the Spirit of God and we ask and we plead and we say, “Lord I’m not going to settle until I am so full with your Spirit that I’m overflowing; that streams of living water are running out of me.” When we are so desirous of that, God promises that He will fill us with His Spirit.

A.W. Tozer wrote this, he put it this way. He said:

Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push into His presence and live our whole lives there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.

God’s Word has the power – God’s Spirit brings the life. Why does God work this way? What’s God doing? Why does He allow sin and Satan and why does He allow our lives to go through dry bones? Why do we have to go through this stuff?

Well, He answers that at the end of our passage that we are looking at, Ezekiel chapter 37 beginning at verse 11.

Then God said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.” So God interprets this vision for Ezekiel. These bones are the whole House of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is lost and we are cut off completely, therefore, prophesy and say to them, “Thus says the Lord your God, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, oh my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel and you will know that I am the Lord God when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves. My people, I will put my Spirit within you and you shall live. I will place you on your own soil and then you will know that I, the Lord your God, have spoken and will act, says the Lord God."

Why does He allow this? So that He can bless us; so that we can receive redemption and life and renewal. Not through our own strength, but when God breathes His Spirit into us; when we believe His Word – when we take God at His Word. That valley of dry bones was a picture of Israel and God said to Ezekiel:

Go and tell them. Speak my Word over them and this is what I will do.

Those dry bones – those dry bones are our circumstances, our sin, our lives lost, our opportunities missed.

Let God show us the reality when we accept the power of His Word, when we accept Him at His Word and we accept His Holy Spirit which is life.

God’s having a party – it’s come as you are, but let’s believe His Word. God calls things that aren’t as though they are. God brings life when He gives us His Word to speak over our life and when He pours His Spirit out over our lives. The question is will you take God at His Word?

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Have you ever thought to yourself – “Well, things are a bit of a mess. I’ve made a hash of this or that and before I go to God with this, I’d better sort it out”? Well, we all do that sometimes. But it turns out that God’s having a party – and it’s come as you are.

The Faces we Wear God promises that when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, that He will give us an abundant life, abundant blessing; an eternal life, a life that we can’t even begin to imagine. Do you ever look at that sometimes and think, “It’s just too good to be true?” Yet some people seem to live with an amazing confidence in the blessing of God and others don’t, and the difference, I think, is that sometimes we don’t take God at His Word. That’s why this week we are starting a brand new, four part series, called exactly that, “Taking God at His Word.”

We can see our circumstances, we can see the physical things around us but with our eyes we can’t see the spiritual dimension; we can’t see the ‘God’ dimension and quite often, we look at our physical circumstances and say, “Well, God couldn’t possibly take my life and my circumstances and my failures and bless me in the middle of that.” But God means to do exactly that; His Word is full of promises that He wants to bless us – He wants to bless you, He wants to bless me. So today we are going to begin by looking at some of those promises, in particular the promises He makes about the relationship between Him and us.

Relationships are a funny and complex thing. How well we know one another influences how much of ourselves we expose to one another. Someone that we don’t know very well, someone that we have a shallow relationship with, we’re not going to talk to them about the deepest, most meaningful things in our lives. And someone that we do know really well and don’t like, who hurts us, well, we are going to be guarded with them. Hopefully a relationship between a husband and wife is really open and frank but even there, there can be barriers.

We all have different masks or faces for different occasions. I know I do - a professional face that I put on and a personal the face. The face that we put on in a passing relationship verses one that we wear in a permanent relationship. And even though I tend to be a very open and forthright and direct person, still, we all do it, don’t we? We have different faces for different people, different faces for different situations. We guard who we are depending on the person we are having the relationship with.

Those different faces that we wear are, in effect, different levels of permission and openness for different situations or people and it’s a deeply ingrained pattern of behaviour. So, what face do you and I wear when we come before God? Is it a face that says, “Well, God, I’m just not good enough for you, so I’d better protect myself from your glory and your goodness”? Is it a face that says “God’s promises, they sound too good, well maybe they’re for that person, or that person, but they’re not for me”? Is it a face that says, “I’d better sort these things out in my life before I go to God”? What face do you and I wear when we come before God? It’s an important question - how do I approach God? Because how can we enter into God’s blessing if we don’t even know how to enter into God’s presence?

We are going to go to a passage in the Book of Hebrews. If you have a Bible, grab it and open it up at Hebrews, Chapter 4. It’s a strange little book – it’s less of a letter to a specific group and more of a general tract. "To the Hebrews" was probably added later on. We don’t know who wrote it, although, judging from its style, it wasn’t any of the other authors of the New Testament. And the basic thrust of the Book of Hebrews is to contrast the old covenant, the old promise, under the Jewish Mosaic law, with the new covenant, the new promise of God of grace and forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ. And it shows how much this new promise is so much better than the old promise. Our passage does that.

Let’s have a look at it – we’re going to read it. Hebrews, Chapter 4, verses 14 to 16. It says this:

Since then we have a great High Priest who passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession because we don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

It centers on the fact that Jesus being our High Priest understands our situation because He has walked in our shoes. This passage comes in the context of God’s rest. God plans to bless us by giving us rest, by giving us peace, by giving us joy, by setting us free from all the things in the world that would tear away at us – emotionally and spiritually. And He says, “Look, Jesus is your High Priest and it’s your High priest that brings you rest.”

Look at verse 10.

For those who enter God’s rest, also cease from their labours as God did from His.

The point is, that one of God’s promises is to give us rest and this picture of the High Priest goes right back to the Old Testament, Leviticus Chapter 16. If you have a Bible, flick back and have a look at Leviticus Chapter 16, the first five verses, which we won’t read right now, talk about the way in which sins were forgiven on the day of atonement and the priest went into the Holy of Holies of the temple and gave blood sacrifices over the alter. But look specifically at verse 17.

No one shall be in the tent of the meeting from the time that the High Priest enters to make atonement in the sanctuary until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for the assembly of Israel.

No one else can be in the tabernacle when atonement was being made for Israel. Then over the page to verses 29 and 30.

You shall deny yourselves on that day, you shall do no work; neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you. From this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you from your sins. It is a Sabbath day of complete rest to you.

So God’s plan in making atonement for our sins, in opening the door to a relationship with Him, is complete rest for us. Jesus was the High Priest, Jesus was the mercy seat, Jesus was the lamb whose blood was sprinkled in the sanctuary. That’s the old covenant. That was then, now we are going to have look at the new covenant – the covenant, the promise, the plan that God has for us which is so much better than that.

God’s Party We are looking at God’s promises. Sometimes we struggle to take God at His Word and God has a promise of relationship and rest and peace for us. We’re specifically looking at what He says in Hebrews Chapter 4 verses 14 to 16 which talks about Jesus being our High Priest.

Under the new covenant, Jesus is the one, the great High Priest who not only went into the sanctuary to make atonement for our sins so that we can be forgiven, to pay for our sins. But He also passed into the heavens, and He also walked on this earth and He relates to us and understands that, He’s able, look at verse 15, He’s able to sympathise with our weaknesses. Not just our sin, but the realities of life here on earth. Jesus, you may get upset with me for saying this, but listen, Jesus went to the toilet, He became tired and frustrated, He felt crowded in, He knew the pressures of a busy schedule, He knew the deep pain of sacrifice – our High Priest, the one who was there when we weren’t, so that our sins could be forgiven.

Our High Priest isn’t some ecclesiastical elitist, He’s a pauper, He’s one of us, someone who walked in our shoes, He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust. Not just because He’s God, but because He walked as one of us. “Let us therefore,” says Hebrews, “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive the mercy and find the grace to help in time of need.” Therefore, why? Because Jesus wasn’t just the High Priest, Jesus was a pauper; Jesus was an ordinary person just like you and me, with all the pressures, all the temptations, all the hassles of life. Isn’t that exciting, isn’t that wonderful?

A few years ago I had occasion to visit the Head of State of Australia. In Australia he is called the Governor General, his name was Sir William Dean, at the time and this place, Government House, where he lives, is steeped in history. We drove up the driveway - the driveway that kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers have come and gone on, and the place was full of the trappings of power.

You know, I played to that – I had a crisply ironed shirt on and I drove up the driveway in a dark coloured car that I had and there was a big bird plop on the front and I thought, “I wished I’d washed my car, I hope I look acceptable, am I good enough?” – but when I met the man, Sir William Dean, the Governor General of this country, what I discovered was this kind, gentle man who was one of us. He was disarming in his humility and his kindness. He wasn’t affected by his position or his status. He showed me around the art collection in Government House and his office and his wife’s office and he set me at ease – we had a cup of tea, he was just a wonderful human being.

You expect someone in a position of power like that, to put themselves above us, in a sense. But he didn’t do that at all, and in a sense, that’s what Jesus is like. In a sense, He is God; He is the Son of God, yet He became one of us. He walked on this earth, He sacrificed His life for us and that’s why we can approach the throne of grace with boldness. That’s why we don’t have to make sure our car is washed, we don’t have to put on our Sunday best, we don’t have to put on a "face" when we come before that throne of grace, because God is having a party and it’s "come as you are". That is a wonderful message.

Your car is dirty, things aren’t quite right, you feel inadequate? Take God at His Word. “Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness” Why? Not because we’re fantastic, not because our car’s clean and our shirts are ironed and we’re perfect? No! Because we have in Jesus a High Priest, who in every way has experienced life the way we do. He understands; He can sympathise with our reality and because of that, it says, “Approach the throne of grace,” with what? – With fear, with uncertainty, with timidity? No! Approach the throne of grace with boldness. Come on! You take God at His Word. Would you come with me before the throne of grace putting your faith, not in yourself but in what Jesus did for us on the cross and take God at His Word?

Now the throne of grace is God’s place, just like Government House was the Governor General’s place. The throne of grace is God’s place, it’s about God’s sovereignty and power and awesomeness. Government House is to me what the temple was to the Hebrews – the all powerful, all knowing God, who transcends all things, but is a God of grace. What an incredible juxtaposition of images. A throne which talks about power, of grace; not a throne of power; not a throne of judgement; not a throne of superiority. God is all those things but He calls His throne, the throne of grace.

But what do we do? We focus on the throne, we want to put on our Sunday best, we want to sort ourselves out before we come to that place. Come on! How often do we have problems and think, “We have to sort them out before we go to God. We get to the driveway of that castle and we want to rush off – we want to wash the car, we want to iron our shirt." There’s a beautiful picture in Luke 15 of the Prodigal Son, the son that deserted his father, spent all his money getting drunk and on prostitutes and he comes back feeling unworthy, saying, "Well, I’ll ask dad if I can become a servant and dad runs out – dad was already waiting on the road, looking for him and he runs out."

Let’s have a look, reading verse 20 of Luke 15, which is where the story of the Prodigal Son is.

So the son set off and went to his father but while the son was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion and ran out and put his arms around him.

That’s what the throne of grace looks like. The throne of grace is a mobile throne of grace. The throne of grace, when we take the smallest step towards God, comes running toward us, because Jesus understands. We need to stop looking at the castle and focus on the King, who became a pauper for us. We need to forget the trappings and look at God. We didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but a spirit of adoption so that we can cry, “Abba Father, Dad.”

When ever we think of that throne, the throne of grace, let us think of that waiting Father, when we take the smallest step towards Him, just as we are, He races out to greet us. He throws His arm around us; He doesn’t condemn us. We are His children, not His slaves. Stop looking at the castle, focus on the King. So how should we approach the throne of grace?

The Mobile Throne So how should we approach the throne of grace? What does your translation say? Mine says, "with boldness" and the Greek word that sits behind our English translation – it comes from Greek philosophy - it means "public". This is presupposition of democracy – it means the right to say anything, a frankness and a candor. That same word is used again in Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 8 and verse 32, telling of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It says this:

Jesus said this quite openly and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him.

Now that word "openly" is the same word as is used for "boldness" here in this passage in Hebrews. In other words it means "just as we are" – no faces, no masks, no fear, no pretending, no trying to dress ourselves up and get our clothes ironed and our car washed. No! God wants us to be frank and open, to tell it the way it is.

There’s a story in Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 9 around verse 14 that tells about Jesus healing a young boy. Jesus has been just up on the Transfiguration Mount and He comes down and there’s this young boy with demons and His disciples have been trying to cast out the demons and they can’t and so the young boy’s father pleads with Jesus and he says, “If you are able, have pity on us and help us,” and Jesus says, “What do you mean if you are able? All things can be done for the one who believes.” And immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe, help my unbelief.” There’s this big crowd there and here’s this man who said, “I believe to a point, I can’t believe a hundred percent. I can just believe as much as I believe and as much as I believe, I believe in you.” And the boy was healed, the demons were cast out. Now that father didn’t get a miracle because he had perfect faith.

I don’t have perfect faith. My faith is much stronger and much bigger than it was five years ago, but it’s not perfect. God doesn’t want perfect faith from us, God just wants us to take the faith that we have and place it in Him. Even faith is a gift from God. That father got a miracle because he was honest, he was direct and this son, who from birth was like this, was set free. Have you got a circumstance in your life that you think, “Well God can’t possibly do anything with this because I have been like this for so long and besides I don’t have the sort of faith that they’re talking about?”

Well here’s a story, you don’t need perfect faith. You just take the little bit of faith that we have and place it in Jesus and Jesus can and will do the most amazing things in our life because the effect of going before that throne of grace is to obtain mercy and grace in the time that we need it.

That mercy is the outworking of how God sympathises with us because we don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who, in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. “Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive what? - The outworking of God’s understanding, the outworking of His love and His sympathy, so that we may receive mercy and find grace, to help in time of need. That grace is free; that grace doesn’t depend on our goodness and our perfection, it’s there because we believe in Jesus. Come on! Will we take God at His Word? And to get help is the sense of help running towards us. It’s that sense of the waiting father, right when we need it; right at the perfect time.

Have you ever noticed how perfect God’s timing always is? Just when we need something, God is there to help. Now this passage is saying you can trust in that, you can believe in that. If your faith is in Jesus, you can come before this throne of grace with boldness and just believe that God will help you.

When you need stuff, when you need help, when there’s something that you can’t get through, come boldly before the throne of grace. Don’t worry about the bird plop on the front of your car, don’t worry about whether your clothes are ironed, don’t worry about what we look like or how we’ve behaved or how big our faith is - that’s not the point. The point is that we have a Saviour who can sympathise with us and calls us to come boldly before His throne of grace.

In Jesus we have it all – King, High Priest, sacrifice, place of forgiveness – He’s one of us, and because of who Jesus is, we can approach the throne of grace with openness, with a boldness, leaving the mask at the front door and just talking to Him the way it is. Focusing on the King and not the castle – on His empathy and understanding because of who Jesus is. Remember He is Abba, He is our Father, the waiting Father who will run to our aid. That throne of grace is mobile, that throne of grace is coming towards us.

And some people think, “Oh I’m afraid to ask God for this, I’m afraid to ask God for that.” Maybe we have had anger or sin or failure or low self-esteem – will we let God help us with a special, well-timed, perfect touch of grace? Come on, will we take God at His Word and come boldly before the throne of grace. Not because of who we are, but because of who Jesus is and because in Christ, God understands and sympathises and wants to pour out His mercy and His grace on you and me. Come on! Will we take God at His Word?

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Sowing and reaping. There is such a long gap, often between those too, have you noticed how long it takes to reap that harvest? And sometimes, frankly, we get sick of the wait. It’s a bit like a farmer becoming impatient and walking off the land, the week before his crop springs out of the ground.

Seed Time and Harvest Over the last few weeks on Christianityworks we’ve been looking at "Reaping God’s Harvest in my life" and in your life. How, when, why should we sow seeds? How do we get God’s harvest? What does God’s harvest look like anyway? God’s harvest is awesome – God’s harvest is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That’s what Paul writes in Romans chapter 14 and verse 17.

He says,“Look, it’s not about food or drink. It’s not about all the physical things and sure, God is in our physical needs; God wants to supply and provide and He does do that, but at the end of the day, the Kingdom of God isn’t about food or drink but it‘s about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And I don’t know a single person on this planet who doesn’t want that sort of a harvest; of goodness and peace and joy in their lives. And sometimes we go through life and it’s a big drought. We feel dry, we feel like we’re in a wilderness, – not always, but more often than not – it’s because in some area of our lives we have rebelled against God.

And God’s a good Dad, it’s like being a parent to a teenager, you know, when you’re bringing up kids and you want to see them grow up and have a wonderful life, but when they rebel, some times you have to withdraw some of the blessings, some of the privileges from their lives to bring them to a point where they learn. God’s like that too. God loves to rain His blessing down in our lives but when we rebel; when we turn against Him, when we turn our back on Him – maybe not in our whole life, maybe just in one little bit of our lives – God says: “Well, you know, it’s time for some pruning; it’s time for some teaching.”

And so, sometimes, when we are going through a drought in our lives, when it’s all dry and that blessing isn’t flowing the way it should be, we need to ask ourselves: “What’s this drought about?” Maybe I have a problem with a relationship, maybe I’m not giving God my top priorities, maybe there’s some area of my life. And when we figure that out, we say, “God is speaking to me in this drought”. That’s the first step. That’s admitting that we have a need and then the Holy Spirit – the Holy Spirit ends up calling us to plant a seed somewhere.

You know, when we have a need; when we are struggling with something, we want to feed that need. We want to say, “Ok God, if you want me to plant some seeds somewhere; if I have financial problems, maybe I have to hoard all my money to deal with my financial problems and God says, “No, I actually don’t want you to feed your need right now. I want you to sow some seed in another field.” And it’s a really weird thing because often you say to God, “Hang on a minute, God, my problem is over here yet you want me to sow a seed in the ground over there? What are you doing? What’s going on? It doesn’t make sense – the two don’t even add up!”

So that’s what we have been looking at over the last few weeks and if you haven’t been with us the whole time, I really would encourage you - this is one of those teaching series that will just make a huge difference to your life as we learn what it’s about – to sow and to reap – because it’s a Spiritual principle that occurs right through the Scriptures, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Sowing and reaping and why God sometimes calls us to sow in a different field because it’s counter-intuitive; it’s a step of faith.

I remember when I first met my wife, Jacqui, gee, it’s twelve years ago now and she just came to our church one Sunday morning and I was preaching. I wasn’t feeling very well and I was only going to be preaching that morning and she was only going to be in church that morning because she was visiting from a different city and she had really wanted to go down to some markets that were near the church.

She had a few hundred dollars in her pocket and she really wanted to go and spend this money down at the markets but somehow her mum dragged her, kicking and screaming, to church that morning and I was in the middle of preaching a message and I looked out and I didn’t know who this woman was and I just felt God saying to me, “That woman is going to be your wife.”

And it turns out God was saying that to her about me while she was sitting there. But in the middle of the service, when the offering came around, she felt God calling her to take all the money that she had in her pocket, a few hundred dollars – which is a lot of money to her – and put it into the offering. God was calling her to sow a seed and she obeyed Him and I believe that if she hadn’t done that - if she hadn’t honoured God’s call just to do that; to be obedient to Him – I just don’t believe that she and I would be husband and wife and we would not have the wonderful marriage that we do.

Sometimes God calls us to do things that are counter-intuitive, that don’t make sense, and so we decide against our better judgment sometimes to plant that seed and we put the seed in the ground and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and in this Mc-world where we live in with the hamburgers and instant access by mobile phones and the internet – we expect everything instantly.

We think, “Ok God, I’ve planted the seed, I want it now! Ok, I’ll wait another five minutes – tick, tick, tick, tick. Ok, ten minutes – tick, tick, tick – that’s it, I’ve had enough, I’m out of here, it’s taking too long!” We’re like that, aren’t we? We are pretty impatient. You know, the seed that Jacqui sowed that day that we met, it took months before we became a couple and ultimately, got married. I mean, it didn’t happen instantly.

When you think about it, you plant a seed into the ground and that seed doesn’t instantly sprout and give a harvest that same day – it takes time. Yet we do that and we say, “It’s too long, I’m out of here. I know this stupid idea of planting seeds in different fields was never going to work, aw!” And we storm off – but hidden away under the ground, that seed is doing something amazing – it’s germinating; life is sprouting out of it. The Bible talks about ‘seed time and harvest’ and yet we miss the time bit.

You plant a seed and there’s time before the harvest. We get impatient and we get bored and we walk off in disgust and we leave the land just as the little green shoot is about to break through the soil.

I remember the first time I went to Disney Land, in Orange County in Los Angeles. The Americans do queues much better than we Australians because there are more of them and they’re used to standing in queues longer than we are. We Australians get quite impatient with queues and what I noticed, some of the best rides at Disney Land – at the time, Star Wars ride was there – it was like an hour or an hour and a half wait. And they were really clever with the queues; firstly, they went around bends and corners so you couldn’t see how many people were in the queue or how long you had to wait.

But the second thing they did was they put entertainment along the queue, so you were entertained the whole time, so you didn’t really realise you were waiting quite as long as you were waiting.

Well, God is like that too. God has got a sense of humour and God knows that we get impatient and God knows that when we plant a seed and nothing happens for a while and we are waiting for the harvest, He doesn’t want us to get bored and He has some things for us to do. What are they?

Weed and Feed Well, sowing and reaping is one of the Spiritual principles that God has throughout His Word, right from beginning to end and when you think about it – when a farmer sows seed into the ground, the farmer just doesn’t sit there for the next few months and do nothing, there’s a bit of work that has to go on. A bit like a garden – there’s nothing like a beautiful garden but its hard work too – just doesn’t happen. Planting, in a sense, is the easy bit but we need to feed and weed and water sometimes. It’s amazing how weeds grow about five times faster than any of the plants that we paid a fortune for! You know the thistles and the rubbish in the garden; they can take over the garden, just in a few weeks.

I remember mum and dad when I was a kid, had a compost heap out in the back of the yard and we had pumpkins and watermelon and they’d throw the rubbish onto the compost heap, but invariably, the pumpkin seed and the watermelon seed would end up not dying and would germinate in the garden and all of a sudden this wonderful garden they had would be taken over by a pumpkin and watermelon. Jesus talked a bit about weeds -–He talked about weeds in the context of a church and said in a church there are good plants and there are weeds and He talked about weeds and thorns in terms of faith. He said:

Look, the thorns can rise up and choke our faith.

So as much as seed time and harvest, reaping and sowing are godly principles, so is weed and feed. You sow a seed and you believe for a harvest, the enemy is sure to come along and put some weeds in that to try and choke it all up. Have you ever experienced that? You go out on a limb, you believe God, you follow Him, you plant the seed – it’s a risk, it’s a sacrifice, you think, "it’s going to go well" – and all of a sudden you do that – you take that step of faith – and all of a sudden it all turns to custard; it all gets hard. So we need to become vigilant, alert gardeners.

God wants us to be involved in the process. Maybe we’ve been walking through a time of drought in our lives; we’ve strayed in some area and we come to the realisation that God is calling us home again. And so He takes us through this time of drought and we plant the seed, which is a step of faith – it might be forgiving someone or it might be giving some money away, it might be any sort of obedience and sacrifice that God is calling us to do – and He wants us to be stronger at the end of that. But along the way there’s a lesson, there’s a journey and that journey is the important bit.

Isn’t it amazing how when we are going through a time of drought, all we want to do is grumble and complain about the fact that there’s a drought and we’re all waiting for the rains to come? But there’s a journey happening there, I mean, the drought’s the drought, there’s nothing we can do about it. Today is the journey; tomorrow is the journey and that journey – where we do the learning – is important.

If you have a Bible, open it at the Book of Galatians, in the New Testament, chapter 6 verses 7 to 10 and this is about sowing and reaping and it’s about the journey, and it’s about what we do on that journey. Let’s have a read:

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. if you sow to your own flesh, you’ll reap corruption from the flesh, but if you sow to the Spirit, you’ll reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right for we will reap a harvest at harvest time if we do not give up.

Ain’t that the truth?

Let’s get a revelation – we plants seeds whatever we do. We can either plant them into our flesh, into our human nature, our selfish nature, or we can plant them where the Spirit of God tells us to plant them. And so we do that; we get a revelation, we plant a seed in the Spirit where God is calling us to plant that seed, and we believe and we wait and we wait and we wait.

But it takes a long time for the harvest to come and we wait and we wait and we wait, but it takes a long time for the harvest to come and we wait and we wait and we wait and then we lose heart and then we give up and before we know it, we’re back sowing to the flesh again.

Sowing a seed where the Spirit tells us to, is an act of faith. Maybe your marriage isn’t going well and the Holy Spirit whispers to you, “So, um, how’s your time with God going? How’s your prayer time going?” And we come to conviction and the realisation that we’ve just let our relationship with God go to the wind. And so we go, “You know something, I think the Holy Spirit is calling me to really get close to God,” and that’s the seed we sow; we say, “You know, that’s my step of obedience. That’s what God is doing here. I can’t change what is happening in my marriage right now but what I can change is my relationship with God and I’m going to spend some time with Him. I’m going to do that, I’m going to believe in that,” and so we do that.

And we set a time aside and the days go by and the weeks go by and time goes by and we don’t see any change in the marriage and the seed’s germinating but we don’t see the harvest and then all of a sudden we say, “This isn’t working and I’m getting up every morning and I’m praying and nothing’s happening. God where are you?” and we give up. All along God is sorting out our priorities, all along God wants us to exalt Him above all. All along He’s ready to make the changes in that husband and wife and that marriage that need to be made; that only He can make, but at the end He gets the glory. Ever felt that way?

You know God’s called you to some act of faith, some seed to plant and it just doesn’t happen quickly enough and we want to give up. Maybe right here, right now, there’s a word from God for you – in season for you. "Let us not grow weary of doing what is right, for we will reap a harvest at harvest time if we don’t give up."

You plant that Spiritual seed and you wait and you just keep doing what’s right and you reap the harvest. That’s God’s way; that’s God’s promise. When we plant those seeds in the field, we have to keep doing what is right. I call that ‘weed and feed’. Pulling out the weeds and nurturing His Word, nurturing His call, nurturing the thing that He whispered in our heart through the Holy Spirit, that we felt to be obedient to. That has to be nurtured and we are going to look at some practical ways of doing exactly that, next.

Our Eyes on Heavenly Things Well, we’ve been going through a wilderness experience; a drought, and we know that God has called us in the middle of that drought to plant a seed – to plant a seed, not in our field; not to feed my need but to plant a seed in God’s field – and we do that as an act of faith; as an act of obedience. I have mentioned that sometimes God is pointing out, through difficulties in relationships that we are having, that maybe we have let our relationship with Him slide. It’s really interesting – the Holy Spirit comes along when we are suffering through a drought and He’ll speak to us and He’ll tell us exactly what the problem is. So we plant that seed and we’re waiting and we’re waiting and we’re waiting for the harvest and we’re waiting for the harvest and nothing happens and we get disheartened.

You know, we’re human and sometimes it’s just so hard. What are some practical things that we can do when we’re in that space; when we’ve honoured God, when we have obeyed Him but we feel like we are losing heart?

The first one we will find in Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 to 3. I love this; this is one of my favourite verses. Colossians 3:1-3 says this:

So if you have been raised with Christ seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds of the things that are above not on the things that are on earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

I call this "feeding". You know, when we take a step of faith, it’s inevitably counter-intuitive. Faith always is because faith is a choice between what God is calling us to do in the Spirit and what we want to do in the flesh. And so when we listen to God and we go and follow Him in the Spirit, the flesh says: “You shouldn’t be doing that, that does not make sense, that is not going to work.” And so when we take a step of faith and go and plant God’s seed where He has called us to plant it, our flesh is going to rise up and say: “Give me a break – that is not going to work.” Here Paul is writing to the Colossians and he is saying:

Set your mind on heavenly things, not on the stuff you can see, not on the things on earth but on heavenly things. Keep your eye on the ball, keep your eyes and your hearts on God, your prayer life, the time you spend in God’s Word, the time you spend worshipping God, this is your Spiritual nourishment you need to feed yourself. You need to feed your spirit with the Holy Spirit.

And that’s what you are doing right now. That’s why I’d like you to get the Study Guide for this series and we’re making it available at no cost because I just believe the more we spend time in God’s Word, listening to Him, we are fed, we are made whole, we are growing strong. Pick up a good Christian book, sing Christian songs, be filled with the Holy Spirit, set your minds on heavenly things, let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.

The closer we get to Jesus, the more we are changed, and the shorter the drought and the closer the harvest because the purpose of what God is doing when we’re going through drought and the purpose of what God is calling us to do – to plant the seed in the middle of a drought – is to change us. So let me encourage you, when you are in that space when you have stepped out in faith, when you’ve planted the seed, when you’re waiting in faith for God’s harvest, set your mind on the things that are above - set your mind on heavenly things, spend time in prayer, spend time in God’s Word. Don’t let those things slide because those are the very things that we need to get us through the drought – being close to Jesus.

The second thing is to crucify the flesh. The Spirit is life, the flesh is death. That’s what Paul says here in Galatians: “Don’t be deceived; God isn’t mocked, you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh, but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit,” and right now there is a battle going on.

If you are in this place of drought and you’ve planted a seed in faith and you’ve taken a stand to be obedient to God, you are on a spiritual battlefield and the flesh; the carnate, the old man inside us is going to act up; is going to get irritable and complain or get impatient or something else in our lives will flair up. Maybe a conflict at the office, maybe we are sowing seed in a particular area and we end up in a deep argument with someone over there. These things are the weeds; this is the enemy coming along to try and rob us of God’s harvest and the only thing to do with weeds is to pull them out.

We don’t want to pander to the flesh. Paul writes this in Romans chapter 13:11-13, He says:

Lay aside the works of the darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead put on the Lord Jesus Christ and

wait for this,

make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

You’ve got weeds coming up, your flesh is acting up against your step of spiritual faith to plant that seed, do not make any provisions for the flesh. The one thing to do with weeds is to pull them up and throw them into the fire. That is the only thing that we should be doing with that. But we want to pander to the flesh as it whimpers; as it is dying. The flesh always whimpers when it’s dying, it doesn’t want to die but God wants us to live in the Spirit, not in the flesh. God wants us to walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh.

Is God’s harvest a priority in your life? Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit? Then make no provision for the flesh. Pull out the weeds. Don’t let them choke the harvest. Don’t let the devil or your flesh rob you of that harvest of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That peace is awesome, that joy is awesome! Look at this passage again. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh but if you sow to the Spirit you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right.

Let us not grow weary in doing what is right for we will reap at harvest time if we do not give up.

We will reap – that’s God’s promise – we will reap at harvest time, at God’s time and part of that harvest – a big part of that harvest – is a changed me and a changed you. As God works on us inside in a way that He couldn’t do if we weren’t in the middle of that drought, in a way that we couldn’t do if He hadn’t called us to plant a seed in His field in faith. If you’re struggling through drought, could I ask you to find out what the drought is about? To go to God and say, “Lord, what’s going on in my life? Why am I struggling here?”

And as the Holy Spirit answers you and speaks His Word into your life and says, “You know something, the reason you’re going through this at the moment is because this area in your life, you’ve rebelled, or this area in your life is broken. I want to fix that.” And we go and plant that seed where God is calling us to plant it and we nurture it and we feed it.

That’s God’s plan that we should live through that, that we should be changed through that, that we should rejoice in that, that we should experience His harvest of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That’s it; that’s God’s plan; that’s the process of becoming more like Jesus. It’s exciting; it’s awesome; it's part of what is ahead of us in our lives. Let me encourage you to sow into the Spirit; to sow a seed into the field that God is calling you to sow in and then to live and walk and breathe in faith, in the presence of the Holy Spirit and you will reap a harvest at harvest time. That’s God’s plan!

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When you think about it, sowing seed and then reaping a harvest is all about multiplication. You sow one seed, you reap a hundred. But the extent, the quantum of the multiplication factor, has an awful lot to do with the way that we sow the seed in the first place.

Lord of the Harvest Over the last few weeks we have been working our way through a series called, “Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life”. A couple of weeks ago we looked at how Isaac sowed seed in the middle of a drought and reaped a harvest. And again last week we looked at figuring out exactly what the drought is about because sometimes we go through seasons of drought; seasons where we’re not experiencing God’s blessing the way we should be and we think, “God what’s going on? Why am I going through this? And sometimes Dad is trying to get our attention.

Sometimes God knows there’s something wrong in our lives; we’ve rebelled in this area, maybe with our finances or maybe we’re living in un-forgiveness or maybe we are living in some sort of rebellion. Maybe we are not spending the time with God that we need to be and God thinks, “I love my child so much, it’s time to get his attention; it’s time to get her attention,” and so we start going through this drought thing and … “God, what’s going on?" And we need to figure out what that drought is about.

Those seasons of drought are very important times because there’s power in sowing seeds of faith during the drought. The power comes from the faith that we place in God and His desire to bless us. So if you’ve missed those couple of programs, you can actually purchase this series on CD, because it’s one of those teaching series that I believe all need to experience so that we know what it is to live with the Lord of the harvest; so we know what it is to reap God’s harvest in my life.

This week we are going to take a closer look at two things. The first one is – what exactly is God’s harvest? I mean, how do we know when we are in harvest time? What does God’s harvest look like? Good question! And the second one is the importance of not only sowing seeds of faith but looking at how we sow those seeds. I’m really excited about being together today because when we speak about God’s harvest, we’re talking about His grace and His power and I hope you’re excited too, so stick with me over the next twenty minutes or so.

Jesus called God "The Lord of the Harvest" and the notion of sowing and reaping, is one of those consistent principles that we find right through the Scriptures; Old Testament and New Testament – it’s a pretty straightforward proposition.

You buy some seed, you put it in the ground, you wait for the rain and the sun and it grows into a plant that gives you more seeds. You don’t sow, you don’t reap the harvest! The question is: is it worth sowing in the first place? I mean, why should we bother? Going out and buying seed – it costs money. Sowing seed in the ground is hard work. You know, it’s not always convenient to sow seeds. When God says to us: “Go and forgive that person,” it’s not always convenient. We don’t always want to do it. Invariably, when God says: “Sow seed", it involves some form of sacrifice. It involves something that we really don’t want to do.

And so it’s not unreasonable to say, “Well, do I really want to sow seed? Maybe this drought thing isn’t so bad. Maybe I can just survive it on my own. Cor … sowing seed, taking a risk, spending money, spending emotional energy and then God has this crazy idea, instead of feeding my need, He wants me to plant His seed somewhere else. Oh, I don’t know.” So when we are making a decision as to whether we should plant this seed; whether we should experience seed time and harvest, we have to weigh these things up. On the one hand we look at the cost of the seed, the effort of sowing, the risk of loss and on the other hand, we look at the value of the harvest. We balance those two things and we think: is it worth it?

So what does God’s harvest look like? Is God’s harvest about money and a big house and a nice car? We all have physical needs – there’s not doubt – and you may be listening; you may be someone who has really acute, physical needs. This program goes all over the world. This program is listened to by wealthy people and people who don’t have enough food to eat. God is in those physical things. God wants to meet our needs but we all know that when the physical provision – the food, the shelter, the security, the money – when it gets to a certain level, to meet our need, after that all the other luxuries, all the other things are lovely and nice and they’re wonderful icing on the cake, but they’re not the things that ultimately satisfy us. They’re not the things that fill us up.

So what does God’s harvest look like? Well, Paul, the Apostle, in Romans chapter 14, verse 17, he wrote this; he said, “The Kingdom of God is not about food or drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Now remember, Jesus taught that we should ask God for our daily bread. God is into our physical needs, but what Paul is saying here is: Beyond all of that, come on, let’s get it straight – the Kingdom of God, the reign of God in our lives, is not ultimately about physical things. It’s not ultimately about food or drink, even though God’s heart is to provide for us and God does provide for us. The main game,” says Paul “is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Righteousness is that sense of completion and goodness that we have when we know, we know, we know that what Jesus did for us on the cross has made us whole, has given us forgiveness, has given us a clean slate and when we live out that goodness and that righteousness as God’s Word calls us, we experience a peace and a joy in the Holy Spirit that words can’t, can’t describe. I mean, peace – who doesn‘t want that? Who doesn’t want the deep, powerful, wonderful peace; the peace of knowing no matter what happens in life, I’m going to be ok? Who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t want joy; the free gift that God puts in our hearts, through the Holy Spirit? Now that’s a harvest! Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

If we were all reaping that sort of harvest in every part of our lives, the rest wouldn’t matter, would it? Let me ask you: righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – is your harvest abundant in those areas? Are you full, overflowing type of harvest or do you want to come up higher in the harvest? Do you want more righteousness; do you want more peace; do you want more joy; do you want to experience God’s goodness more and more? I know that I want that!

In a sense, I can’t have more righteousness than I already have because it’s all done for me on the cross. I’m free – I’ve got eternal life but, we want to live that out too, don’t we? We want to see our lives change to be like that; to experience the peace. So, food and drink; the physical stuff is fine but that’s not really the main game. Its righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – that’s life. How do we get that? How do we experience that?

Give and It Will be Given Well, we are talking today about reaping God’s harvest and we saw before, that the main game in the Kingdom of God is not food and drink; it’s not physical things, even though God wants to provide for us, its righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Oh, fabulous; now that is a harvest worth having! The question is, exactly how do we sow in order to reap that sort of a harvest – of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit? It’s a good question and it’s a question that Jesus answered directly.

If you have a Bible, open it at Luke chapter 6, verses 37 and 38. Let’s have a read. This is what Jesus said. He said:

Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure with which you give, will be the measure with which you get back.

Now, often you hear the second verse; the bit about "the good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap", you hear that in terms of God’s financial blessing. I’ve often heard it used that way. Now, do I believe God blesses a giver? Absolutely, yes I do! And we’ll look at that later in this program. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about here.

He’s talking about three things – He says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged, don’t condemn and you won’t be condemned, forgive and you will be forgiven. Give like this and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. With whatever measure you give that’s the measure with which you will receive." Judgment, condemnation and forgiveness - if we give these in the right way then we’ll get back in the same way. Isn’t it interesting?

He’s talking about some really interesting concepts here – judgement, well that’s criticism and bitterness. That’s when I judge you and I demand recompense because you have wronged me. I judge you because you’ve got some weakness and I think, “You just have to fix this, you owe me buddy.” You know, I need my pound of flesh from you – that’s judgement and when I judge you it hurts and when you judge me, it hurts.

Question: do you like being around judgmental people? Are they your first choice to be close friends? Well, obviously not, but we all love to judge and what we do is we focus on people’s failings and ignore all their good points. That’s what judgement is and Jesus said: “Do not judge and you will not be judged.” How is it, that we stop judging?

Well, the only way I figured out is to let people’s weaknesses and failures wash by me; go right through to the keeper. It doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of the strengths and weaknesses of people, but instead of getting all tied up in knots about someone’s weaknesses and getting all tied up in knots about their failings and getting all tied up in knots about things that are never going to change – because that’s the way they are – we can compensate for those weaknesses. We can lift them up; we can bless them, right?

Now that is hard sometimes, it is really, really hard but we’ve got to stop judging. You want righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit? Well, righteousness and peace and joy don’t happen when we are out busy doing something Jesus said, “Don’t do”. Righteousness and peace and joy don’t happen when we are busy doing things that ruin the peace and "judgement" ruins the peace.

The second thing Jesus says, "don’t do" is, “Don’t condemn.” It’s the next step after judgement. Condemnation is when we write them off, “that’s it, I’ve had enough. I’m not dealing with that person any more.” And we shut ourselves off, don’t we? We do that; we write them off and we condemn them. It’s like a death sentence to the relationship. “Instead,” said Jesus, “forgive and you will be forgiven.” Forgiveness is giving up our right of anger and retribution and getting even and condemnations.

Forgiveness is wiping the slate clean, forgiveness is making peace. Forgiveness says, “That person who wronged me has exactly the same standing with me as though they had never done what they did.” Does that sound vaguely familiar? Because that’s what Jesus purchased for us on the cross with His life and He’s calling us to exactly the same thing.

Judgement and condemnation are enemies of the harvest of righteousness and peace and joy. They are in direct opposition and Jesus is saying, “Instead forgive, instead sow good seed; faith-seed into the harvest field,” and that is hard some days, right?

It is hard to forgive, it is hard to let people’s weaknesses wash by, it is hard not to criticise them, it hurts not to condemn them – do it anyway, ‘cause Jesus asks us to, ‘cause Jesus did it with His life. We are going to talk more about exactly that this next week. Let’s look at it again.

Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

Imagine a good measure of forgiveness, a good measure of peace, a good measure of joy, will be given to you, pressed down, shaken up, flowing over will be put into your lap and it depends on whether we sow seeds of judgment and condemnation because if that’s what we sow, that’s what we’ll get. That’s what Jesus is saying. You sow those things and that’s what you will get back. You sow forgiveness and that’s what you’ll get back – seeds of righteousness and goodness and forgiveness, but it turns out that how we sow, how we give, the intention of our hearts, counts too.

God’s Multiplication Factor When you think about it, sowing and reaping is about multiplication. You take one grain of wheat, you put it in the ground, you plant it, you water it, the sun shines on it and that head of wheat has fifty or a hundred grains of wheat on it. But how we give; the heart with which we give, impacts on God’s multiplication factor. Again, if you have a Bible, flick it open to Second Corinthians chapter 9, verses 6 to 10. This is what the Apostle Paul writes. He says:

The point is this, the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also read bountifully.

Now, let me just say that this is the context – he’s going around and he’s talking to the church in Corinth about raising money for the church in Jerusalem because there’s a famine happening in Jerusalem and they’re all starving.

And so Paul is going around to the different churches that he was involved in – that he either planted or that he had ministered at – raising money for Christians in Jerusalem who are starving in the famine. Which is amazing in itself, because these are the people who ultimately end up locking him up and sending him to Rome where he was killed. Anyway, that’s the context he is talking about it in. He’s talking about giving money.

The point is this – “the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly, not under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing, in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written, He scatters abroad, He gives to the poor, His righteousness endures forever. He, who supplies the seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.”

Powerful stuff! Look at it! Let’s just break it down for a minute. Verse 6, he says:

If you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly and if you sow bountifully, you will reap bountifully.

In other words, if you sow one seed, you might reap a hundred, you sow fifty seeds, you might reap five thousand, you sow a hundred seeds, and you’ll reap then thousand. The more we sow, the more we reap. How much should I sow, how? And he says, “I’m not going to put a guilt trip on you. Make up your mind – make up your mind with God as to how much you should sow. And I always encourage people, you know, when they are giving to God’s work, when they are giving to the poor, get with the Holy Spirit, get with God and say, “God, I just feel you calling me to give to this particular work that you are doing in someone’s life right now. How much do you want me to give?” Because that is between God and His child – God and the giver – God and the sower. It’s God that gives, so we need to get with God and say, “God what do you want me to give?” But how? How should we sow? Look at verse 7 of chapter 9 of Second Corinthians:

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

God loves a cheerful giver! When someone come to you and gives you something begrudgingly, do you enjoy that? Is that great fun? No! It’s awful, isn’t it, when someone gives grudgingly, it’s really awful? God wants us to give out of the abundance of our hearts – God wants us to give out of joy and peace and wanting to be there willingly. God’s like that. Now look again at the harvest, verse 8, it says that:

God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you will always have enough; so that you’ll always be able to give out of your abundance.

Not just money but righteousness, peace and joy and look at verse 10 – I love this bit:

For he who supplies the seed to the sower and the bread for food, will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

So Paul is making a link here between – I’m calling you, I’m asking you to give to the people who are starving in Jerusalem, but in doing that; in planting that Spiritual seed, the money for the starving; the money for his ministry – maybe in our lives, the money to help someone poor or someone at church or someone who’s struggling – a friend or family – you sow a seed like that and you’re not just giving money, you’re sowing a seed that will bear a harvest of righteousness. God will take that – you’re sowing one field where God calls you to sow and He, all of a sudden, brings harvest to all these other parts of our lives. And the same is true in other areas.

If God says, “I am calling you to forgive this person,” and we struggle and we finally forgive and we obey God, God brings a harvest of blessing into a whole bunch of other parts of our lives. Why wouldn’t He? He’s God, He can do that. He loves us – He’s busting to bless us. That’s why He does this stuff and He calls us to sow our seed in His field, rather than feed our need, because He wants us to put Him first and He wants us to put our faith into the God who is the God of blessing.

And Paul goes on in verses 11 and 12. He says:

You will be enriched every way for your great generosity which will produce thanksgiving to God through us, for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God through the testing of this ministry, you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them in Jerusalem and all the others while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that He has given you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable blessing.

In other words when we give it unlocks thanksgiving, it unlocks blessing, unlocks God’s grace and He just pours it out of heaven because He just delights when we give in faith, the way He’s calling us to give. Whether it be money or whether it be anything else that He is calling us to be obedient to in our lives. And sometimes we don’t see it as sowing seed but it’s exactly what it is. When we are obedient to God, we are sowing a Spiritual seed; we’re putting it in the ground. God does something amazing with it, the plant grows and there’s a harvest of a hundred fold. It’s God’s way.

Can I encourage you? I just really feel the talk about forgiveness, right now - maybe you’re listening and you are holding onto some un-forgiveness in your heart, I encourage you to listen to God’s Word and to plant a Spiritual seed and forgive that person and God will take that and use that and give the most amazing harvest out of that.

Then how do we do it? Two ways – not sparingly but bountifully and it’s up to us and God. You know, when we forgive someone, we can go the whole hog and we can really forgive them but if we forgive them sparingly, well, it’s not really forgiveness, is it? And the second way is cheerfully – not grumbling, not whinging, not complaining – go the whole hog, lash out, do it cheerfully and joyfully, with a smile on our faces, even though planting seed is always about sacrifice.

The Kingdom of God is not about food or drink but about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. What a harvest! What an amazing notion, that we can go and plant seed into God’s Spiritual field, simply by being obedient to what He’s calling us to do – even when it’s not convenient, even when it’s tough, even when we don’t feel like it, even when the flesh says, “No, no, I don’t want to do it,” just do it.

Because when we plant that seed in God’s field, His plan is to bless it and to grow a harvest that we can scarcely even imagine, so sow the seed in the field that God is calling you to plant it in and with everything that is in me, let me say, that the God of righteousness, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, is just busting to bless you with the most amazing harvest, because that’s who He is. Go on, sow the seed!

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Everybody wants to reap a harvest in life. You do, I do. But sometimes, our lives feel a whole bunch more like a drought than a harvest. So exactly what is my drought about? What exactly is your drought about? Why is God letting this, this drought happen, to you and to me?

Another Drought This week on Christianityworks we are continuing with the series called, “Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life.” We all want to reap a harvest but sometimes, well, sometimes life is a bit more about drought than it is about harvest. Why is that? What’s going on when we are going through a drought? Maybe you’re going through a drought; a dry time; a difficult time, a time where things aren’t just going the way you’d like them to go and when that’s happening, it’s dry and there’s no rain and in a lot of countries there are famines when there are droughts. And when there’s a drought on, what everybody is hanging out for is what?

Well, of course we’re all waiting for rain when there’s a drought because we know to have a harvest we need rain. It’s a very simple cycle – you buy some seed, you plant it, you wait for the rain, the rain comes and then the seed grows into a harvest and then we send out the workers into the field and we gather a harvest. No rain, no harvest! That’s right isn’t it?

Well, let’s see. Let’s have a look. Last week we looked at Isaac’s experience when - if you have a Bible, you can go back and look at it in Genesis chapter 26 – he went and did some silly things but then he went and sowed some seed in the middle of drought and we’re told that his harvest, he reaped one hundredfold. So he planted one seed and for every one seed he planted, he reaped one hundred seeds.

Today we are going to look at another drought. If you have a Bible, grab it. We are going to go to First Kings chapter 16. This is a time when Elijah, the Tishbite, got involved in a drought because one of the Kings of Israel was doing some silly things. If you have a look in First Kings chapter 16 verse 29, it says this:

In the thirty eighth year of King Asa, of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel. Ahab, son of Omri, reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty two years. Ahab, son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who went before him.

Now remember, in the history of Israel, by this time they were in the Promised Land, but the twelve tribes of Israel had split. The ten tribes to the north were referred to as Israel and the two tribes to the south, Judah and Benjamin, were referred to as Judah. That’s why we have two Kings that the writer is here talking about.

We’re talking about Ahab who reigned over Israel, that’s the ten tribes to the north and this guy was a bad dude. He was just not one of the good Kings; he did some terribly bad things and so God decided to deal with him by sending a drought. And this is where we see Elijah come, in the beginning of chapter 17 of First Kings and this is what happens.

Now Elijah, the Tishbite, of Tishbe, in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word. The Word of the Lord came to him saying: “Go from here and turn eastward and hide yourself in the Wadi of Cherith which is east of the Jordon. So Ahab did bad things; he married Jezebel, he worshipped another god called Baal and so God’s response was to send God’s man, Elijah, a prophet, to say to the King: “Listen, I am going to send a drought, not only on you but on your whole country.”

Now what’s going on here? God is a God of grace but He is also a God of great wisdom. God’s blessing rains down on us when we are living in His will, when we are living obedient to Him, when we’re living in a relationship with Him. He is like any dad, Dad wants to bless His kids but when we rebel, as the King did here, as Ahab clearly rebelled by worshipping other gods.

What does God do? Does God throw a tantrum? I mean, is that what God is doing here? No, no! God is being like any father and saying, “Well, if you are going to rebel against me, my heart is to bring you back.” There are consequences to your rebelling, so when we rebel, as Ahab did, against God, God turns the blessing off sometimes. The blessings stop raining down from heaven. If you’re a parent who’s brought up a teenager, you know that you want to bless them. Don’t you? I do!

I have a wonderful daughter and I love to bless her but when they rebel; when they turn against us, when they do things that we say "you shouldn’t do" because we know that there’ll be consequences, well, sometimes we have to withdraw some of the blessings. Why? To be mean? No! To help them to grow; to help them to lift up, to help them to learn that there are consequences to rebellion. And it’s the same deal with God, the original Father, sometimes, sometimes our drought is about that very thing.

What about your drought? What is your drought about? What droughts have you got in your life at the moment – in relationships or maybe they’re in a financial area of your life or maybe in an emotional area of your life? Stop and think for a minute and say, “Where are the areas in my life that I would say – well, I’m not really reaping a harvest there? That part of my life is going through a drought.” Ok then, is there anything that you are doing or not doing in those areas that might have caused God to be a good Dad and stop raining down His blessings on that part of your life? Is God trying to get your attention?

We are not doing a guilt trip here. We’re not saying, “Well, you know, if I don’t do everything a hundred percent perfectly, God’s going to come a whack me over the head with a big stick.” No! God’s Dad! Jesus referred to Him as ‘Abba‘, Dad. God is a loving Father so we are not doing a guilt trip number. Ok? This is a realistic assessment of our lives and I want to ask you, “Is God speaking to you today and saying, “There is something that you need to turn away from?”

Maybe you’ve got some financial issues and I would ask you, “What does your giving life look like? How much are you giving to God‘s work? How much are you giving to the poor because so often, when we stop giving our very best; giving the top of what we earn to God’s work, all of a sudden our finances turn to a mess because God’s plan is to use God’s people to fund God’s work and when we stop giving to God‘s work, then God says, “Well, you know, your life’s out of balance,” and all of a sudden we seem to be having a financial drought. Sometimes we’re having relationship problems or maybe a problem in a marriage and maybe God’s saying, “Well, what’s your relationship with me looking like? How come we’re not spending any time together at the moment?

What drought are you walking through right now? And let me ask you: exactly what is your drought about? I think it’s a good question. Not every drought; not every difficult patch; not every wilderness experience that we have in our lives, is because we have made some mistakes. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes other people do things and things are just happening and it’s the way life is, but I gotta tell you, sometimes we are doing things that rebel against God like Ahab and God allows drought to come into our lives. The question is what can we do about it? We are going to look now at how Elijah went to be with a neurotic, suicidal widow and we will see exactly what God did.

The Suicidal Widow We are talking this week about reaping God‘s harvest in my life, in your life and sometimes we go through a period of drought in our lives and it’s Dad’s way of getting our attention. God’s way of saying, “Look, there’s something in your life that’s not quite right.” That’s why we need to ask, when we are going through a time of drought, “What is my drought about?” But in a drought, we can spend our whole time hanging out for the drought to break and the drought breaks when? When the rain comes! We have seeds, we plant the seeds and we know we will need rain before the harvest will come.

We can be so busy moaning and groaning about the fact that there’s no rain, that there’s a drought but we miss the whole point of the journey that God has got us on. Elijah was God’s man, he didn’t do anything wrong. He was God’s man in the middle of this drought and he had to get some food and He did provide for him when he went down to that Wadi at Cherith which was east of the Jordon. God said, “You will drink from the Wadi and I’ll command the ravens to feed you,” and that’s exactly what happened, but eventually the water ran out, even in the Wadi and God said, “Well, you know, Elijah’s my man, I am going to provide for him,” and he also had a plan to provide for a woman, a widow.

Let’s have a quick read of what exactly happened. This is coming from First Kings chapter 17, beginning at verse 8:

The Word of the Lord came to Elijah and God said to him: “God now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon and live there for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” He’s thinking, “Yes, yes! God has given the food to this widow and she’s going to feed me and it’s going to be fantastic.”

So he goes down there. He sets out to Zarephath and when he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there, gathering sticks and he called her and said: “Bring me a little water in the vessel so that I might drink.” As she was gong to bring it, he called to her and said: “And bring me a morsel of bread in your hand,” but she said: “As the Lord, your God lives, I have nothing baked only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I’m now gathering a couple of sticks so that I can go home and prepare it for myself and my son that we may eat it and die.”

Aw, fabulous! Elijah goes all this way down to this Zarephath place and he thinks God’s going to provide for him and God gives him an neurotic, suicidal widow, who’s about to have her last meal and die. Aw, fabulous, thank you, God!

But Elijah says to her: “Do not be afraid. Go and do as I have said, but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me and afterwards make something for yourself and your son, for thus says the Lord God of Israel: “The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain of this earth.” She went and did as Elijah said so that she, as well as he and her household ate for many days.

The jar of meal was not emptied neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the Word of the Lord, that He spoke through Elijah.” This is God’s amazing provision. If drought was God’s way of getting our attention to bring us home, doesn’t it follow that He’ll sustain us during the drought? If we die in the middle of the drought, it’s punishment. If we survive and we learn and we change, that is grace. That is God’s blessing from the God of grace.

Elijah was a prophet but the drought still affected him and he goes down there and he goes to this widow and he demands something amazing of this widow. He says to her, “Look I know you’ve got almost nothing left. I know you’re about to die and your son is about to die, but first, from the little bit that you have left, cook me something to eat and I promise you that God’s blessing will chase you down and your food will not run out until the day that the rain comes on this land.”

Can you imagine if you were that widow or I was that widow and this man says, “Gimme, gimme! Gimme what you’ve got,” and the widow has a choice, either to withhold it – and we now know from this story, if she had withheld from the man of God – she and her son would have died because they would have run out of food. Or she had the choice to give and take a "faith risk". She was sowing seed in drought and she chose to give to Elijah.

Question: what’s the point of the widow’s story? Why is it included? Because if you look at the few chapters around the particular chapter in First Kings, there’s a big macro level story going on. There’s a King who had sinned, a land full of famine and drought and just after this – we’re not going to have time to go there – there’s a big picture story where Elijah has a showdown with the prophets of Baal.

All this big stuff going on here and we think this macro level is important but at the micro level God tells us here about this widow with no name who is dying, who in faith plants seeds and takes risks and experiences God’s blessing. And what God’s saying is that the little story is as important as the big story.

Here’s a guarantee – in the midst of your drought; in the midst of my drought, the Word of God will reach out to us, somehow in some little way and there might be some much bigger things going on as there were here but God will come along and say, “Plant a seed here and now.” A faint whisper, a prophet, the Holy Spirit stirring in our hearts, “Plant seed here and now,” and you know what I’ve noticed? – often we have a problem; an area in our life where there’s drought and God says, “Plant a seed, not in there, not is that field, plant a seed way over here in another field,” and we think, “Hang on a minute, God, these two things have got nothing to do with each other. I need to plant into my field, I need to feed my need,” and God say, “No, don’t feed your need, plant my seed.” That’s really important – “Don’t feed your need, plant my seed.“ The widow could have feed herself and her son first and God said, “No, feed my prophet first.”

“God, why do you want me to plant over there, my problem’s over here? Why, this is crazy, this doesn’t make sense? Why?”

The Lord’s Rains Well, we are looking at reaping God’s harvest in our lives and we’ve been looking at the story of Elijah and the widow and this drought and in the middle of this drought, when she had nothing left, God called the widow to sow the very, very little bit of food she had in her hand and give it to the prophet.

Now she had a choice – she could have kept it. She could have said, “No, I need to feed my need,” but through Elijah, God said, “Don’t feed your need, plant my seed over here, where I tell you.” And so the widow gave Elijah food. She sowed into his belly not her own belly and we saw as we read that story before, that God made sure that she was provided for. That none of her food ran out. Why is that? Why did God say, “Plant your seed over here – not in your need, not is your field – not where you want, do it the way I want you to?”

Well, I think what’s going on here is that God says, “Put me first.” We want to sow into our belly and that’s not God’s plan. This little story of this widow – we don’t know her name - and Elijah is God’s story. It’s God’s story of grace. It’s a fabulous, wonderful miracle that she steps out in faith with her last little bit of food and she ends up with an endless supply of food to carry her through the famine. Isn’t that a great story? God does that! When we honour Him, when we put Him first, He blesses us and she must have thought, “Fabulous, everything is going to be wonderful from here on in and then “Bang”!

If you have a look at chapter 17, beginning at verse 17, we see that all of a sudden her son dies.

After this, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. His illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him and she then said to Elijah: “What have you got against me O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son.” But he said to her: “Give me your son,” and he took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber, where he was lodging and laid him on his own bed.

He cried out the Lord: “Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” Then Elijah stretched himself upon the child three times and cried out to the Lord: “Lord my God let this child’s life come into him,” and the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah and the life of the child came into him again and revived and Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and gave him to his mother and then Elijah said: “See, your son is alive,” so the woman said to Elijah: “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the Word of the Lord in your mouth, is truth.

Isn’t it amazing how we are going through a drought and God does some miracles along the way and we think, “Fabulous, we’re on easy street and all of a sudden "whack"! It’s like three steps forward, five steps back.

It happens sometimes. It’s often the way – miracle, calamity, another miracle. Why? Well, have a look at what it says in verse 24.

Now I know that you’re a man of God and that the Word of the Lord, in your mouth, is truth.

The reason God lets this happen is so that we learn faith and so that we learn that God will provide; that God will come through. There’s so much more in this story that we can’t go through in the next chapter, chapter 18 – we don’t have time for that but there’s God’s powerful showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. I really encourage you to read it in chapter 18.

But eventually, eventually, the drought comes to an end. This is what happens. Picking it up in chapter 18, verse 41:

Elijah said to King Ahab: “Go up and eat and drink for there is the sound of rushing rain.” So Ahab when up to eat and drink and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, there he bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees and he said to his servant, “Go up now and look forward to the sea.” And the servant went up and looked and he said, “There is nothing.”

Then he said go again seven times and at the seventh time the servant said: “Look, a little cloud no bigger than a persons hand is rising up out of the sea,” and then he said: “Go say to King Ahab, “Harness your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.” In a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind and there was a heavy rain and Ahab rode off and went to Jezreel. But the hand of the Lord was with Elijah and he girded up his loins and ran in front of Ahab, to the entrance of Jezreel.

There’s a drought. There’s been a drought for three years. Nothing’s been happening and all of a sudden, it’s time for the drought to come to an end and this man, Elijah, speaks the Word of God and says, “There’s going to be rushing rain, there’s going to be a flood, get home before it happens.” He spoke those words before even one cloud appeared, because he serves the God who calls things that aren’t as though they are.

What about your drought – your relationship drought or financial drought or health drought or whatever it is – we are walking through life and we are travelling along and we have this sense that – "nothing is really going right for me" – and the Holy Spirit comes along and says, “Plant a seed in another field.” He whispers that into our hearts and we do that and we just decide to be obedient to God and we plant that seed and maybe there’s some other big spiritual battle going on, we don’t really understand and we think, “Well, God’s got to worry about that because I’ve got to let Him fight that, I can’t deal with that.” And one day in your heart, one day in your Spirit, you’ll sense that the drought is about to break.

Why? Because you’ve figured out what your drought was about and in your heart you see that little cloud; you see a cloud no bigger than a persons hand is rising out of the sea and in your heart you can rejoice.

Before the rains even come, we know. We pray in faith; we give thanks because God takes us through the drought and like that widow, He calls us to plant a seed, to take a risk, to take a step of faith because in the middle of the drought God wants to change us because in the middle of the drought, God wants to grow us because right in the middle of the drought God wants to bless us. And so we experience His blessing in the drought and there are ups and downs and there are days we want to cry and days we want to laugh, but one day the drought finishes.

One day when we’ve figured out what God is doing and we bend our will towards His and we obey Him and we plant a seed in another field. When we finally figure out we have to stop feeding our need and start planting God’s seed, then God says,“He’s learnt what I wanted him to learn; she’s learned what I wanted her to learn.” And then it’s time for the drought to break.

It’ll take time. Droughts always take time and when we’re in the middle of the drought it’s never a lot of fun. But when the rain comes, it’s God’s rain. When the blessing comes, it’s God’s blessing. See if we had planted the seed in our own field, we’d be able to say, “I did it!” but when we take this seed, this Spiritual faith decision that God is calling us to – whatever it is – maybe it’s forgiving someone, maybe it’s giving money to some ministry, maybe ... whatever God calls us to do.

When we plant His seed, in the field of His choosing and the blessing comes and the rain comes and He changed our heart along the way, we know that it’s the Lord’s rain, we know it’s the Lord’s blessing and we know it’s His flood-tide, and that’s so much greater and better and sweeter than you or I could ever do. So let me ask you - what exactly is your drought about?

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Let’s face it – we all want to get the most out of life. We want to reap a harvest. And in fact, that’s exactly what God wants for our lives, too. He promises us an abundant harvest. And yet so often, life feels more like a drought than anything else. In those times, we’re left asking ourselves … So, where’s my harvest?

Generational Sin Well, welcome to Christianityworks again this week and we are starting a new series called, "Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life". What is it that you want out of your life? Health, happiness, family, a job, career, a reasonable level of comfort, joy and peace, we want our kids to grow up and be happy, we want to have a happy fulfilling marriage, we want to have friends, we want to have balance, we want to have a good life, don’t we? We have different variations, we have different permutations; the things that you are going to enjoy in your life, well, maybe I won’t enjoy in mine and vice versa, because we are different people, we come from different backgrounds, in different circumstances and different outcomes will satisfy us.

But there are the basics aren’t there; the things that I spoke about before that we all want in our life? We want a life of significance, we want a life where we’re part of a family, we’re part of a group, we’ve got friends, we’ve got joy and peace. Those things are important to us and we expect to put in the effort and to reap the reward. We expect to reap some sort of harvest from all the hard work. What sort of harvest, is a different question, sometimes we get our expectations and our desires and our needs out of whack.

You know, I spent a lot of my time before I became a Christian, chasing money and success and career. All of those things are good things, but when we get them out of balance, when they become the main thing; when they dominate above all the other good things in life, well, then we can end up looking for the wrong things, striving for the wrong things, hurting other people to get there and we reap a harvest, that frankly, is the harvest of our own selfishness.

On the other hand, if we do good, if we get up every day and say, “Well, you know something, God, I know I’m not perfect, I know I am going to make some mistakes but my heart, Lord, my heart is to follow you today. My heart is just to do good things for other people and for myself.” Well, we get up and do that every day and we are going to reap, by and large, a good harvest.

Well, over these next four weeks, today and the following three weeks, we are going to take a balanced look at "reaping God’s harvest in our lives". The problem is that most people can’t really describe what that harvest looks like; exactly what do we want?

Let’s just take a look at our own lives today. The bits where we don’t have a harvest, you know, normally look across our lives and there are some areas where we are getting a great harvest – the results are good, they’re satisfying, they’re fulfilling – but so often there are one or two areas in our lives and we look at them and we go, “Wow! You know, I’m not getting a harvest here, in fact, I’m nowhere near to getting a harvest and I’ve made such a mess of my life. I’m never going to reap God’s harvest in that area. Why would God ever even bother with me? No, God’s harvest isn’t for me. No! Harvest? No. it’s a drought, it‘s parched, it’s hopeless, it’s devastating. The dam is empty, the crops are dead.”

We can have such deeply entrenched patterns of behaviour that they rob us of the harvest. Sometimes we take on the weaknesses of our parents. We might have generational sin. A man, whose father was a gambler, may well end up being a gambler. A person, whose parent was alcoholic, could end up being an alcoholic. We take on the good traits and the bad traits of our parents and sometimes we look at our circumstances and we look at our failures and we think, “Aw, it can never work.”

We are going to look today at the story of Isaac in Genesis chapter 26. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it, open it. It’s right at the front of the Bible; the 26th chapter of the first book of the Bible and it’s a story about Isaac, the son of Abraham and what he did in the middle of such a drought, this is what it says:

Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech of the Philistines. And God appeared to Isaac and said, “Look, don’t go on down to Egypt; settle in this land that I’ll show you. Stay here as an alien and I’ll be with you and I’ll bless you because to you and your descendants I’ll give these lands and I’ll fulfill the promise that I made to your father, Abraham. I’ll make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and I’ll give your offspring all these lands and all the nations of the earth will gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge and my commandments, my statutes and my laws.

So Isaac settled in Gerar and when the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She’s my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “She’s my wife,” thinking, “Well, she is so good looking, the man of the place might kill me because of Rebecca, because she is so good looking.” When Isaac had been there for a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out of his window and saw Isaac cuddling his wife Rebecca and Abimelech called Isaac in and said, “She’s your wife, isn’t she; why did you say that she is my sister?” and Isaac said to him, “Well, you know, I thought I might get killed because of her,” and Abimelech said, “What have you done to us? One of the people might easily have slept with you’re wife and you would have put guilt on us all.”

So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, “Who ever touches this man or his wife will be put to death.” Well, Isaac sowed some seed in the land and that same year, he reaped a hundred fold.

So here’s Isaac, he’s in a land that’s not his own; he wants to run off to Egypt because Egypt seems to be much more prosperous and God comes to him and says, “No, stay here, I’ve got a promise on your life and this is your land, stay here as an alien”. So Isaac makes the decision to stay. It can’t have been an easy decision; there was a drought, there was a famine and he stays in this land. But then he makes a huge blunder. He puts his wife out there and what a dangerous thing to do, this is something that his father, Abraham, did twice to his Mum. Unbelievable! Imagine, putting your wife out there, saying, “She’s my sister.” Someone else could have taken her and slept with her.

We man are supposed to protect our wives and he blows it, completely; he just repeats the generational sin of his father. He is in a land that’s got a drought that’s not his own, life is an absolute mess and then it says, “Isaac sowed seed in that land.” That’s amazing! We are going to look at what happened when Isaac sowed the seed.

Sow the Seed We all want the most out of life, don’t we? And sometimes the odds are stacked against us. Like that story we were looking at – the story of Isaac. Here was Isaac in a land that wasn’t his own and his dad had made some serious mistakes and Isaac was just reliving those; that same pattern of generational sin that so often happens in our lives. We seem as though we can’t control it, so dad has made a mess of his life, in a sense, and the drought is causing a famine. There’s no harvest, there’s no … How can there possibly be a blessing for Isaac, yet God promised him a blessing? God appeared to him and said:

Look, don’t go down to Egypt, stay here; stay here as an alien and I’ll be with you and I’ll bless you because to you and your descendants, I will give these lands and I’ll fill it and you’ll be blessed.

When you look at that, you know you see God making a promise to bless you on the one hand and then you look at your own circumstances; the circumstances of where we live, our own failures and we think: there’s no harvest, there can never be a harvest. Isaac was in the middle of a drought and a famine. He deceived the King, he hung his wife out to dry, he made a big mistake. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he did something radical, in the middle of that mess. It says in Genesis 26, verse 12:

Isaac sowed seed in that land and in that same year he reaped a hundred fold.

Now farmers don’t sow seeds when there’s a drought. You know, when there’s a drought, they look and they wait for rains and they wait for rains, because if you just put seed in dry land and there’s a drought, not only won’t you get a crop but you’ve wasted all the money that you’ve spent on the seed. So we think about that – it was a radical thing. I don’t know how much the seed cost but in a famine, in a drought, you can bet your life it would have been really expensive. So here’s this reckless thing, where he just takes the seed which cost him a lot of money and he puts it in the ground.

The business risk, well, if you or I were doing it, would we have done it? Probably not; and the drought is so depressing. I mean, I have never been part of a farming community, but I know from what I’ve read and spoken to people who have lived in farming communities – when there’s a drought going on, it’s really depressing on the whole community and here it wasn’t just a drought, it was a famine. People were starving and Isaac was planning to go somewhere else; to run away – to Egypt.

It’s not unreasonable he wanted to run away from the drought, but God said, “No, I’ve got a plan for you here, stay in the famine, stay in the drought,” and sometimes God calls us to stay. The thing that Isaac got right is he obeyed God. That tug in his heart; that word from God – he’d made a key decision to stay – probably against his better judgement. Ok, great – he stays. I’ve got a promise – “I’ll bless you here”, says God and then what?

Well, he makes this huge blunder; he lies to the King about his wife and she could have been taken to bed by someone else, frankly. So you’ve got the drought, you’ve got "I want to run away", you’ve got "God says stay", you’ve got this blunder, probably because of what dad handed down to me. You reckon he was confused? He should have failed; he blew it but God had made him a promise. God had said, “Stay here and I will bless you.”

So Isaac – we see it in verse 12 – Isaac sowed his seed in the land. Takes a lot of faith to put seed in the ground when there’s a drought. Even if there wasn’t a drought, it’s still an act of faith. You know, a farmer puts seed in the ground, there could be locusts, there could be drought, there could be flood, there could be fire, there could be disease. It takes faith to put seed in the ground, especially in a drought, and even when you’ve blown it. So what happens? Isaac sows the seed in that land and in that same year he reaps a hundred fold – the Lord blessed him and he became rich – he prospered more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.

Now the Philistines had stopped up and filled with the earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham. And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Get away from us. You’ve just become too powerful for us.” So what happens? He takes one seed, he plants it in a drought and he gets a hundred back. He takes two seeds, he plants them in a drought, he gets two hundred back. He takes a hundred thousand seeds and plants them in a drought and he gets a hundred times a hundred thousand back. And you read the rest of that chapter, chapter 26 – God just kept blessing him – He blessed his socks off and his son Jacob as well.

Sometimes we think, “You know, I’m carrying sin around, I’m carrying this thing around, it might be sexual, it might be gambling, it might be any sort of other addiction and we know that it’s been handed down from our parents – it’s sad but true. And we think, “Oh, God can never bless me. I can never break this and I look around and I see this famine and this drought and things around me are going badly.” God’s promise is to bless us! God is a God of blessing. But the promise didn’t grow a harvest until Isaac planted the seed during the drought.

Let me say that again. The promise didn’t grow a harvest until Isaac planted the seed during the drought. So what’s in that for us? Maybe you are looking around at a situation of drought and famine and failure and sin? What’s in this story for us?

What’s in it for Us? Well, we have been looking at this story of young Isaac, who was living in a drought and a famine and he made a mess of his own circumstances and he should have had failure written all over him. He wanted to run away from it all and now God says, "stay". Someone today is listening, maybe it’s you, and today you want to run away from your circumstances and every now and then God does call us onto something new. Every now and then God says, “It’s time to leave this church and go to another; it’s time to sell this house and move on to another but most of the time God wants us to bloom where He has planted us. If God is calling you to go - go! But if He is telling you to stay – stay!

And if your "go" is maybe leaving your wife or your husband or your children, let me tell you, God is not calling you to do that. There are some very extreme circumstances and I say this with all compassion because I have traveled the road of divorce; that’s where I came to meet Christ. There are some very extreme circumstances of violence and abuse and God’s plan isn’t for us to be in those – I’m not talking about those. But so often we replace the ‘until death us do part’ with ‘until something better comes along.’ And we think, “Oh, well maybe God means for me to move on?” No, God does not! God wants us, most of the time, to stay where we are and to be a blessing to those people around us.

And so, here we saw Isaac stayed where God wanted him, even though there was a drought; even though he went on to make a huge blunder with his wife. And there are so many circumstances in our marriages, in our jobs, in our church or in anything, where we would look at them through human eyes and we think, “They’re never going to change - this is never going to get better,” but we see things in the natural but God’s not natural – God is supernatural and supernatural literally means "above natural". He is so far beyond natural and He sees – He sees our circumstances, not from the natural perspective, not from the human perspective but from God’s perspective; from the supernatural perspective.

And God is a God of the harvest; God is a God of blessing and sometimes we have to do what Isaac did and stay in that place even through there’s a drought and a famine and stay in that place even though we go on to make mistakes, and just plant some seed. One that is absolutely, one hundred percent for certain - if we do it God’s way, whether it’s to stay or to go – if we follow God’s call, we will make boo-boos along the way, you know, we will make some mistakes but God honours those who honour Him. If God says, “I know you’ve got a famine in your land. I know your circumstances are just rotten and awful, but I want you to stay there, amidst that drought and famine and if we stay we honour God. God sees that, God honours what’s in our hearts and He forgives what we do with our hands.

God is a good God. Ok, so we stay, we do it God’s way, then what? Then we plant seed in the drought, in the face of our own failure. Boy, is that counter intuitive or what? We want to give up by now but God says, “Plant seed.” Seed? What is seed like? Well, maybe you’re in a job; in your work situation and you just hate your boss. I know that’s a strong word but some people do. The boss is so oppressive, so unfair; promoting other people around you, victimising you and all we want to do is run away and God says, "No, actually, I’d like you to stay here. This is where I’ve planted you.”

How can we plant good seed? Well, we can excel, we can say, “You know, I’m going to work hard anyway; I’m going to bless that person anyway. I’m going to do so well at this job, in the face of what this boss is doing to me, people are going to sit up and notice.” We can sow good seed into bad situations. Or in a marriage; maybe your husband or your wife is driving you nuts. There’s pain and there’s tears and there’s anguish and we can say, “Well, I’m just going to ditch them,” but God’s calling us to say, “No, stay here and sow good seed.” We can try and run away or we can stay and sow good seed.

We can be the best husband or the best wife that we can possibly be. We can choose to bless and to honour and to love our husbands and wives. We can just be such wonderful people amidst the most difficult circumstances. Sowing seed is always a step of faith because we can’t see the harvest when we sow the seed. Maybe your finances are a mess – your credit cards are up to the limit, the overdraft is up to the limit - and we just hear God saying, “Just stay there and become a good steward; cut back and become a good steward; cut back, manage your finances, give to the poor,” and I bet you that God will ask you to sow.

Now sometimes when our finances are bad and we just think we have to save it all and we just have to stockpile it all and pay the debt off but I’ve seen it happen, time and time again – when God deals with our finances – one of the first things He does is calls us to give off the top, to Him; to the poor.

It’s about sowing seed and seed is a scary thing to sow because we can’t see the harvest and we have to pay for the seed to sow it, before the harvest comes along – it is a step of faith. God is calling us to listen to Him; to obey Him, to take risks that He calls us to take, which aren’t really risks but they look like risks, in faith. Isaac sowed seed and reaped a hundred fold. That’s a lot! He couldn’t control the weather. You and I can’t control the outcomes, all we can do is to stay in the place that God’s calling us to and sow the seed and it’s God that gives the increase, it’s God that brought the rains, it’s God that blessed Isaac’s step of obedience and faith.

In our ministry – you know, in this ministry of Christianityworks - when we started taking programs to air, we had to sow seed. We had to start recording and producing programs before even one station had said, “Yes, we’ll take the programs.” We had to spend money that, I’ll tell you, we didn’t have a lot of it, but we knew God was calling us to this. We knew that this venture was God’s venture and God has blessed it so wonderfully and blessed so many lives through it but if we hadn’t sown the seed, the harvest wouldn’t have come. God gives the increase; it’s His harvest. It might be our drought and our famine and our failure and our fear, but it is God’s opportunity to be God and God’s promise is to bless us. God doesn’t just say, “Go out there on your own and do it,” God says, “Here’s where I want you to do it and this is the sort of seed I want you to sow.”

God is so personal. You know, when I pray and I ask Him, “Lord, what seed can I sow into this relationship?” Bang! He always, straightaway says, “Do this or do that,” and sometimes it doesn’t make sense but we sow the seed and God blesses us. You see, it’s in the middle of the drought that God wants to sow the seed, and the harvest is His. God is the God of the harvest. Is that scary to you? It is to me and I think it should be some days because faith ... we don’t need faith if it’s easy but the harvest that comes from faith, the blessing that comes from faith, the enormous, hundredfold increase that comes when we sow the seed that God calls us to, in the drought that God calls us to, well, that’s an awesome blessing and it’s God’s blessing. That’s God’s plan!

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We parents try to do all the things we can to help our children to grow up. We advise. We admonish. We even end up preaching at them sometimes. But it’s not what we say, it’s what we do, how we live – what they see our life to be, that has the greatest impact in shaping them as they grow up.

A Godly Example Well, this is the last message in a series that I have called, “Building a Godly Family” and what I’ve decided to do; I talked to a friend of mine in the U.S., his name is Mark. He has nine children of his own and I thought I’d ask him for his top three or four tips. Now if you want to find out what they are, stick with me today on the programme because we are going to explore what a father of nine had to say.

Now I don’t know how things are in your neck of the woods but one of the really hot topics around where I live is binge drinking amongst teenagers. I mean, blind Freddy can see that alcohol abuse is so incredibly destructive. I was listening to a doctor at the head of the Emergency Ward in our local hospital and he was saying that something like eighty percent of the young people under thirty, who get admitted to the Emergency Ward of the hospital on a weekend, are there because of alcohol related issues.

Now that’s amazing – violence, injury, illness – it’s pretty scary and it kind of begs the question: "How does that happen?" I mean how does a kid go from being this beautiful little baby to a drunken teenager in the gutter? And to combat this teenage binge drinking they have been running an ad on television – a bunch of Australian men in the back yard drinking beer and one of the dads send his young son to the fridge to get him another bottle of beer. And the punch line is about making the point that our children are taking in our habits. They’re watching us, they are taking it all in, they pick up things by what rubs off from us.

Do you know something? That kind of makes sense. Where there is drinking, child abuse, all those things are so negative, so destructive and yet this powerful imprinting thing happens to children in a family. And parents ... we as parents, we’re right up there; we are the authority figures and when a child is growing up the only reality that it has is the family that it’s living in. That’s all that child knows; you grow up in the family and that’s it. You don’t know any different whether it’s anger, violence, alcohol abuse, whatever it is, if that’s a powerful part of your reality growing up, it’s going to leave an imprint.

Now, our DNA determines who we naturally are but our personalities; our characters, our view of ourselves and others, our morals, our values, our patterns of behaviour – all of those things are hugely ... hugely shaped by our environment. God’s plan is for a loving family, not just a nuclear family, the way we are used to in the West, I guess but the wider family. If you have a Bible, I want you to grab it, open it up with me. We are going to the New Testament, the Book of Titus chapter 2, beginning at verse 2. This is what it says:

Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent, and sound in faith, in love and endurance.

Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behaviour, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands so that the word of God may not be discredited.

Likewise, urge the younger men to be self controlled. Show yourself in all respects a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say.

You see what’s happening here? Paul is writing to Titus and he’s saying, "Look, Titus, look, here’s how it is: older men should set an example; older women should set an example so that the younger men and the younger women will learn from the older ones, so that needs to be handed down from the older men and women to the younger men and women and then, from the younger men and women, to their children."

See, so much of our behaviour comes from the behaviour we learn from older people, both as children and as adults. That’s why mentorship is so important. You may have heard me talk about a man, Graham, my business partner for twenty years. Now Graham is about seventeen or eighteen years my senior and he taught me so many things – I watched his behaviour. He was good and descent and effective in so many ways and I learned from him. I became all that I am by watching him and learning from him, like ... like a life’s apprentice.

We have been talking these last few weeks about building a godly family and today I want to get really down to earth with some practical things. I believe ... I truly believe that the most powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. Let me say that again; this is important. The most powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life.

Are you an older man or woman? Some societies respect their elders, other like mine, well; we’re not quite as good at this as we should be. Anything old is out of date; it’s beyond its use-by date; it’s old fashioned. We take older people and we stick them in nursing homes. I don’t generalise, but as a society, mine doesn’t value older people as much as some other societies do. But you older people can be such a godly influence in your family.

You’ve been around, you know something. You should have godly wisdom that comes from a life-long faith in and walk with Jesus Christ. You are not involved any more, by and large, in the daily cut and thrust and pressures of bringing up children. What a godly influence you can be on your grandchildren! You can be gentle, yet powerful. The glow, the radiance of God that shines through your eyes and your mouth can be such an influence.

And you parents! What a godly influence you can be on one another and on your children, husband and wife, by your behaviour and your countenance and your attitude and deeds and encouragement, how you can support one another. Maybe one of you is behaving badly – under pressure, you’re tired – the other one draws alongside and in love, steers things down the right path. And then the kids, instead of seeing their mother and father arguing and pulling in different directions, they see them trusting in God and supporting one another. What sort of lifelong imprint do we think that is going to leave on our children?

Each of us have bad habits – sin, anger, selfishness, low self-esteem, pride, dishonesty, whatever it is, those things can be handed down – in fact, they will be handed down to our children. But when we choose to deal with them; when we sacrifice them to God; when we let Him into that space, to change us, the fruit will be to our children and to their children and to a thousand generations. When the simple daily habits of our lives are godly, Christ honouring, humble, this is a powerful blessing on our children. This is the most powerful thing that we can do to build a godly family, to be godly.

Now I mentioned earlier on, Mark, my friend in the U.S., he kind of lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. I asked him to tell me what was one of the most important things that he knew about building godly family? Listen to what he says:

Everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. (Luke chapter 6, verse 40)

While not usually thought of as a verse on parenting, the implications are clear. “We cannot hope to produce that in our children which we ourselves, do not possess”, writes Mark. “Our children, after all of our teaching, creative or not, intentional or not, verbal or not, will be like us. So, watch your own heart for it is the wellspring of life and don’t forget that the first things that must be dealt with, should be dealt with first, including keeping our marriage the priority in our family.”

Um, them’s wise words, don’t you think?

Faith Comes by Hearing This "building a godly" family thing, you know what I think? I think it is about realising that we all, each one of us, in our families, need to see things through a fresh set of eyes. Every time I look up at the stars and the moon, I’m gob-smacked. The whole Milky Way thing, it’s almost like a cloud, like countless specks of stardust strewn across the sky, and then like clockwork every morning, this amazing ball of fire and light and warmth comes over the horizon – the sun, it never fails.

Now I’m wondering, if you or I had never been taught anything about the earth and the solar system and the sun and the moon and the universe, if we knew nothing about any of that, what would we make of it? If we stood here on planet Earth and watched this whole heavenly light show go on, day by day, what would we make of it without the knowledge scientists have given us?

Well, actually, we don’t have to look too far. There were so many theories down through the ages: the earth is flat, the earth’s at the centre – everything else revolves around it, the stars are little holes in the firmament – the skin that is stretched up where the sky is somewhere.

See, what happens is we look at this incredible cosmic light show that rolls past every day from our miniscule perspective, not realising how small and how narrow our view is and we get a distorted picture. We think the earth is the centre of the universe; we think that we’re the biggest most important thing in this cosmos and this whole light show revolves around us.

You see what happens? And it’s exactly what’s happened down through the ages but once we got the facts we started looking at things completely differently – at least a trillion, trillion stars in the known universe and how the sun is just one of them. I mean, even our galaxy of billions of stars is such a small pinprick on the map of the universe – it’s just so infinitesimally small even though it takes light, travelling at 5.88 trillion miles per year, over a hundred thousand years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. You see how radically the facts transform our understanding of reality? It’s mind blowing stuff!

Well, what, if anything, does this have to do with the subject that we have been talking about these last few weeks on the programme, ‘Building a Godly Family’? Well, as it turns – everything! I talked earlier about Mark, my friend. I shared that he has nine children and I shared with you what he had to say about setting a godly example because ultimately our children will end up being like us and so how we live our lives ends up being the most important sermon we’ll ever preach.

Well, here’s the next thing he said, in his top three – his second tip for building a godly family. Have a listen:

Faith, he says, comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

What do we mean by this? The written Word of God is absolutely central to everything we do in parenting and to birthing faith in the hearts of our children. My wife and I, we can talk, lecture, admonish, discipline, correct, nag ... whatever we want to do until we are blue in the face and it will be no good at all unless the Spirit of God takes His own Word and does a work in the hearts of our children.

Therefore, we believe we must expose and challenge our kids with God’s Word as often as possible. In our home, that has taken the form over the years, of bedtime stories, Scripture readings at the dinner table, family devotion times, Scripture memory, using real life experiences to show how God’s Word speaks into every situation.

To someone who hasn’t grown up in this environment, well, that may seem a little odd, but it makes so much sense. See, we started out by talking about the different perspectives we can have on the cosmic light show, depending on whether or not we know the truth about how it works. If we know the truth we understand the earth is a tiny little speck of dust, if we don’t we imagine that it’s the centre of the universe. We only learn the difference when we hear the truth.

And it’s exactly the same for us as people. If we don’t know the truth about God – who He is, what He did for us through Jesus, His Son, who we are when we believe in Jesus, how we can respond to His incredible love that God has lavished upon us – unless we know those things then we are going to live out our lives in complete ignorance; completely from the wrong perspective. It’s when we teach our children the Word of God that they develop a godly perspective that bears so much fruit.

It’s exactly what God taught His people, Israel, just before they crossed into the Promised Land. If you have a Bible, open it up at Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 to 9:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, will all your soul, with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise up and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

So in other words, if you want to build a godly family, tell the kids about Jesus. Here’s the amazing thing: I actually ask Mark’s children for their comments. What do they like about being in their family? Do you know what they said, the kids? Reading the Bible together, the creative teaching, the family prayer time; these were some of the things the KIDS said they liked about their family. Well, go figure!!

The Olive Trees Around the Table I want to share with you a story that blew me away, that Mark, my friend, shared with me. And my prayer is that it will blow you away too. It’s all about fruit, in fact, it’s about olives – the fruit of investing in and building a godly family.

Now you and I both know that whenever we invest in anything, what the word "investment" really means is sacrifice now to reap a harvest later because investing is about putting something that we have in hand now; something that we could use or spend in another way. Investing is about taking that thing and planting it somewhere else to reap a reward down the track.

If we save for our retirement, we take money that we could blow on things that we’d enjoy today, we set it aside in some form of investment plan, so that the seed grows into a tree that will feed us when we are retired. If we decide to lose weight and get fit, we sacrifice today’s ‘eat whatever I want’ plan – we sacrifice that in order to reap the reward of a healthier body. We give up time that we would rather spend watching television to exercise to reap the reward. As it turns out, exactly the same principle applies when we invest the time and the effort and the emotional energy that’s required to build a godly family.

This friend of mine, Mark, with nine children, which I still shake my head at – Mark’s final take when I ask him the top three things; tips that he had on building a godly family, well, it comes from Psalm 128. Now grab your Bible, open it up – Psalm 128 is written to the father in the family – it’s a message specifically to dads. Have a listen; it’s actually a very short Psalm:

Happy is everyone who fears the Lord and who walks in his ways.

You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands; you shall be happy and it shall go well with you.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around the table. Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.

The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your children’s children. Peace upon Israel.

Now, I guess to our twenty first century ears maybe that take on family might seem a tad patriarchal. Remember it was written to a people who lived very much in a patriarchal society, so let’s go with it.

Verse 1:

Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

We are blessed; "happy", blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. That’s what we have been talking about over these last few weeks – putting God first in everything … every part of our lives, including the way we do family – that brings blessings.

Verse 2 describes that blessing:

You shall eat the fruit of your labour; you shall be happy and it will go well with you.

You know, that’s the natural consequence of when we honour God.

But now, have a listen to verse 3:

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

Yes, patriarchal, the wife is the fruitful vine but it comes back to the Old Testament view of what blessing is.

Blessing in the Old Testament equalled lots of children and your own lands, pretty simple, so to the person reading that Psalm when it was written, that’s what verse 3 means. The first part is about the wife having a lot of children but have a listen again to the second part of that verse:

Your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

Olive shoots ... they grow up into might olive trees that bear one of the staples of the Eastern diet, olives, from which comes the precious commodity of olive oil.

Now have a listen to what my friend Mark wrote about this particular verse. Here it is word for word from this father of nine children and it just rocked my socks off. I hope you are blessed by what Mark wrote too.

God impacted us with this idea out of our own family study of the Scriptures some time back. It comes out of Psalm 128, verse 3 which says: “The children will be like olive shoots around the table of the man who fears God.”

When learning that olive plants take between sixteen and eighteen years of careful cultivation, pruning and watering and during that time, typically they bear very little fruit and that after the eighteenth year they bear abundant fruit for many, many years to come, it gave us a reason to persevere and not be weary in well doing. That is an incredible truth from Scripture that has kept us going through some really tough times with our kids.

Don’t you love how God packs so much into His Word, it’s so full of truth. What an amazing picture of these olive shoots around the table and we invest in them – this fresh, young shoot – all that effort and investment that the farmer puts into the tree for years. It occupies a part of his orchard, takes investment and work and it bears almost no fruit and then ... then one day, just as God had always planned, all along, that tree produces olives.

I love olives! There’s a cafe just down the road from us, owned by a Greek man, Alex, and he makes these olives that are to die for and you get them with some Turkish bread, and bit of Greek dip and ... AH, fabulous! But imagine, Alex’s olives come from one of those trees ... a tree somewhere, that some farmer has nurtured and cared for for sixteen to eighteen years until finally, it bears fruit. You see this wonderful picture? And just to top it off the Psalmist, at the end of the Psalm, helps us to realise that it doesn’t end with just the olives of that first tree – there is so much more. Psalm 128, verse 6:

“May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel.” This investment in these little olive shoots, sitting around the table of the parents who fear God; who honour God; these parents who are prepared to invest tirelessly, day after day, is going to bear fruit in a little while - fruit that will last for generations.

I look at my three: Simon almost thirty now, Michael in his late twenties and Melissa our baby who has just turned eighteen and Jacqui and I, we are so proud of whom they are. We are so delighted to see the fruit finally growing – to see them making their way in this world, rising up to be the people who God naturally made them to be.

Now I have to tell you, really, doing the whole little kid thing, it’s not my naturally gig ... it’s just not. It was hard work for me. So for me, many days, it was such a tough road – being a dad, going through teaching the children over and over and over again, but the fruit ... the fruit that that investment is now bearing is so incredibly worth it, I have to tell you.

I want to encourage you today that wherever your family is, whatever is going on, whatever dysfunction you perceive will absolutely prevent you from building a godly family, I want to encourage you that the Word of God is true. That when we begin to honour God and to fear God and we step out and we say, “I am believing God for a godly family,” I got to tell you, the Spirit of God will come in power.

He will show us what to do. He will show us what to say. He will show us how to live and it might take a while, but I have to tell you, my God and your God – that God is about building a godly family.

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You know something – that old saying that blood is thicker than water, it’s true. There’s a special bond between members of a family. Our family really does matter. And that – that’s why it’s time to start looking at what it means to build a godly family.

Family Matters It’s great! Here we are again, another week continuing our series called, "Building a Godly Family". And the reason we are doing that is because families really matter. We all imagine that out there somewhere there is a typical family – a mum, a dad, two point four well-adjusted children and that perfect family is living out a perfect life. In fact, not just one of them, lots of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of them – all these perfect families.

I mean, look at them! They all look so perfect but not me, not my family: blended or dysfunctional, arguments or strife; people who haven’t talked to each other for years; parents who drive their children nuts: children who just don’t get it, they go off and do their own thing and leave their parents shaking their heads.

You get what I’m saying, right? It feels like sometimes it’s just our family that’s in a mess and everyone else’s has got it together. You know why? It’s those happy ads on TV: selling the four wheel drives with happy, smiling kids in the back seat; selling the breakfast cereal, the ad where the sun is shining in the kitchen window and mum’s pouring orange juice while the kids are sitting there smiling and eating healthy cereal. I mean, come on!

Life’s not like that! It’s just not you, it’s just not me. We all have issues in our family – ninety nine point nine percent of the people do and those who don’t are kidding themselves. It varies of course. I mean, not everyone’s kids are doing drugs; not every husband is beating his wife but there is no such thing as the perfect family out there ... there just isn’t. So let’s stop carrying around this burden that we’ve plonked on our heads that somehow my family doesn’t measure up to what everyone else’s family is doing.

It’s not about measuring up. In my book it’s about what can I do from this day forward to build a godly family? What seeds can I sow? What plants can I water so that the fruit of a godly family will grow for all to enjoy? That’s what it’s about because our families matter. Let me ask you this: how much does your family matter to you? Just stop and sit back and think about that for a moment – chew it over. How much does my family mean to me?

I don’t know what your family looks like but it doesn’t matter who we are, where we’re at, how we were brought up, somehow we are all part of a family. My hunch is that it’s God’s plan for it to be that way – it’s more than a hunch. I mean, God is three persons in one – Father, Son and Holy Spirit living in perfect community.

I’m not sure that I have ever even thought of it this way, but there we have it, the first family, God Himself. The first verse in the Bible says, “In the beginning, God ...” “In the beginning, Elohim ...” literally "God's" plural. And the very first person He creates, Adam, well, have a listen to what God says about Adam.

It is not good that a man should be alone. I will make a helper as his partner. (Genesis chapter 2, verse 18)

And right throughout the Old Testament, what you see is that God’s blessing for His people, the Israelites, is all about having two things – their own land and lots of children. We know that family is meant to be a blessing. It’s a God thing, I mean, right from the beginning, God isn’t just one person; He’s three.

Family really matters! And I know that for some people, just hearing that is going to hurt ... hurt an awful lot. Almost half of all marriages in the wealthy West end in divorce. I have friends who have lost loved ones in the ravages of war. Every day twenty five/thirty thousand children die of poverty and starvation and disease and Aids and ... so thinking about family, depending on your particular circumstances, well, you know it can hurt but the reason it hurts so much; the reason divorce is such a scourge and losing someone we love tears our insides out, the reason is this: because family truly matters.

We want our family to stay intact; we want our kids to grow up strong and healthy and have a listen to what the Psalmist writes in Psalm 37, beginning at verse 35. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it up here, Psalm 37, verse 25:

I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending and their children become a blessing.

See, that’s God’s perfect plan for our families – for us to live a good life; a righteous life and for us to be a blessing to our children and for them, then to go on and become a blessing to others. It’s a story ... well it’s a story that’s written in our DNA. It’s a story that plays itself out in our hopes and our dreams but it’s a plot that we so easily loose in the busyness of a consumer oriented, entertainment oriented, credit card oriented world in which we live.

Let me ask you again – out of everything in your life, everything you have, every hope, every dream, every possession, every desire – out of everything, how much does your family matter? My hunch is for most of us, the answer is a lot. Family matters an awful lot, doesn’t it? And if it does, if it really does, then surely ... surely we need to invest in this thing.

We need to not just talk about having a godly family but get on a build a godly family. These relationships; these people who matter more to us than any other thing on this earth – that’s what we are going to be talking about this week on the programme – making that investment - getting beyond talking, getting beyond thinking, getting beyond dreaming and actually getting on and building a godly family because there is so much blessing in that – so much.

Setting the Course Now so many families are in a mess – tension, strife – but all it takes is one member of that family to turn back to God; to honour God and God can and will make some awesome and mighty changes. It might take time; it might take longer than you or I would prefer, but God is a God of grace; His heart is to bless our families to a thousand generations. All He is looking for is some godly men, women and children to take a stand and say, "Enough of this. It is time for me to build a godly family." First Corinthians chapter 4, verse 20 in the Message translation says this:

God’s way is not a matter of mere talk, it’s an empowered life.

You know what I’ve noticed? We can talk a lot about stuff but most times nothing changes unless we actually do something and yet because we come home tired and we need a rest and we just ignore things; we just let things run – the badly behaved children, for example. There is a great proverb, it’s in Proverbs chapter 29, verse 17. It says:

Discipline your children and they will give you rest; they will give delight to your heart.

Now you’ve seen it down the local supermarket, so have I – the mother with the child. The child is just grinding her down; bad behaviour; throwing tantrums and mum, she’s just tired ... she’s too tired to do anything. She lets this kid run riot, it causes her grief, causing everyone else around the place grief too, I might add. Why does that happen? I’ll tell you why: probably because dad is too tired to discipline the child when he comes home at night so this kid walks all over his mother; she’s exhausted and the kid’s only seven! Wait until this little terror becomes a teenager, I mean, just wait!

There is fruit in building a godly family; tremendous fruit! And what Proverbs said is: “When you discipline your children they will give you rest; they will give delight to your heart.” Peace and a delighted heart – see, what you sow, you actually reap. The problem is that sowing ... well, it’s such hard work sometimes and reaping seems to be such a long way off, doesn’t it?

Well, let me tell you something, we have been talking about building a godly family but it ain’t going to happen unless we step out in faith and start making it happen. Yes, it’s about God blessing our efforts but if He’s got nothing to bless, then He’s got nothing to bless. We behave ourselves in to a bad place. Bad habits in families happen because we just fail to do things and we do things that are wrong that we shouldn’t be doing.

It’s what we say, what we do, what we fail to do. We behave ourselves into that bad place and yes, we should pray, but God expects us to start behaving ourselves out of that place. He’s going to bless that but we have to do our part, so Christians, do you want a godly family? A family where each family member is living out a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ; where each one is living that out in their lives? Husband and wife have this warm and intimate relationship, children are by and large honouring their parents, each family member respects, honours, understands the other.

There’s real blessing; God’s blessing that flows into our families and out through our families when we build a godly family, but we’re going to have to decide that’s what we want, plan it and start living it. We are going to have to decide that some changes have to be made. This easy, comfortable, lazy existence has to change. Discipline is painful; kids don’t like it much; it takes hard work and strength and perseverance but it pays dividends.

So let me ask you, how much do you want to have a godly family? And if the answer is: "Absolutely, yes! I do!" then some decisions have to be made. If your family is one with a husband and a wife then it is up to the both of you. Talk and dream and decide what’s important. Set priorities. Figure out "how are we going to do this together? What steps do we need to take first?" Mum and dad, you are the leaders, don’t expect the kids to figure this out.

And I happen to believe, actually, that ultimately, the father is responsible for the spiritual growth and nourishment and development of his family; the buck stops with you, dad. This isn’t a sexist thing! So many women would give their eye teeth for their husbands to step up to the plate and take on that leadership role. So many kids would love to have parents who were not only interested in them, who spend time with them and effort, setting boundaries, enforcing the boundaries, nurturing them within the boundaries.

I have to tell you, as a person, humph, I’m a natural isolationist. You know something? I so much prefer my own company, often times, to the company of other people – it’s just who I am. Now, I really enjoy retreating to my own space after a hard day at the office so for me, given whom I am, getting involved with the family and the kids and listening to what happened to them at school or at work, it’s just not a natural gift. But we have to start somewhere. You can’t build a godly family if there’s no relationship, if there is no interaction – something my wife has taught me.

We are going to talk about some of the "how" a little bit later in today’s programme and again next week. In fact, one of the godliest families I know; friends who live in the U.S. with mum, dad and nine kids! They have given me some of their pointers – both the parents and the kids. So we are going to have a look at those next week on the programme but right now we have to decide, each one of us, do we actually want to have a godly family?

Well, do we? And if we do, what are we going to do about it? Maybe that’s something you can pray about and think about and talk about at home over this coming week and we can talk some more next week on the programme, this whole thing of building a godly family.

Children and Honour You know, we were talking earlier about the fact that if we want to build a godly family we have to do more than talk about it, we have to act. And I just want to talk about our children right now because one of the biggest things that rob the peace out of our homes is children who haven’t learned to honour their parents and one another.

Now honour is something that today’s generations don’t talk too much about. "Aw, we want other people to honour us", but honour, as it turns out, is a two way street and without it we simply can’t have a godly family. In fact, God thinks that it is so important that in the Ten Commandments, the first four are about God and us and the very next one, the fifth Commandment is about honour in the family.

Pretty amazing this whole "Ten Commandments" thing, when you think about it! Let’s have a quick look – the First Commandment is in Exodus chapter 20, verse 2 and 3:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

The Second Commandment – Exodus chapter 20, verse 4:

You shall not make for yourself an idol; you shall not bow down to worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

Commandment number three begins in Exodus chapter 20, verse 7:

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God for your Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

The fourth Commandment, Exodus chapter 20:8, 9 and 10:

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath day unto the Lord your God and you shall not do any work.

So the first four Commandments are: don’t make any idols, don’t worship anything else other than God, don’t use His name badly and have a day of rest which you give to Him. So those first four Commandments are all about – in a nutshell, executive summary – honouring God.

Now I’m wondering if you or I were God what would we have put down as the very next Commandment? Well, if it were me, I think murder would have been number five – I mean, you shouldn’t murder people – that’s really important. What could be more important than that? Don’t steal; don’t commit adultery, what should have been number five? What does God choose as number five? Exodus chapter 20, verse 12:

Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Ahead of murder, ahead of adultery, stealing, lying and jealousy, "honour your mum and dad"! I don’t think I would have put that in the top ten – maybe in the top twenty, but certainly not in the top ten – certainly not as the very next Commandment after those that are about honouring God. Yet, where does God put it? Number five! Not only that, it is the very first Commandment to which there is a blessing attached:

So that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you.

You know, when you become a parent you start thinking what that means is that if the kids honour the parents, the parents won’t kill ‘em. Yea, well, you know, those teenage years? But that’s not what it means – what it means is that God will bless someone who honours their father and their mother! Figure that out? This is really important to God.

See, Israel was going in to possess the Promised Land. They would have to take it by force one day and all the Nations they took it off would try and take it back again. All the other Nations around them would try to defeat them but the blessing attached to honouring your father and mother is this: that you will own your land and you will have peace. Isn’t there a message in that for a few families?

Now many families are in a mess because the children have never been taught to honour their parents. I know young adult children in their twenties who live with their parents, they don’t pay any board. This particular woman I know, this child is a drain on the parents’ finances in their old age. They leave a mess behind, they cause pain. Why? Because these children were not taught to honour their father and their mother.

You know, as a teenager, the most natural thing in the world is to treat your parents like slaves – you expect your father to be a taxi driver, you expect your mother to wash your clothes and clean up after you but there comes a point in those teenage years when the children are old enough to be taught to do some of these things, not just for themselves, but actually to do some things back for their parents. To clean up messes that they don’t create, to clean toilets that not just they use so that they learn to honour the other people.

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Peace is one of those things – well, who doesn’t want peace in their lives. Freedom from conflict. But imagine, imagine what a blessing it must be, to have peace at home. A family that thrives on peace instead of being lost in conflict.

What a Blessing If God offered you anything you wanted in this world, anything at all, what would you ask for? Tough question. It takes a bit of thinking about – a new car; a bigger house; good health; a long life. There are so many things to choose from. What would you choose? Can I tell you something, after the basic provisions of enough air to breath, water to drink and food to eat and a roof over my head, do you know what’s right up there for me? Peace, just being able to live life in peace.

If you have a Bible, open it up at 1 Kings in the Old Testament, chapter 22 and verse 17. This is what it says:

Then Micaiah said, ‘I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep that have no shepherd’. And the Lord said, ‘These have no master, let each one go home in peace’.

There’s something … something about being able to go home in peace. To kind of walk in the front the door, close it behind you, be in this sanctuary called “home” and to be able to withdraw from the world with our families and have peace.

In fact my hunch is, if you and I did a survey and a peaceful home was one of the things on that list, many a person would choose that because there is such a blessing in a peaceful home. Many a home is torn by strife – discord, disrespect, dissension – and many a family is disintegrating. What if we could have a peaceful home? What a blessing that would be.

When you look around this world there are many homes that are far from being peaceful. They’re a long way from that. And depending on where you live, either divorce is running at almost one in every two marriages or – if divorce isn’t quite the cultural norm – many of the so called families are no more than warring adults and a bunch of angry, ill-disciplined children.

There’s no peace in those places. You can’t have peace when the people aren’t living a peaceful life. There’s an interesting statement at the beginning of the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Proverbs is Wisdom Literature. Have a look at Proverbs chapter 1 verse 7:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

When it comes to peace, I had an interesting email from a rebel fighter in a war-torn part of Africa last year. He listened to a program of ours on the radio about the fear of God. Have a listen to what he said:

"Recently I was attending a peace conference. While I was in my hotel room I turned on the radio. As I was listening to your program, I realized that with no fear of God in our hearts there will be no peace. No peace at all.

This eight minutes were enough to take me to a turning point in my life as well as in my peace effort in this region. I left the room as a changed man. I’d been on the battlefield for 13 years now. I don’t know how many people have died because of my gun but what I know is that I decided to lay down my arms."

Isn’t that an amazing testimony? But do you get it? Peace comes when we fear God. Peace comes when we decide to do it His way. Peace comes when we lay down our guns and stop shooting because deep in our hearts the fear of God has taken root – a right fear; a good fear – when we decide to start living our lives His way, the right way.

There’s a name for that. It’s called righteousness and righteousness has a real impact on our home lives. Again listen to the prophet Isaiah. I’m reading from Isaiah chapter 2 beginning at verse 7. Listen to how he puts it:

The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, a secure dwelling and in quiet resting places.

Man, what an incredible blessing. Peaceful habitation, a secure dwelling and quiet resting places. Let me ask you something. Is that something that you want for your home, for your family? When you walk in the front door and close it and shut out the rest of the world out there, is that the sort of home that you want to have.

I believe that it is time for us to start building a godly home; to take seriously our responsibility to play our part in making our homes godly. I don’t mean being perfect. We are imperfect people and so are going to have an imperfect home. Sure. But you know something, as we start to get the fear of God happening in our hearts as we honour God, as we start to decide to live our lives His way, something happens.

It’s a bit like that rebel fighter. Peace breaks out. It won’t happen over night. It may take months or even years to sort through some of the messes we’ve created and I know that we can’t change the past but we can change from this moment forward.

What a blessing a peaceful home is. I’ve lived in both. A house of conflict and a house of peace and let me tell you, peace is so much better. There’s a price to pay. I can’t have all my own way any more. You know something, that’s good, that’s something I had to learn and I’m still learning but I’m absolutely determined to do the best I can to make the home I live in peaceful. Not just for me, but for my wife, Jacqui and my beautiful daughter Melissa. They’re entitled to peace too, you know.

Now there are going to be times when the three of us rub one another the wrong way, when it just doesn’t quite work. But today on the program we’re going to be taking a look at some really practical things we can do to have a godly family and peaceful home.

I was talking recently to a real estate agent who was selling a house for a couple that had just separated. Every week they have the sales meeting with the real estate agent to see how the sale’s progressing. He was telling me how difficult those meetings were. He said you can cut the air with a knife. These two detest each other. They couldn’t see eye to eye on anything. Why is that? How did that happen? How did things get to such a low point?

Let me tell you, that’s the inevitable outcome if we live in our families for ourselves, selfishly. What I can get out of it. It starts not long enough after a couple’s married, tiny cracks appear, battles start that turn into raging wars and it tears families apart. Life wasn’t meant to be lived that way. We weren’t meant to live in a war zone called family. And part of what needs to happen in our homes is that each one of us needs to bring ourselves under the authority of God Himself. Godly people have the opportunity to build a godly home.

It’s no slam dunk by the way. It’s no certainty but at least we have the opportunity. Ungodly people have got no show. Let me ask you again, what do you want? Do you want what the prophet Isaiah was talking about?

The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places.

Is that what you want? Or do you want a home of discord and dissension.

Husband and Father Now I truly believe that the husband, the father, the man, has such a great role to play in bringing peace. We men are a funny breed. There is something deep inside us that makes us the protectors and the providers for our families. Most men, not all, but most men are programmed, hard-wired, to provide and protect. Okay, these days women often go to work and bring income into the house (and that’s great), but it tends to be the man – the husband, the father – who carries the burden of protection and provision around in his heart.

It’s kind of how we blokes are. And even though we can get it wrong (we can become dominating, and reclusive and uncommunicative and in fact, downright abusive) you know there’s something special about the way God’s made us. There’s something inside us that’s wants to lead … and that, that is a real asset to our families. I don’t know about you, but I want a peaceful habitation, secure dwelling, peaceful resting place just like Isaiah spoke when we looked before the break.

And funnily enough it fits so well with the thing we men carry around inside us somewhere – to be the protector and the provider. Because if we really thought about it, that’s the sort of home we’d like to provide for our families, I certainly would. And that snug fit, that kind of hand in glove thing that’s happening here between God’s promise of a peaceful home and the man’s desire to provide and protect, you know what that tells me? It tells me that we men – husbands and fathers – have a big role to play in bringing this blessing to pass

That’s something I’d like to unpack right now, because if the truth be known there is more than one man listening today, for whom it’s time to step up to the plate and be a man. To be the man God made him to be; to protect, to provide, to bring peace and blessing to our homes.

The notion these days of the man being the head of the household, well, it’s not very politically correct. It’s not particularly popular. But the reality is the man’s protector/provider kind of strength fits in well for that role. Not to dominate people, not to abuse power, but to be a godly leader in the home.

And there’s the key – it’s in that adjective, "godly", because an ungodly husband and father can be such a destructive force in the home. He’s so strong, his anger is so fierce it’s a part of who he is as a man. A father can be destructive. Have a listen to this piece of godly advice from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4:

Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

You see, there the two sides of the coin in that verse. There’s a strength and you can either use that, Dad, to bring your kids up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord or you can misuse it to provoke anger in your children. Godly strength wrongly applied becomes a harsh reality and where there is a harsh judgement and treatment from an ungodly man in the home there can be no peace.

The other mistake we make in the 21st century is the mistake of abdication. Many a husband and father walk away from his role as the leader in the home. And that’s sad, because as a godly leader he can bring such an incredible peace and stability and safety and order in this chaotic thing we call family. There are a few different reasons why men walk away sometimes.

The first is that they are just plain exhausted. They are working long hours to pay off the mortgage.

The second is that it doesn’t seem politically correct anymore for him to exercise leadership. We mistake equality between men and women by thinking they’re the same. We get it all wrong. We think somehow that it means that our roles in the home are the same. They’re not because we’re different and God planned it that way. The template men have in their heads of the relationship with their mother and father well it doesn’t work anymore so they give up.

Kids have been taught to disrespect their parents. That’s the third thing. In the TV program, "The Simpsons", dad, Homer is this stupid old slob who can never get it right. Society’s teaching our kids to defy their parents and so many a man will abdicate for these reasons. And on top of all that, he’s too busy to have a close walk with God. He, himself, therefore isn’t godly. So if you’re a man listen up and if you’re a woman listen up too because this is important.

Men, God made us in a certain way. Strong with that protector/provider for a purpose and the greatest thing that you can do for your family is to get close to God; to start praying and reading the Bible and getting close to God so that you can hear His heartbeat. It’s a beautiful strong beat, the father’s heart – a constant rhythm.

And the closer we get to God, men, the more we rediscover who God made us to be. Actually being a leader and loving and cherishing our wives and nurturing our children. It ends up coming kind of naturally. It comes naturally to cherish our wives and to nurture and discipline our children and to protect our families from the things that will upset their peace.

There are probably so men have slipped into bad habits because they’re tired, because godly ways aren’t trendy anymore. Perhaps they’re not that trendy but if we surveyed women if they wanted their husbands to step up to the plate and take up the mantle of leadership – godly leadership – you know what we’d get? A resounding, “Oh, yes, please!”

It’s great for us men to be passionate about our work. There is something my wife’s been teaching me, I have to have something left over for my family too. Not the dregs, not the leftovers but something of my best. So if you’re a man, if some of this rings true for you and is driving a bit closer to home than you wished it was, here is my encouragement to you today.

You my friend are God’s gift to your wife and to your children. He expects you to lead, he expects you to protect and provide and when we figure out what that means in our particular family – what we discover is that who we are brings such peace to our homes and that, that’s an incredible blessing.

Wife and Mother Before the break we talked about the man, the husband, the father. What an incredible asset his strength can be in building a godly family and bringing peace to the home. Now it’s time to talk about the wife and the mother and the incredible asset that she can be in being the glue that binds the family together into a working unit; the one who makes the home a nurturing environment.

But so often the women feels used and abused. No wonder! In many places and cultures she’s expected to go out and earn income as well. In Australia at least, the lion’s share of housework is still done by women and not men.

Now the Christian view of male/female relationships can seem, well, old fashioned. But the more I delve into what the Bible has to say about male/female relationships, the more I realise that whilst maybe we wouldn’t quite use the same language today if we were writing it, what God has to say about families and husbands and wives, when you dig beneath the language that offends our 21st century sensibilities and go to the heart of what He is saying, it’s as true today as it was when it was written. Have a listen to this. 1 Peter in the New Testament, chapter 3 verse 7:

Husbands, in the same way show consideration for your wives in your life together paying honour to the woman as the weaker sex since they too are heirs of the gracious gift of life so that nothing may hinder your prayers.

That weaker sex thing makes me smile. Women after all are the ones who have the babies and the very thought of having a baby is enough to send me into a cold sweat. I mean, I go weak at the knees at the thought of what it must be like for a woman to give birth. And then the Bible calls them the weaker sex. Bit chauvinistic don’t you think. Actually what the original Greek that sits behind our English translation says, is that they are the weaker vessel.

This is how I picture this. You know, the big metal vats that they use when they milk cows, you know, those big sort of aluminium cans – that’s the bloke and the woman is this small, delicate, exquisite vase on the mantel piece of infinitely more worth, infinitely greater beauty than that big hard can. That kind of does it for me, that picture.

Men have this knock-about strength and robustness about them. They play the game of rugby or football or whatever your code of football is, the bone crunching thing that they do. Not very much a girl thing is it?

Women on the other hand are delicate, they’re much more emotional creatures and for the most part we men don’t get that often. And see what Peter’s writing here to us blokes is this: just because you appear stronger; just because you’ve got it in your heads that you’re bigger, better, stronger, faster (and this was particularly relevant to the patriarchal society he was writing to) just because you’ve got this macho picture in your head, don’t you for one minute even begin to think you are somehow better in God’s sight.

In fact you’d better honour her. Do you know what that means? Do you know what it means to honour someone? It means firstly and foremost to value her. That’s why the old marriage vows say love, honour and cherish because she needs to be cherished and she has this incredible strength, men, that we don’t have. So God’s calling us here, through His word, to value her, to honour her, to pay deference and reverence to her. This is very strong language and there’s a sting in the end of this last bit for men. Have another listen.

Husband’s in the same way show considering for your wives. (Boy, if only we could show consideration for our wives). Husbands show consideration for your wives in your life together paying honour to the woman as the weaker sex, (that beautiful vase on the mantel piece) since they too are heirs of the gracious gift of life, (now here’s the sting) so that nothing, nothing may hinder your prayers.

Look at how seriously God takes this. People, women play such an amazing role in the building of the Godly family and the bringing of peace to the home. But to those of you who are woman, I’m going to say this. I want you to hear the sting in the tale that God puts in his advice to men about how they treat you.

I want you to hear how seriously God takes you. How much He cares for you, how much He doesn’t mince His words when He’s standing up for you. It’s time for some women in this world to realise how incredibly important your gentleness and your commitment to your children and your commitment to your husband and your commitment to your home really is in building a godly home.

See, in my heart, I think of my wife as the pillar of our family. She’s the one that binds us all together and while I’m out there being a hunter/gatherer she is binding the family together. She’s knocking off some of my rough edges. She’s softening who I am. She’s helping me to see the children. She is a wonderful asset in our home.

I want to come back to what we were talking about today. It’s about the blessing of a peaceful home. Remember we talked at the beginning of the program about Isaiah chapter 32 beginning at verse 17 where God says this:

The effect of righteousness, that is living our lives the right way through Jesus Christ, the effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. (What a beautiful home that would be. God goes on to say), People will abide in a peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places.

Can I encourage you today, it is so worth it to decide as husband and wife, as the leaders of the home, that you are going to have a peaceful home and then to set about using the different gifts, the different skills, the different ways that God has made each of you, to be a blessing and to bring that to pass.

Doesn’t matter how dysfunctional our homes may be, doesn’t matter what mistakes we’ve made in the past, doesn’t matter how bad things are, God wants his people to live righteously and the blessing that comes from that is peace and security and a quiet resting place. And that is so worth doing.

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Of course, families are and always were, God’s idea. Yet so often these days, families seem to be, well, let’s be honest, just a tad dysfunctional. And as we each grapple with the realities of family life, all too often, we look around at all those apparently normal, balanced, near-perfect families out there and wonder to ourselves – what’s wrong with my family? What’s going on here?

The Dysfunctional Family Well, here we are, a new week! And today we are going to start a discussion, you and I, about something completely different. Over these next few weeks on the programme we are going to be taking a look at what it means to build a godly family. I’ll tell you why.

Recently here at the ministry of Christianityworks we asked our friends and supporters to write in to us to share their prayer requests and here’s what struck me: at least eighty percent of the prayer requests we received – and there were a lot of them, I have to tell you – at least eighty percent were asking us to pray for people’s families: for my son or my wife, for my daughter, my husband, my auntie, my cousins. You know something? We actually care about our families. As difficult and as strife torn as many families are, blood is thicker than water and our families really do matter to us

And we don’t have to look very far, you know, in society to see todays families are becoming more and more dysfunctional. But here’s the thing: we kind of know that but somehow we imagine that, well, there’s this perfect family out there. In fact, the perfect family is the norm and the dysfunction we see in our own families, well, we are just the only ones.

"It’s my fault. I’ve botched it up. We’re just stuck with this – it’s the way it is. The teenagers who don’t respect their parents; the adults in our extended families who are having feuds and they haven’t talked to each other for ages because they argued over distributing the assets of their parents when they died eight years ago. No, you see, it’s just my family that’s a mess. And that’s the thing, it’s what I’ve been handed; it’s the hand I’ve been dealt and there’s just nothing I can do about it – there’s just nothing. What’s the point?"

It’s true, isn’t? Living out families is sometimes like living out a gorilla war. It’s so in your face; every time you come home; every time you walk in the door – the whole "family thing" greets you. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that every family is a basket-case – hopefully yours isn’t but sometimes we are so close to it all, it kind of feels like it is a basket-case. We get it out of perspective.

And in the middle of this constant relational tension you can get to feeling like, "Aw, God, what’s going on here? Why can’t I have a normal family like everybody else – like those people next door?" And let me tell you, I’m not talking about this whole "family thing" from some perfect place, I can tell you.

Before I gave my life over to Jesus a decade and a half ago, I’ve got to tell you I made some huge blunders that changed the very course of my life and I am still far from perfect. But since that time God’s been teaching me a new way – I’m still learning.

So I’m at a certain place in my journey and you are at a certain place in your journey and let’s get over this comparing and judging, "Other people have better families than me." There’s only one issue: "Where do we go from here?" And I for one, I am about building a godly family because there is such reward in that; such harvest and not just one day in the future but along the way, here and now – the joy of investing and sacrificing to make a difference in the lives of those whom we love.

We will talk about that over the coming weeks but today I just want to give us some comfort that God knows all about dysfunctional families. You can take the very first human family, if you like – Adam and Eve – and their two sons Cain and Abel. You probably know the story of Adam and Eve – you know, the Garden of Eden, then they sinned; they ate the apple and God kicked them out and they had a couple of sons.

But I want to show you something about this family – the interactions between the people – that’s a real stark reminder about the dysfunction in family. You often hear people talking about Adam and Eve and the snake and all that stuff from a theological perspective – and that’s great – but what about from a family perspective? Okay, Adam and Eve, they’ve sinned; they ate from that one tree that God told them not to. God comes looking for them – they are hiding in the garden. I have always thought that was incredibly smart to be hiding from God! And God brings Adam to account:

He says to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” And the man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit from the tree and then I ate it.” And then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me. I ate.”

And the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures. Upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat for all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers and he will strike your head and you will strike his heel.

Comes from Genesis chapter 3, verses 11 to 15

So there it is: they rebelled against God and God – well, Adam blames Eve. The very first thing he does when he does something wrong Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake and I guess, the snake didn’t have a leg to stand on! You see what happens? We go from perfect harmony to dysfunction.

God tells them that that is going to be the norm from now on there’s going to be enmity between the man and the woman, there’s going to be enmity amongst the children and that’s exactly what happens. Listen to what Cain and Abel ... what their relationship ends up like:

Abel was the keeper of sheep and Cain the tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel, for his part, brought the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering, God had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted and if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you but you must master it. Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out into the field,” and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Genesis Chapter 4.

So there you have it – the very first family. They rebel against God; husband turns against wife, brother kills brother. It’s the absolute natural state of affairs for a family that has turned its back on God. But here’s the good new, there’s a flip side to this coin for the family that turns back to God. A family that honours God; a family that has God as the head of its household – that family can expect God to bless it. Have another listen. Deuteronomy Chapter 5, beginning at verse 8:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven or above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

In other words, when we put God at the head of our lives and the head of our families, He will show us His steadfast, unwavering love, not just to us but to a thousand generations. And you know what that means? It doesn’t matter how bad things have become in our families, when we honour God, He in turn will honour us.

Breaking with the Past One of the things that bring so much dysfunction into families are the things of the past – things that have been handed down genetically, emotionally and spiritually. Our parents hand so many things down to us – their genes, their strengths and their weaknesses. People say that I look like my dad, I even walk like him but it wasn’t till I saw myself in a TV interview that I was shocked to realise that my very mannerisms are so much like my fathers.

It’s pretty scary! And so alcohol addictions and bad tempers and a tendency to whinge and complain; all sorts of things end up being handed down from generation to generation.

Dysfunctional families are much more likely to produce children that grow up to have their own dysfunctional families. Where does it end? Well, I have a simple answer to that – it ends today, right here and now, this very minute – that’s when it ends. Let me explain. See, it’s really easy to blame our parents for things ... for the bad things that happen. If abuse happened in your childhood or you had a father with a bad temper or your parents smoked; whatever it is and they handed those things down to you.

I don’t know about your parents but mine, I had good parents. They weren’t perfect, they just worked hard and I am sure they can look back at their lives and go, "Well, I could have done this better or I could have done that better," but there is no point in just sitting here and blaming them and blaming the past. Things do get handed down from generation to generation, some of them are good things but others aren’t.

When you go and see your doctor, one of the first things he’ll ask you about is your family history. Is there a history of high blood pressure or diabetes or heart disease or mental health issues or breast cancer? Family history has a lot to do with our physical well-being.

Now my dad had Type ll Diabetes and in the end it took his life. My mother has high blood pressure and so I can sit here without exercising, eating whatever I want and whinge and complain about the fact that they could give me diabetes and high blood pressure, or I can get off my backside and do something about it. There’s a pretty clear alternative.

Most illnesses, you can work against them and reduce the risk and it’s the same with emotional and spiritual things that get handed down to us. Maybe you had parents who were into the occult, maybe you had parents who fought like cat and dog, maybe you had parents who knew about God but simply didn’t honour God with their lives. Well, you’ve got two choices – you can sit there and complain about it or you can do something about it.

Have a listen to what happens when we put other things before God. We looked at it earlier. God say

I am a jealous God and I will punish children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and fourth generation. But those who show steadfast love, I will bless to the thousandth generation.

It’s pretty straight forward! When parents turn away from God and chase after other things, it’s going to have an impact – not just on them – but on their children and their children’s children.

It’s obvious. We’ve seen how it works. A child brought up by an alcoholic father is likely to suffer the consequences of that in adulthood. There’s every chance that it will impact not just them but it will be passed down to their kids. It’s not rocket science – we’ve all seen it but look at the alternative that God talks about:

Showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

A thousand generations – a new generation every twenty five years, that’s twenty five thousand years! We are only a fraction of the way into that since this was written (Deuteronomy) a few thousand years BC. Do you get it? God’s blessing to us and our families when we honour Him is just massive, and you see that in a lot of godly families. This dynasty of blessing flows down from one generation to the next.

Maybe there are things from your past – emotional, spiritual – that are impacting your life. Today is the day that we can choose to break that chain. Today is the day that we can choose to break free from the power of the past. Listen to the prayer that Nehemiah prayed:

O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps the covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you, day and night, for your servants the people of Israel. Confessing the sins of the people of Israel which we have sinned against you, both I and my family have sinned.

And Nehemiah then goes on to ask for forgiveness; he turns away from that and he moves on. It’s a simple prayer; it’s a prayer of repentance. It breaks the linkage to the sin of previous generations – Nehemiah, his ancestors and his family.

We have all sinned! God is a God who forgives and God is a God who makes all things new again. He breaks the power of the past over us because His heart is to bless to a thousand generations. The Apostle Paul writes in Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17:

If anyone is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and all things are new.

Let me take you back to some of the things that maybe you’ve had handed down to you – addictions or anger or bad behaviour or whatever it is – we can receive freedom from those things simply by praying and believing. God will work out His answer to our prayer in our lives in His good time

Meanwhile we can take stock of those things and decide to start doing something about them. Not in our own fancy strength but through a relationship with Jesus which transforms us. It is time to end the cycle of sin in our families – to stop it dead here. The buck stops with you and me. How about it?

Setting the Course Now it doesn’t matter how dysfunctional a family is at the moment, all it takes is one member of that family to turn back to God; to honour God and God can and will make an awesome and mighty difference. It may take time, it may take longer than you and I would prefer but God is a God of grace – His heart is to bless our family to a thousand generations and He’s looking for some godly men, godly women, godly children to take a stand and say, "Enough is enough! It is time for me to build a godly family." First Corinthians chapter 4, verse 20 in the Message translation says this:

God’s way is not a matter of mere talk, it’s an empowered life.

That’s why this ministry I’m involved in is called Christianityworks because it actually does. So let’s talk about making it happen – an empowered life that sets about building a godly family. But you know what I have noticed? We can talk about a lot of stuff but most times nothing changes unless we actually do something.

It’s true at work; it’s true at home! How often have you been to a meeting at work and people talk about a whole bunch of stuff: "We’ll do this, we’ll do that", but after the meeting no one does anything. And guess what? Nothing changes; nothing!

We come home at the end of the day; we need a rest; we ignore things – the badly behaved children for example. There’s a great proverb: Proverbs chapter 29, verse 17 that says:

Discipline your children and they will give you rest; they will give you the delight of your heart.

I have seen this down at the local supermarket. The mother’s is with the child and the child just grinds her down through bad behaviour and she’s tired ... she’s too tired to do anything about it so she lets this kid run riot, causing her grief and causing everybody else grief as well.

Why does it happen? I’ll tell you why – probably because dad is too tired to discipline the child when he comes home. Does he enjoy their behaviour? No! But this kid walks all over his mother, she’s exhausted and ... and mind you the kid is only seven – wait till the little terror becomes a teenager!

You see, there’s fruit in building a godly family – tremendous fruit. Discipline your children and what do you get? Peace and a delighted heart! What you sow is what you reap. The problem is sowing is hard work sometimes and reaping seems ... well, such a long way off, doesn’t it?

Let me tell you something – we have been talking about building a godly family but it ain’t going to happen unless we step out in faith and start making it happen. Yes, it’s about God blessing our efforts but if He’s got nothing to bless then, He got nothing to bless. I mean, if I am twenty kilos overweight, forty pounds, and I want to be trim, taut and terrific and I pray and pray and believe God for a breakthrough but I keep eating and drinking the same old rubbish and I don’t exercise.

Let me ask you something – is God going to zap me while I am lying on the sofa and miraculously remove the excess weight? Well, He could, and with God I never rule anything out but I have never quite seen it happen that way, have you?

Why would we think it is any different building a godly family? We behave ourselves into a bad place by what we say, what we do, what we fail to do – we behave our families into that bad place and yes, we should pray. But God expects us to start behaving ourselves out of that place. And that’s what we are going to be talking about over the next three weeks.

He is going to bless that but we have to do our part. So let me ask you something – do you want to have a godly family because if you do you are going to have to decide; that is what we want, plan it and start living it? We are going to have to decide that some changes have to be made. This easy, comfortable, lazy existence has to change. Discipline is painful; kids don’t like it much. It takes strength and perseverance but it pays dividends in their lives and in ours.

Let me ask you, how much do you want to have a godly family? And if the answer is, "Yes, I do. I do!", then some tough decisions have to be made. If your family is one with a husband and a wife, then it is up to the both of you. If it is a single parent family then it is up to you alone. But husband and wife have to talk and dream and decide what is important and set priorities and figure out how to do this – what steps to take first, and so on.

Mum and dad, you are the leaders and I happen to believe that ultimately, the father is responsible for the spiritual growth and nourishment and development of his family. The buck stops with you, dad! And that’s not a sexist thing because I have to tell you, so many women would give their eyeteeth if their husbands would just step up to the plate and take on a leadership role. So many kids would love to have parents who were interested in them, who spend time and efforts setting boundaries, enforcing those boundaries, nurturing them within those boundaries.

I have to tell you, as a person, I am a natural isolationist. I like my own company, oft times over the company of others. I really enjoy retreating to my own space after a hard day at the office, so for me, given who I am, getting involved with the family and kids and listening to what happened to them at school and at work – it’s not a natural gig, you know?

But we have to start somewhere. We can’t build a godly family if there is no relationship; if there is no interaction; if we are not involved in planning and making it happen. We are going to talk about some of that over the next few weeks. In fact, I have been speaking to one of the godliest families I know; some friends of mine who live in the USA – mum, dad and their NINE children. They have given me some of their pointers, both the parents and the children. This massive tribe, I have to tell you, they have got their act so well together.

I know it’s not perfect, but I ask them and I ask the kids, "Tell me what this godly family thing is about." I’m going to talk about that in the next few weeks but right now, we have to decide, each one of us, do we really want to have a godly family? Well, do we? And if we do, what are we going to do about it.

Maybe that’s something you can pray about and think about and talk about over this next week. We will look at it some more when we get together again at the same time next week, this whole thing of building a godly family.

But I have to tell you, when I read about this God who says, "Look, I don’t care what has happened in the past. You turn back and you honour Me in your lives, in your family and I tell you what, I won’t just bless you, I’ll bless your children and I’ll bless your children’s children and I’ll bless their children and the next generation."

In fact, the blessing when you break the curses that have been handed down to you, simply by praying and honouring God and turning back to Him, the blessing that flows is a blessing that flows for a thousand generations. That’s who God is!

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Over the last few weeks on the program, we’ve been discovering how it is that God speaks to us today and how we can get about hearing Him when He does speak. The question is – when it’s something big or important – how can we make sure that we’ve heard Him right? Because the last thing we want to do, is to get it wrong, right?

The Counsel of Others It’s great to be with you again today in this last message in the four part series that I have called, “How Can I Hear God Speak to Me?" And today we are going to take a look at how God sometimes speaks to us through the people around us.

Just the other night I was asked to spend some time facilitating a discussion amongst the elders, the church council, of a particular church, not far from where I live. It seems that what had been going on was that there was conflict amongst some of the leaders and that’s not good. Leaders of God’s people shouldn’t be in conflict – they should act in unity.

The Apostle Paul, writing to his friends at the church in Philippi said this – Philippians chapter 2, verse 2:

Make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love and being in full accord and of one mind.

We were chatting about the fact that God has made each one of us differently – Romans chapter 12 – some of us are prophets, others servers, others teachers, encouragers, givers, leaders, carers. And I can tell you, a leader is going to have a totally different view of the world compared to say, an encourager or a carer – that’s because leaders are wired one way, the encourager is wired another way and the carer is wired yet another way, on the inside. That’s the way it is, because we are different. We see things differently and often, that’s the source of conflict.

Now, in this meeting, one of the elders of the church; an older man with a great deal of wisdom asked the sixty four million dollar question. He said, "Okay, so we are all different, with different points of view – then how are we meant to discern the will of God, out of all those different views?" And that my friend, is a very, very good question.

One of the things I’m prone to do is to race out and just do things – without listening to the advice of other people. It’s because my personality type is the "leader". I’m an action person. I work on the theory that if I make ten decisions today and get just seven of them right, I’m way ahead than if I only made three decisions but got them all right.

And my good friend Keith Henry, with whom I co-authored the book, “My Personality GPS”, he makes this point about leaders – he says that one of their natural weaknesses is they often fail because they don’t listen to advice. Those detail people – you know the sort – they analyse everything to the "enth" degree – those detail people naturally drive me nuts because they slow me down. I want to get on with things and they want to analyse things first.

But you know what I have learned? I have learned that without those detail people, I am going to fail at things because God is in the detail. The detail matters! And part of my growing up; my process of maturing is to value and to listen to the detail people because they are really, really, really important to me.

And I have come to realise that often God will speak to me through the gifts and the abilities of other people, even – let me say – people who in the natural have a tendency to drive me nuts. I love that – God has such a great sense of humour in dealing with our own immaturity.

Okay, what does God’s Word have to say on this issue – this answer to the sixty four million dollar question? When there are all these different perspectives, how are we supposed to discern God’s will? Well, there are a few fantastic bits of wisdom on this very thing in the Book of Proverbs – Proverbs chapter 15, verse 22, says:

Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed.

Proverbs chapter 18, verse 2:

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinions.

Proverbs chapter 20, verse 18:

Plans are established by taking advice; wage war by following wise guidance.

Isn’t that great stuff? What God is saying to us here is that, if we rush off in a fit of pride because we think we know best, well, there’s every chance that our plans will go off the rails. But if we humble ourselves, instead of being more interested in our own opinions and listen to the advice of others, that’s how our plans are going succeed. I have to tell you this is something I have had to learn and I have learned it the hard way and the more I have learned it, the more I have succeeded.

We were recently planning something really new in the ministry of Christianityworks – quite different and quite new. And so we pulled together a group of very different people to plan and implement the project. Very different people, I have to say and with all that I am, I believe we heard God speak through this process. And with all that I am, that’s exactly what I think God meant for us to do. “Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed.”

It’s awesome stuff! It is so easy to fall into conflict when teams of people are working together or at least trying to and yet, everyone sees things from a different perspective. And the key to discerning God’s will is mutual submission - that requires wisdom. Have a listen to what God has to say about His wisdom; the wisdom that comes from above. James chapter 3, verse 17:

The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

The bit I really like in there, that strikes a chord with me, is the bit that says "willing to yield" – willing to get off its high horse, listen to the skills and views and gifts and abilities of other people as godly men and women that God has put around us. It’s when we yield that we hear the voice of God. Let me say it again: it is when we yield that we hear the voice of God. And there is a reason for that: James chapter 4, verse 6:

Because God opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble.

So often we want to hear God speak; we want to discern the will of God: "God, what are You doing? God, what’s next? God, this is a tight spot, how do I deal with this?" And yet we ignore the good advice of the godly men and women that God has put around us. Hello!! Why? Because we are proud! Let me say this loving but directly – immature and foolish and proud, because as it says in Proverbs chapter 18, verse 2:

Like a fool, we take no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing our own personal opinions.

We all know people like that – we have all done that. We get on our high horse; we think we are right and we are not interested in listening to anyone else. And to stop doing that we need to humble ourselves.

Sometimes, as we saw last week on the programme, God speaks to us supernaturally, other times He speaks to us through the ordinary and the every day. Both are equally valid! And one of the great delights of my heart, something that I have grown to truly love is to hear God speak through the lives and the mouths and the skills and the abilities and the gifting and the experience of other people because by His grace He has taught me to get off my high horse, to shut up and to listen.

Dreams and Visions Right now I want to go on and chat about dreams and visions, because that’s something the Bible; the New Testament talks about. But are they real? Does God really still speak through dreams and visions today or is this a phoney notion? I think they’re reasonable questions to ask when we are enquiring as to how God speaks with us.

Now maybe you are thinking, "Dreams and visions – aw, for goodness sake! Where is this joker coming from? Is he for real?" Well, my response is simply this: my heart; my passion is to dive into God’s Word, the Bible, to read it, to understand it as best I can and to live it. I’m a simple kind of guy and that’s how I approach life.

And one of the things that happen is that God often does things in ways that I, with my rational Western mind-set, perhaps wouldn’t have chosen had I been in His big shoes. Well, fortunately for you, I’m not – that’s the up side. But perhaps the downside is that if we accept God at His Word, then we have to accept that He is going to do things His way, even if they don’t always quite make sense to us.

So, what does God’s Word say about dreams and visions? I am going to share with you a passage from chapter 2, from the Book of Acts. God’s Spirit has just been poured out on these Christians and they are all talking in different languages – they are behaving as though they are drunk – literally. You can read it for yourself – the fifth book in the New Testament; the Book of Acts chapter 2.

Not surprisingly, the other Jews in Jerusalem at the time were pretty critical of this sort of behaviour. They are accusing these Christians of being drunk, so Peter the Apostle, stands up to explain. Acts chapter 2, beginning at verse 12:

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

See, what’s going on here is that the unexpected is happening. These Christians are falling over as though they’re drunk; they are speaking in different tongues. And to silence the sceptics, Peter gets up and says, "You think this is amazing? This is nothing! Wait to see what else is going to happen." And then he goes on to quote the Old Testament prophet of Joel.

Remember this is Jerusalem in the first century – everybody listening knows the Scripture that he is quoting. And he promises that the Holy Spirit will cause people to have dreams and visions and prophesies – all ways that God is going to speak with us.

"It’s in the Bible", Peter is saying, "so don’t shoot me; the messenger." And if I could personally echo that same sentiment to you, here and now – if you somehow feel uncomfortable with the notion of dreams and visions and prophesies and me talking about it – friend, it’s in the Bible, so please, don’t shoot the messenger.

Do you know that many, many Muslims who come to put their faith in Jesus Christ, report that they saw Jesus coming towards them in a dream. In fact, this is a really, really common occurrence. Has God ever spoken to me in that way? No, He hasn’t. I hear God in different ways and that’s fine. We are all different and God knows that and He speaks to us in different ways. But I have been impacted by this – absolutely.

When my wife, Jacqui, first visited our church – this was before she was my wife, in fact, none of knew who she was – she came on a Sunday morning; a service when I was preaching. And she came back again on the Sunday evening. Now, in the evening, our pastor Phil was scheduled to preach that night. You may have heard me speak about Phil before – he is a practical, very down to earth kind of guy. He gets up; he is about to preach and he looked towards Jacqui – he didn’t know her name; none of us knew her and he said to her, "Look, God’s given me a vision for your life." And he went ahead and he described this picture; this vision he had had in a huge amount of detail.

That was a pretty gutsy thing to do, I thought. Well, Jacqui is pretty quiet and shy so she didn’t react. Months later though, we discovered that this was an incredibly difficult time in her life and that she had been wanting God to speak to her and that vision that Phil described to her that night, was a huge turning point in her life’s journey. In fact, if Phil hadn’t communicated that to her that night, she probably wouldn’t be my life today.

In many parts of the world, people have no problems at all with the idea that God speaks through dreams and visions and prophesies, but somehow, we Westerners, with our rational, materialistic mindsets, struggle with the idea.

Let me come back to where I started. We should test everything like this against God’s Word. Sometimes, people will come to us with stuff that isn’t from God but sometimes it is from God and if God tells us in His Word the Bible, that all along it’s been His plan to speak to us through dreams and visions and prophesies, well, I don’t know about you, but I think we should be listening.

Yes, it’s open to abuse! In Colossians chapter 2, verse 18, Paul talks about this – about people who:

... dwell on visions, being puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.

That’s why we test everything against God’s Word. But friend, God does things in ways that perhaps, you or I wouldn’t have done and I hunger to hear Him speak and I delight in hearing Him speak. When, how, that’s His choice. Our job is to listen.

Ducks in a Row Well, here we are almost at the end of this series that I have called, “How Can I hear God Speak to Me?” And over the course of these four messages, we have looked at eight different ways that God speaks to us today. (1) The Bible, firstly, God’s Word, (2) secondly, God speaks to us in times of prayer; when we get still before Him. (3) Thirdly, God speaks to us through preaching and teaching – God anointed, Spirit-filled, faithful, Christ-centred preaching. (4) He speaks to us through signs and wonders, (5) through prophets. (6) Sometimes He speaks right out of the blue – (7) other times, through the counsel and the gifts and abilities of others and sometimes (8) He speaks through dreams and through visions.

And you know, you add that up and what you discover is that God is speaking rather a lot – principally, primarily through the authority of His Word, the Bible; the living Word of God. That’s why we put it right up there at number one. If numbers two through eight purport to be God speaking, then they had better be consistent with number one, the Word of God. If they aren’t, then they are not from God – it’s as simple as that.

Let’s make no mistake – God is not in the business of contradicting Himself. God is not in the business of changing His mind. But He is interested in our lives – in the nitty gritty of our lives and He knows that sometimes we need His guidance. And because He loves us, it stands to reason therefore, that He is going to speak specifically into our lives as any father would.

I heard a pastor; a man whom I respect greatly, stand up and preach a sermon, not too long ago, in which he basically said that God, these days, only speaks through His Word, the Bible, and through no other means – not through prophets, not through signs and wonders, not through anything except the Bible. Uh!! Well, the first thing is ... the first thing is that it’s not what the Bible says.

Each of the other ways that God speaks with us that we have looked at over these last few weeks – numbers two through eight, that I just listed previously – in that list we just went through, each of those is straight out of God’s Word, the Bible.

But afterwards, when I went and asked this pastor a couple of questions, it was interesting. The first one I asked was: "Well, how did you come to be an ordained minister in this church; in this denomination?" And his answer was: "Well, because I felt called!" And friend, that’s exactly the right answer – in fact, it’s God’s calling that’s the only answer.

So my next question was: "Well, how did you discern that calling; how did you come to the conclusion that God was calling you into His ministry?" And he then proceeded to tell me about this and that, all the things we have been talking about in two through eight – through other people, through preaching, through voices out of the blue. Yet, he didn’t want to acknowledge that God speaks that way, even though this man had discerned his calling into ministry that way.

It stands to reason that if we feel led by God to do this or to do that, we somehow must have heard Him speak that into our lives. That’s what this series of messages has been all about. We are going into God’s Word and learning from Him how it is that He chooses to communicate with us.

But learning to discern His calling; learning to put the pieces together sometimes isn’t easy. Along the way I have made mistakes and I’m sure you have too and when it comes to the big decisions in life, that’s a bit of a scary prospect. What if we think we are hearing from God but we’re not, in choosing a wife or a husband or in choosing a particular career or ministry or in maybe, heading off to so some distant foreign land to become a missionary? You get the point! I mean, I do believe that sometimes – often times – God’s leading leads us right into the wilderness for an experience of the wilderness, when we are expecting instant success. That’s okay; I’m not bothered by that.

The issue, simply uppermost for me, is if I am going to head off in this direction or in that, then I want it to be the direction that God has chosen and ordained and prepared for me. That’s all! Whatever way it is, I want it to be God’s way. How do you discern God’s will amongst the noise and the distractions of life? A prophesy, a dream, a passage from the Bible leaps out at you, "Man, were they from God or am I just imagining this?"

Before the days of global terrorism, as a frequent flyer, I was often invited up into the cockpit of a plane, to sit in the jump seat and watch take-offs and landings. They were the good old days. One time I was returning during the night to Sydney, on a flight from New Zealand and I was in the cockpit of a Boeing 767 which gives you a great view out of the front windscreen – better than most other commercial planes of the time.

And flying into Sydney, well, it’s a pretty big city – there were so many lights. I thought, ‘How are the pilots going to pick the runway out amidst all these lights?’ I mean, I know they were flying by instruments but eventually, they had to see the runway. And then all of a sudden, we turned and the plane levelled off and the runway came into view. This bright, straight row of lights – I mean, you just couldn’t miss it. All those lights in a row, clearly, unmistakably showed the pilots which direction to fly in and how to land once they were off their instruments into visual mode.

And for me, it’s the same thing with discerning God’s will. He speaks to us in different ways at different times and learning to understand Him is a process, as it is in any relationship. But when I feel Him leading me down a particular path, inevitably what happens is, two or three or four things kind of line up in a straight line – a Scripture verse that sets my heart on fire and just won’t go away and then someone else comes along with a word; a prophesy and they don’t know what is going on; they don’t know what I’m thinking and dreaming.

And then some event – that door over there that I thought was open, slams shut in my face and this one over here, to my surprise, opens up. And all of a sudden it’s like those lights on the runway – they end up in a bit of straight line, like little ducks in a row that point you in a certain direction.

And sometimes, oftentimes, you can’t actually see them until you start heading down the path. In fact, that’s mostly the case – we have to step out first in faith, often letting go of the past, before God reveals what is coming next. That’s why it’s called ‘stepping out in faith’.

But friend, time and time and time again, I have seen my God just line those little ducks up in a row and when I see that, I start to head down that path; prayerfully, eyes open, asking God to open doors if it is His will and to slam them shut, if it’s not. Sometimes there is opposition and that’s where faith comes in. But above all, I always remember this: God is a faithful God, He knows my heart; He will not lead me down a path that He doesn’t want me to follow.

Yes, sometimes He will take me to the wilderness; yes, sometimes He needs to prune me and cleanse me so that I can bring Him more glory. That’s fine and that’s His choice. I just want to make sure I’m following in His direction.

And whilst I have run into the occasional dead end along the way, you know, as I look back ... look back over the last decade and a half of walking with Jesus, I can see how He has guided me to where He wants me to be.

Friend, God is a faithful God. God is still speaking to us today, through His Bible, through prophesies and dreams and visions and other people and He’s speaking to us in so many different ways. Can I encourage you to stop, to spend time with Him, to listen to Him, to learn to discern His voice?

Jesus said we would hear His voice and we would know that it’s Him. And as we grow in that and we discover how we can hear God’s voice, friend, that is such a wondrous thing.

God is still speaking to His people today!

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God is a God who speaks to us. It’s something He’s been doing for centuries. Millennia in fact. And sometimes, sometimes he speaks to us in ways that we just don’t expect. Right out of the blue. Question is – are we listening?

The Power of the Prophetic It’s just fantastic to be with you again this week and yes, we are continuing this week with our look with how it is that God speaks to us today – here and now, in the twenty first century. This series is called, “How Can I hear God Speak to Me?” And today’s message is about expecting the unexpected.

It’s interesting, way back in the Old Testament, God spoke to His people through the prophets – people like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and all those Old Testament prophets – men whom God had called to speak His message to His people.

Then in the New Testament, He speaks to us, first and foremost, through His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ and the Apostles and the other writers of the New Testament Books. And He is still using those, through His Word the Bible, to speak to us today. By His Spirit, He speaks today.

But interesting – the New Testament in particular, tells us how His Spirit speaks today. Sometimes it’s easy to ignore that – it’s easy to get all dull and boring about the way that God communicates with us but God is a stunningly creative communicator. There’s absolutely nothing dull and boring about how He communicates. And one of the ways He does that is through the power of the prophetic.

So today, what we are going to do is take a look at that. Now, in embarking on this today, I acknowledge that there are those amongst God’s people who simply believe that there are no more prophets today – that this is something that belongs to the past and not the present. What’s a prophet? Well, simply someone who speaks on behalf of God. Someone who speaks God’s will into the lives of God’s people.

And yet, other traditions and denominations really emphasise the prophetic dimension of God’s communication. And sadly, some do so to the point of abusing the prophetic. What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t carry any particular baggage of denomination or tradition around when it comes to these things. My heart is simply to open God’s Word, the Bible and to figure out what God says and to go with that.

So that’s precisely what we are going to do today. Let’s take a look – this is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth – so after Jesus has died, risen again and is sent into heaven. This is the fledgling New Testament church that he is writing to. First Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 4:

Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

Now, here Paul is talking about supernatural gifts that are given to the family of God. And not just the special super-spiritual Christian leader type people. Have a listen again to verse 7:

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

In other words, to each person; to each believer, is given one or more of these supernatural gifts. Now, I have heard people say, "Oh, well. That was for back then. It’s not for now.” Umm! This passage – First Corinthians 12 – rolls straight on to First Corinthians 13; the next chapter that famous passage about love, which kind of says, "You know, you can have all the spiritual gifts under the sun but unless you use them in love, they are useless." And it goes on to explain what love is.

These same people love to quote First Corinthians 13 but somehow, maybe it’s because in our Western mindset; maybe we are uncomfortable with the idea of these supernatural gifts - we can’t explain them rationally. Some people want to deny that this bit of the New Testament – 1 Corinthians chapter 12 – actually exists and yet they go on and rely on the next chapter. I’m not quite sure why that is.

But I find nothing – let me say this – NOTHING in the New Testament that tells me that this thing on spiritual gifts – supernatural gifts – was meant for them back then and not for us here and now. Nothing! And the gifts; words of wisdom and of knowledge, extraordinary faith, healing, miracles, prophesy, discernment of the Spirit, speaking in different tongues, interpreting different tongues.

One of the arguments against words of wisdom and knowledge and prophesy, is that these so-called "modern day" prophets can set themselves up above the Word of God. They can say things that don’t agree with the Scriptures; God’s Word. So what are we going to do with that? Well, I have to tell you: like anything else good that God gives us, you can take it and you can abuse it. Absolutely! I have seen it happen in this area, where people go for emotionalism and manipulation, where they claim to be speaking for God, but in fact, they are not at all. But just because something good from God can be abused doesn’t mean that it’s not a good thing from God.

There are several times in my life when someone has given me a specific prophesy, just for me, and all of those, barring one exception – which simple didn’t ring true as being from God to me or other people who were there at the time – but the rest of those had a huge impact on my life. I look back on them now – and most of them were key turning points in my walk with God. And you know, these weren’t proud people coming out with “Thus sayeth the Lord” type of proclamations.

One of the most powerful was from a man called Dennis Adams. He worked at the time for a Christian Radio Network called HCJB – it was at a conference. I had just become involved, full time, here at Christianityworks. My predecessor had taken all of our radio programmes off the air. There was almost no financial support – the ministry was almost dead and I simply didn’t know what to do. I met Dennis for the first time at a Christian Media Conference. He looked at my name tag – we didn’t know each other – but he had heard some of the short radio messages I had preciously put together. And almost immediately, tears welled up in his eyes and with such passion and such conviction, he said to me, "You have to start doing those radio programmes again. You just have to."

That day, Dennis’s words pierced my heart and because of that we spent the last few thousand dollars the ministry had on producing the first series of these radio programmes but at the time we had no idea how we were going to get onto a radio station anywhere. Well, that was almost six years ago now and today, these programmes are heard by millions of people each week, around the world. See, I know that those words that Dennis spoke to me that day were God’s words; they were a prophesy and without them I wouldn’t be here today.

Should we discern prophesies? Absolutely! Should we think them through and pray them through? Absolutely! Should we reject any that don’t ring true? Absolutely! But, friend, God’s Word says that He has appointed prophets amongst His people. God’s Word says that He is still speaking to us through prophets and their prophesies today. Why, oh why would we want to deny that?

Out of the Blue Have you ever heard kind of a voice out of the blue and wondered, now, where did that come from? We are chatting this week again on the programme about hearing from God. How does God speak these days and how can we hear Him. That’s what we are exploring because God is still speaking and He means for us to hear Him. Now one of the ways I notice He talks to people throughout the Bible is well, it’s like a voice out of the blue.

I had coffee with a dear friend of mine, James, just yesterday. He was telling me about how the day before he had been racing out for a meeting and he had this distinctive impression on the way out the door; a strong impression that he should go back into his study and grab his diary. Of course, he ignored it and on the way something happened and he needed to contact the person he was supposed to be having this meeting with to adjust the arrangements. The problem was he didn’t have the man’s phone number on him. You guessed it – the phone number was back in the diary, sitting on the desk in his study.

Now sometimes God has big things to say to us and sometimes He has just little things to say. And in my experience, if we love Him, if we are in the business of drawing close to Him, sometimes in the thick of things, while we are on the run, He speaks to us out of the blue. Some people are uncomfortable with that.

There is a school of thought that God only ever communicates to us through His Word, the Bible. Well, I agree – the Bible is the primary way that He communicates with us and if anyone claims any other form of communication – prophesy, a word of knowledge, something from God out of the blue – if anyone claims to have any communication from God like that, but it’s inconsistent with what the Bible says, well then, my friend, it is not from God. God never contradicts Himself, so I agree on that front.

But the number of times He speaks to people in the Bible and they answer Him, "Here I am, Lord" – let’s have a look at one of those today: Moses – this burnt out old wreck of a man – he is eighty years old. He had murdered an Egyptian as a young man and so, even though he grew up in Pharaoh’s house, he fled out to the back of the desert and he had been tending sheep for forty or fifty years. But all of a sudden, when God is ready to speak with Moses, well, God speaks – out of the blue or at least out of a bush. Let’s have a look at Exodus chapter 3, beginning at verse 1:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

The cry of Israel has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

Was it an audible voice or was it a voice that Moses heard in his heart? Well, we don’t know, but God didn’t have a Bible to speak through back then – it wasn’t written yet. So He spoke to Moses out of the blue, as it were.

Now if you have access to an electronic version of the Bible, I suggest that you do a search on the words ‘here I am’. It happens over and over again – God speaks to people out of the blue and they answer Him, ‘Here I am, Lord.’ Has it ever happened to me? Well, I have never quite been called to lead Israel out of Egypt, to be quite honest with you, but at the same time God has spoken to me out of the blue, about things that are big and about things that are small.

I remember not long after I became a Christian. I was alone in my house – it was a Saturday afternoon and I was ironing down stairs. As I finished each shirt, I would take it upstairs and hang it in the wardrobe. As I was heading back downstairs I was just overwhelmed by the presence of God so I sat down on the stairs and what I experienced over the next fifteen/twenty minutes was God calling me to preach the Good News of Jesus.

I thought, "Hang on, I have been a Christian like five minutes and You are calling me to do this?" And then He showed me how, over the prior twenty years, as I had been invited all over the world to speak at conferences and events in the I.T. Industry, which is what I did back then – I was an I.T. consultant – He showed me how He had been getting me ready for this, even before I had given my life over to Him.

These weren’t my thoughts or my ideas. This wasn’t a vivid imagination at work. It was a definite ‘someone’ outside of me, speaking to me and showing me this stuff – kind of an experience. Did I hear an audible voice? No, I didn’t – never have. But I knew it was God.

Jesus said in John chapter 10, verse 16:

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they will follow me.

And that’s exactly how it was for me that day. I just knew that it was God speaking. I just knew that He had called me to do this. I didn’t know how it would happen – I had absolutely no idea, at that point that it would involve radio – none what so ever. That didn’t come until another eight years later. Sometimes I thought I heard His voice and I don’t think I got it quite right, so I always test things – I think, I pray, I see if it makes sense. And little by little, what I have discovered is that I am getting better and better at recognising His voice and listening to Him.

In my day to day life, God sometimes nudges me this way, sometimes that. In the middle of the pressure and conflict sometimes, the Holy Spirit speaks strongly and directly, often with a Scripture, to me, that leads me to behave in a godly way, rather than following my natural human inclinations.

And that’s exactly what Jesus promised.

When the Advocate comes,” He said in John chapter 15, “whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, will testify on my behalf. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Friend, God is in the business of communicating with us. When He does, when we hear Him out of the blue, let us test everything against His Word, the Bible, if it’s not consistent with His Word, then it is absolutely certain this thing was not from God. But He does communicate with us in all sorts of different ways and sometimes He speaks to us completely out of the blue. It’s fantastic! Let’s just be ready to listen.

Feet on the Ground You know, I love the fact that God speaks to us in all these different ways. We have looked at quite a few over these last couple of weeks – ways that He speaks to us today. And we will be doing that again next week too. But as I said, I really feel the need to end today on a note of caution. The point is that not everything that someone says, supposedly in the name of God, is going to be true. And not everything that we feel sometimes, or think we hear sometimes, is going to come from God. Why? Well, we’re human, we’re fallible. Sometimes we get things wrong. Sometimes other people have ulterior motives.

Now, this is nothing new – false prophets have been around for a long time. And sometimes the things that false prophets have to say, is stuff that we really, really want to hear – its stuff that sounds much better than the stuff that’s coming from the true prophets.

Listen to this – Jeremiah chapter 5, verse 31:

The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule as the prophets direct; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?”

In fact Jesus said - Matthew chapter 7, verse 15. He said:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

So, there is a risk; there is a danger. Now that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t speak through prophets or through dreams or visions – quite to the contrary. The biblical record is clear – He has been doing that for millennia, even though all that time, there have indeed been false prophets around. In fact, often in Israel’s history there were many more false prophets than there were true prophets.

And so, in the face of that, there are two equal and opposite errors that we can make. The first one is to deny the unexpected; to retreat to the safety of things that we can understand and live our lives believing that God only ever speaks to us from one source these days – the Bible – and that’s it.

Now if you know me you will know that I believe that the Bible is God’s Word and it is the authority; the absolute truth, when it comes to what God has to say. And for that reason, it’s because of what I read in the Bible that I simply can’t come to the conclusion that God doesn’t speak through prophets anymore or dreams or visions or words of knowledge. God’s Word doesn’t let me draw those conclusions.

And the other error that we can make, on the other end of the scale, is to chase after the false prophets who tickle our ears with things that we love to hear. Jesus said – Matthew chapter 24, verse 11:

And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

So, the answer, quite simply, is this: it too comes from God’s very own word and I love this because God’s wisdom is so balanced. First Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 19 to 22:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

In other words: don’t fall into either of these two errors. Don’t deny what God is doing anymore. Don’t quench the Spirit – don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. God is still speaking today – God is still speaking through prophets. “Don’t despise the words of prophets.” But at the same time, don’t take everything everybody says as though it is true – especially if it tickles your ears and if that’s what you want to hear.

Instead, test everything, sift it and weigh it, sort through it – go to God, go to your Bible and under God’s hand, decide whether it’s good or bad. If it’s good, hold onto it, if it’s bad, abstain from it.

I mean, imagine you are walking down the street – some guy in a flashy, shiny suit walks up to you and he says, "I have the best investment plans for your savings that you will ever find. Give me all your savings and I will invest them for a hundred percent return every year." Let me ask you something: you don’t know this man from a bar of soap – would you give him all your savings? Would you at that point, walk to a bank, take out all your life savings and give it to this man to invest? Of course not! We would discern what he has to say; we would figure out – is this person trustworthy? Is this something that’s good or should I just ignore him and walk away?

And it’s the same with prophesies and words of knowledge. People, God’s Word calls us “not to quench the Spirit, not to despise the words of prophets but to test everything” – to sift it, “to hold fast to what is good; to abstain from what is evil.” Pretty good advice!

I frankly can’t figure out why people want to fall into either of these two errors – throw the baby out with the bath water, quench the Spirit, or, accept everything without being discerning. Why would you want to do that?

Now, I know I am going to get some mail over this message, from both camps – that’s okay. For me, it’s about going to God’s Word – without baggage we carry from the past and openly, honestly, faithfully finding out what it is God is saying and how He speaks to us today.

That’s where it’s at! That’s what God honours!

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It’s one thing to want to hear God speak. Lots of people do – How can I hear God speak to me is one of the most common questions I’m asked. But half the time, I wonder whether we’re not wandering around with our ears shut and our eyes closed. Really!

The Providence of Preaching My enduring memory of being dragged to church when I was a child was the droning of the preacher. I can honestly say he never said one thing; not a single thing back in those days, that impacted my life for good. Perhaps there was one thing – I was so bored this particular Sunday, sitting on these hard wooden pews, as a young lad, that I took the time to learn to wiggle my ears. But that was it! An incredible waste of time when you think about it and really sad because there is something incredible powerful about hearing the Word of God preached and receiving God’s wisdom that way.

Last week, we kicked off a series of messages about how we can hear God speak. I mean, if God is God and we are meant to have a relationship with Him then, shouldn’t we be able to communicate with Him? Of course, we can pray – that’s communication in one direction but what about communication back in the other direction? How can you and I actually hear God speaking His will into our lives?

As we saw last week God is still speaking today. We have chatted so far about hearing Him speak through His Word, the Bible and during times when we get still before Him in prayer. We are going to chat today about two more ways that we can hear God speak – firstly hearing through His providence of preaching and later through the reading of signs. Humm!

Now, the idea of preaching – some guy getting up and speaking about God’s Word, teaching what is in the Bible – you know, to many people, it seems pretty old fashioned. And the other problem with it is that there’s lots of bad preaching going around as well. I have sat and listened to a lot of people talk about the messages they get from their pastor on a Sunday morning and I have to tell you, in many, many cases, the news is not good. There’s a lot of dead preaching out there – people droning on with irrelevant, boring messages.

Not everywhere, of course, not every pastor, not every church, but a lot of it. A.W. Tozer in his book “The Pursuit of God” put it this way. He said:

It’s a solemn thing and no small scandal in the Kingdom of God to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table. Sound Bible exposition is an imperative ‘must’ in the church of the living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church, in any meaning of that term. But exposition can be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any spiritual nourishment whatsoever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul but God Himself and unless and until the hearers find God in their experience, they are no better for having heard the truth.

It’s sad but true! Hang on, this is nothing new though! This is how Luke records the reaction of people to Jesus preaching - Luke chapter, verse 31:

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbath. They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority.

And again, in Matthew, listen to what he says. Matthew chapter 7, verse 28:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

In other words, this stuff that Jesus was talking about was not the sort of preaching and teaching that they had been hearing from their scribes and synagogue leaders and priests and the rest of the religious establishment - in fact, quite to the contrary. Again listen to what Jesus had to say about the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees – Matthew chapter 23, beginning at verse 2:

The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

So, I guess what I am saying is that there is good preaching and bad preaching. Let’s call a spade a spade here. Preaching that brings life and sadly, preaching that brings death. And people who sit under dead teaching, well, their faith and their passion for Jesus ebbs away. And little by little, they grow cold – little by little their faith dies and they with it.

Does that mean that good preaching is all hyped and motivational and you know, about success and earning a lot of money? No that’s not what makes good preaching! Good preaching speaks the things of God into our lives – there’s an authority, there’s a gravitas – a weight, a power that reaches into our hearts. The people listening to Jesus were amazed because He spoke with authority. They could just pick it.

Remember what Jesus said to His disciples when He was telling them how He was the Good Shepherd? John chapter 10, beginning at verse 2:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought all his own out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run away from the stranger because they do not know the voice of strangers.

And then Jesus went on to say:

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.

See, when you hear the voice of God through someone preaching, you just know. Friend, seek out the sort of preaching and teaching that you know comes from Jesus – the sort with authority; the sort through which power and grace and truth and love from Jesus ring out. Clear, pure and unmistakable – it’s the sort of teaching that God uses to change lives. It’s astounding; it’s amazing because you can feel God reach out through the speaker into the realities of your own life. Listen to those sorts of teachers and do not sit under dead teaching.

Scribes and Pharisees are alive and well in the church today. And there’s tired, uninspired, dead preaching to be had in abundance. I don’t want to sound critical or self-righteous – that’s not what this is about. This is about calling a spade a spade; it’s about being honest and direct. How sad it is to sit there and just learn to wiggle your ears, as I did as a lad, and miss out of the Bread of Life. Tozer was right – this is no small scandal.

Let me share a story with you. There was a time just before my wife Jacqui and I were married and we were engaged and it seemed that everything was going against us. We were really, really low – both of us. We had a great church and a great pastor and a great teacher but we were low. So we decided to go down the hill one Sunday evening and visit another church – just on a whim.

The preacher wasn’t the regular pastor whom we knew but a visiting guy from some surfing ministry. He preached on Matthew chapter 14, verses 22 to 33 – the bit where Jesus walks on the water and Peter steps out of the boat in the middle of the storm. As we listened to this message, we looked at one another because we realised that God had put this message and this preacher there for us, to strengthen us and encourage us.

Over the coming weeks, we preserved through the challenges we faced with a new courage and it all worked out. And to this day I remember that message, even though it was decades ago now. To this day, when I am facing challenges and my faith is being challenged and I need courage, I go back to that passage. God is still using that message in my life today.

Inspired, anointed preaching and teaching is one of the ways we hear from God. It’s mighty and it’s powerful and God can target issues and needs in our lives so accurately; so precisely. Let me encourage you to find and to receive that sort of teaching and preaching in your life. Not the stuff that necessarily entertains you or tickles your ears or tells you what you want of hear – there is plenty of that stuff out there too and that is leading many people astray. But the sort of preaching that tells God’s truth with power and with authority.

Reading the Signs Now, in February 2007, German woman Ewa Wisnierska was competing in an international para-gliding competition in rural New South Wales in Australia. The winds were from the south so she and most of the other competitors headed north. Now there was a thunder storm brewing towards the north but if they could only get through that before it formed, well, they would be well on their way. She could see it happening but the band of clouds and storms hadn’t formed fully yet. So there she is, hanging off her para-glider, trying to skirt around a small cloud when all of a sudden the clouds merged in front of her and she found herself in the middle of a powerful thunder storm – rain, hail, lightening and winds. She had misread the signs.

Now the problem with clouds for a para-glider is that clouds mean lift. The storm rocketed her upwards at twenty metres per second – up and up. There was nothing she could do to stop it – the updraft was just too powerful. Three thousand metres, four thousand, five thousand, six thousand – now at seven thousand metres we run out of oxygen – no one survives. Seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand – almost ten thousand metres; ten kilometres above the earth’s surface – frozen, unconscious, in the minus fifty five degrees Celsius, oxygen depleted stratosphere, dangling from her para-glider, she glided there in a slow turn until suddenly, the weight of the ice on her para-glider caused her to plummet several thousand metres. Then, miraculously, the para-glider snapped open again and the jolt woke her up.

This was the most extraordinary experience – really a miracle. No one has ever survived something like that. Can you imagine how she felt when she came to – she has been sucked up into this thunderstorm, she is covered in ice, barely able to move, aware that she was in a precarious life and death situation. Still in this storm that could snuff her out, as by the way it had to another experienced competitor from China who had been just a few hundred metres away from her.

Even in this barely conscious state though, knowing the mistake that put her in this place; knowing that she only had one chance at survival, now that the storm was weakening and she was more on the edge than in the middle, she did the one thing she knew to do – she put herself in a downward spiral. With everything she could muster, she created this downward spiral and she survived to tell this most extraordinary tale. In fact a week later, she was back in the air with the very same para-glider.

I watched her being interviewed – the one thing she said was this, along these lines: "It was a race. We were all trying to win. We saw the storm coming but everyone headed towards it and so I followed them. The thing that I have learned," she said, "was that next time I’ll read the signs for myself and make my own decisions about going on or pulling out." Now that ... that is a bit of wisdom that really struck me between the eyes.

We are talking this week and the next few weeks too, about hearing God speak. If God is God, how can we hear Him speak? Last week we saw that He speaks through His Word the Bible, and we can rely on that as our bedrock; our foundation. God never contradicts Himself – whatever else we may hear, see or feel – what He says in His Word is the truth and anything that contradicts that, isn’t the truth.

And we saw that He speaks to us as we spend time in prayer; in thought quietly with Him. And earlier we saw that He speaks to us through anointed and inspired preaching and teaching.

What we are going to look at now is "signs". Now God speaks to us through signs as well and one of the things we are taught in His Word is to read the signs. Come with me to Luke chapter 12, beginning at verse 54:

Jesus also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Now here, let’s get the context right: Jesus is talking to them about the fact that they have got the Son of God right there, under their noses and they just don’t get it! But the word "sign or signs" appears over a hundred and eighty times throughout the Bible. Sometimes we are talking ‘miraculous signs’ but other times, they are not so much "miraculous" and almost exclusively, these signs – listen to this – are pointing towards God and what He is doing and who He is. That’s the whole point of "signs" – they are pointing to something.

Jesus, the miracles He did: John in his Gospel refers to them as ‘signs’. Jesus was and is the Word of God; God speaking to us about whom He is and what He is up to in this world. And so often there are signs in our lives – maybe right under our noses, God is pointing us in a direction but either we miss them altogether or we misinterpret them.

I wonder how often people look at all that is going on in their lives; the storm clouds are rolling in and they ask themselves, "I wonder what God is up to?" Have you ever been travelling through a situation; something difficult or complex and you don’t quite know the whole picture or how it’s going to turn out and then all of a sudden there’s a flash of lightening over there and a thunder clap that follows but over in a different direction there is a ray of sunshine; of hope?

See most of us, we can look up at the sky and see that the weather is changing but we ignore what God is saying to us about what He is up to in the things that are happening around us. So here’s what I do: well, if something is a little fuzzy; it’s not quite clear, I take the time to quietly get before God. I pray a bit for wisdom and insight and then I just look at the different things that are going on and I think about them prayerfully. "God, that event, what does that mean? Is there anything that You are trying to say to me through that? Or this person, he’s being so difficult and what she said, do you mean for me to take notice of those things?"

I remember once we were having problems selling one of our houses, when we had already bought another one. Now, it’s not something we had done out of hubris, we felt God leading us on to downsize and downscale and so we stepped out in faith – we bought a new house before we had sold the other one. And way before things became difficult, a wise, experienced real estate agent has quipped to me – he said, "I always tell people when they are selling, ‘Don’t panic, it will sell eventually.'"

Now, I thought nothing of it at the time. When things got tight and difficult and really tight and settlement of the new place was coming up and the old place wasn’t selling, time and time again, God brought that passing comment back to me; into my remembrance and spoke to me through it and gave me peace.

It might be something you saw in a movie or on television or a thunderbolt or a ray of sunshine – you know sometimes God will give us insight through those things that He is doing. He expects us to read the signs – it says so over and over again in the Bible.

Is that like reading tea leaves? No! It’s about looking at all the stuff that’s going on through God’s eyes – getting still and listening to what He is saying to us. So often God is speaking and we aren’t even listening. I really encourage you to get still before God. Think about the different things that are going on and ask Him what He is trying to say to you through the signs that you see around you. Ask God for His wisdom and insight.

You know, when we go to God, He never holds back; He never withholds wisdom if we ask Him and believe He will give us the wisdom and believe He will give us the insight, you know what – He will give it to us.

It’s a process of learning to discern what God is saying and when it’s Him talking and when it’s not. The one thing I always come back to is this: God never contradicts Himself. That’s why we can be absolutely certain that anything that contradicts God’s Word, in fact, isn’t from Him.

Preaching and Practice I often tell people about a man who has had an enormous impact in my life – Phil Littlejohn. He was the pastor of the first church I attended after I became a Christian. Phil was and still is a gifted teacher of God’s Word. Week after week I have listened to him preaching and whilst I didn’t realise it back then, him faithfully telling me each week what God had to say through His Word, laid the foundations of my faith. It’s like a bedrock; solid.

I realised that when I stumbled across this passage; something that Jesus said to His disciples – Matthew chapter 7, beginning at verse 24:

Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!

That’s exactly what was happening when I received God’s Word through the preaching from Pastor Phil – it was like building a house whose foundations were on solid ground. The preaching of God’s Word, that I received through Phil, was very much God’s providence for me. In every sense of the word, it was God sent. And that’s why it is such an incredible tragedy for people to waste their time, waste their lives sitting under dead, lifeless, uninspired teaching.

With all that I am, let me say this: if that’s what you are doing right now in your church, something has to give. Don’t keep doing that because instead of laying a foundation of rock; solid, strong – you are building your house on the sand. And here’s the point: the preaching thing is not just about learning the theory, it’s about have the wherewithal to put it into practice in life because storms come in our lives – they always do.

So we need the foundation of God’s Word. But then we go out there and we put it into practice. That’s why being able to read the signs out there in life, is equally important. I know people who believe in Jesus but they treat preaching like it’s some theory lesson. They don’t value it highly because they don’t ever intend to go out there and – wait for this – put it into practice. But that’s exactly what Jesus intends. There’s no separation between preaching and signs in His view. Just read how He lived His life, here on earth. The preaching and the practice were one and the same to Him.

And the more God’s Word becomes a part of us – through our own Bible reading, through the preaching of those whom God has sent to us to teach us His Word, the more His Word becomes part of our DNA like that, the more we see the world through His eyes; from His perspective. Rather than from our own selfish, worldly perspective and the more we will be able to read the signs, to hear His voice, to figure out His will for our lives.

It is exactly what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 12, verse 2:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

In other words, as God’s Word takes root in us, we are changed because we change our minds and that is when we become able to discern the good and acceptable and perfect will of God for our lives. It’s not just theory – it’s theory and practice. It’s hearing God’s Word and taking that – let it become part of us and go and do it and live it.

Preaching and practice, preaching and practice, preaching and practice, over and over and over again and before we know it, we are hearing God so clearly ... so clearly, it is just an awesome thing.

Friend, I want to encourage you again – get in your Bible, spend time with God, reading His Word, prayerfully thinking through it, praying. Go and get good teaching – good, solid, inspired, anointed, God-given Bible teaching and then take those things and put them into practice in your life and my friend, they will bear fruit a hundred fold.

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Let me ask you a question – is God still speaking to us here and now? Today? And if so – how? Well – what are the answers? If God is indeed still speaking, shouldn’t we be listening? Imagine what a difference it could make, to know His will for our lives.

Is God Still Speaking? Now, here ... here is a question that these days, pretty much divides the church down the middle. Are you ready? Here it is: does God still speak today? Ooooh ... the controversy; the division that that little question creates, is huge. There are some who contend that the only way that God speaks today; the single only way is through the Bible. Read the Bible; that’s God’s Word; that’s how He speaks.

Then at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you have Christians who claim to have seen signs and wonders; to have so called, "words of knowledge" and "prophesies" over their lives. I even know one man whose pastor constantly claims to have visions of Jesus. WOW man, what do you do with that? How do you understand that?

And then there is little old you and me. If you are anything like me, deep inside there is a desire that burns for God – something that, well, it’s hard to explain – a hunger after God Himself; a yearning that won’t, that can’t be satisfied by some dry, academic, cerebral answer to this question: does God still speak today? It won’t be dismissed by shallow responses either. And nor will sensational claims quench the thirst after Christ Himself.

And so that’s why these coming weeks on the programme we are going to explore this question: does God still speak today? And if so, how? As I said, I ache to know God; to experience Him; to hear Him speak into my life. And I know that there are many, many more people on this earth who feel exactly the same. I want to live my life out completely for Him – everything I am, everything I have, all my hopes and all my dreams, to serve Him with the lot.

And it’s not because I’m some great guy – believe you me, I’m not. It’s because I have tasted the sweetness of His love – the many splendored love of Christ, as A.W. Tozer calls it. I have tasted His goodness and His joy and His peace and do you know what – I want more!

And so I want to hear Him speak because any relationship that means anything; that has any value to it is based on communication – and not one way communication, two way communication. A marriage is headed for divorce when there’s a stony silence between husband and wife. If all that they do is communicate on a transactional basis, about the mundane things of life and they no longer communicate heart to heart, then friend, unless they do something about that, their marriage is headed for divorce.

So the question is: Does God still speak? In my experience, He does, in a variety of ways. But experience ... experience isn’t the "be all and the end all". We have emotions – they go up, they go down – sometimes we are on the top of our game, other times, frankly, let’s be honest, we are off with the pixies. So whilst we may be experiencing God speaking through prophesy, through signs, through dreams ... all sorts of different ways, I believe with all my heart, the truth, God’s chosen way of revealing Himself to us; providing us with a rock solid basis for understanding Him and understanding our experience, is His Word, this thing we call the Bible.

Inspired by Him, written through human beings, for sure – each of the sixty six books of the Bible, written in different times in history, under different circumstances, for specific purposes but together those sixty six books are the inspired Word of God – God speaking to the generations that have gone before us and to us and the generations that will come after us. And God never contradicts Himself. He never says one thing and does the other. God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

So if any one, whether it’s you or me, claims to have heard from God in a certain way, then the question is: does the Bible say that that is how God communicates with us? Because if it doesn’t, then friend, at the very, very least, I am very, very suspicious that this person has indeed heard from God. And secondly, if this person claims to have heard from God and acts on it or shares what God has allegedly said to him or to her, is the message consistent with the Word of God – the whole council of God? Because if God says one thing and some so called, "prophet" comes up with a so called, "revelation" that contradicts God’s Word, then forget it. It ain’t God talking! Does that make sense?

When we step into the realm of God speaking with us about specific things happening in our lives or in the lives of other people, then we are stepping into territory which is rich and fertile on the one hand – if God is indeed speaking. I for one would want to hear but on the other hand, it’s open to manipulation and to error.

This approach is summed up in this Biblical principle – it comes from First Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 19 to 22. Have a listen – it says:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

In other words, don’t ignore God speaking through His Spirit. Don’t despise the words of prophets, but at the same time, sift it; test it – hold onto the good, ditch the evil. So, is God still speaking? Absolutely! This is what Jesus said: John chapter 10, beginning at verse 1:

Truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and – listen to this - the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

Again John 15:26:

When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.

And again, John 16:14:

He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Is God in the business of still speaking to His people through His Spirit today? Absolutely! That’s exactly what Jesus promised would happen – over and over and over again. It’s promised in the Bible. But as we read back in First Thessalonians – whilst the Spirit is at work, speaking, declaring and we shouldn’t quench what He is doing. When people claim to be speaking on God’s behalf, then we had better test it to make sure that it’s from God. And I guess that’s at the very heart of what we are going to be talking about over the coming weeks – discovering how to hear God speak into our lives. It’s powerful stuff!

The Word of God I remember when I first gave my life to Jesus – I had such an incredibly strong sense of God’s presence. He wrapped His arms around me during a particularly difficult and painful time in my life and yet I was full of the joy of the Lord. And a dear friend of mine, Phil, the pastor of the first church I attended sat me down over a coffee and he said to me, "You know Berni, it’s not always going to feel as good as this."

And whilst in one sense, he was right, there was something inside me – well, it made me angry. I thought to myself and I said this to God, "If I can’t have a close, intimate relationship with my God, each day; if I can’t experience His joy and His peace, each day, then you know something, Lord, I don’t think I want You." It’s pretty radical stuff! And to be sure life has had its ups and downs. Sometimes circumstances are against us and sometimes everything is rosy. Sometimes our emotions are up and sometimes they are down.

In those early days of becoming a Christian, they told me; Phil told me that I should read my Bible every day. Can I tell you what a turn off that was? Can I tell you what a burden it was to think that I would have to open this old, stuffy Book; this huge Book; seven hundred and seventy five thousand words, thirty one thousand, one hundred and seventy three verses, one thousand, one hundred and eighty nine chapters in sixty six Books. Written in times and places and cultures that were completely unfamiliar to me.

Who or what, for instance, is Ephraim? And why was everyone sacrificing bulls and goats and doves and stuff? You get the drift! But Phil, my pastor, was a persuasive guy – real salt of the earth kind of guy and when I listened to him preaching on Sundays he made an enormous amount of sense to me.

So I did something back then – I established this pattern of getting up early in the morning; something I have been doing since I was a small child anyway, because I am an early riser – while everyone is still asleep – and spending some time in prayer and reading the Bible. I was surprised – God’s Word made a lot of sense. A lot of it was confronting – it was like shining a really bright light on my own immaturities and the things I was doing that weren’t pleasing God.

And day after day, month after month, year after year, here’s what has happened to me – it’s changed me. I open the Bible these days and it is God speaking to me. Now there aren’t fireworks and clashes of thunder and great amazing revelations each and every day – it’s not like that. Little by little, God’s Word has become part of who I am. I’m not good at memorising verses – some people are - I’m just not. But what I find amazing now is that when someone asks me to get up and speak about something or we are having a discussion amongst friends about this issue or that, the recall that God has given me over His Word, is amazing.

I can remember the things that God says – maybe no word for word, but pretty close – and where He says it and that makes all the difference. When someone is really bugging me and I want to tear them apart, all of a sudden the Holy Spirit says to me, “Turn the other cheek!” And wisdom from above is pure and peaceable and gentle and willing to yield and all of a sudden, God’s Word is guiding my behaviour. God’s Word is giving me what I need to live my life. The Holy Spirit speaks His Word right into my life when I need it.

And the other thing is – sounds really mundane reading the Bible every day and I guess it is. I tend to read an Old Testament Book followed by a New Testament Book – one of the Letters, from Romans to Revelation, followed by one of the four Gospels and Acts. It’s kind of how I cycle through the Bible. And I have pretty much read it all now, several times. The reason I cycle is that the different Books feed me in different ways.

Some of those Old Testament narratives – the Judges and Kings and Chronicle Books – they feed me with the power and the majesty of God’s faithfulness. And then the Letters in the New Testament – they teach me about real life and understanding life, in light of what Jesus has done. And then the Gospels and the Book of Acts – they take me back to the heart of my faith in Jesus. And then some of the wisdom Books in the Old Testament – Proverbs, Psalms, Lamentations – I sprinkle them throughout and it’s like adding salt to everything else.

And as I read through, bit by bit, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have found exactly what I need for today – the things I am going through or the things unbeknown to me that are going to confront me later on today. It’s amazing how many times God has given me what I need for today from those very next few verses, in the next chapter that I was due to read.

Reading the Bible sounds like a chore – it sounds mundane but the strength and the maturity and the growth and the transformation; the things that have so made my life better – I can’t begin to tell you. They have come from this wonderful habit that Phil taught me all those years ago - the ability to discern whether someone else is speaking for God or not – the wisdom to know how to handle tough situations – the maturity to lay down my life. That’s hard, boy, it’s hard some days. All those things have come as the Word of God has become part of who I am.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 tells us that we have been made in God’s image. Problem is, our rebellion; our sin has marred that image. And reading God’s Word most days, listening to what He has to say most days, is like being restored back into His original image. It’s a repair job here; a cleanup job there; a new bit here ... and all of a sudden we become a different person.

It is knowing the truth that sets us free and the Bible is God’s way of speaking with us. If there is one thing ... just one thing that I could point to as the smartest thing that I have ever done, after giving my life to Jesus, it’s opening up the Bible – that daily habit – and letting God speak His Word into my heart through His Spirit. And the tragedy is that so many people ... the people who don’t do that are the very ones whose lives are all over the place because there is no foundation; there is no anchor into God’s truth.

The Time of Prayer Earlier we saw that one of the main ways that God speaks to us ... in fact, THE main way is through His Word, the Bible and it’s an awesome thing. And as I said back then, the simple habit of reading God’s Word, even if it is just a few verses, every day, has utterly changed my life.

But that’s only one side of the coin in my daily time with God - because the other side of the coin is prayer. There’s an amazing contradiction that so many people are living out in their lives – people who believe in Jesus. Here’s how it goes: on the one hand these people really would love to hear God’s voice; they would really like to know that He is there with them, that He has some practical words of wisdom for them, some guidance on the decisions they need to take – that’s on the one hand.

And yet these, so often, are the very same people who are too busy to sit down for twenty minutes, half an hour, maybe even forty five minutes or an hour, most days, to spend that time in prayer with God. Too busy, too busy, too busy! Well, fair enough, I know all about that! See, I’m one of these busy type "A", action oriented people – we’re more focused on doing things and getting outcomes than on spending time on relationships. So anyone who says to me, ‘I’m just too busy to pray’, well, I really understand; I really relate to that.

But the problem that comes out of that is that we head off into our day and we confront all the issues and tensions and decisions and all that stuff – we are so immersed in it all – and then right in the middle of it, we think, "Ah, where’s God? Why is God talking to me? Why isn’t God guiding me? Why isn’t God comforting me?" Well, I’ll tell you, friend! God was waiting for you this morning; He was waiting for you to get still before Him, to spend some time with Him reading His Word the Bible, listening to what He has to say and then chatting with Him in prayer. Have a listen to this Psalm – it is one of my absolute favourites – Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it will not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice and the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, he shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted in the earth.” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Powerful truth in verse 1 is that God is our refuge and our strength in the middle of all this mess. You don’t have to be afraid – if the mountains are shaking, if they are falling into the sea, if there is calamity, there’s upheaval, there’s uproar – that’s the picture in the Psalm. The sorts of things that we go through in the rough and tumble of life – we don’t have to be afraid! Why? Because there’s a stream flowing right through the heart of our city that makes us glad. The nations may well be in an uproar but God is God above all and when He speaks the earth melts before Him.

Now, that’s a great theory but when we are in the middle of this calamitous uproar; when tensions are running high at work; when we are hard pressed on every side; when we are running through life at a hundred miles an hour, how are we meant to experience this river of joy from God? How are we meant to hear Him and know Him and not be afraid because of Him when all this stuff is flying through the air? Well, the answer comes to us in verse 10 of this Psalm:

Be still and know that I am God.

Isn’t that beautiful! Just ... with all that stuff going on ... just be still and know in your heart of hearts that your God is God; that your God is in control. I don’t care who the relationship is with, if we don’t take time away from the hustle and bustle, just to connect, just to spend time together, just to talk – whether it’s husband and wife or work colleagues or friends – if we don’t do that, then the hustle and bustle is going to distract us from the reality of the relationship with that other person.

We forget, in our experience, how wonderful the love of our husbands or wives is; we forget the joy of a friendship because our dominant reality; the thing we are focused on is the busyness and the battle of life. And friend, if we want to know that God is in control, we need to get still before Him and just KNOW! It’s as simple as that! That’s what prayer is – getting still before God.

Here’s how it so often works for me: I pray a bit and I ask God to speak with me. Then I open the Bible and I read the next bit I was going to read; the next chapter in Luke’s Gospel or whatever and in reading that, the Spirit of God speaks to me through God’s Word. I get this sense that God is up to something here but then I need to chew it over so I pray about it and I ask God, ‘What are You saying to me?’ I think about it, I get still, I listen and that’s the place where God so often speaks, with a word of reassurance, with some specific guidance or direction.

I had that happen this morning, in fact. I had a difficult situation; some difficult decisions to make and after spending time in God’s Word and thinking and praying and listening, well, the answer was as plain as the nose on my face. So often I’m confronted with a "to do" list longer than my arm – I can’t possibly get it all done today. "God, what is Your priority? What do You want me to do today?" And that’s where the most important things drop into my lap, so I go and I do those ones. It’s a gift from God.

Friend, so many people’s lives are in a mess. "I want to hear God speak!" Well, let’s get still before God; let’s spend time with God. If we want to hear God speak right into the middle of the realities of our lives, we need to get still before Him.

Let’s get a revelation today! I know your life is busy – mine is too. But if we start spending fifteen minutes, twenty minutes a day, quietly, all the distractions gone, the doors closed, the Bible open – time in prayer; God shows up. He loves spending time with us. He loves it when we set time apart for Him. And frankly, if you are struggling to hear from God but you are not making time to spend with Him, this message today, is for you. Start spending time just with Him and little by little He will start speaking. Day by day, we will learn better how to recognise His voice. Little bit by little bit we will get guidance about things for today and things for tomorrow and things that we need to lay down.

Jesus said, "The shepherd speaks and the sheep hear His voice.” In my experience, sometimes in my prayer times over the years I have misheard God but the longer I spend at this, the more discerning I am and the more easily I am able to recognise the voice of my Shepherd.

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When we have a need – a real need – something we can’t do or fix or resolve for ourselves – what we need, is a helping hand. And if we get that helping hand – the person who’s attached to that hand, well, they go up in our estimation. They earn the right to say things that others can’t to us. Funny thing happens through a helping hand.

Healing with our Hands Well, welcome to the programme this week – the last message in a series that I’ve called, “Living Life as an Ambassador for Christ”. And today... today I would like to share with you how you and I can be real ambassadors ... ambassadors with a difference; ambassadors that really stand out from the crowd.

Whenever there’s a disaster somewhere in the world – a tsunami or an earthquake or a cyclone or a tornado – it seems to me that the wealthy countries like my own; the countries with the logistics and the equipment and the resources to help – it seems we take forever to mobilise. When people are buried under rubble, they only have days, perhaps only hours to live and what they need right then, is specialist search and rescue teams, with sniffer dogs and listening equipment and all that stuff. And the survivors, what they need, is medical help, food, water, shelter. And the last thing I want to do is be critical but it seems to take so long for the wealthy countries to mobilise their resources.

We know that these disasters are going to happen every year – they just happen and I am always left kind of scratching my head as to why it is that it takes us so long to respond. What those poor people need, within the first twenty four hours, is a huge influx of capability to save lives. And these days, I mean, you can pretty much fly from anywhere to anywhere in not much more than twenty fours and yet, time and time and time again these disasters happen and it takes us weeks to mobilise. Does that kind of strike you as strange?

You know, as a tax payer in a relatively wealthy country – all be it a smallish population, but never the less, a wealthy country – when I see the way public monies are spent, the last thing that I’d have a problem with is my government setting aside some money to establish and maintain some rapid response capabilities to help other nations when disasters strike.

But as easy as it is to sit there and criticise a government, I wonder whether this lethargy in responding to need isn‘t something that you and I experience in our personal lives. I read about an extreme example of this in a newspaper recently. Have a listen to this short article.

A South Korean couple addicted to online gaming, let their baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter. Parents, Kim You-Chul and Choi Mi-sun, spent up to 12 hours a day at an internet café tending to their avatar child in the online game Prius. But they left their real baby home alone and fed her just one bottle of milk a day. Police have charged the couple with child abuse and neglect.

Pretty bizarre, pretty extreme, one might think, "Got nothing to do with me; I’m not like that. I don’t neglect my children like that." I would hope not but what about our friends; what about our family members; what about our neighbours; what about the couple next door whose marriage is falling apart? We hear them screaming and arguing but do we ever invite them over for a barbecue, to share in their lives and for them to share in ours?

What about that person at church – you know the one – single; overweight; they’re life’s a mess, they talk a bit too much and no one ever invites them to their place on Sunday for lunch? What about that man at work – you see he’s a workaholic; he’s ruining his marriage, neglecting his children – ruining everything, all for want of a friend who can show him a better way of living?

Where are we then, you and I? I’ll tell you where: we are like ‘online’ that Korean couple, watching TV! We’re doing all the things we want to do in the comfort of our own lives and our own homes. And the more affluent we become the less we care for one another. But we justify that; we rationalise it away; we sit in our homes with more than enough – many of us – more than enough, telling ourselves, "We worked hard for it and now we need a rest." We are living virtual lives, watching TV shows about cooking, instead of cooking ourselves; watching TV shows about travelling, instead of travelling ourselves. Raising our virtual lives, our virtual gods and ignoring the real world.

It sounds harsh doesn’t it? Well, sometimes we need to be direct. Sometimes we need to call a spade a spade. God does that too. Have a listen to this – First John chapter 3, verse 17. If you have a Bible, open it up – towards the end – the First Letter of John chapter 3, verse 17:

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has all the world’s goods and yet sees a brother or sister in need but refuses to help?

Now, I know that’s hard because there seems to be so much need out there in the world. Sometimes we look at the news and we see the misery and we just turn it off, you and I – we can’t make a difference; it’s too big. Okay, I kind of understand that, although we can always make some small difference, but there are so many people closer to home; sometimes even within our homes, that we have the opportunity to serve – to heal with our hands; to heal with what we do as well as with what we say.

Speaking first hand here, there is nothing ... absolutely nothing that speaks more about God’s love into someone’s life than when we step in to help them with that one thing they need help with. Sometimes it’s the smallest thing – just a word of encouragement; a meal to someone just out of hospital; a visit or a phone call. Sometimes it’s loving them over the long run; being there with them and for them.

Whatever it is, when we have a need and someone just meets that need, there is nothing that speaks more of the love of Jesus than that. Believe you me, I know. It was people doing just that in my life who played such a powerful role in me coming to faith in Jesus Christ. In fact, their investment in meeting my needs bears fruit every day, as I sit down behind this microphone.

Listen again to what Paul writes about how he sees his role and ours in this world. Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20:

So we are ambassadors for Christ; since God is making his appeal through us we entreat you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.

Imagine now, an ambassador of a wealthy country who has taken up his or her post in a poor country. And one day that poor country suffers a devastating earthquake and that ambassador from the wealthy country moves heaven and earth to quickly mobilise rescue and medical capabilities. They come quickly; they meet the desperate needs and then, when finally the crisis is over, what do you think the ambassador’s actions have just said to the people of that poor country, about the wealthy country that the ambassador represents? That ambassador’s actions will have spoken volumes into the poorer nation about how much the richer nation cares for them. It’s simply not rocket science!

Do you believe in Jesus? I do! And anyone who does is called to be an ambassador of Christ and as the Apostle Paul writes, it is through His ambassadors, dotted all over the planet, that God makes His appeal for people to be reconciled to Him. We don’t have to look very far to find the need, do we? Often it’s right under our noses. And we can spend time in prayer and at church and worshipping God and all those wonderful, good things while the babies starve; while the needs go unmet; while marriages next door fall apart and people right across the street are living in fear. Or we can go ... go and be ambassadors of Christ.

For how does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or a sister in need and yet refuses to help?

Loving with our Hearts As I said at the beginning of today’s programme, this is our last message in this four part series, “Living Life as an Ambassador for Christ”. And as we draw to the end I always find myself thinking of so many other things we could have talked about. Over the last three weeks I guess, what we have been doing is taking a look at the different aspects of the Apostle Paul’s assertion that he and by implication, you and me - if we believe in this amazing, loving, compassionate, powerful Jesus – are ambassadors for Christ. Have a listen again to how he put it – Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20:

So we are ambassadors for Christ; since God is making his appeal through us, we entreat you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.

We have talked a lot about what it means to be an ambassador through whom God would make His appeal to a lost and hurting world. We’ve looked a bit at the way Jesus was an emissary of God into this world when He became a man. How He communicated God’s message of grace to the blind and the poor and the diseased and the needy and the outcast. And I wish we could spend weeks and months more, taking a closer look at that. Maybe we will come back to it in a little while because at the centre of everything ... EVERYTHING is Jesus, the Son of God; the Maker of the heavens and the earth.

So, as we draw this series together today, with so much more left to talk about, I had to decide on just one thing – the most important thing – and that most important thing; the one thing that Paul, at the end of First Corinthians 12 calls, "the yet more excellent way", is this: love! That’s what we are going to finish up with today.

I had a friend who, several years ago now, was called into Christian ministry, out of Australia into the United Kingdom. Now the particular place where he went to live and to work was, well, it was a part of the U.K. that was particularly depressed at the time. His job wasn’t to work directly with the people but when I went to visit him and I wandered around the local town, I could feel that ... that oppression. There were derelict factories, rusting, decaying remnants of the industrial age. There was high youth unemployment and I spoke with the people; there seemed to be a hopeless; a lost-ness; an emptiness in this part of the country. It really stood out.

Now we Australians, by and large, are a pretty optimistic lot. We have in our National character this ‘can do’ attitude that to other cultures sometimes, comes across as being a bit brash. And so when I was confronted with this sad community’s spirit, it really struck me between the eyes. And as I chatted with my friend over coffee late one night, he too confessed that he was finding that really difficult – moving from one culture to another – it’s never easy. But the sadness and the listlessness and the hopelessness all around, particularly, coupled with the long, grey, cold winters, was really getting to him.

Now, please understand me, I am not knocking the Brits. I love travelling to England but there are parts of the country – any Brit will tell you this – there are parts of the country where there is high unemployment, particularly amongst the youth – and it's tough going.

Anyhow, a year or so later I was chatting with this man over Skype and he’s a great guy – I love keeping in touch with him – and so I assumed he was still doing it tough in this unfamiliar culture. I started empathising with him and his response ... his response shocked me. He said in effect, "Oh no; no, no, we love it here; absolutely love it here. This is where God means us to be and it’s really great." That was quite a turn around, so I asked him, "What’s changed? You’ve moved your position a long way from where you were and what you were feeling a few years ago."

And as I listened to him talk, it clicked! I could hear it in his voice – he had fallen in love with the people. God had touched his heart and he had this real compassion for the people out there – the unemployed; the people with that sense of hopelessness. He’d become part of a local church and he was part of the community and he realised that the joy and the enthusiasm and the optimism that he had in his heart could be a light in that place. He had fallen in love with the people.

Sometimes we Christians feel like misfits in this world. There’s a reason for that. As Jesus said in His prayer, just before He was crucified – John chapter 17 – He said that, “... we are in the world but not of the world.” The Apostle Paul makes the point that “ ... we are citizens of heaven, not of this world.” We are misfits; just like my friend the Aussie felt – he was a misfit in his new surroundings.

And when we are misfits, the easiest thing in the world is to kind of criticise and poke fun and belittle those around us and complain – "I know Jesus; I have my life sorted out; I know what’s right and all those other people out there, whose lives are in a mess, well, they’re somehow less that I am." We criticise, we argue, we demean – it’s called, "religious superiority". You see it often between races and cultures – one race looks down on another because of their skin colour or their traditions or just who they are. And I’ve seen people get this wrong over and over and over again.

I love it when the Apostle Paul says in First Corinthians 13, it doesn’t matter what gifts or abilities or what you do or how much you give, if you don’t have love, friend you are nothing. And the love that Jesus showed was more than just love – it was compassion, it was empathy, it was kindness and gentleness.

There are two Letters in the New Testament – First Timothy and Second Timothy – they are written by Paul to Tim, his young protégée. And in the second one, the Apostle Paul writes these words – Second Timothy chapter 2, verses 24 to 26:

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.

The bit I love most in there is the bit about God perhaps granting that they will repent and come to know the truth; they may escape the snare of the devil and be set free. It’s oh so easy, as someone who loves Jesus and is passionate about Him and who wants to see people’s lives transformed, to start getting this idea that it’s up to us. You know, we see many, many lives transformed through these radio programmes, all over the world but let me tell you this, with all that I am: nothing that I can do; nothing that I can say, can change lives!

Just yesterday I received an email from a man in another country who wrote about a particular programme he’d listen to over the New Year period and he said, "One small thing you said, God took that and changed my life." He was an alcoholic and he’d stopped drinking. Now, I can’t do that – only God can, by His Spirit when He takes His Word and brings it to life in our hearts. That bit is God’s job.

And when you or I become arrogant or pushy or superior in our attitudes we are working against God because, “God always opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble.” And I don’t care what gift you or I have, how hard we work for Jesus, how much of our cash we contribute to His work, unless we have love, my friend, we are enemies of God; enemies of our fellow men, women and children.

“These three things remain”, writes Paul in First Corinthians chapter 13, “faith, hope and love. All really good but the greatest amongst these is love.”

Whatever we do, however we do it, if we do it in love, God can use it – kind, gentle, patient – that’s what Paul writes to Timothy. The wisdom of a man towards the end of his life after many, many years of very difficult ministry – bound in chains; about to be executed, writing to his young protégée, just starting out on his career - kindness, gentleness, patience and love.

A Price to Pay Now, I had the honour the other evening of sitting and having dinner with a man who heads up a large international ministry that touches young people with the love of Jesus Christ. They have a passion for seeing the lives of young folk transformed and they have missions and people kind of all over the world doing that – it’s a huge organisation. Now this man happens to be an Australian and him and his wife and a couple of kids had to move from Australia to the U.S. for him to be able to take up the role as global president of this missions and ministry organisation.

So, several years ago they received the call and off they went. Now you would imagine Australia and America – both English speaking; both Western cultures; pretty similar countries in many ways – you would imagine. But as someone who has travelled to the U.S. a lot and as someone who’s just received an American into our ministry; a man and his family who immigrated the other direction – from the U.S. to Australia – I can tell you, there are some huge cultural differences between these two, apparently similar countries.

Anyhow, I asked this man and his wife, as we were having dinner together, how did they find things when they moved their family to a large city in the U.S. several years ago. ‘Aw,’ they said, ‘it wasn’t easy. Oh, there were some big adjustments. Oh, that first twelve months was really tough going and we still missed those familiar things and the people and the culture that we grew up in.’

So, I guess this is my point, is that it would be easy for you and me to sit and look at and listen to this man and think to ourselves, "Well, he’s blessed; he made it; he’s at the top of the heap in this large ministry, without ever seeing the cost. It cost him something, it cost his wife, it cost his children to uproot themselves and follow the call of God." Now, this guy is such a gifted leader – he is so the right man to head up that organisation but it cost him. You get it – it cost him.

And these days he spends a lot of time flying around the world at the back of the plane – he’s a tall man – and that’s tiring and uncomfortable and as someone said to me recently, this guy could be the head of any large global corporation. He just has what it takes – he could be flying first class; he could be earning stacks of money but he’s doing neither because his heart burns with a fire ... a fire; a passion to see peoples’ lives changed. Not as they embrace some new religion or learn a new set of rules but as they meet and encounter Jesus Christ. As they discover His love and His power and His compassion and His vision for their lives – Jesus. This man; this leader is an ambassador for Christ.

For two reasons – first is his soft heart; his passion and the second are his hard feet. In other words, he was prepared to go. I think it was Corrie Ten Boom who once said something along the lines that, God calls us to have soft hearts and hard feet. But the problem is that many Christians have the exact opposite – they have hard hearts and soft feet.

My friend, whenever we are called to be an ambassador for Jesus Christ, there is a price to pay. Jesus said, “If anyone would be my disciple then he must take up his cross and follow me.” Count the cost – there is a cost and, “Unless you take up your cross and follow me,” said Jesus, follow me where I lead, “then you cannot ... you cannot be my disciple.”

Being an ambassador of Christ is going to cost us something. It is not for the faint hearted; it is not for the hard hearted. It is for those in who burns a fire for Jesus; a passion to see hurting, needy people encounter this risen Saviour, Jesus, whether it’s across the world or across the street – a passion to see lives transformed by Jesus.

Does that mean we all have to immigrate to a foreign land and head up a ministry? Of course, it doesn’t! But it does mean that each one of us, in some way, shape or form, wherever Jesus leads, has to go. Just as Jesus came to us, so we are called to go to the lost – to the sinners, to the outcasts, to those amongst our family and our friends and our work colleagues and our local football club and our neighbours and our enemies – even our enemies – to go and make disciples of all the nations – to go and be ambassadors ... ambassadors of Christ.

My friend, if you believe in Jesus; if you have given your life to Him, I encourage you to do something today – I want encourage you to go to Him, in prayer, and say:

Lord Jesus, I want to be Your ambassador. I want to be part of Your great plan for this world, of transforming lives; I want to carry You into this world, Lord, I want to see people meet You. Lord God, show me how ... show me how.

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Anyone who believes in Jesus – is also meant to be an Ambassador of Christ. Now – that’s not an easy role. Sometimes being Ambassador requires some tough talk. Other times it’s about diplomacy – the question is, knowing when to call a spade a spade, and when to be more … circumspect.

It’s Not a Shouting Match One of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever seen as a Christian – and I’ve seen it a few times – is some guy standing on a soapbox in a Mall or on a street corner, or as I shared a few weeks ago, at a Saturday morning market, screaming out the so called, "Good News" about Jesus Christ. Now, I’m a Christian and so I will sometimes stop and see if I can understand where they’re coming from. And truly, most of the time, I just can’t figure it out, but there they stand on their soapbox, with a Bible in their hands and surrounded by some pretty tacky placards normally, screaming the Gospel at people. Do I think God can use that? Sure – I mean, He seems to use the foolishness that I preach sometimes, in peoples’ lives, so why not the guy on the soapbox on the street corner?

Do I think, however, that it’s the most effective way of dealing with the issue? Is it the best way to communicate the incredible love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, the riches available to those who put their faith in Him? Is it the best way to share that Good News? Not by a long shot; not by a very long shot! And yet, it’s easy ... it’s so easy for us to imagine that telling people about Jesus is kind of like getting on that soapbox. That it’s about two equal and opposite ideologies – God’s and the world’s – butting heads and locking horns.

Over the last couple of weeks and again this week on the programme, we are having a chat about living our lives out as ambassadors of Christ; His emissaries, if you will. If I believe in Jesus; if you believe in Jesus, then one of the things that we have to do with our lives – one of the main things - is to communicate His love; to carry His love out into a lost and a hurting world. That’s what the Apostle Paul said in writing to his dear friends at the church in Corinth – way back in the First Century. Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20:

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.

Each one in our own way, of course but otherwise, how can we possibly claim to be His ambassadors? How can God make His appeal to this world to be reconciled with Him through someone who looks nothing like Him; who sounds nothing like Him? Now, that presents us with something of a dilemma! Does me, anyhow, because what I see is that sometimes Jesus stood up and berated people – not too often, but sometimes He did. He called the religious leaders of the day "hypocrites", "a brood of vipers" and a whole bunch of other things as well.

And yet other times, He dealt with people with such tender love and compassion, it kind of moves you to tears when you read about those times. Like the woman caught in adultery – you can read her story in John’s Gospel chapter 8. I mean He pretty much puts Himself between her and the angry mob that wanted to stone her to death. Go figure that out!!

So how do we reconcile that? How do you or I, if we want to be like Jesus, learn to speak into this world the way that He did? When do we speak with tender love and when do we stand up to be counted and call a spade and spade, no matter who it’s going to offend? I guess that’s kind of where we are going this week on the programme – looking at how we speak into this world like Jesus.

How do we connect His message of love and forgiveness and a new and abundant life to the needs ... the often desperate needs in the lives of the people around us? Do we call a spade a spade and get right into peoples’ faces or do we speak with compassion and love? And if it’s both of those, how do I know when to use one and when to use the other?

Now these questions, as you can imagine, are questions that I have mulled over a lot and as I look at how Jesus communicated, He only got upset ... really upset with people on a handful of occasions. In other words it was the exception rather than the norm. He didn’t see His role as God in the flesh, as being one half of a shouting match most of the time. And so far as I can see, He reserved His anger for the people who should have known better; for the people who said they believed in God – the religious leaders. Have a listen – Matthew chapter 23, beginning at verse 12:

All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and then when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross the sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Or when He went into the temple, John chapter 2, verse 15:

Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

See, the only time Jesus really got stuck in was when He encountered hypocrisy amongst the religious leaders. When they held themselves out to be clean on the outside but actually, they were filthy on the inside – when they oppressed the people who were looking for God; when the powerful stood over the weak; when the rich exploited the widow and the poor; when the judges were dishonest to the detriment of the ordinary people.

You know, when Christians, at least here in Australia where I live, sometimes stand up to politicians and publicly speak out against injustice and wrongs and decisions being made and laws being passed that just aren’t in the interests of the common people, like you and me, the most common response of the politicians is that Christians and church leaders should keep their noses out of politics. I couldn’t disagree more! When we see wrongs and injustices – and can I say, especially when we see those things in the church; especially when we see hypocrisy amongst God’s own people – I believe it’s time to stand up and to say so.

This isn’t a clash of ideologies; it’s not a slanging match or a shouting match; it’s not some irrelevant joker standing on a soapbox on a street corner - because you know something? The truth … the truth rings out, clear as a bell. Sure, people with vested interests aren’t going to like it. Sure, there’s going to be a cost, but God’s heart ... God’s heart is for justice for the poor and the oppressed. And sometimes we are called to speak out.

Next, we are going to have a look at the flip side of that coin – the gentle speech of the diplomat; the ambassador.

The Diplomacy of an Ambassador Let’s take a look at the flip side of the coin – the diplomacy of an ambassador because Jesus used that much more than that other really direct and angry approach. Most of us, you and I, we have blind spots. In fact, the reason they are called, "blind spots" is that we can’t see them. And when it comes to our own blind spots in life, what’s amazing is how defensive and touchy we are about them. It’s almost that we hold them to be sacred.

Let’s say that our blind spot is anger – that’s the one we are dealing with in our lives - and we are prone to flaring up quickly and someone comes along and points it out to us. Well, they’d better watch out! Or if it’s low self-esteem and someone tries to help us with it, we can crawl even further inside our shells.

So how do you help someone with their blind spots? Because my blind spots – if I don’t deal with them, will end up hurting you and stunting me and you know, my friend, your blind spots, if you don’t deal with yours, will end up hurting the rest of us and stunting you. That’s what sin does! And before we get all judgemental: Sin! Sin! What century is this guy coming from? Let me read out to you a succinct list of the sorts of things that I’m talking about – just so there’s no mistake.

Now, I’m reading from the Message translation which is a really contemporary translation of the Bible, written by a guy called Eugene Peterson. It’s coming from Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 to 21. Have a listen to what God calls sin:

"It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on,” writes Paul. “This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Now, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist here to figure out that the sort of things that God calls "sin", which Paul is talking about here – they are exclusively the things that cause us and other people pain. And the thing that we want to do when someone’s sin is causing us pain is we want to give them what for – we want to tell them exactly what we think about them and hold them to account and, if needs be, have a shouting match with them and get our own way – we do! Because what we are driven by is desire to stop our pain. What we are driven by is "wanting" to win.

But here’s the thing: if what we want to do is to live our lives as ambassadors of Christ then we need to handle these incredibly difficult issues, with His wisdom. And time and time again, when Jesus encountered people whose sin was ruining their lives, He dealt with them with such incredible compassion.

Tax collectors back in Jesus day were a really grubby lot – they were dishonest, they rorted the system, they applied extortion and this behaviour was sanctioned by the Romans who occupied Israel – so long as the Emperor got his taxes! So, by the common Israelite, they were despised; they were considered to be the worst sinners of all; they were traitors and turncoats. Let me read you some of Jesus wisdom and how He handled them. Matthew chapter 9, verses 9 to 13 – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up – Matthew chapter 9, verses 9 to 13:

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And so, he got up and followed Jesus. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why is it that your teacher eats with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, Jesus said, “Those who are well don’t need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners."

See, you and I, when we see people whose sin offends us or hurts us; when we are on the receiving end of their sin, the thing we want to do, naturally – it’s a natural human response – is to cut them off; to cut them out of our lives. That way we are protected; that way we don’t have to deal with them; that way we don’t have to deal with the pain that they cause in our lives.

But what Jesus is saying here is that it was precisely for these people; these sinners; these rejects, that He came and so He went and ate a meal in that house. Here He was, this veritably rock star – huge crowds were following Him - He comes into town, He decides to go and eat with what – the Mayor, the Governor, the church leaders, the synagogue leaders, the bishops? No, no – the tax collectors!

Do you see this huge ... huge symbolic act that was going on here? He knew that it would do two things. That He would draw vocal criticism from the religious leaders and He’d also confer honour upon the sinners. And by conferring honour on them, He was building a relationship with them. He was accepting them just as they were; without a word of condemnation or judgement. And my hunch is that that completely changed their attitude towards Him.

You know something? They had their blind spots – they were rationalising away their extortion and dishonesty and if Jesus had come and berated them or condemned them or ignored them, nothing would have changed in their lives. Instead He came and ate with them and drank with them and listened to them and took the criticism that everyone else heaped upon Him for doing that – and He built a bridge by honouring them.

And so powerful was this that one of them, Matthew, became one of His disciples. He wrote the first Book of the New Testament. You want to be an ambassador of Christ – then we need to learn the language of an ambassador? Being an ambassador, as we saw on last weeks programme, about building relationships and bridges, so that when there are difficult issues that have to be dealt with, there is already a connection of relationship and trust in place, through which to deal with the problem.

Think about it – who are the people in your life to whom you give a licence to talk to you about your blind spots? I know who they are in my life – it’s the people who have honoured me and stuck with me and who’ve proven themselves to be wise and trustworthy. They’re the ones with that licence!

And as I look back, it was through those people – people just like that; people who had eaten with this sinner; loved this sinner; coped with my sins – it was through those very people that I encountered the transforming love of Jesus Christ. They were His ambassadors in my life. They treated me the way He treated those tax collectors and friend, without them I wouldn’t be with you here right now. It makes you think.

Preaching with our Ears Today and over these last few weeks on the programme we have been chatting about what it means to be an ambassador of Christ; to live our lives - if we believe in Jesus - as one of His ambassadors. Remember, the Apostle Paul – Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20 writes:

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God.

Now, one of the things that strikes me is how strong differences are across cultures. We’ve had a man recently join our team here at Christianityworks – his name is Gregory. Now you may or may not have known this but we Australians are fairly direct in the way we speak. Americans on the other hand, are less so – we often joke about that. Gregory will ask where the bathroom is, whereas I’ll ask where the toilet is. So we Australians are much more direct.

But even more than that, Gregory grew up; spent many of his childhood years in Japan, and so he has a lot of Japanese culture on the inside too – a culture that’s very much about politeness and face. And even though we have known each other for a very long time, working together now every day has been a real learning experience for both of us.

When I ask him what he thinks, I want him to actually tell me what he thinks. If he thinks I’m off with the pixies on some issue, I actually want him to tell me so. Forget hierarchies – I just want his direct, honest input because that’s how we will get the right results. He, on the other hand, can find that just a bit confronting because that’s not the cultural background that he’s come from. It’s just one simple example but it’s a good one.

Imagine if I, as direct as I am, were sent as Australia’s ambassador to the U.S. or even more so, to Japan. I’d have to learn a lot about their cultures before I could communicate effectively on a diplomatic level with those countries. I’d have to find different ways of saying things I want to say. I’d have to listen carefully to what their diplomats were saying to make sure I actually hear what they mean to say.

You know something? Sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with the people around us is no different to that. After fifteen years of walking with Jesus, I have a whole different perspective on what success is, what joy is, what happiness is, what sin is, what pain is – and all sorts of things, from someone who has never met Jesus – from someone who doesn’t have that relationship with Jesus. Why would I ever imagine I could talk to them as though they have the same perspective as me?

You know, for a long, long time in my life, I just wasn’t ready for anyone to tell me about this Jesus. I mean, get lost! I couldn’t stand those God botherers. I had a totally different perspective to theirs. I just knew that life was about making lots of money and being recognised in my field and being successful. I knew I’d find my pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. I had, back then, a whole bunch of misconceptions about life and where I wanted to be headed and what would make me happy. And I didn’t need anyone to preach at me - least of all those God botherers telling me about Jesus.

What I needed was someone to listen to me – what I needed was someone to understand me and help me to understand myself. I needed someone to preach to me with their ears – if that makes sense. An ambassador from one country who is about to be sent to another country has to learn about the culture and the language and the issues and the aspirations and the concerns of the country to which he or she is being sent. Someone who lives in one country and is going to be a missionary in another country, well, they have to do exactly the same.

I believe the most important asset an ambassador can have are his ears and his eyes – to observe, to perceive, to listen, to see, to understand. Jesus grew up in the Hebrew culture of First Century Israel. He attended school in that culture. He knew how to speak and He had a lot of time listening. He spent time eating and drinking with tax collectors; with sinners. He spent time living with His disciples. He spent time getting to know the issues in peoples’ lives.

I remember when I was working in a retail buying group – quite some years ago. The chairman of our board was a man called Stan Brown – he owned a menswear store in Sydney. I remember him saying that a shop attendant who walks up to a customer and opens up with, "Can I help you?" well, he’d say it’s like asking someone to marry you on the first date. First he said, you need to find out who they are, why are they here, why did they come into your store, what’s their taste, what are they looking for? First you have to find a point of connection, he said, then ... then they’ll be open to receive any help.

As I look at people who God brought to me; the ambassadors whom He sent in my direction when I needed to meet Him, what I realise, is that they, for the most part, preached with their ears – they listened, they understood, they laughed, they cried with me and once they understood – once I really knew they understood – then I relaxed. Then I let them into my thoughts and into my heart – then they were allowed to influence me because they got me. Then they had the opportunity to show me who this Jesus really, really is.

The stock-in-trade of an ambassador is diplomacy. It’s about trust and communication and understanding and if you and I ... if you and I are going to be ambassadors of Jesus Christ, then that’s something I believe we are going to have to learn.

When I take the time to get to know you and understand you – whether or not I agree, I have just built a bridge into your life that honours you. When you feel understood, you feel secure and you experience trust and it’s exactly the same back in the other direction.

Friend, Jesus was an amazing communicator – He was prepared to confront the difficult issues when they needed to be confronted and He was prepared to show compassion because that’s what flowed out of His heart to people in need. And it was that bridge of compassion that we can build with people.

That’s the bridge that, one day, Jesus will walk across. Trust me, that’s the bridge and it all comes from preaching with our ears. Go figure!

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Everyone – everyone who believes in Jesus is called to be His ambassador. An Ambassador of Christ. That involves a change of heart, it involves a change in our actions and it involves – well, going. Ambassadors don’t stay, they go. That’s why being Christ’s Ambassadors ain’t easy sometimes.

Christ on the Inside Now, one of the things that you and I know is that we are what we eat. If what I do is I pig out on chocolates – man, I love chocolate, but we know that too much of it is bad for us; and fatty foods and sweet, sugary drinks and lots of cakes and sweets, all that stuff – if I pig out on that then who I am on the inside is going to change. I’m going to put on weight, my emotions will take a downswing, because that’s what happens with too much sugar, I’ll become lethargic and tired and I won’t be able to cope. My heart will have to work so much harder to get blood around the larger body and my coronary arteries will get all clogged up, my blood sugar will go up ... and on and on the list goes.

The impact is that I have less of a life to live now because I’m always tired, not feeling well and my life expectancy will be cut short. On the other hand, if I get a great mix of healthy cereals and grains and those brightly coloured vegetables and lean meat and all that stuff, which actually tastes pretty fantastic, the complete opposite will happen. What happens on the inside has a huge impact on what happens on the outside.

Who we are on the inside – whether it be physically or emotionally or spiritually - has a huge impact on who we are on the outside. And the upshot of all that is that we simply can’t be one thing on the inside and try to be something else on the outside – it just doesn’t work.

Last week, again this week on the programme and indeed, over the next couple of weeks we are having a bit of a chat about living our lives here on this earth as ambassadors for Christ, because that is what anyone who believes in Jesus is called to be. We are citizens of heaven, not of this earth and as Paul, the Apostle writes, in Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20:

We are ambassadors for Christ; since God is making his appeal through us, we entreat you on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God.

As I said, you just can’t be one thing on the inside and then pretend to be another thing on the outside. You can’t be Swedish on the inside and pretend to be the Indian ambassador on the outside. We can’t be the devil on the inside and pretend to be an angel of light on the outside. Well, I suppose we can for a while but I suspect it’s incredibly hard work, carrying on a deception like that and it doesn’t take long for who we are to make its way to the outside.

Jesus Himself said – Matthew chapter 15, verse 19:

For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness and slander.

So, if we are going to be ambassadors of Christ, then we first have to be citizens of heaven on the inside, just as the Indian ambassador has to be Indian and not Swedish on the inside. Interesting how God talked about this through His prophet Ezekiel, to His people. He talked to them about what was going on in their hearts. Have a listen – Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 31:

“Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me and get yourselves,” listen to this, “a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel?"

A new heart! I think we know what God means but that’s not much of an expression that we would use today. But the expression that we would use is "a change of heart". You and I know what that means: unless something happens deep inside our hearts – on the inside - we can’t change on the outside. But you know there have been issues, transgressions, sins in my life that, try as I might, I couldn’t change my heart by myself. I’m guessing you have had that experience too – we all have!

And that’s why God made this promise too, through His prophet Ezekiel, to His people – Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26:

A new heart I will give you, a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

In fact, perhaps what you want to be is an ambassador of Christ but there’s something right now going on in your heart; something you would love to change but you can’t for yourself that you need God to do for you. So why don’t we pray about that right now:

Father God,this Word of yours, You are putting Your finger right on one of the deepest problems in my life. You and I both know what it is and You know that I have struggled to change my heart - I’ve tried my hardest, but I just can’t. And so I come to You in faith and pray for Your will – Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26 – for a new heart – a change of heart. Take out the heart of stone, O God, and replace it with a heart of flesh. Take out of me any spirit that is causing me to sin and fill me with Your Spirit. I come to You in faith. I believe that what I have asked You, You will give me because I am asking You in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Now, I encourage you, if you have prayed that prayer will me, to believe, simply to believe, that God will give you the good thing that you have asked Him for and He will. That’s what He says He will do and He never, ever, ever fails on His Word – ever!

When the Apostle Paul was sharing the Good News about Jesus with the folk in Athens, he quoted a poem about a Greek god and applied it to Jesus. This is what he said – Acts chapter 17, verse 28:

For in him we live and move and have our being.

You know, for me that says it all! It’s about being totally immersed in Christ; about being drenched in Jesus – that’s actually the literal meaning of the word "baptised or baptism". The original Greek word was "baptidso". So when a boat was lost in a storm and it went under and it sank, it was said to have been "baptidso"d. When a fabric was dyed a new colour and it was plunged into the dye and completely drenched and it came out a new colour, it was said to have been "baptidso"d.

That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul writes to his friends in Rome. Romans chapter 6, verses 3 and 4:

Don’t you know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ were baptised into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised again from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

It means death to the old life and the living of a new life; literally, to be "born again" – a whole new heart and filled with a new spirit; the Spirit of God this time; the Holy Spirit. It means that goodness replaces evil – not so much because we work hard at it but because God’s given us a change of heart and now what happens is we actually want to honour God; we want to live a life that brings glory to Him – and that’s the new life.

We are going to talk more about that next. It’s the new life that wins people over to Christ. It’s the new life that shines like a light and brings flavour to people’s lives like salt. But just as a well that is dry can’t bring forth water, so a life that is empty of Christ; His very Spirit; His presence within us, so a life like that can’t be an ambassador of Christ.

If there are things that you have been struggling with on the inside; things that are holding you back from taking up your commission as Christ’s ambassador in your little petunia patch, then here’s what I encourage you to do – get with God, get in prayer, open His Word, ask Him to fill you to overflowing with His Holy Spirit. Ask Him again and again and again to give you a new heart. And just as we prayed before; just as I said before, He surely will – because He wants to – because when we bear much fruit in our lives it brings Him great glory. A new heart; a change of heart; filled with a new spirit, His Spirit.

Christ on the Outside So let me ask you a question: if you are someone who believes in Jesus and you drive a car, do you have a Jesus bumper sticker or one of those fish stickers on your bumper bar? Maybe ... maybe not! I mean, even if you don’t, that’s okay, I don’t either, but if you had to put one on your car, let me ask you, does your behaviour on the road as a driver match up to what the sticker advertises? I mean, are you a courteous driver who obeys all the road rules or do you break the speed limit and honk your horn at people and yell at them from the inside of your car?

I guess if you’re the former it would be okay to have a fish sticker or a Jesus sticker on your car because your behaviour is a good advertisement for God - in effect, because what you advertise on the sticker and how you behave match up, it works. On the other hand though, can you imagine a rude, impatient driver, who’s constantly breaking the road rules, identifying themselves as a Christian, using some sticker they put on their car. It’s not a very good ad for God, is it?

It turns out that who we say we are; who we hold ourselves out to be and who we actually are in what we say and what we do – if those two don’t match up – well, there’s a name for that: we call those people "hypocrites". We have been talking about living our lives as ambassadors of Christ – “for we are ambassadors for Christ since God is making his appeal through us.” 2nd Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20.

In other words, God, just as He used the Apostle Paul, wants to involve us in the business of making His appeal to the rest of the world. Now what we have seen over the course of the last couple of weeks is that we don’t all have to be "Pauls" in order to do that. Diplomacy, which is the role of an ambassador, mostly happens in one on one relationships where trust is built so that governments have relationships in place to resolve difficult issues. That’s the point of diplomacy and it’s the role of an ambassador.

See, I think sometimes we are misled into thinking: Aw, WOW, oh – an ambassador for Christ, well, that must be the pastors role not me!’ because it sounds like a flashy, up front title. And earlier we saw that in order to be an ambassador of for, say India, we had to be Indian, if we’re Swedish no one is going to believe we are the Indian ambassador, right?

Who we are on the inside really counts. That’s why God promises something new – Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26:

A new heart I will give you; a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

See, we can’t change who we are on the outside until we have a change of heart on the inside. I’ve tried it, you’ve tried it – it doesn’t work! If something first happens in our hearts though, to change us on the inside, then all of a sudden changing on the outside becomes mush easier. That’s what we talked about earlier.

Right now we are going to follow on with the natural continuation of that. We are going to take a look at how important it is that who we are on the outside is consistent with who we are on the inside. And that’s why I kicked off with that story about the bumper sticker.

It’s kind of obvious isn’t it? Now I’m not suggesting that you or I are ever going to live a perfect life. I pretty much make mistakes every day and probably you do too and no one ... no one expects us to be perfect. But either how we live declares that our heart and our life has been changed by God or it doesn’t and if it doesn’t, without putting too fine a point on it, we’re being hypocrites. That’s something that Jesus identified in the religious leaders of His day. They pretended to be ‘oh so holy’ on the outside, but on the inside – well have a listen to what Jesus said to them – Matthew chapter 23, verses 25 and 26:

Woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside may also be clean.

Now, I’m kind of comforted by that; I like it that Jesus is concerned both about our hearts – who we are on the inside – and our hands – what we do on the outside. If someone came to me and said, ‘You know Berni, I’ve heard what you have been saying – I’ve decided I want to be an ambassador of Christ. What do you think is the most important thing in that role?’ Well, this is how I’d answer.

The first thing is your heart and your relationship with God’ being completely sold out to Jesus and if you don’t have that, well, you can’t pretend it. And the second thing is: how you behave; how you live it out, because if you say that you are one thing and you do completely the opposite, people will pick you as a phoney in a split second and then, instead of shining God’s light into the world, you just turn people off.

Let me give you an example. My country, Australia, has a very strong relationship with the United States of America – has had for a good many years. Now, imagine that the U.S. Government, all of a sudden, appoints a brand new ambassador and sends him across the pond to Australia. And within a few months, we discover this ambassador, he’s a lecherous drunk, who can’t keep his hands off other women – whether or not he happens to be any good at his trade of diplomacy – and scandal after scandal, involving this new ambassador hits the news and the press.

How do you imagine such a person would influence the view that Australians have, not only of the U.S. Government but of the American people? It would be devastating wouldn’t it? Not only would this so called "ambassador" hurt the people around him but he’d bring his whole Nation; his whole people into ill repute.

And that’s why the lives we lead as Christians are so important. Come on – let’s get real!! Does hypocrisy display the glory of God? No! It brings Him and His people as a whole, into disrepute. "Oh, those Christians – they’re just a bunch of hypocrites!" And God ... God doesn’t like hypocrites, my friend. Listen again to Jesus – Matthew chapter 23, verse 25:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

People talk about ‘missional living’ – living out our lives as missionaries or ambassadors in this world. You know what I think the biggest thing that you and I can do to live "missionally" is to live a holy life. What’s a holy life? It’s a life where the cup and the plate are clean on the inside as well as the outside. Peter, the Apostle, sums it up like this in his Letter, First Peter, chapter 1, verse 14:

Like obedient children, don’t be conformed to the desires you formally had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, for it is written “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

My friend, there is something wonderful; utterly sublime, when we roll up our sleeves with God and get to cleaning the inside as well as the outside. And here’s the thing: people notice – people sit up and take notice and think to themselves, "There’s something different about that person – something good; something I trust; something I want." And there ... right there, we have an ambassador of Christ!

Taking His Love to the Sinners When I used to run an I.T. consulting firm with my business partners, we used to joke that life would be so much easier if we didn’t have clients. It’s true, it’s just not very profitable, I guess. And the same is true when it comes to sinners – you know, those people who drink too much, or they swear too much, or they are just rude or belligerent or a pain in the neck - the most natural thing in the world for someone who loves Jesus, is to kind of recoil from them – to retreat into the holy huddle of Christian friends.

I would like to finish off today with a short story about Jesus approach to sinners. It comes from Luke chapter 5 – if you have a Bible, come on, open it up with me – let’s go there – it’s a confronting and edgy story – gets right in your face, just the way Jesus meant it to be. Come on, let’s have a listen. Luke chapter 5, verses 27 to 32:

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And Levi got up, left everything, and followed Jesus. Then Levi gave a great banquet for Jesus in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and the scribes, well, were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” But Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners to repentance.

Now, here’s the thing: the Romans occupied Israel in the first century – this godless empire occupied God’s people; God’s Promised Land and ruled over them. And the way they collected taxes was effectively, to tender it out to individuals; people like Levi; people who were Jews! They would bid for the right to collect the taxes on behalf of the Romans and the highest bidder would win. And so in order to make a profit, the tax collector would then find all sorts of ways of extorting additional taxes from the people.

Now, Levi was sitting in a tax booth, collecting taxes from people who used the road to ship their goods and so forth – a bit like a modern day toll road. And what made it worse, not only did he extort taxes; not only did he cheat and lie but he was working for the Romans – Levi, a Jew, ripping off his fellow Israelites!

So, this was not the sort of guy you would want to talk to or have as a friend or approach for any reason whatsoever. But Jesus ... Jesus approached him; Jesus called him, the way a Rabbi calls disciples. Jesus went to this sinner, Levi, this abhorrent, disgusting traitor – as far as all the other Jews were concerned – and not only did He say to Levi, “Follow me,” He went to dinner; a banquet at Levi’s house with a whole bunch of other tax collectors.

Now the religious people, the Pharisees, instead of saying, "Man, what a great idea – taking the love of God right into the middle of the sinners – loving them, listening to them, healing them, maybe even bringing them to repentance," instead of that, the Pharisees, they found some theological, religious reasons for criticising Jesus. Now, let me ask you this – brutal; right to your face: when it comes to sinners, are you more like Jesus or more like the scribes and Pharisees? Come on! It’s a question we need to ask.

The thing about an ambassador is that he doesn’t stay at home in his own country where he knows everyone; his friends are and he’s comfortable – he gets on a plane, with his family, sets up his home right in the middle of this other foreign country that he has been posted to as an ambassador. Get it!

You and I, if we truly are Christ’s followers, you and I are called to "go". Not to sit at home in our holy huddles were we are comfortable. Don’t get me wrong: having Christian friends is great, going to church is great but we’re called to live on the mission field – we are called to go to the sinners the way Jesus did. And while sometimes that means going to another part of the world, true, most times it just means touching the colleague at work, inviting over the neighbours next door for a barbecue because you have heard them screaming at each other and their marriage is falling apart and what they need in their lives is Jesus. What they need to know is that He loves them. What they need to have is a personal encounter with the Saviour who came for them. Not just for us, for them – the Saviour who died for them - the Saviour who rose again to give them a new life and an eternal life. What they need – the "Levis" in our world – they need Jesus.

So, I am going to ask you again, when it comes to the ‘Levis’ in your world, are you Christ to them or are you a Pharisee? Do you go to them with the love of Jesus or do you sit at home with your friends and complain about them?

My friend, these people who are hurting, who are dying, who are going to a Christ-less eternity, my friend, they need an ambassador – they need an ambassador of Christ who looks just like you and just like me.

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Life just seems to happen doesn’t it? We get up, do pretty much the same thing as yesterday, over and over. And as someone who believes in Jesus it can be easy for us to lose sight of what God wants us to do with our lives. And it turns out – that in His eyes, you and I – we’re Ambassadors of Christ. That’s quite a calling.

First a Citizen, Then an Ambassador Right about now, depending on how you count some of the smaller ones, there are over 200 countries in this world. One source I read lists 223, another 192. Let’s say there are around 200 – some of them are huge and powerful, right down to the smallest country in the world. What a huge variation: China, population 1.34 billion, at one end of the scale, right down to the Pitcairn Islands, official population 50, at the other end and everything in between.

Now, anyone whose had brothers and sisters knows that siblings don’t always get on. And the history of humanity is a history of wars, invasions, conquests, dominance, exploitation – in fact right now, there are around thirty recognised wars going on around the world, not to mention the other, quote "lower level" conflicts.

So how do all of these cuntries get on? Well, hopefully these days, most of the time, when there’s disagreement on an issue, instead of fighting wars as the first step in the process, countries use a thing called, "diplomacy". They have diplomats and so they use diplomatic channels to discuss and resolve most of the issues between them. The head of a diplomatic mission is usually called, "the ambassador". So in my country we have an American ambassador, we have a Chinese ambassador; we have an Indian ambassador and so on. And here’s the thing: none of those people are Australians. The American ambassador is, well, he’s American, the Chinese ambassador is Chinese, the Indian ambassador is, well, as you would expect, Indian.

So not only is the ambassador a citizen of the country which he or she represents, they also look like they come from that country and they speak like that they come from that country because they do come from that country. Now, all of that is, I would hope pretty much blindingly, glimpsingly, obvious to all of us and the job of the ambassador of each country is to be his or her country’s representative with a foreign government – the channel through which their country raises issues with another government and vice versa.

Sometimes; many times those are difficult issues. You can imagine, for instance, the exchanges that occur between Indian and Pakistani diplomats or at times between China and America on trade issues or between the various European countries within their Union. Ambassadors are there to represent their country; the country of their citizenship, in a foreign land.

The Apostle Paul had this to say on the issue. Have a listen it comes – if you have a Bible, open it up – Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 16:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though once we knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

See, almost sounds as if Paul is saying he’s not so much a Roman citizen, which he was, but he’s a citizen of God’s Kingdom, sent as an ambassador to explain and to share God’s message of reconciliation and forgiveness into a foreign world. “So we are ambassadors for Christ since God is making His appeal through us.” And in fact, elsewhere, Paul writes exactly that. Philippians chapter 3, verse 20:

Our citizenship is in heaven and it is from there that we are expecting a saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So there it is. Paul sees his role as being an ambassador of Christ – declaring the forgiveness that God has for each and every person on this planet, if only they will put their faith in His Son and the eternal and glorious reconciliation we can have with Him when we take that step. And that ... that is simply carrying on what Jesus came to do. Mark chapter 1, verse 38 – Jesus answered:

Let us go on to the neighbouring towns so that I may proclaim the message there also for that is what I came out to do.

John chapter 18, verse 37 – Pontius Pilot asked Him:

So are you a king? And Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king, for this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

Jesus came in order to tell us the Good News, and in fact, to "be" the Good News. The Apostle Paul saw himself as an ambassador of that Good News, even to the point of being an ambassador in chains, on death row. Ephesians chapter 6, verse 19:

"Pray also for me so that when I speak a message may be given to me to make known with boldness, the mystery of the Gospel for which I am,” writes Paul, “an ambassador in chains".

My friend, what did you come to do? Where is your citizenship? Are you a citizen of this world or are you an ambassador in a foreign land, bringing the Good News of the Gospel of reconciliation with God, through Jesus Christ, into a lost and hurting world? My hunch is that anyone who calls themselves a Christian; anyone who takes on themself the name of Christ, is called, not to a life of comfort, so much, as a life of following hard after Jesus. Luke chapter 4, verse 27:

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Over these coming weeks on the programme we are going to be talking about living our lives as ambassadors ... ambassadors of Christ. What does that mean – what does that look like? Well, we will be looking at that. Today the point I think we are meant to get out of our time together, you and I, is that firstly a disciple is a citizen of the country that he or she represents. And if we are to be ambassadors of Christ, as Paul wrote, as much as we are immersed in our culture, as important as that is in reaching out to those around us with the Good News of Jesus, we are not, my friend, citizens of this world, but we are citizens of heaven, sent as ambassadors into a foreign land.

And as ambassadors often find, the foreign places into which they’re sent – they don’t always want to hear what they have to say. It’s not always easy being an ambassador. In fact, the reason that countries need ambassadors is to deal with difficult issues; the tensions that could escalate into conflicts. Ambassadors, yes, have to be diplomatic but they also have to tackle the difficult issues. And as Jesus came as an ambassador of heaven to proclaim the truth and was ultimately crucified for it and if Paul followed in His footsteps as an ambassador of Christ and was ultimately executed for it, if you and I are going to life out our lives in the small corner where God has put us as citizens of heaven, we are to be ambassadors of Christ.

That’s not always going to be easy! The world won’t always want to hear – it could cost us everything but I’m afraid it comes with the territory ... the territory of being an ambassador of Christ.

Did God Really Mean That? I know of people who believe in Jesus, who go to church Sunday and Sunday; they sit there in the pews, sing the songs, listen to the preacher but they’re not flashy; they’re not up front performers or musicians or speakers or leaders. Every now or then perhaps, they make morning tea or contribute somehow to the life of the church, but because they’re not high profile, up front people, because they’re more people who blend into the background, they’ve decided, in their heart of hearts, that they have nothing to contribute. The world’s been telling them and subtly the church has been telling them, too, "You have nothing to contribute".

So lots and lots of people have come to the conclusion that they have nothing to contribute – lots and lots of people have stopped trying to live out their faith in Jesus; a faith that used to burn so brightly, and gradually, little by little, the flame within has grown dim – it’s almost gone out. But for some reason ... some reason they can’t quite put their finger on, they toddle along every Sunday, hoping ... no, surely, there’s no more hope; secretly hoping perhaps – hoping in a way that they would never admit to themselves, let alone anyone else – that God is going to come along and do something powerful in their lives and through their lives.

I wonder if you know anyone like that. Well, if you do, if perhaps there’s just a little or even a lot of that going on in you; if perhaps you’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for God to do something powerful in you and through you; to give you some part to play in His plan that’s custom made, handmade for who He made you to be, and I believe with all my heart that today, that wait comes to an end. Today, that is over because He has a word for you today – His Word, not mine – that will set you free to be what He always planned for you to be an ambassador of Christ.

Not in the same way as anyone else, you know, because you are not the same as anyone else you know, but in a unique way that fits with who you are. Now, I know beyond any shadow of any doubt that there are countless of people listening to this message today who simply cannot believe that this could possibly be true – the flame has almost gone out. That’s why we are going to share with you a powerful, powerful word from God from Jesus own lips, in fact.

Anyone who spent just five minutes reading one of the Gospel accounts of His life, in the first century, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, will be able to account a stream of powerful miracles that Jesus performed. He healed the sick, He raised the dead, He made water into wine, He fed thousands with almost nothing – He did so many amazing, powerful miracles ... miracles that were witnessed by many people. I mean, there’s no doubt that He actually performed those miracles.

It was this power that in the end got Him crucified. Not only did He preach with power, He acted in power and the people flocked to Him. It was because of the preaching and the deeds of power, the miracles that the Pharisees and the Sadducees – the religious leaders of the day – became so threatened by Jesus that they had Him crucified. And ultimately, just in case anyone was in any doubt, He Himself was raised from the dead.

Now you and I, we look at Jesus – He is after all, the Son of God. He is someone that you or I can never, ever, ever be. We look at Him and we think to ourselves, "WOW, no one could ever minister that powerfully again here on earth." Have a listen to what Jesus said to His disciples, just before He was crucified – John chapter 14, verses 11 and 12:

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

Jesus didn’t say that we would just be able to do the things that He did. No, no, He said that “anyone who believes in him will not only do the things he was able to do but, in fact, will do greater works than these,” Even greater!

Now, it seems to me we have a choice here. We can sit quietly in church, the third pew from the back, on the left hand side – you know, where we have sat every week for what seems like an eternity – we can just sit there and believe the world and the devil’s perception, that we have nothing to contribute, no role to play in God’s great plan of redeeming and saving and reconciling this world to Himself. We can believe that rubbish but if we do that ... if we continue doing that the flame in our hearts for Jesus, the one that’s growing dimmer and dimmer these years; that flame will eventually go out.

Or, we can believe God and what He has to say. We can believe Jesus and what He has to say. We can believe God’s Word. See, so often, faith is believing God’s apparently outrageous claims and promises, square in the face of the mundaneness of life – a world that squeezes us into its mould – mundaneness verses majesty. The power of the Spirit verses the power of this world.

Let me tell you something, I’ve made my choice. I was a man whose life was broken; a terrible mess. When I accept Jesus, with simple faith of a child, just on face value and still today, I’m accepting what He has to say, really simply. Not in any complicated, theological sense, just on face value and Jesus said John chapter 14, verse 12 – He said:

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact, will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father.

I’m taking that, how about you? You see, I think He really meant it ... I think He really means it right now. Just as Jesus came as God in the flesh to bring the Kingdom of God near to us, I believe He’s calling you, He’s calling me to take up our cross and to follow Him and to be His ambassadors and to do just the things He’d always planned for us to do – not in our power, but in the power of His Spirit. Works greater than His because He has gone to the Father and His plan is to involve you and me in bringing His love ... the love of Jesus Christ, the love that saw Jesus crucified on that cross; that love to those who need it.

That’s what I think. But in a sense, it doesn’t matter what I think. Question is, what do you think?

Does the World Really Want to Know? So, God’s plan is that we should be His ambassadors. It’s a great plan! This plan that God has, to take every man, every woman, every child who believes in Jesus His Son and is therefore a citizen of heaven and appoint them as ambassadors of heaven; ambassadors of Christ to their little part of the globe so that through them God can make His appeal ... an appeal of grace and love, to people so that they will be reconciled to Him.

Question is: does anyone want to hear what we have to say? See, so many people shy away from being an ambassador of Christ because they somehow imagine that it’s the guy with the smooth voice on the radio – it must be his job to be an ambassador of Christ. Or the one they see on TV or maybe it’s the youth pastor down at church – must be his job to be an ambassador of Christ. We imagine somehow, that being an ambassador in this great upfront role, someone with great public speaking style; someone with a presence – "Uh, you know, that’s not me. I can’t possibly do that; that can’t be my job."

Whatever country you may live in you have diplomats from foreign countries living in your country; performing their roles as ambassadors, so let me ask you: how often do you see those guys on TV or hear them on the radio or read about them in the newspapers – how often? The answer is almost never! Yea, maybe every now and then an ambassador might get quoted but I know if I tripped over the Ambassador of China or the Ambassador of the U.S.A. in the street, I wouldn’t know them from a bar of soap.

Why? Because most of the time, being an ambassador isn’t about being up front in the public eye; most of it is about quietly building influence, one on one, or with small groups so that when there’s a difficult issue to be dealt with between the two governments, there’s a bridge already in place over which the parties can travel and talk. When there’s a sensitive issue or a border dispute or a difficulty with a foreign national in a country, the diplomats talk quietly, mostly in measured tones; mostly unseen and unheard by the rest of us, to resolve the issue.

Diplomacy is much more about individual relationships and trust than it is about overt brinkmanship. I wonder if we applied that model of diplomacy to our role as ambassadors of Christ, whether that doesn’t cast a whole new light on the job description. We all have friends and family and work colleagues; people with whom we already have relationships of trust and I wonder whether being an ambassador of Christ isn’t a whole lot more about letting our goodness shine into their lives than it is about standing up on a soapbox on a street corner or in the mall or down at the weekend at a crowded market, as I saw recently – screaming out words, supposedly from God, to a whole bunch of people with whom we don’t have a relationship and who don’t want to listen anyway.

I wonder whether it isn’t a whole bunch more about quiet diplomacy than beating someone over the head with a Bible. The people whom I allow to influence me, I’ve got to tell you, are the ones that I trust and the ones that I trust are the ones that I’ve known for quite a while. I’ve watched them, I’ve observed them – they are good people; honest, decent, have their lives together. You know what – they are the ones to whom my heart is open. Why would we expect that it’s any different in being an ambassador for Christ?

Jesus put it this way – He said – you can read this in Matthew chapter 5. He said:

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under the foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.

In other words, anyone who steps out into the world who loves God, believes in His Son – anyone who is prepared to share that love and that faith with other people as an ambassador of Christ – you’re going to be persecuted. Look back through history and that’s what you’ll find. Now, where I live "persecution" simply means, people might reject you or they might make fun of you, they might keep their distance. Most people I know, know who I am and what I do and what I believe and even in that role, I don’t get much of that sort of stuff. And even if I did it’s not much of a price to pay.

Of course, in other parts of the world, persecution is very real – prison, torture, even death – very real. Look at Jesus – nailed to a cross. But what He’s saying here is to be the salt of the earth anyway; add flavour! “Be My light, anyway,” Jesus is saying, “Shine light into dark places. Do those things; be those things! Shine My love into the hearts of the people around you. And if you’re some upfront creature, okay, sure do that and if you’re a quiet, unassuming, relationships oriented kind of person, my oh my, what a great ambassador you are going to make.”

Go and build bridges and build relationships and build trust and let people see the goodness that’s in your heart and in what you do. Shine light, add flavour – people like some light; people like flavour – go and do that. Sometimes we are so worried about whether other people want to hear about Jesus or not; sometimes we are so concerned with how they will react.

I imagine that being an ambassador involves a lot of subtlety. I imagine the role is all about timing; knowing when to quietly build relationships; knowing when to speak about hard things. The Bible talks about speaking the truth in love – that’s what diplomacy is. I read an interesting Proverb this morning in my own personal time with God. Have a listen:

Well meant are the wounds of a friend but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

Sometimes that’s a friend’s job – to speak the truth in love – and sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it hurts but the thing I know is this: being an ambassador of Christ is the job of every disciple of Jesus. Sometimes that involves just living a good life and shining a light; sometimes it involves dealing with difficult issues and doing it in love; sometimes it involves embracing your enemies; it involves all sorts of different things at different times but each one of us who believes in Jesus is called to be an ambassador of Christ in our own way, in our own neck of the woods.

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Jesus promised us His complete and perfect and abundant joy. Problem is – there are so many things that want to rob us of that joy.

A Man of Sorrows I’m not sure what you’re doing today or what you have planned for the next half hour or so, but right now I want to encourage you to spend some time with me because this week on the programme we are going to look at what it is to live a life of joy. And I truly believe that it’s no coincidence that you and I together right now.

I know a least one person who doesn’t want you to hear what God has to say about "joy" today, because it could transform your life and that’s the last thing the devil wants for you. There is real power in God’s Word; real power. So why don’t you join me in this last programme in a series that I’ve called, "It’s Time to Start Enjoying My Life".

Joy can be a difficult concept to come to grips with. Most people in their lives have pressures and strains and some relationships that hurt and perhaps some money problems. I had an email recently from a woman who had been in a difficult situation for a number of years and as much as she had prayed, God simply hadn’t changed the situation. We all have stuff in our lives and somehow that stuff seems to rob us of our joy and we seem powerless to do anything about it.

We can look right across every part of our lives and things may be going really well everywhere except in this one little area, maybe our health is great, maybe family’s good, works all good except we have money worries or everything is good except this teenager in our family is giving us grief. You know what I mean! My point is that each one of us can point to something in our life today and say, "See, that’s why I don’t have any joy in my life."

Today, as I said, we are looking at the last message in a series of four programmes called, "It’s Time to Start Enjoying My Life". This message is a rather "hits the road" message – it’s about living the life of joy. This half hour may be one of the best investments in your life that you will ever make.

Over the last three weeks, we’ve been joining the Apostle Paul in his Roman dungeon on death row. He wrote a letter to his friends, the Philippians. It’s a book in the New Testament, only a few pages long. It’s a letter of great encouragement, encouraging them in their faith. And the central thing, the whole point of this letter is about joy – that deep, abiding joy that Jesus promised and died to give us. And yes, I know that can be hard to come to grips with when we have something in our lives that seems to be robbing us of joy.

Last week I shared with you the promises that Jesus made on His last night with his disciples before He was crucified – the promises He made about joy. Now let’s just go there again and read them and let the Spirit of God write those promises on our hearts today.

On that last evening together with His disciples before He was to be crucified, He talks so much about joy. What an odd time and place to do that! He is about to die, His disciples are afraid and Jesus talks about joy. Have a listen. John chapter 15:11:

I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

And again, John chapter 16, beginning at verse 20:

I tell you the truth; you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve but your grief will turn to joy. A women giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come but when the baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So it will be with you.

Now is your time for grief but I will see you again and you will rejoice and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask Me anything. I tell you the truth, My Father will give you whatever you ask in My name. Until now you have not asked for anything in My name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.

And in His final prayer before He is crucified He prays “Father, I am coming to you now but I say all these things while I’m still in the world so that they may have the full measure of My joy within them."

Jesus is talking about joy not about the sort of warm and fuzzy we get when we go to the shop and buy some nice new thing. There is a clear distinction between the happiness of this world and the joy of the Lord and as if to draw a clear line between the two, He talks so much about the joy of God so close to his brutal crucifixion. And you know, it’s interesting in the same way, Paul talks about joy in the midst of his sorrows as if to underscore the point that Jesus was making: that the joy of the Lord isn’t something that depends on our circumstances. Have a listen to the very human words of Paul from his letter to the Philippians chapter 2, beginning at verse 25. It’s really a very human letter. He says:

I think it’s necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier who is also your messenger whom you sent to care for my needs. He longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was sick. Indeed he was, he almost died but God had mercy on him and not only on him but me too – to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore, I am all the more eager to send him to you so that when you see him again you may be glad and may have less anxiety. Welcome him in the Lord with great joy and honour men like him because he almost died for the “work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you couldn’t give me. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.

See, I love this passage. Paul is a guy, he is in jail, he’s got friends he is writing to, he has this friend, Epaphroditus, who almost died but God spared the man’s life and spared Paul sorrow upon sorrow. You know, it’s easy to idealise Paul and think, ‘WOW, you know, this guy wrote almost half of the New Testament but in his life he had sorrow upon sorrow. People tried to kill him, there were riots when he preached, he had disappointments when he was prevented from going to places he wanted to go, he was ship wrecked, he was beaten, now he is imprisoned on death row, people are taunting him – other Christians. This man had sorrow after sorrow and yet still he writes, "Rejoice in the Lord, my brothers."

I think God’s trying to tell us something through Paul: that our circumstances are no excuse for not experiencing God’s joy. But how do we overcome those? Well, we are going to take a look at what God has to say about that next.

Rejoice in the Lord Now let’s pick up here with Paul in the dungeon and look at what it means to live a life of joy. The passage we are about to look at is perhaps one that you know really well. This passage is about making the rubber hit the road. This passage tells us how it is that we can have the joy of the Lord no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in. This passage is a jewel. Open your Bible, come with me to Philippians chapter 4, beginning at verse 4. Come, let’s have a read:

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all. The Lord is at hand. Don’t be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

It’s a wondrous passage – just four little verses. We are going to look at each one separately now; really unpack this. You know I think the more familiar we are with a passage, well, the more we kind of just skim over it. "Oh yea, I know that one, I’ve read it before." Well, let’s not do that this time; let’s see what the Holy Spirit is saying to each one of us here in His Word. Let’s look at the first verse, Philippians chapter 4, verse 4:

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice.

Have you ever wonder about the difference between the two words "joy" on the one hand and "rejoice" on the other? Well, "joy" is the thing that Jesus bought for us on the cross; joy is the thing that Jesus wants to give us. But "rejoicing" is what we do with that "joy" when we enter into that joy; when we take the decision that says, “YES, His promise is for me. You know something? I am going to live in that joy and I am going to rejoice. I am going to praise Him, I’m going to thank Him.”

See, this verse is the punch line of the whole Book of Philippians. It’s what Paul is saying, in a nutshell, from his dungeon. "I am going to enter into God’s joy always in all circumstances, rejoice in the Lord always. And I’m deciding right here and right now, that I am going to live a life of joy always." And just in case we missed it, he said it twice:

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice.

Wake up! Jesus promise of joy is for you and for me. But how do we rejoice? Well, the next verse opens the door to joy. It’s a verse about humility. We talked last week on the programme about how our sin, particularly the sin of pride and scheming and all that stuff we know is wrong, robs us of the joy of the Lord. Verse 5, chapter 4 of Philippians, Paul writes:

Let your gentleness be known to all for the Lord is near.

The Greek word that sits aback of that word "gentleness" means "moderation, patience" – it’s a word of humility. No humility, no joy!

We go racing around full of ourselves – self-centred, self-seeking, self-absorbed, treading on people to achieve our ends. There can be no joy in that. Come on! If we have Jesus in us, the Lord is near. There’s fruit that comes out of that – love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – let that fruit grow. Why? Because Jesus is in this place. It’s time to let the Spirit of God have sway in our lives – complete control – because He has arrived.

If we don’t get this bit … this bit is about obedience, there will be no joy. I can’t live my life my way and then expect Jesus to show up and bless me with His joy. "Oh, ok, ok, Berni," I hear you thinking to yourself, "but how do I live in that joy when there are so many things out there that want to rob me of the joy? I can hear the theory: the joy of the Lord doesn’t depend on my circumstances, but how do I actually live that? How do I actually experience that?"

Well, the next verse tell us, verse 6:

Do not be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

I don’t know, it seems too simple to be true. Take it to God in prayer, ask Him and thank Him, “Present your requests to God”. See, the temptation is to look for a solution everywhere else other than with God.

You know, when I get up in the morning, my normal routine – I get up reasonably early – and my first thing is, after I have a shower, a cup of tea, I sit down with the Lord and I pray and I read the Word and just spend time with Him. You know what the temptation is? The temptation is to go and check my emails and see who has emailed me from around the world.

This is where the rubber hits the road. We need to take our lives to God first. Any problem, any issue, any need, don’t be anxious about it; don’t run around in a flap about it but “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, take your requests to God."

Let’s say your husband or your wife is going through a difficult patch – there’s a blind spot; they can’t see it but you can and so it’s affecting your relationship; it’s affecting both of you but every time you talk about it, it ends up in an argument. What do you do? Give them the cold and silent treatment? Go and talk to a friend? Just try and sweep it under the carpet?

OR, every day, do you spend time with the Lord? "God, thank You for putting me is this position. Lord, thank You so much that I can pray and thank You that I can be faithful to my wife or my husband and just love them through this. Lord, give me the strength and the wisdom, give me the gentleness; show me how I can change. Lord, bless my wife; Lord, bless my husband, open their heart by Your Spirit."

Do you get the point? Every day, faithfully, giving thanks, rejoicing that the Lord is in that place with you and then the answer comes. Here it is. Here God tells us how it is that we can live in His joy, despite what is going on – verse 7:

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

You see, the joy and the peace of God are not something you and I conjure up; they’re not something that we fabricate. They’re not positive thinking; they’re not some clever "double think", where on the one hand I have troubles over here and on the other I trick my mind and emotions into a state of joy. They are none of those things – the peace and the joy of God are His gift to us. The Spirit of God comes and places His angels around our heart so that the pains and the fears that were piercing pierce it no longer.

How does that happen? Paul says, "I don’t know", it transcends all human understanding. It’s beyond human comprehension but what I can tell you is that when we decide to take God at His Word, it just happens.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice. Let you gentleness be evident to all because Jesus is here. Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, take your requests to God and the peace of God, which passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

It’s just how it works!

Thinking and Doing "WOW", isn’t God’s Word powerful and wonderful? The truth is often so simple and you and I know when we hear the truth of God’s Word it just, well, it rings true in our hearts.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I’ll say it, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all for the Lord is near. Don’t be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, take your requests to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

But here’s so often what happens. We hear the truth and it rings in our hearts and inside we say, "YES, yes, this is what I have been looking for!" And tonight we go to bed and tomorrow we face the same old problems and issues and fears and anxieties that gnaw away in our heads. You see it takes time to change our minds; it takes time to renew our minds. And it’s when our minds are renewed that God changes our lives.

That’s what Paul writes in Romans chapter 12:1-2. He writes that we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds. See, we need to change our minds from the old way of thinking – "Oh, there is no way out. Jesus promise of joy isn’t for me. Things are never going to change" – to the new way of thinking ...

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice.

You know what I’m talking about, right? You hear this message; you get fired up; you say, "YES! It’s for me", and then all of a sudden reality sinks in and it’s like the message evaporates and it’s like, "I can’t change anything." So how do we step into this new way of thinking? How do we live life in faith according to the Word of God? How do we take the joy that Jesus promised us?

Well, just in the next few verses in Philippians, the Holy Spirit tells us. He tells us how to stop these attacks in our mind. Philippians chapter 4, beginning at verse 8:

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure or lovely or admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about those things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you.

In other words, think about the good things from God. Thinking is how our mind spends its time. Hear that again – thinking is about how our mind spends its time – where it goes, what it does. And it’s easy to keep going round and round and round the same old mulberry bush, especially when we have something in our lives that is eating away at us. What I have decided to do in those circumstances is to take God at His Word. I’m just not going to let my mind go there.

You know, my mind is capable of grumbling and complaining and blaming people and thinking ill of them. I can get angry and wallow in self pity and when I feel my mind going there, I decide, "No, I’m just not going there, I’m going to think about Jesus. I’m going to think about the wonderful things He has done for me in my life. I’m going to think about that Scripture verse the Holy Spirit laid on my heart yesterday: There is no sense in the peace of God guarding my heart and my mind and me wandering off outside that peace and ruining my day!"

Every day I’m just going to do my best to put His Word into practice; not perfectly, mind you, just my best and I am going to rest my mind in His goodness and His Word and little by little joy and peace are going to come, no matter what is going on in my life.

The Apostle Paul learnt this through a life time of sorrows and trials and discovering the joy of the Lord in the midst of all of those. Listen to how he puts it in a nutshell. Philippians chapter 4, beginning at verse 10:

I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned but you had no opportunity to show it. I’m not saying this because I’m in need, because you know something? I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty and I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, I can do everything through Him who strengthens me.

See, Paul is saying here that my joy does not depend on my circumstances because I have discovered when I take my needs and my fears and my hurts to God and I thank Him and I pray and I just put them at the foot of the cross, the Holy Spirit comes along and puts a joy in my heart that I just understand how it is there. It defies comprehension but God does that and He guards my heart and He guards my mind so that the attacks don’t come.

Listen to me, there’s only one place to get the joy of the Lord and it is from Him – it’s not from a friend, it’s not from something we buy, it’s not from how we work – it’s just from knowing Him and being with Him and listening to Him and letting Him do His stuff.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice!

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Joy is a wonderful thing. And it turns out that Jesus died in order that we might have His joy. True. But sometimes, sometimes we squander that joy – what an incredible waste.

Paint the Picture Over these last few weeks we’ve been taking a look at joy, especially God’s heart for us to have His joy in our lives – a complete and overflowing sense of joy. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want joy in their lives but I’m not talking about some fleeting happiness; not some warm and fuzzy that we get when we’ve had a good day or something good has happened to us. Those warm and fuzzes, well, they’re nice but somehow, they seem to evaporate so quickly.

Now when Jesus talks about joy, He talks about something quite different. Have a listen. On that last evening together with His disciples, before He was to be crucified He talked so much about joy and what an odd time and place to do that. He is about to die and He says in John chapter 15, verse 11:

I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

And again you can read for yourself in John chapter 16, verse 20. He says:

I tell you the truth – you’ll weep and mourn while the world rejoices you will grieve but your grief will turn to joy. A women giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child has been born into this world. So it’ll be with you. Now is your time of grief but I will see you again and you will rejoice and no one can take away that joy. In that day you will no longer ask Me anything. I tell you the truth, My Father will give you whatever you ask in My name. Until now you haven’t asked anything in My name - ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.

And again, His final prayer before He is crucified – you read it in John chapter 17, verse 13. He says to God, His Father:

I’m coming to You now but I say these things while I’m still in the world so that they may have the full measure of My joy within them.

See, when Jesus is talking about joy He is not talking about a warm and fuzzy. He said all of these things just before He was about to be crucified. Clearly, He wasn’t having a warm and fuzzy. There is a clear distinction between the world’s happiness and the joy of the Lord. And He does this on the night before He is to be crucified as if to draw a clear line between the two.

He talked so much about joy so close to His brutal crucifixion. The Holy Spirit is nothing if not absolutely consistent. And again He draws this peculiar distinction by including in the New Testament, a whole book about joy – written by the Apostle Paul whilst he was in a Roman dungeon, in chains and on death row.

We’ve been looking at that book over these last few weeks on the program, it’s the Book of Philippians. It’s a letter that Paul wrote whilst in jail, to his friends in the church in Philippi. Now let’s continue there today. If you have got a Bible, grab it and open it up at Philippians chapter 2. Come with me into God’s Word.

I truly believe and I’ve seen it often in people and I’ve seen it in days gone by in my own life; that we ourselves do so much to rob ourselves of this joy that the Master – let me say this quite deliberately now – that the Master died in order that we may have. That is the price He puts on this joy, His joy in us, complete and abundant and overflowing. How sweet it is! Yet we ourselves, we can rob ourselves of that joy which has such a high price on its head.

Come with me now to see what the Holy Spirit writes to us through Paul in his prison cell about this tragic robbing. Comes from Philippians chapter 2:

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ; if you got any comfort from His love; if any fellowship with the Spirit; if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded; having the same love; being one in Spirit and purpose. Don’t do anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.

Just short four verses!

So what is Paul saying to the Philippians and what is the Holy Spirit whispering to you and me today, all these centuries on? "If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ ...” In other words, if there is any benefit at all from knowing Jesus; any comfort from His love; any fellowship with His Spirit; any tenderness and compassion, if you have got anything out of knowing Jesus Christ, make my joy here in this dungeon complete. How? By doing what? Well effectively, by being humble.

Here is Paul with his own life in serious risk if the truth be known, shackled in a prison, talking to his friends in Philippi about such a serious matter. The thing that will rob them of their joy is their pride. Listen again to these words:

... then make my joy complete by being like-minded; having the same love; being one is spirit and purpose; do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.

Let me ask you this. How much joy is there in selfish ambition and vain conceit? At the end of the day when all that matters is looking after "number one", our own interests, it’s so empty and hollow and let me say, completely joyless. When we manipulate and strive to get our own way; when we harbour selfish ambition and vain conceit in our hearts and live them out in our lives; when we tread on people and destroy our relationships, in truth, what we discover is that we are completely alone. What joy is there in that?

But when we, in humility, consider others better than ourselves; when we look after other people’s interests and not our own, well, we turn that around completely and that, my friend, removes a blockage to joy. Listen to how James and Peter put it. James chapter 4, verse 6 and First Peter chapter 5, verse 5 as they quote Proverbs 3:34:

God opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble.

If we would have that deep and abiding joy of which the Master spoke on that frightful evening before He was crucified; the joy that He prayed over us in that final prayer; that joy that He died to purchase, then let me say bluntly, that we too must come to that cross and lose our lives.

An Odd Place I remarked earlier in the programme that a dungeon on death row is an odd place for Paul to sit and write a letter about joy. It’s a short letter, just a few pages, but it oozes the joy of the Lord. Earlier we saw that the Holy Spirit through Paul’s words was putting His finger on one of the things that robs us of joy – selfish ambition and conceit, getting our own way. And he pleads with his friends, "If you have any benefit from knowing Jesus Christ, put all that other stuff behind you."

Well, that’s easier said than done. I mean, we’re all a bit selfish; we all want our own way, and one of the first words we learn to utter as little children is, "No!", so how do we get beyond that? How do we grow and move on so that instead of being disobedient to God and being robbed of His joy, we love Him through our obedience and live "in" His joy? See, obedience – it’s not a particularly trendy word these days – it smacks of old fashioned, rigid, out dated religion, doesn’t it? Yet John writes in First John chapter 5, verse 3:

The love of God is this: that we obey His commandments.

That’s how we express our love to God. Ok, well, that much most of us know. We know the theory but what about the practice? The prize is the joy of the Lord, so how do we get over our sin of selfish pride that robs us of that prize? Well lets go on to see what the Holy Spirit is whispering into our hearts through the next part of this Book – Philippians chapter 2, beginning at verse 5 – he writes this:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who being in the very nature of God, didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name.

That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not just in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.

This is a wondrous picture of the cross. Have you ever thought about it this way? I mean, it’s tough for anyone to do, to go to the cross, but Jesus humbled Himself. He stepped out of His glorious heavenly realm where angels bowed down and worshipped Him and became a man. What a huge step of humility. And Paul is saying here, "Let your attitude", literally, "Let this be in you, just as it was in Jesus." I love that.

See, Jesus comes first; He does it first. He never asks us to do something He hasn’t already done and when we hear His gentle call, we hear a call to follow Him. Do you hear that call in your heart today? "Follow Me; come follow Me to the cross – the place where I poured Myself out for you." Jesus, God Himself, didn’t consider what He was entitled to out of His love for us, you and me. He humbled Himself and became – wait for it, here it is, that word – obedient to death, even such an excruciating death as death on a cross.

And He is calling us here, to lay down our lives – this great paradox. We think we can get joy our own way but we don’t discover the joy of God until we lay our lives down; until we die to self. This is the heart of the message of joy. So long as you and I reign as our own little tin pot, despotic dictators in our lives there can be no joy of the Lord. So long as the self, selfish, self absorbed, self centred wraps its tendrils around our heart, that heart will be constricted and all joy squeezed out of it.

I mean, real joy, the joy that comes from God Himself. That when we go to Him and say, "Jesus, I crown You as Lord of my life, every part, every dealing, what I eat and drink and say and do and think and feel and hope and dream; every dealing and every transaction." When we crucify that "self" on the cross, look at what happens, Jesus is exalted and there in comes the joy.

Listen again to His prayer that night before He died; a prayer that He prayed very deliberately for you and me. His final prayer before the cross, the purpose of His suffering.

Father, I’m coming to you now but I say these things while I’m still in the world so that they may have the full measure of My joy within them.

Do you see this? Obedience is a word of liberation not oppression. The sweetest paradox of the human experience is that ‘the self’ is a ruthless tyrant. It is at the cross where we invite the Spirit of God into our hearts to breathe His joy into us. Here is that peculiar distinction between the world’s happiness and God’s joy. Listen with me to the last part of the passage we just read, Philippians chapter 2, verses 12 and 13:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed not only in my presence but now much more so in my absence, continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.

We are going to come back and look at God’s work in us next.

Shining Like Stars My prayer for you today is that God’s Word has quickened your heart to His purpose, His purpose for joy in your life. See, dying to self is such a scary concept; such a step of faith and not just once but daily. Look at what Jesus says in Luke chapter 9, beginning at verse 23:

Jesus said to all of them “If anyone would come after Me he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.

This is the great paradox of dying to live. And you see, God wants us to shine like stars – we are going to look a little bit further what Paul writes about that. And that’s what happens when we have the joy of the Lord in us because there is something that happens; something that the rest of the world sees when God is at work in our hearts; when we live the joy that can only be found at that cross.

See, this last bit is so important because it speaks about the attitude we take as we suffer as the self dies. Make no mistake, death is always painful. When Jesus talked about taking up our cross daily and following Him, He was talking about nailing ‘the self’ to flesh and the flesh will hang on for dear life. It will be prone to complain and grumble; it will want to turn back; to run from the cross. Listen again as the Holy Spirit whispers His wisdom into our hearts. We are going to pick up what Paul was saying at Philippians chapter 2, beginning at verse 14:

Do everything without complaining or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure children of God, without a fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour for nothing. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you so that you too should be glad and rejoice with me.

See, humility; laying down our lives at the cross, stands out but it’s not humility when we complain and argue and grumble. Humility is when we submit obediently to the will of God; dying to self. There are times in my walk where this dying has been particularly painful I can tell you, the power of the temptation to lash out and blame others; to grumble and complain. You see, dying at the cross never seems fair. "I have rights you know, I am entitled", the flesh cries. But the Spirit of God calls us to this odd place to discover joy.

Our attitude should be the same as that of Christ, who being in the very nature of God didn’t consider equality with God to be something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of the servant, being made in human form and being found in appearance as a man, humbling Himself, He became obedient to death, even death on a cross.

We should be like that. That is what Paul is saying; that is what the Holy Spirit is saying and here is what happens. We all of a sudden appear different to those around us – utterly different – other worldly. Like something that is rarely seen on this planet, we shine like stars amidst a crocked and perverse generation. We shine with a light of joy that only glows in a life surrendered to Jesus Christ. And that light is what will draw others naturally to Jesus.

What a great deception of the devil that is, to have us think that joy only comes when we assert our rights and follow our driving ambition. What a great deception! You see the truth is exactly the opposite. Real joy; the joy of the Lord comes in that bitter sweet surrender of our lives on that cross. There is Paul in the dungeon – see how he talks about himself? He says:

Even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith.

You see, Paul is facing execution because he preached the Gospel of Jesus, not just to the Philippians but right around the known world. Paul is coming to the end of his life and is looking martyrdom right in the face. He is looking death right in the face and yet his greatest concern is the joy of those in Philippi, that they experience the joy of God; that they don’t do anything through selfish ambition or vain conceit to miss out on the joy of the Lord. And here is Paul in this dark dungeon shining like a star amidst a crooked and depraved generation.

Have you ever looked up at the stars lately, away from the light of the city and the smog of the city, and looked up at the stars and what a wondrous sight it is? That’s what the Holy Spirit wants us to be in this world that’s so dark sometimes – in this world where people just follow their noses and do what feels right and look after their own vain interests.

Jesus wants us to stand out and be different and that joy is what makes us different. It shines like a star. The joy of the Lord comes in that bitter sweet surrender of our lives on that cross – a life-long surrender; a daily surrender.

“Take up your cross every day and follow Me,” said Jesus.

A surrender that will mean loss and pain as the self is crucified, but a surrender that little by little will reveal this purpose of God – that our joy would shine like a star in a dark and hurting world.

I want encourage you – if you haven’t surrendered all of your life to Jesus Christ, do that right now. The prize is so wondrous. Yes, it’s a step of faith; yes, it’s a scary thing to let go of things that we know are wrong, but the prize is the joy of the Lord. The prize is living a life where God takes just who we are and who He made us, for us to shine like stars amidst a crooked and depraved generation.

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We tend to think of joy and sorrow as being opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. But God – God has this thing where He wants to pour His joy, into our sorrow..

A Letter of Some Friends Last week on the programme we began a new series called, “It’s Time to Start Enjoying My Life”. Look around, the joy in this world seems to be in such very short supply and yet "joy" is something that Jesus, so much, wants us to experience. Not the joy that the world has to offer; not some short term happiness fix – not that – real joy; abiding joy; lasting joy.

You can read what Jesus said about "joy" in John chapter 15 and verse 11. This is a time when the disciples were afraid because Jesus was about to be crucified – they knew it. Everything was falling in a screaming heap. And look at what Jesus talks about. He says:

I have said all these things to you so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Isn’t that awesome?

So that My joy (Jesus joy) may be in us and that our joy might be complete.

The problem is that, well, that can be really, really hard to swallow. I receive so many emails from people who are struggling in life. One man in Africa, he belongs to one tribe and his wife to another and her family are trying to tear the marriage apart.

I had an email from a woman the other day who has had so many people in her life disappoint her and fail her. There are so many people living life in circumstances that, well in the natural; in our flesh, they don’t warrant joy. Joy and sorrow after all, are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

How dare some joker come on the radio and start talking about joy? "If he only knew my circumstances. How can he say that God wants me to experience joy? What a load of rubbish!" Well, that’s a common reaction. If you are struggling with things in your life at the moment, it’s not a surprising reaction. You are not on your own. Okay, then, let me as you a question. If God meant us to wallow in sorrow why is it that Jesus said:

Until now you haven’t ask for anything in My name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.

You can read that – if you have a Bible, open it up – that came from John chapter 16, verse 22.

See God never meant us to live life in despair. If He did, why would the Bible say this:

Even though you haven’t seen Him with your own eyes, you love Him and even though you don’t see Him now, you believe in Him and you are filled with an unspeakable and glorious joy because you are receiving the goal of your faith which is the salvation of your soul.

That comes from First Peter chapter 1, verse 8. Or Psalm 33:

Sing to Him a new song, play skilfully and shout for joy.

No, God means us to live in His joy and so often He calls us to joy when our lives and circumstances demand sorrow.

It’s a bitter sweet irony and today and the next couple of weeks we are going to spend some time with a man on death row. A man locked in a dungeon in chains under the sentence of death; a man who, if anyone did, deserved to wallow in sorrow.

His name is Paul and he opens his letter to his friends with this mournful and sorrowful words. Have a listen – it comes from Philippians chapter 1, verses 1 to 11:

Paul and Timothy, both servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and the deacons. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all of my prayers for all of you I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now. Being confident of this: that He who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It’s right for me to feel this way about all of you since I have you in my heart. For whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the Gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Jesus Christ and this is my prayer: that your love will abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ. Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and the praise of God.”

Does that sound like a guy who is on death row; in a dungeon? Look how he starts: “I thank my God” – he begins with thanksgiving. And then he says “I always pray for you with joy.” What right has this man in a dungeon to feel joy? And then he says “It is right for me to feel this way about you because we all share in God’s grace.”

See, what he is doing is he is pouring out to his friends what is in his heart. He is saying “In my heart I feel these things. Sure, outside I am in chains but in my heart I experience joy.” And his prayer for them is that their love may abound more and more and more – this abundant over-flowing story of love and joy.

See, this man is in chains on death row and in fact he gets a whole bunch worse, we’ll have a look at that a little bit later on the programme. In the second chapter it gets a whole bunch worse and yet he opens his letter; his letter of chains with an overflow of abundance of joy that comes from the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

It’s interesting you know, that the Greek words used in the New Testament for "joy" and for "grace" come from the same root word. Joy and God’s grace are closely linked for Paul. And he’s saying, "Look, what’s going on in my heart is what really matters because the Spirit of God has taken up residence here."

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you I always pray with joy. It’s right for me to feel this way about you, even though I’m in chains we all have a share in God’s grace.

I want to share with you an email that I received last Christmas. I sent out a word by email to several thousand of our ministry supporters and just a gentle word about God being on our journey with us and one woman, Karen, replied and said this, "I seem to attract people who seem to want me around and yet when someone else comes along that they prefer, I get pushed aside. Especially at these times I feel God is the only one I can trust. I’m sorry if I sound a bit glum, I’m not really. Sometimes I feel a bit sad but then I think about God and how He’s still loves me and He wants me to be with Him."

You see, Karen knows the thing that Paul knows – that joy doesn’t come from other people or what’s happening on the outside of us, it comes from God Himself.

I thank my God every time I pray for you. In all my prayers for all of you I always pray in joy.

We are going to look next at how the Apostle Paul handled rejection.

Outrageous Fortunes In his play, “Hamlet”, Shakespeare talks about "suffering the slings and the arrows of outrageous fortunes" and when we take a look at the next part of this letter of the Apostle Paul from his dungeon on death row; a letter to his friends at Philippi, well, this letter makes sense of this line from “Hamlet”. Have a listen – I’m reading from the Bible – Philippians chapter 1, verses 12 to 26. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it, open it and read it with me.

Now I want you to know brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the Word of God more courageously and fearlessly. It’s true! Some people preach Christ out of envy and rivalry but others out of good will. The latter do so in love knowing that I am put here for the defense of the Gospel. The former, well, they preach Christ out of selfish ambition not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I’m in chains.

But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached and because of this I rejoice. Yes, I will continue to rejoice for I know that through your prayers and help, given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn our for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed but I will have sufficient courage so that now as always, Christ will be exalted in me, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am going to go on living in this body this will mean fruitful labour for me.

Yet what shall I choose? I don’t know! I am torn between the two – I desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that through my being with you again, your joy in Christ will overflow on account of me.

This is an amazing passage because remember, the Apostle Paul is in chains in a Roman dungeon on death row. He is there because he went out and told people about Jesus so this is religious persecution – he has been locked up for his faith and for sharing his faith with other people.

But instead of grumbling, I mean wouldn’t it be so easy to be in prison and say, "God, why have You put me here? God, I only went out to tell them about You, God what are You doing?" Would be so easy for Paul to do that, and instead he sees the positive?

You know, so often we only see the negative. I remember a time a dozen or so years ago when I was going through some really difficult times – my own dungeon; so incredibly dark. I experienced some really difficult things in my life and it was as black as black could be. It was incredible pain of loss and fear and loneliness and betrayal. I wasn’t suffering for the Gospel like Paul, I was just suffering.

That’s the place where I first met Jesus Christ. Now, as much as it hurt, I always had the sense that God had a purpose in it – that God would somehow use it. Can I tell you something? Without that suffering I would be completely useless to you right now. I was Mister "I’m perfect" and full of myself and arrogant and conceited and only interested in "me" and the suffering broke open my heart, let Jesus in; the Great Healer. I look back on it now and I see the positive.

Paul was mature in his relationship with Christ and he was able to sit there in the dungeon and see the positive thing there. Right when it was happening; right when he was chained up; right when he was under the fear of death, he wanted to say to his brothers and sisters in Philippi, "You know something? What’s happened to me is good because it served to advance the Gospel."

And then the second bit is the one that really gets me. He goes on to talk about what other people were doing and saying and they were preaching out of envy. They were preaching out of selfish ambition; they were preaching to stir up more trouble for Paul. Paul has poured at least ten years of his life out into preaching the Gospel and planting churches across Asia Minor and here he is, he’s suffering the most incredible things. He had the right to some recognition; he had a right to some respect and honour and yet, the other Christians instead were taunting him.

The worst possible thing – he’s in jail and they’re taunting him and his response? Let’s read it again:

But what does it matter? The important thing that is in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is being preached and because of this I rejoice.

See, he’s not interested in what other people are doing. He doesn’t care about what other people think; he humbly just wants people to meet Jesus. And that humility sets him free to experience joy. And he finishes up that passage and he says:

I am convinced that I will be with you and I know that I will remain and I’ll continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith.

See, for Paul it’s about joy and enjoying life no matter whether he’s doing well and he’s got lots to eat or whether he is locked up in a dungeon on death row.

“Yes I’ll continue to rejoice,” he says, “for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.”

If we are going to rejoice, we have to enter into God’s joy we have to "enjoy". Now, either Paul is totally mad or he is onto something here. What do you think? What’s going on for Paul here in his dungeon? It looks to me like there is a light in his heart; a fire that’s burning so bright all the darkness around him can’t put it out.

I remember being in the Army on an exercise, years ago and they gave us waterproof and windproof matches. It was a real problem when you are out in the bush and it is really windy and the flame always blows out – these matches were amazing. You lit one, even when it was soaking wet it would light and the strongest gale couldn’t blow it out. You could blow as hard as you liked and this match kept burning. That’s the picture of what’s going on in the heart of Paul; a joy unspeakable; a joy that comes from out of this world; a joy that comes from God Himself.

Well, that’s Paul. What about you and me? Can we have joy like that? We’ll take a look at that next.

The Joy of the Lord is My Strength Well, it’s great to have a listen to the Apostle Paul’s circumstances and realities but you and I, we’re not Paul; we are different people; we’ve got different circumstances. So this is not a message that goes "Paul had his act together, let’s live our lives like Paul" because, truthfully, I don’t believe that it works that way.

That would be a "works" thing. The Bible talks about "dead works" and trying to be like Paul, I think it would be exactly that – a dead work. So what then? We have troubles and trials in life – we do. Sometimes we go through circumstances that are so incredibly tough; times that appear to be filled with sorrow and despair. What role does joy have?

I want to go back to what I said at the beginning of the programme and last week. Not talking about some worldly joy that we conjure up in our hearts; I’m not talking about pulling our socks up and having a good attitude; I’m not talking about "works". God’s joy is a gift of grace so I’m talking about God’s joy.

Let’s go back to what Jesus said to His disciples – John chapter 15, verse 11 – when they were afraid; when they were in despair; when they knew that Jesus was about to be crucified and everything was falling apart – He says:

I have said all these things to you so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

… His joy in our hearts. He wants to impart His joy into our lives and that’s a gift of grace; a free gift from God.

Last week on the programme we looked at the story of Israel in Nehemiah chapter 8. They had heard the word of God and they wept because they knew that they had turned their backs on God. They were convicted in their hearts by the Holy Spirit of their sin and that’s the time, isn’t it, when we feel least deserving of God’s joy?

Actually what we feel deserving of is God’s punishment and wrath. And the reason we feel that is that we are made in His image. We have His sense of justice and that is exactly what we deserve. But then, instead of what they deserved, listen to what God said to them through Nehemiah, their leader. You can read it in the Old Testament. Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 10:

Nehemiah said “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to the Lord; don’t grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

Whose joy? God’s joy – grace a free gift from Him when they deserved punishment, God said to them through Nehemiah, “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” When we turn to Him; when we get up close with Him, a glorious joy that words can’t describe is His free gift to us – a joy unspeakable.

And the key is this, "The joy of the Lord is our strength”. This is not a "be like Paul" message – it’s not that. When we draw close to Jesus; when we spend more and more time with Him; when we do that, He fills us with His joy. Have a listen again to the way the Apostle Peter puts it in First Peter chapter 1, verse 8:

Even though you haven’t seen Him with your own eyes, you love Him. And even thought you don’t see Him now, you believe in Him and you are filled with an unspeakable and glorious joy because you are receiving the goal of your faith; the salvation of your souls.

And that joy … that joy is a joy that God imparts to us. We are receiving the goal of our faith – we are receiving His joy. So many people are going through tough times in life and they will call a friend on the phone before they talk to God about it.

Wake up! Jesus is in this place with us, with you and with me. Whatever our dungeon looks like; whatever those other people are doing to hurt us and taunt us, the joy of the Lord is our strength - in dark places, in dark times, in dark dungeons. Those are places of great opportunity, when there is no other light that shines, His light will shine in our hearts. Listen to what Paul says in Second Corinthians chapter 4, verse 6:

It’s the same God, who at creation commanded the light to shine over the darkness, who has shone in our hearts with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

I want to encourage you with something today: Jesus died and rose again so that we could be forgiven all the things we have done wrong and have a relationship with Him and experience His joy. This joy is not something that you and I conjure up – it’s not something that we buy off the rack. This joy comes from God Himself. It’s His free gift and when we humble ourselves; when we turn to Him; when we desire Him with all our hearts; we turn away from all that rubbish that we are into and day after day and week after week, month after month, He will fill us with a certain joy so wondrous that there are no words to describe it.

Paul knew that. That’s what was going on for him in the dungeon. Paul couldn’t write about joy to the Philippians because he was some spiritual superman, Paul was just a weak man in chains in a Roman dungeon but those chains didn’t bind his heart because he had a real experience of Jesus Christ. Not some distant experience, he had a real experience of Jesus Christ and it was Jesus Himself who gave him that joy. Jesus said:

I have said these things to you so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

It is time to start enjoying your life and joy – real joy comes from Jesus.

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It’s such a simple word. Three letters. Just one syllable. So why is joy so elusive? We try so hard to find it –but, you know…

Why is Joy in Such Short Supply? Well, it’s great to be with you again this week and we are starting a new series on the programme called, "It’s Time to Start Enjoying My Life". I really am looking forward to this series because "joy" is such a big issue in life. It’s such a simple little word – just three letters, one syllable – "joy" and yet it seems in such short supply; it’s more precious than gold or silver. Think about it, how many of the people that you know, would say, if asked, "I’m really enjoying my life?" And if I ask you, how much, on a scale of zero to ten, are you enjoying your life, right now? How would you answer?

Most people hover somewhere around the middle or bottom half of that "zero to ten" scale. Why is it though that joy seems to be in such a short supply in this world? There’s not one person that I know if I asked them, "Would you like to experience joy in your life?" I don’t know anyone that would say, "Aw no, no, I don’t think I need joy in my life."

Joy is such a wonderful thing, it’s such an important thing. Now I’ve travelled to lots of parts of this planet; places where people are really wealthy, I mean mega wealthy; places where people are moderately well off and places where people live in abject poverty. I know people who are rich and people who are poor, tall and short, black and white, thick and thin, but you know something? None of those distinctions seem to have much to do with whether they are enjoying their lives or not.

Those external things, at the end of the day, that’s not really where it’s at. You can have everything that money can buy – the latest plasma screen, the biggest new car, the finest clothes, jewellery, all those things and more; a wonderful husband or wife and great kids – you can have all of those things and still not really be enjoying your life.

I heard a well known, really wealthy business man on TV the other night and he can have anything he wants. You could tell though, as he spoke and you looked at him, you could tell that he had an unsettled life; he was looking for something. See so often, when it comes to joy and the levels of joy that we experience, they’re so low and we blame those things on the outside. "Well, I’d enjoy my life if I had more money." "I’d enjoy my life if I had a better job." "I’d enjoy my life if other people weren’t so difficult; if it wasn’t for the politics at work or the tension at home, or my loneliness or … You name it, we can blame it – then I’d enjoy my life."

You know what I am talking about; blame, blame, blame. But you know why I know that it’s not the things on the outside that give us joy? Because I used to be one of the people that thought that it was. I could holiday in five star resorts, I did. Had gold plated taps in the en suite – you name it, I could have it and I had no joy. I actually felt desperately miserable.

You see, there’s a big swindle going on in society and I don’t care whether you live in a wealthy country or whether you live in a poor country. Maybe you have heard me talk about it before perhaps and I take aim at the advertising industry. It’s not really their fault because it’s a symptom of a greedy society.

See, they flash up on television and in the media and on radio, seductive images of success and they link them to the product that they are trying to sell us and the message is, "If you buy this product you will be happy." So you do – you buy that product; you spend your hard earned cash and you discover that there is just no joy in it. And so we watch the next ad and we buy the next thing and it still doesn’t satisfy and we do the next thing and it still doesn’t satisfy. "Oh, when I’m happily married, then I’ll enjoy my life." But you know something? Another person can’t make you happy!

I have a wonderful wife – truly. Jacqui is my absolute favourite person on planet earth but I can easily still feel empty and hollow and unhappy, even though I have her; even though I have a comfortable home to live in. See, we live in a world based on greed. Companies know that so they trade on our dissatisfaction; they trade on our lack of joy; they trade on our desire to discover joy as the basis for earning more money to fill people’s pockets to make them happy but it never does. That’s the swindle!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not against capitalism; I’m not against free enterprise; I’m not against people working hard – those things on their own though just don’t bring you joy. And yet, over and over and over again, we go looking for joy in all the wrong places. "Ah, if I am entertained, I’ll enjoy myself then." Sure for a short time, some entertainment might make us feel good but that’s not what I am talking about. I’m talking about a deep, abiding contentment; a deep joy that never goes away – right through the highs and the lows and the ups and the downs and the good times and the bad times – a joy that’s deep inside somewhere, that words can’t describe. That’s what I’m talking about. Joy; real, abiding joy!

Now you might say to me, "Berni, is that what life’s all about? Aren’t you being unrealistic? Are you being a Christian hedonist – you know, the whole point of knowing God is that so you feel good?" Well, let me tell you something – one of God’s greatest promises is the promise of joy when we have a relationship with Him – it’s not an optional extra. He talks about it literally hundreds of times through the Bible. We are going to look at some of those over the coming weeks. Psalm 126, verse 5 says:

Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

Jesus said … you can read it in John chapter 16, verse 24. By the way, if you have a Bible grab it, we are going to need it today. John chapter 16, verse 24:

"Until now,” He said “you have not ask for anything in My name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.”

Joy is not some optional extra in our relationship with God. It’s an integral part of God’s plan for our lives. So often God says He is going to do this or do that so that our joy would be complete. See, He wants complete joy for us – a joy that never fades; a sweet calm delight in our hearts – no matter what life throws at us. And it’s a joy – a joy that comes from Him. Problem is so many people are trying to chase down this elusive thing called "joy", just looking in the wrong places.

Whose Idea is Joy Anyway? There is something awesome about being around a person who has a deep sense of joy. Maybe you know one or two people like that. Often they are not sort of over the top, really out going people; sometimes they are quiet and gentle but you just know that there is something inside them that you want. They seem to cope so well with the curved balls that life throws at them. They seem to have so much to give. They have like…like a quiet, understated kind of gentle confidence – maybe confidence isn’t the right word, maybe contentment is the word I am looking for – and that person’s joy kind of invades our heart space. We just want to be around them. It feels good because they’re safe and encouraging and they are just great to be around.

Most of us only know one or two people like that but what we know is that we want to be around them because it does us a whole bunch of good. My hunch is we kind of all relate to that. Joy is a commodity that seems to be in such short supply.

The advertising industry, as I said earlier, tells us "Buy this product and you will experience joy" – it never happens. It’s a symptom of a greedy world – me, me, me, more, more, more. But the more that we chase after this precious commodity that we call "joy", the more … well, the more elusive it becomes.

For much of my life I truly subscribed to the philosophy that if all my needs were met – all my desires – I would experience joy. I had the big house, I had the latest car, I had gadgets galore but they never brought me the joy and the contentment I was looking for.

So where do you get it? Christians sometimes get a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that we are talking about "joy" because it appears to be self-centred that we would be chasing after "joy". When Jesus came to this planet, He came proclaiming … what? The Kingdom of God; the reign of God in our lives and people got confused. They saw the Roman occupation in first century Israel and they thought, "Here is this Messiah to set us free from that kingdom of oppression and re-establish God’s Kingdom in Israel; like when David was King – back to the good old days."

Now, that’s not what He was talking about at all. He was talking about something that happens in our hearts. In Luke chapter 17, verse 20:

The Pharisees asked Him about the Kingdom of God and they said when would it come? And Jesus replied “The Kingdom of God isn’t coming in a way that you can see. People won’t say “Here it is” or “There it is” because the Kingdom of God is within you.

People thought it was a physical kingdom; God had another plan. The Apostle Paul – he puts it really well in Romans chapter 14, verse 17 – he’s talking about religious rules here. But he says:

The Kingdom of God is not a matter of food or drink but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Isn’t that interesting? The Kingdom of God isn’t about these physical things; not rules and regulations about what to eat and drink, it’s about three things – righteousness which is what we have when we believe in Jesus and we experience His forgiveness; a right standing with God through our faith in Jesus Christ; getting our lives back on tract. And through that we then get a peace and a joy – these are the things that the Kingdom of God is all about.

And they come to us not through buying the latest gadget or extending the house or renovating the bathroom. No, they come to us through the Holy Spirit. And it’s not a peace and a joy that the world offers – it’s not something you can buy off the rack in the store, not that at all – it’s a gift from God and it’s something that Jesus talked about over and over and over again.

Flip your Bible across from Luke to John chapter 15, verse 11. Jesus disciples were afraid; Jesus is about to be crucified. Everything they have believed and seen over the last three and a half years is falling in a screaming heap and look at what Jesus talks about:

I have said these things to you so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” “I have said these things to you so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Jesus is about giving us God’s joy even in those incredibly difficult times and in fact, especially in those times, and making our joy complete. Let me share something really interesting and profound with you. The Greek word – remember the New Testament was written in Greek – the Greek word for "joy" used right through the New Testament, is closely related to the word for "free gift" and the word for "grace".

You see, God’s joy is this thing that He wants to lavish on us freely – it’s part of His grace; it’s an integral part of who He is and what He has done through Jesus Christ. And over and over and over again, what we see is that the joy that Jesus talks about isn’t the joy from the world. It’s the joy that comes from God.

It’s not some joy we conjure up for ourselves; it’s not something we experience because something good happened to us today or we bought some new clothes or something. No! God is a God of joy. Now, I challenge you – no we are not going to go there today – but I challenge you to read just one chapter in the Bible, its Luke chapter 15. Jesus tells three parables: one is about a shepherd who loses a sheep; one is about a widow who loses a coin and one is of a father who loses his son. And in each case these people regain what they had lost.

Jesus told these stories to explain to us what God is like. The point of it is the joy in God’s heart when He gets us back. The father of the prodigal son responds with such joy, he just lavishes it on his son who once was lost but now is found – he throws a party.

My experience is I tried to get joy hits in so many different places before I met Jesus. I had the money to spend, so I did. I spent a fortune trying to capture joy and get it in my heart, but I never did until one day I encountered Jesus Christ. His presence; His Spirit is what flooded my heart with joy. It overflows out of me into the lives of other people – not perfectly – but in a way that words can’t describe. Peter the Apostle, puts it this way in First Peter chapter 1, verse 8:

Even though you haven’t seen Him with your own eyes, you love Him and even though you don’t see Him now, you believe in Him and you are filled with an unspeakable and glorious joy because you are receiving the goal of your faith, salvation of your souls.

I didn’t realise it at first but as my relationship with Jesus began to grow, that unspeakable and glorious joy; a joy that – I’m good with words, but I can’t find words to describe because it’s unspeakable and glorious. That wondrous joy filled my heart. It’s not something you and I can conjure up. It’s God’s joy and He pours it into our hearts, through His Holy Spirit as we experience His forgiveness and start to live in His goodness and ditch the rubbish we used to think and speak and do.

That’s why Paul wrote God’s Kingdom isn’t about rules and regulations and physical things. It’s about righteousness and peace and joy – God’s righteousness, God’s peace and God’s joy that are given to us through the Holy Spirit. It’s totally out of this world. Jesus was talking about His peace – He said:

My peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I don’t give it to you the way the world does so don’t let your hearts be troubled and don’t let them be afraid,

He says in John chapter 14, verse 27.

See until we experience it we just don’t understand it. Even when we do, it’s impossible to find words to describe the wondrous reality of the joy and the peace Jesus Christ brings. They’re not from this world; they come from Him. And we can look in as many holes and under as many logs as we like but it’s not until we put our trust in Him, completely in Him, that we experience His joy. We dwell in His presence, we pray, we are filled with such a wonder and such an awe and such a joy unspeakable.

Entering the Gates of Joy We have been talking about the fact that God’s plan is to fill us with joy but sometimes people look at God from a distance and they say, "Well, you know, I don’t believe that that joy is for me. I don’t know."

Let me share a story with you. I visited a barber’s shop recently to have my hair cut and as Bert the barber went to work we began to talk. We talked about … well, all sorts of things – sport, as you do in a barber’s shop, politics, interest rates. Eventually we ended up on the subject of God. Bert says to me, "You know Berni, I don’t believe that God exists." "That’s interesting," I said, "Why do you say that?" Here’s what he said: "Well you just have to go out onto the street to realise that God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God existed, would there be so many sick people? Would there be so many abandoned children? If God existed would there be pain and suffering? I can’t imagine a loving God would allow these things to happen."

I thought about it but I didn’t want to get into an argument with him so, when my haircut was done, I just paid and headed out the door. But just outside the door there was a man in the street, with long stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt so I turned around and headed straight back into the barber’s shop and I said to Bert, "You know what Bert, barbers don’t exist." He was a bit taken aback. He said, "How can you say that? I’m here, I’m a barber, I just worked on you." "No", I said, "Barbers don’t exist because if they did there wouldn’t be any people with dirty, long hair and untrimmed beards like that guy outside."

But Bert was sharp as a tack. He said, "Ah, but barbers do exist – that’s what happens when people don’t come to me." "Exactly, that’s the point – God does exist too but all that stuff you were talking about – that’s what happens when people don’t go to Him." End of discussion! You get my point? People want to criticise God from a distance but you can’t do that.

We are talking this week about joy – God’s joy and if we want to enjoy our lives we have to enter into that joy. We can’t stand at a distance and complain about God and can’t say He’s not real and criticise Him. If we want to have that joy we have to enter into the joy.

I love poetry, always have. There’s a beauty and wonder in taking something profound and expressing it in poetry. And the Book of Psalms; Psalm 100, verse 3 says this:

Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name for the Lord is good and His love endures for ever. His faithfulness continues through to all generations.

God has a heart full; a God sized heart full of joy that He wants to pour into our hearts. That’s what we have been looking at on the programme today. Jesus said it over and over again. He said:

I have said these things to you so that My joy might be in you and that your joy might be complete.

And where we kind of sit back at a distance, either totally scornful of God, as I used to be, or maybe kind of believing in Him at a distance; believing that … well, He’s God but never, never really believing that … "He would want to fill me – me – with His joy."

Come on, wake up! God’s joy – a joy that we can’t find anywhere else in this world; a joy that words can’t express; a joy unspeakable – is an integral part of His plan for our lives. But we have to walk through the door; we have to enter into that joy, to "enjoy". That’s what "enjoy" means, to enter into the joy.

We need to ask and thirst and spend time with Him and pray and beat His door down and don’t leave Him alone until He does what He said He would do – to give us His joy and so make our joy complete. It’s a joy that fills us in the good times and the bad times.

Ask, search, knock! Whoever asks receives! Whoever searches finds! Whoever knocks, well, to that person the door will be opened!

If we as parents, evil as we are, give our children good gifts, how much more do you think our Father in heaven will give us good gifts when we ask?

I have said these things to you so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

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The only faith the Bible talks about, the only sort of Faith Jesus talked about was the sort of faith that moves mountains. The sort of faith that conquers the world! The sort that has powerful results.

Conquering Faith There are times in our lives when we have to overcome obstacles. Now not every obstacle is there for overcoming, let me say. Sometimes they’re meant to be there at least for a while, and sometimes they’re meant to be there as a permanent feature. I don’t know if you recall the apostle Paul’s prayer to God about the thorn in his flesh that was hindering him, but three times Paul asked God to take it away, and God’s answer was no, because that thorn in Paul’s flesh was there to keep him humble. Even adversity, especially adversity sometimes, plays an important part in God’s plan for our lives.

But sometimes it’s God’s plan for us to overcome obstacles in our lives. Sometimes we need to be more than conquerors over our circumstances, in order to achieve what God’s called us to achieve. When we have to conquer an obstacle that’s way beyond our power or our wisdom or our strength, then we need to have faith – faith in the One who does have the power and the wisdom and the strength to make things happen. We need the sort of faith that conquers the world, and that’s the sort of faith that we’re going to chat about again today on the programme – world-conquering faith. So let’s go back to Hebrews 11 and see what God has to say to us today about that sort of faith. Hebrews 11:29:

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so, they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute didn’t perish with those who were disobedient because she had received the spies in peace. And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Sampson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and all the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fires, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.

Isn’t that just one of the most amazing passages? I get a real courage in my heart just reading that passage. So, what’s God saying to us through His Word today? When the nation of Israel fled from their centuries of slavery in Egypt, and after they’d wandered for forty years in the wilderness, God finally let them into the land that He promised them through Abraham centuries before.

Now you’d think, wouldn’t you, that if the land was the land God had promised and He’d chosen and He’d provided, that God could ordain for them that they’d kind of waltz in there and settle down and take over, but that wasn’t God’s plan. The land was occupied by many nations and kings and tribes, and the Israelites had to take the promised land battle by battle. That’s often God’s way. That’s why so often, life as a Christian seems to be battle after battle.

That’s why sometimes we think to ourselves: "Why is following Jesus this hard? Why doesn’t it all just fall into place? What about the promises of God?" Well, the promises are there, just like the promised land was there for Israel, but they had to be taken (often battle by battle), and those battles, my friend, require faith. Faith pleases God and so those battles are our opportunity to grow in our faith, as we rely on God’s promises to take us through, and that’s pleasing to God.

So Israel took Jericho ... by strength? No, by faith! And Rahab, the prostitute who’d harboured the Israeli spies before that battle, she was saved by faith. And then the writer goes on to list many situations and circumstances in the history of Israel where battle after battle after battle after battle had been won, as Israel God’s people stepped into the breach and put their faith in their God.

My friend, that’s what the Christian life looks like. That’s what we’re meant to be living, and after each battle and each trial and each beating and each victory, you know what happens? Our faith grows stronger. We don’t just become mighty men and women of faith by sitting here in our lounge-rooms watching the television, we become mighty men and women of faith by using our faith – by exercising the muscle of faith, so that it grows stronger and stronger with each battle. And one day we wake up and we’re able to face bigger battles for Christ because now we have the faith we need to live through them.

Let me share with you a letter I received awhile back from a woman, Elsie – an elderly lady, who used to support Christianityworks by sending some stamps every few months. Listen to the world-conquering faith of this frail old woman. She writes:

Although I’m only a very aged pensioner’ (those are her words), ‘I have been kept by God’s grace through many years. In the last eighteen months, I have had both floodwaters and burning tree-embers over my veranda, but God has protected me through it all. Only last night the bush-fire threatened my home again, and I went to bed knowing that only our Creator could keep me safe. Berni, I’m sending you these stamps in the name of our miracle-working God, who fed thousands with five small loaves and two fishes, who burst open prison-doors, calmed tempests, split rocks and provided water, conquered death and defeated Satan, and who is coming again to take us all to His eternal home in glory. May these stamps help others to enter His peace.

And so they did.

We used those stamps in our very next mailing to our supporters, and in response to that mailing, I received a letter from another woman, who as it turns out lived just a few kilometres from Elsie, who’d been to the point of suicide when she received our letter, yet God used that letter to save her life. She wrote: "Thank you for saving my life."

I believe with all my heart that that miracle was born out of Elsie’s world-conquering faith. I rang Elsie, I told her what had happened, and she wept with joy. What an awesome God we serve, that this self-described "aged pensioner" can be filled with that sort of world-conquering faith.

And as you receive God’s word today, may you be filled with a passion to travel through the battles, through the fires, through the floods of your walk with Jesus, so that day after day He will grow in you the sort of faith that conquers the world.

Unwavering Faith You know the thing that is absolutely the most difficult thing about faith? It’s that sometimes when I believe in God for something, He doesn’t give me the answer I was believing for. Sometimes when I trust in God to do something, something that’s really good – something that’s really powerful – something that truly would glorify His name, either He doesn’t do it or He delays in doing it, or He does it in a completely different way to what I was expecting.

You see, when it comes to faith, I just want it to be simple: I decide what needs to be done, I ask God to do it, and I believe in Him that He’s going to do it and He does it! Hey, that’s simple enough. How come God doesn’t get it sometimes? How come He heads off in some tangent when I can see plain as day what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how it needs to be done?

Now, as we’ve been exploring what Hebrews chapter 11 has to say about faith over these last few weeks, have you noticed that each of the examples so far has focused on successful outcomes of having faith in God? Yippee! But the Bible is nothing if it’s not realistic, and so it also talks about those times when God doesn’t seem to deliver on our prayers – when we’ve prayed in faith and He doesn’t show up. Have a listen. This first passage follows on from the Abraham story.

God had promised Abraham many descendants, even when he and his wife were old, beyond childbearing age, and He promised a land of his own – the promised land, in which his descendants would be like ... well, more numerous than the stars in the sky, and the grains of the sand on the beach. Question: How much of that promise did Abraham actually get to see? Well, only two small parts. Firstly, God gave him a son Isaac – miraculous to be sure, but only one – not the multitude that had been promised, and God fleetingly let him pass through the Promised Land, so what does the Bible have to say about these unfulfilled promises? Hebrews 11:11:

By faith he received the power of procreation, even though he was too old and Sarah herself was barren, because he considered Him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one person – and this one as good as dead, descendants were born – as many as the stars in heaven, as innumerable as the grains of sand by the seashore. All of these died in faith, without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth.

People who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land they had left behind, they would have had an opportunity to return, but as it is, they desire a better country – that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, He has prepared a city for them.

So, Abraham didn’t even see the outcome of his faith. All but two of the Israelites that finally centuries later left slavery in Egypt, perished in the wilderness and never saw the Promised Land; only their children did, and yet God commends them for their faith. God’s plan, God’s promises span centuries, right down to the birth of Jesus. God’s promise of many descendants is what gave Jesus to us, and you and I today are still being blessed.

Because Abraham trusted God, because Israel trusted God, you and I are blessed in Jesus who came through God’s promise to Abraham. God’s plans span millennia, way beyond Abraham’s life! Abraham’s life was just one small piece in the overall jigsaw puzzle, and yet God commends Abraham for his faith.

See, that’s the big picture – that’s the truth. You and I, our lives, are just one small part in the overall scheme of things, in God’s whole plan for the human race. And sometimes from our narrow perspective, well, we can’t see the whole picture. In fact, I’d suggest that our perspective is inherently way too narrow ever to fully comprehend God’s big picture. So often, God makes promises and we step out in faith into these promises, and things don’t go quite the way we planned, and yet those apparent failures are critical in the overall plan of God.

Again, listen to what Hebrews has to say further on, on this very thing. Having regaled us with all the successes of faith that various leaders and kings and prophets had, the writer of this book of Hebrews under the hand of God turns his attention to the apparent failures of faith. Hebrews 11:35:

Women received their dead by resurrection, but others were tortured, refusing to accept release in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats – destitute, persecuted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in the deserts and mountains, in caves and holes in the ground, yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better, so that they would not apart from us be made perfect.

So, you read that, and it seems to me that having faith in God is more important to God than the outcome of that faith. Stepping into the firing line with a distinct possibility of getting shot, trusting in God, is more important to God than whether or not we get shot. That’s what the Scripture is telling us, and it’s true. What we’re interested in is a narrow form of success – success in our little bit, but sometimes our apparent failure, or what you and I would call failure, is a critical element of the jigsaw in God’s overall plan.

Just think: What if Jesus had been saved from the cross? Where would you and I be now? But I’ll tell you something. I bet you the disciples were praying to God in those final hours that Jesus would be saved – that He’d be spared. I bet you that had you and I been one of those disciples, that’s exactly what we’d have been praying, right? It’s not always about winning each battle. Sometimes God’s got a bigger picture and what pleases Him, and what He commends us for, is a faith that stands an unfailing faith, despite the outcome.

Overcoming Faith Well, we’re going to conclude our time together in this particular series by looking at what Hebrews chapter 11 has to say about the sort of faith that overcomes obstacles – the sort of faith in God that’ll help us overcome difficult circumstances. Often we hope that if someone is against us that our faith will mean that we’ll end up winning, and they’ll end up losing. That’s a good thing to believe for, isn’t it? Do we see something of that in the Bible? Well, yeah, we do.

We often see God’s people in the Old Testament, whether under the leadership of Moses or Joshua or David or Jehoshaphat or quite a number of judges and kings and prophets, turn to God in times of distress, and God goes out there and fights the battles for them and gives them victory over their enemies.

Sometimes that’s what the Lord does in our lives, and when we just feel to get out there amongst it and the forces of hell are unleashed against us, there is absolutely nothing wrong with praying in faith for victory, so that the Lord’s will can prevail. There’s been many-a time in my life when I’ve been up against it; when it seems that people came against this ministry of Christianity Works and our mission to share the good news of Jesus with many, many people around the world; when our finances have been so difficult that we couldn’t really see how we could possibly continue; when people that we relied on failed us, and left us in a difficult spot.

Please don’t ever think that just because I’m here on the radio proclaiming the good news of Jesus, none of these things happen to us; they do, and the more we preach Christ, the more the enemy unleashes his armies against us. That’s par for the course.

So, when we’re in a tough place, should we turn to God as our first resort instead of our last? Should we rely on His faithfulness to overcome the obstacles and opposition that we face? Absolutely we should, because He’s our God, and yet that’s not always what He has in mind. Sometimes His victories are so different to what we’re expecting. There’s something that Jesus said to His disciples in the final days before His crucifixion that must have seemed so outrageous and so plain wrong to them, as they heard it, and as they lived out the next few days. This is what He said. Have a listen. John 16:32-33:

Jesus said, ‘The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered each one to his home, and you will leave me completely alone, yet I am not alone because the Father is in Me. I have said these things to you so that in Me, you may have peace. For in this world you will face persecution, but take courage; I have conquered the world’.

The first verse speaks of the coming fear and trials that the disciples were already beginning to face. You’ll each scatter! You’ll flee to your homes! You’ll leave me alone! Man! If Jesus had been saying that to me, I wouldn’t have been impressed. You’ll face persecutions. Zippedy doo dah! There’s a promise of God that we can stand on, and yet in the very next breath, He’s saying:

But I’m telling you these things so that in Me, you might have peace. Have courage! For I have overcome the world; I have conquered the world.

Words are cheap. Not so long after this, they see Him arrested, tried, beaten to within an inch of His life – the flesh literally hanging off His back where He’d been whipped, lugging a cross – a huge wooden cross – up to Golgotha, where He’s nailed to the cross, and there He dies. And yet this miracle man Jesus had said to them:

Take courage! Be of good cheer! I’ve overcome the world; I’ve conquered the world.

Let me ask you this: When He was hanging there on that cross, did He look like much of a conqueror – much of an overcomer – in the eyes of His frightened, disillusioned disciples who’d fled, who’d left Him in His darkest hour, just as He’d predicted? Not likely, and yet just a few days later, He was raised from the dead – just a few days later, to their absolute disbelief, even though He’d been telling them this would happen. The One whom they’d seen dead and lifeless was alive again. He truly had conquered the world. He’d conquered the grave; He’d conquered death; He’d overcome the very worst outcome of all – the outcome of dying.

Do you see how the immediate circumstances of His trial and crucifixion shroud the ultimate victory in the disciples’ gaze? And so, my friend, it often is with us. So often we’re focused on the short-term victory in this or in that – a victory that all too often involves saving our skins (let’s be honest), when all along our Father in heaven is working out His ultimate victory in our lives. And in order to realise that ultimate victory, for a time, we have to suffer. Have a listen to how the apostle John puts it. 1 John 5:4:

For whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Ultimately, it’s the one who believes Jesus is who He says He is who conquers this world – because in Jesus Christ, you and I have victory over the grave; we have victory over death; we have victory over this world. And as we’re travelling through the short-term pain of a lifetime, that’s what keeps us pressing on to the end – the truth that in Christ Jesus, we have life eternal. Peter the apostle says this. 1 Peter 1:6:

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while, you have to suffer various trials; so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

To that you and I can shout: "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Through Him, we have victory over the grave."

There are going to be times in this life when you and I feel like losers. Peter was writing that to a bunch of people who had been tarred and feathered and burnt on stakes at Caesar’s parties. These people weren’t just suffering various kinds of trials; they were dying for their faith, but in those moments to them, and in those moments to us, God is faithful. His love is unfailing; His promises are true, and we have all that we need to make it through.

For me to be able to serve you with this truth today is such an incredible privilege. As I walk through my trials, as I suffer through my things, I need this word just as much as you do. I need the encouragement and the power of God’s Word just as much as you do, so please take this truth; hold it close to your heart; because through your faith in Jesus Christ, as weak and as tenuous as it may feel sometimes, you have already overcome the world. I’ve said these things to you that in Him, you may have peace.

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You know, I wish I could tell you that God is primarily concerned about our comfort and convenience, but that’s just not true. He’s much more interested in our character and maturity and so He often calls us into radical, uncomfortable faith.

Radical faith Have you ever felt God asking you to do something that is so radical so counter-intuitive that you felt that you were going mad? I have on more than one occasion, and as I speak with great men and women of God as I interview them as I meet them and get to know some of the giants of faith that I go to church with, that I work with, here’s what I’ve discovered listening to their stories. The more open we are to God the more we spend time in prayer, the more we take God’s word to heart as though it’s true and as though it's actually meant for us, the more God asks us to do crazy things.

I have a dear friend who against every personal desire and aspiration that he had for himself and his family, moved across the other side of the world to take on a job for years that God had called him to do.

Now most days were a struggle, most days he was homesick, most days he didn’t really understand why God had called him into that place. But four years on, as he was heading back home again, can I tell you the impact that his presences, his skills, his wisdom, his insight and energy and persona has had, not just on the organisation that he worked for but in the lives of tens of thousands of people that organisation ministers to, is just enormous.

And the more we listen to God, the more we find Him asking us to do crazy things. Radical things, things we wouldn’t consider doing if it was left up to us. And that’s exactly what happened to Noah.

We’re looking today again at faith in this series I’ve called simply, "Having the Sort of Faith that Conquers the World". It’s a phrase you find a lot throughout the bible and no where more so than in the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter 11. It’s a chapter that talks a lot about faith, the sort of faith we need to make it through the trials and the temptations of life. The sort of faith we need to see the big picture, to get life into perspective. The sort of faith that we need to please God, because without faith, without the assurance of things we hope for and the rock solid of evidence of faith in our hearts of the things we can’t yet see. It’s completely impossible to please God.

Now, I want you to put yourself for a moment in Noah’s shoes. You’re living a happy life. Okay, the world around you is a bit corrupt but there is nothing new or surprising about that. You, your wife, your family, you're having a great little life there and God says to you, "Hey Noah, I know you live miles and miles and miles away from the nearest lake or ocean, but I want you to build a hulking great big boat. A big one! We’re going to call it an ark because I’m going to flood the world, kill everyone, and you and your family and two of every species of animal are going to be the only ones that survive. So get to it. Start building this boat."

Now you and I know what happened. We know how the story turns out. But, poor old Noah had none of the benefits of the 20/20 hindsight that you and I have. He didn’t even have the Bible that we have to believe in God through, he’d never even heard of Jesus. All he knew was that this God came along and told him to build a boat in the middle of nowhere. Talk about feeling stupid.

Imagine going home to the little misses that night and she asks, "How was work Noah?" "Well? I was chatting with God and we’ve come up with this great plan, we are going to build a boat. A big one! An ark!" She says, "A boat? Are you crazy?" And not just the little misses, imagine what the neighbours had to say? "Hey have you seen what Noah’s up to? He’s really flipped his lid this time. He’s building, wait for it … an ark!" "Nah, not even Noah’s that crazy!" "Yeah, really an ark, 300 cubits long!"

The laughter, the ridicule that must have gone on down at the local pub each night as Noah and his sons built that ark! What does God tell us in Hebrews chapter 11 about this? What’s God’s summation of Noah’s craziness? Look verse 7:

By faith, Noah warned by God about events yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household. By this he condemned the world and became an air to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.

What Noah needed to do this extreme thing was extreme faith, and he yielded extreme results. I’ve had some times in my life when God has called me to do the craziest things. "Berni … leave your secure high paying consulting career and become involved in this media ministry that’s stopped doing what is meant to be doing. That’s almost broke and ready to shut it’s doors! Berni, go and start broadcasting your Australia programs in Africa when there was only one guy I even knew in Africa! Berni going and hire a man in India to start broadcasting your programs over there, even though there isn’t a single door open to start doing what I’m calling you to do! Berni…."

Yeah ok, today it’s a thousand radio stations airing these programs, today its millions of listeners each week, today it seems like the obvious thing to have done. But each time God called me to do something crazy … it was just that dead set crazy. Maybe not as crazy as Noah’s gig, but that didn’t help me at the time.

So when was the last time God called you to do something crazy? Something happens in that place that I can’t quite explain. There are many times that I’ve listened to sage advice from mature men and women around me and that’s been the right thing to do. But at those major turning points, the truly crazy ones, there’s been a pull in my heart from God that was as scary as it was unmistakable. And at those turning points, the "Noah" points, I’ve pretty much had to ignore the sage advice that I was getting from the people that I trusted and just go with the call in my heart.

At those times it’s been scary and at those times I’ve made some mistakes. Not everything always worked out the way that I’d planned it in my head. We didn’t always get everything right the first time. Things didn’t always happen as quickly as I wanted them to happen. It was 8 years from when I felt the call to go and tell people about Jesus until I took on the role that I’m doing now. It was almost 3 years between when we hired that wonderful man in India and when God actually opened the doors to a weekly radio audience on a major secular network of 30 million people each week.

It never felt much like faith, it was uncertain, it was murky, it was unclear, but often when with this dream in our hearts, and with a certain reality that we’d rather look like idiots, that we’d rather fall flat on our faces and fail, rather than miss out on what God was doing. At times I’m prepared to admit to the people around me, that I looked like an idiot. But then, so did Noah. And the God that Noah served and the God that I serve and the God that you serve, never ever chastises us for having too much faith. Sometimes, not everyday, but sometimes faith is doing scary crazy, counter-intuitive things that God calls us to do:

By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected that warning and built an ark to save his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with that faith.

So what are you waiting for?

Uncomfortable faith We’ve been chatting over these past few weeks about faith, not in a theoretic sense but in a "rubber hits the road" sense. Because faith is that thing we need to get through the things that we can’t handle on our own. Faith is what we need to move that great big obstacle that’s blocking our way when its way to big for us to climb over, or crash through or walk around.

Faith is what we need to overcome that one nagging sin in our lives that keeps on coming back to rob us of the joy and peace that Jesus came to give us. And faith is what we need to go and do the difficult things that God sometimes calls us to do. The inconvenient things, the uncomfortable things, the things we rather not have to do thanks very much Lord.

So that’s the sort of faith we’re going to chat about right now – uncomfortable faith – because no one ever had an impact in this world by playing it safe right? When Jesus calls us into a place to make a difference in someone’s life, it's often because that persons life is, well, a bit of a mess and it's going to hurt us to have to be in that place with that person. When Jesus calls us out of our nice safe comfortable existence to go and do something for him, I can guarantee you it’s not going to be convenient and it’s not going to be comfortable. It requires faith.

People sometimes ask me, "Berni why is it that even though I believe in Jesus, I don’t know, somehow it doesn’t feel real. There’s no passion, there’s no fire. There’s no excitement." And my response is always the same. I ask them two questions.

Question 1: How much time do you spend quietly each day alone with Jesus, with the door closed and the bible open?

Question 2: What are you doing with your faith? How are you living it out?

Now Question 1 is really important because, unless we're spending that time alone with Jesus each day, growing in a dynamic relationship with Him, well, shazam shazam there’s not going to be much of a relationship. But today I want to focus on Question 2, What are you doing with your faith? And when I meet someone who has that vague unsettled feeling about their faith, the sense there should be something more, there should be power, there should be impact, I can almost guarantee you that in effect they’re a spiritual couch potato.

And by that I mean, they’re not living out their faith. They’re not getting out there and making a difference in this world, taking risks, putting it all on the line for Jesus. And just like someone who spends their life sitting on the sofa, channel surfing cable TV, drinking soft drinks, eating chips is going to end up feeling lethargic, the Christian who isn’t exercising their faith is going to feel precisely the same. Don’t believe me? Well, it’s exactly what the Bible tells us. In James chapter 2 verse 26 says:

For as just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.

So as we come to look at faith again today, we’re going to do so from the perspective of Abraham, a man who was called out of the comfort of his ancestral home in Ur, which is around about where modern day Bagdad is today, have a listen. Hebrews chapter 11, beginning at verse 8:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he set out not knowing were he was going. By faith, he stayed for a time in the land which had been promised to him, as in a foreign land living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob who where the airs with him of that same promise. But he looked forward to the city which had foundations, who’s architect and builder is God.

By faith, he received the power of procreation. Even though he was too old and Sarah herself was baron. Because he considered him faithful who had promised, therefore from one person and this one as good as dead descendants were born. As many as the stars of heaven and innumerable as the grains of the sand by the sea shore.

Now, perhaps you remember that story. Abraham is the father of Israel the nation. He and his wife Sarah in their mid seventies were childless, a source of great anguish and shame that equated God’s blessing with having lots of children and having your own land to live in. And so what was God’s solution? To promise Abraham and Sarah many, many of descendants if only they’ll leave their safe and comfortable ancestral home behind and go out on a journal thought the wilderness, though all sorts of strange and weird and wonderful places only God knows where.

A familiar story to many I suppose. And yet what we often miss is the context, let me say it again the definition of God’s blessing in that time and in that culture – in fact you see it over and over again in the Old Testament – is firstly that you had lots of children. And secondly you own your own land to live in. If you had both of those things, then you were considered to be blessed of God. The more children, the more land you had, the more quiet openly God was in the business of blessing you. But if you didn’t have them, then you were considered to be cursed of God. Obviously you’d done something wrong. Obviously you must have been a bad person. That was the thinking.

Now Abraham, was a wealthy man. He had lots of flocks of animals which means he had a lot of land. So when God called him out of that and onto his journey with this promise of many children, do you see what God was asking him to do? God was asking Abraham to give up that one half of the blessing that he already did have, in order to get the other half, which was lots of descendants. And what made this so crazy was that he and his wife were in their seventies, way pass the age where Sarah could bare children. Abraham and Sarah had to let go of this blessing and step out in faith, God knows where, in order to get that blessing.

My friend that is so often how God works. So long as we think our lives are about being comfortable and safe, no risks, no need for faith, no need to rely on God for food and shelter and provision. So long as we make our comfort and our safety the priority, our faith is going to be dead.

God’s main aim isn’t to make you and me comfortable; His main aim is to grow our character, by making us part of his plan, to touch and reach a lost and hurting world with His love. God’s plan isn’t that we should have a huge superannuation or pension fund so that we can spend our retirement indulging our senses in food and travel and luxuries and relaxation. His plan is to use us to reach out to our neighbour with His mercy and grace and love.

And so the solution for the spiritual couch potato … the answer to getting rid of that lethargy and bringing a new vigour and anticipation to our faith? It’s always the same. The one who would live a vibrant exciting faith, a life where the power of God is manifest before their very eyes, is the one who goes to God and pleads:

Lord show me where you want me to go! Want to you want me to do? What sacrifices do you want me make? What risks do you want me to take so that the name of Jesus would be lifted up in this world. Oh Lord wherever you call me, and whatever it will cost me, I want to go! Give me the courage, fill me with your spirit. Show me where and how and when I can loose my life for you dear Jesus in order that I might find it.

Friends, start praying prayers like that one, and I guarantee you that God won’t take long to answer you. I guarantee you that before you know it you’ll be at a place where you see God’s power in action because frankly without it, you’d be in trouble!

Ditching comfort and convenience God’s word stands in such contrast to our hopes and our desires and our ambitions for comfort and convenience doesn’t it? Yes God is a God of outrageous blessing, but it’s a blessing that follows along behind our obedience to Him. You and I want to put the cart before the horse, so often! Because we’ve been taught over and over again that it’s all about us. I come first. I’m the most important one.

You know my parents immigrated to Australia from Europe just after World War 2. They brought us into this world, in this great new land of opportunity that they made their home. This land of freedom and of plenty that embraced them as new migrants, and what they wanted for my sister and myself was a better life than the one that they’d had. They’d worked so hard, they’d sacrificed so much so that we could have a great education, so that we could learn and study and grow and have all the things that they missed out on during that terrible world war.

But the easiest thing for me as a recipient of their sacrifice, was to take all their serving of me, and misinterpret it to mean that it’s all about me. But that is not what they meant at all! I mean, they taught me a very strong work ethic. But because I had parents who loved me and sacrificed for me the natural selfishness that we all have, that selfishness that was in me, twisted that around and so I lived most of my early adulthood in this belief that it truly was, all about me!

In fact, the term "the me generation" was invented for my generation – The Baby Boomers. We were all pretty much like that. And that mistake is exactly the mistake that so many times we make as we misinterpret the love and the grace and the blessing of God in our lives.

Jesus talked about this very thing, our tendencies to put the cart before the horse; to put our comfort and convenience before the will of God in our lives. Have a listen to what he said. There’s every chance you’re quite familiar with this passage. He was talking about our natural desires for enough food to eat and clothes to wear and all those physical needs that we seem to worry so much about. He was saying, "Look, don’t worry about those things. Your father in heaven knows everything you need. And you’re worth so much to Him, of course He’s going to provide all your needs!" And the punch line, the executive summary of all that, went something like this. Mathew chapter 6, beginning at verse 33:

Jesus said, look don’t worry about these things, instead strive first for the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things will be given unto you as well.

In other words, put God first. Put God’s will first. But obedience to God first, sacrifice first, follow Him where He calls us first, and all those other things which by the way, aren’t the main things, they’ll follow along behind as surely as night follows day.

Friend, He’s not saying here that we shouldn’t have our needs met, He’s not saying we shouldn’t have clothing or food, or shelter, Jesus is simply saying, "people get your priorities right". And getting our priorities right, putting Him first, takes faith. It does! When our funds are limited, and running low, it takes faith to take the first fruits of our income and give them to God to support his work. When there’s been a global financial crisis, it takes faith to step out and use all our resources for the glory of God.

When people are being critical when their being obnoxious, you know something … it takes faith to love them with the love which Jesus loved us. It takes faith to forgive them; it takes faith to hold them. And when it’s hurting like hell, when the pain of our sacrifice for Jesus is more than we really want to take, it takes faith to say, "Father, not my will but let your will be done." Exactly what Jesus did for you and me in that garden called Gethsemane just before He was handed over to be nailed to that terrible, terrible Cross.

My friend, Jesus isn’t looking just for believers He’s looking for disciples. He’s looking for men, women and children who are prepared to lay down their lives and take up their cross each day to follow Him. He’s looking for men, women and children who aren’t in the business of saving their own skins for those who’ll surely loose it, but who are in the business of laying down their lives for Him by faith, knowing that that’s how they’ll discover real life. By faith.

Strive ye first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, get your priorities right. Put God first and all these other things will be given to you as well. You know why it takes faith? Because at the very time it feels like we’re loosing something, at the time it feels like we’re in a dangerous place, at the time I feels unfair, at the time it hurts, but truly I tell you, when we take up our cross, when we follow after Jesus with our cross on our shoulder, prepared to lay down our lives, that’s when we discover true satisfaction.

I think sometimes we spend way too much effort standing up for our rights so that we forget that we should be laying down our lives for Jesus. May God bless you as you live out your faith.

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Christians are always talking about faith. My faith walk. Faith this, faith that. So what is faith? Not the theory? But what does it look like when you live it? The sort of faith that pleases God.

What Is Faith? It’s really quite amazing, but over a thousand weekly editions of this program, Christianityworks, have gone to air since it launched way back in 2004. It’s been quite a walk of faith with all the obstacles that we’ve faced along the way and so today on the program we’re kicking off a series of messages called, “Having the Sort of Faith that Conquers the World”.

These two words “By faith” appear over and over again in the Bible. And in fact, if we go to the New Testament book of Hebrews, we’ll see that’s pretty much the place where they’re most densely packed together. By Faith.

Now faith, it's something that Christians talk about a lot – our faith walk, faith this, faith that. But what is faith? When and where do we need faith? How do we get it? It’s something that Jesus talked a lot about so let me ask this, do we really understand what faith is? Do we really know what the outcome of faith is meant to look like in our lives? They’re the questions that we’re going to be pondering and exploring and journeying through together over these next few weeks on the program starting with today.

Okay then, so what exactly is faith? Well I suppose that many of the people listening today perhaps you’re one of them, would point me to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1 to answer that question, it says that:

Faith is the assurance of the things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.

Well and good, that’s the most concise definition of faith in the bible, that’s the stock standard definition, tickity-boo, who needs a series on faith? We know what it is: it’s the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. But as much as we Christians quote that verse and its one of the most quoted Bible verses of all, do we really understand the context in which it was written? Let’s look at it again, it says exactly:

Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

So what’s that word "now" doing at the front of the verse? What’s that all about? Well, that word is called a conjunctive, in other words, it ties this verse to what came immediately before. Ah, so this verse doesn’t stand alone, there is a context, something that comes before that we need to get in order to really understand the verse.

So, what comes before? Well, here it is, the previous chapter, Hebrews chapter 10 and we’ll kick it off just at verse 26. Listen carefully because we’re going to unpack this in a moment. Hebrews chapter 10, starting at verse 26:

For if we wilfully persist in sin, after having received the knowledge of the truth, then no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the advocacies. Anyone who has violated the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witness. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the Blood of the Covenant by which they were sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace? For we know the one that who said ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’ and again ‘The Lord will judge his people’. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

But recall those early days when after you’d be enlightened you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution. And sometimes partners with those so treated. For you have compassion for those in prison and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions knowing that you yourselves possess something better and more lasting.

Do not therefore abandon that confidence of yours, it brings a great reward. For you needed endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what was promised for yet in a very little while, the one who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back but we’re not amongst those who shrink back or are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved. Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

So what’s the context? The context is two things, the punishment that will surely come if we reject God’s grace and mercy and continue on in sin and the second part is about the extreme trials that we’re bound to face in life. In fact the Hebrew believers, the ones who were reading this letter, were facing incredible trials! They were being persecuted like you wouldn’t believe. And so the writer of this letter was saying, you know something, you’re going to struggle with sin, and you’re going to face incredible trials and so what you need, what you really need to get you through, is faith.

To tell you the truth if you put it like that I’d frankly rather be in a situation where I didn’t need any faith, because faith is what we need when we’re battling sin. Faith is what we need when we’re in a dangerous uncertain place. Faith is what we need to be saved from something we can’t save ourselves from. To persevere through situations and ordeals to make it out to the other side of something we’d rather not be in the middle off.

Wouldn’t it be so much better from were you and I sit, if we didn’t end up in places were we actually needed faith? Because faith is the assurance of something we hope for, which by definition means we don’t have it right now and we wish we did. And faith is the evidence of that thing that we can’t see yet, because all we can see is what we’re in the middle of which are our circumstances, and we’re hoping for so much more. And yet, as we’re going to see shortly that’s exactly how God sets things up.

You have sin in your life and I have sin in my life, but in and of ourselves we just can’t get rid of. We’ve struggled with it for years and we couldn’t’ do anything about it until we started putting our faith in Jesus. We couldn’t overcome sin or set things right until we put our trust in Jesus. And the same thing’s true of the many obstacles we face in life. Perhaps you’re someone who’s been listening to these programs for a while and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Oh that Berni guy seems to have things all sorted out. What an easy life. He gets to be on the radio and tell us how to get it right.’ But you wouldn’t believe the challenges and the trials involved in getting out there and doing what Gods called us to do at Christianityworks.

The attacks that come against the ministry because Satan doesn’t want people hearing about Jesus, he doesn’t want us doing what we are doing. The trials when people fail, when the finances are tight, you name it. It’s either happened, or it’ s going to happen. And just in the same way you face trials, you face temptations, you have mountains that get in your road and stop you from doing the things that God’s called you to do. You have sicknesses you have struggles, and people come against you, financial issues – my friend that’s what faith is for.

Faith is the assurance of things we hope for and the evidence of the things that we just can’t see yet. You and I need faith and that’s why we’re going to be talking about it over the coming weeks on the program.

Big Picture Faith. Are you familiar with that term that saying that someone’s lost the plot? What it means is that we’ve lost sight of were we are going, we’ve lost sight of the objective. We’ve managed to get things completely "out of kilter", "out of bounds", or "out of whack" as we as Australians like to say. "Oh man, hasn’t he lost the plot!?" And often it happens when we become focused on just one thing in our lives, let’s say a single relationship or a single thing that’s not going quite right.

When we’re hurting, we focus on just that one thing that is hurting. Sometimes we lose the plot when we are so focused on making ourselves happy that we forget about everyone and everything else and somehow, the more we try to make ourselves happy the more empty we feel. It seems to me that they one sure way of feeling depressed is trying really, really hard to make yourself happy.

So the reason we lose the plot is that we lose sight of the bigger picture, we’re so focused on that one thing that we can’t stand back. We’re busy working hard at life, living life, peddling harder and faster and then the storm strikes especially when there is a head wind blowing and it’s slowing us down. It is the easiest thing in the world to lose sight of the big picture, the context, the sense of meaning and purpose and direction that we once seemed to have for our lives and now the harder we go at it, the murkier it appears to get.

What was once clear when we were young now seems to be blurry. Sometimes it’s like we’re living our lives in a fog. You know what I’m on about here right? And then one day you wake up and you think to yourself, I think I’ve lost the plot!

That place right there is a scary place. I’ve found myself in that situation, when I’m busy working hard, even, working hard doing things for God, none of us is immune to this here. I don’t get some exemption certificate from this stuff just because I work in a Christian ministry. This is real life. This is real stuff. What we’re talking about this week on the program, in fact over the coming few weeks is faith. It’s a phrase, two simple words, “by faith” that appear over and over and over again in the Bible, especially in the 11th chapter of the New Testament book of Hebrews.

Now, we need faith for all sorts of things, we need faith in Jesus to be forgiven by God and to be set free to live an eternal life in His presence. We need faith to make it through the trails and the difficult situations and make it to the other side of those. And as it turns out we need faith to get a sense of the bigger picture, to keep the balance and sense of perspective right over our lives. So that we don’t loose the plot or so that when we do loose the plot we can pick it up again. Have a listen to this. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 3:

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible …

In other words, by faith we know that everything that was created, was created by Jesus. He is the Word of God that is being referred to there. The worlds, the cosmos, the universe, the little ant that crawls cross the floor, everything … the worlds were created by Jesus, God spoke them into existence through Jesus.

"Let there be light.” He said, and there was light! “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place and let dry land appear.” And it was so, and God called the dry land Earth, and the waters were gathered together and He called them the Sea’s. and God saw that it was good … and on and on.

A universe that with all our brilliant technology we can only see part of, and the part that we can see with our radio telescopes is so big, its so vast that it would take light – travelling of course at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometres per second – it would take light 15 billion years to travel from one end of the known universe to the other!

Even the nearest star to the earth after the Sun is called Proxima Centauri, it’s about 4.6 light years away. Now that doesn’t seem too far does it? But if you and I were to hop into a car, say at 100km per hour and travel that distance of 4.6 light years, how long would it take us? Well, just about 7¼ billion years. And that’s without any toilet breaks. It’s the nearest star after the sun, and the rest are all much, much further away!

Why is this important? Here’s why. We live on this earth as though this is all there is. Now we know there is a sun up there and it's really big and its really hot and its about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometres away. We know that there is a universe out there that’s huge. But day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, we live life really as though they don’t exist. We live life as though the only thing that exists is my own "here and now", this instant: what I’m working on, what I’m doing, what I’m trying to achieve, what I’m feeling, what I’m struggling through, what ...

Do you see my point? We completely loose sight of the big picture. I see all around me, every time I travel to India, I come back with a fresh realisation that the narrow privileged lives that we lead here in this affluent, blessed country we call Australia, is completely atypical, completely abnormal in the big picture of the rest of the world. And it’s in this narrowness that we lose our way; its in this narrowness that we loose the plot. Let’s look again at that verse on faith that I read out before. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 3:

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was made was made form things that are not visible.

Faith gives us the context that we need, faith is about knowing in our heart of hearts that there is God out there who made it all, He’s so big, so powerful, so intelligent, so loving, so awesome that He created the whole cosmos. Even the bits beyond human science can see. And He placed you and me here on this earth in perhaps the only inhabitable place in the whole universe. That’s the big picture.

And so instead of telling our God how big our problems are we need to start telling our problems how big our God is. Instead of obsessing about this problem or that disappointment, instead of sweating over the little things in our lives, in faith we can stand back and see the big picture, the God picture, the faith picture. By faith we understand that God made it all. By faith we can rest in this God who loves us so much that He sent us His son to die for us. By faith!

God-Pleasing Faith Now there is a huge part of me I have to tell you that wants so much to please God with everything that I think and everything I feel, and say and do, I really, really, really want to please God. Really I do! But someday it seems that all I have to do to blow it is to wake up and get out of bed in the morning. Does that make sense? You want to do what’s right, you know what’s right with all your heart you want to please God, but you just can’t seem to do it.

It’s like there is a war going on inside you, you want to do what’s right, but every time you want to do what’s right, evil intentions are lurking there right over your shoulder, whispering into your ear. Well it's not just me, it's not just you. The apostle Paul who wrote almost half the books in the New Testament he had exactly the same problem and you can read all about it in Romans Chapter 7.

So how do we please God? Let’s go back to that book towards the end of the New Testament, the book of Hebrews chapter 11, which is where we have been spending out time together today, and let's have a look because there is an answer in there as to how you and I can please God. And the answer isn’t working harder at being good. Let’s pick it up, Hebrews chapter 11, beginning at verse 4:

By faith able offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s. Through this he received approval as righteous as God Himself given approval to his gifts. He died but through faith he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken so that he didn’t experience death, and he was not found because God had taken for it was the tested before he was taken away that he had pleased God. And without faith, it’s impossible to please God for, whoever may approach Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.

That’s really interesting because back there in the book of Genesis, chapter 4 when we read about Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve’s two boys, were not really given a reason why it was that Abel’s offering was acceptable to God, but Cain’s wasn’t. There’s a bit of a hint. We’re kind of told that there wasn’t something quite right in Cain’s heart, but that is all we’re told. It certainly had nothing to do with physically what he did.

Both Cain and Abel brought an offering to God. Cain’s was rejected while Abel’s was acceptable to God and as a result, out of envy, Cain murdered his brother Abel. So what was the difference between the two. The answer is faith. Its there in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 4:

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s. Through this he received approvable as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts. He died but through faith, he still speaks.

See Abel gave his offering to God in faith. And as God showed through His response to Cain, an offering without faith isn’t pleasing to God at all. It’s not just the physical act of making a sacrifice, that sacrifice has to come with faith. And again, we read that Enoch had been blessed by God because he’s pleased God because of his faith. Executive summary, bottom line, what’s God saying here? Hebrews Chapter 11, verse 6:

You see without faith, it is impossible to please God. For whoever would approach Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.

And it's not just here in the book of Hebrews that we discover the importance of faith in pleasing God. Jesus himself told people the exactly the same thing. When someone asked him, “Lord what do I have to do to be saved?” He answered quite simply, “Believe in me”. How often have you and I worked so hard at pleasing God as though anything we can do, can possibly add to what He has already done for us, and what He’s planning on doing?

Sometimes I think that we behave as though God is totally completely and utterly depending on you and me to fulfil His plans. As though without us, God’s plans for this world are going to fall over in a screaming heap, and God’s going to go, "Oh man! What am I going to do?" And so we work so hard, we work hard! And we bring Him the offering and we bring Him the sacrifice. We see all the problems facing us and so we bring in the offering from the field like Cain with little to no faith in our heart.

Well, guess what? Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Would you please note that word, "impossible"? What it does not say is that without faith you won’t please God quite as much through your labours as you would have done if you put a bit of faith in the mix. That’s not what it says. The Bible clearly says that without faith it is completely impossible to please God.

The Greek words used there for "impossible" mean literally to be completely without strength, impotent, powerless, weak, disabled. That it is unable to be done, it’s totally impossible. Why? Because God is God. And He has put us here in this physical world that is removed from His spiritual dimension, yet the spiritual dimension, the God dimension, the presence of God is as real and as present as the nose on my face.

The thing is that we just can’t see it. Our act of Love, our act of pleasing God is honouring him by believing that He is, that He does exist and that He is in the business of blessing and rewarding those who seek Him. Why does he do things that way? Well, just think about it, God has something of a problem when it comes to eliciting a free will love response from you and me. If we could see God for what He is, if we could see Him face to face in all His power and in all His glory, hey, there would be no free will involved. In the face of that power, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

So He removes us from that presence, He puts us in a place where we lay hold of Him, not by seeing Him, but through a layer of adversity we call life. Through a cloud of unknowing, never quite seeing Him clearly in this life. And we lay a hold of Him, we honour Him, we love Him, we serve him, we obey Him by faith. And that is why without faith it’s impossible to please God. Ask Cain, ask Abel, they’ll tell you all about it, because by faith that story is still being told today.

So the next time that you feel the need to work your back side off to please God, remember this, your work isn’t so much the thing that pleases Him, it’s not about the sacrifice so much, its about you, its about me, its about our faith! When we do what we do in faith, my friend, that is what pleases God.

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The whole resurrection of Jesus thing – can be a bit hard to swallow. I mean – did it really happen? And if it did, what does it mean for us here and now?

A Crazy Morning Let me paint you a picture. Just the other day, someone you love has passed away. You really admired and trusted this person. I mean, you’d seen them in operation and now they’re gone. It’s a shock. It shouldn’t have happened. They were so young and so full of potential and promise; they had a future. And now that person’s gone. It takes some time to come to grips with that sort of a loss. The shock, the sadness, even anger – we go through all sorts of different stages in that grieving process.

You wake up with that dull headache in your head … what’s it about? And then you remember your loss. But the phone rings and it’s another friend and they’re ranting and they’re raving that this person who was dead, they’re saying, "He’s alive! He’s alive! I’ve seen him!"

Hang on a minute, what sort of a crackpot is this. What’s going on? Is this some sick joke? But your friend’s adamant. "He’s alive!" Now what? How do you react to that? I mean, it’s an incredible claim, an incredulous claim. Mad. You saw him die with your own eyes – arrested, crucified, buried and defiantly very, very dead.

You know, in one sense it’s almost easy to believe if you read it in the Bible. You know, it’s something that happened a couple of thousand years ago to Jesus, I mean, long enough ago to make it safe. You know what I mean. Sure God could do anything, God could do that way back then, it was 2000 years ago. The question is, if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead again lets just transpose that into today, here and now. You get a phone call tomorrow morning, ‘Jesus is alive!’ You saw him die … he’s alive.

Today we’re going to put ourselves back in the shoes of the Disciples right there in that place in Jerusalem. This is the second message in a series of four that I’ve called, “The Price He Paid for You”. And it’s about that part of the Easter story that involves the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What was that about? Did it happen, and if it did, what does it mean to you and me, here and now? Now, if we put ourselves back in the shoes of those Disciples, right there in that Jerusalem 2000 years ago with the Jesus they knew, all of a sudden it gets a whole lot harder to believe.

It was a bit like that for Mary Magdalene:

She went down to the tomb to embalm the body of Jesus and Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept she bent over to look inside the tomb and she saw two angels in white seated where Jesus’ body had been – one at the head and the other at the foot. And they asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’ ‘They’ve taken Jesus, my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where they’ve put him’.

At this she turned around and she saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t realise it was Him. ‘Woman,’ He said, ‘why are you crying? What are you looking for?’ Thinking that He was the gardener she says, ‘Sir, if you’ve carried Him away, tell me where you’ve put Him and I’ll go and get Him.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ And she turned towards Him and cried out in Aramaic ‘Rabonni’ which means ‘teacher’.

Jesus said, ‘Don’t hold onto me as I haven’t yet returned to the Father, go instead to my brothers, the Disciples and tell them I’m returning to my Father and your Father and to my God and to your God.’ And Mary Magdalene went to the Disciples with the news. ‘I’ve seen the Lord,’ she told them.”

He had said these things to her. See it wasn’t only Mary. I mean, I love the fact that even though Jesus had told them time and time and time again He would rise from the dead, she looked at Jesus and it’s so incredible to think that He could possibly be alive, she mistakes Him for the gardener. Do you know the joke in that? The Son of God has risen from the grave and Mary, I mean the humour here is just something else, Mary looks at Him and thinks he’s the gardener – the guy that mows the lawns and weeds the garden and does the edges. But she wasn’t the only one:

After that Thomas, sometime they call him doubting Thomas now Thomas was one of the Twelve and he wasn’t with the Disciples first came to them after He’d risen from the dead, and so the other Disciples said to him, ‘Thomas, we’ve seen the Lord, He’s alive’. But Thomas said, ‘Come on, unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my fingers where the nails were and put my hand into His side where they pierced Him, I am not going to believe this rubbish.’ Now work that out.

Jesus’ Disciples were in a house together and this time Thomas was with them, and though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you, Shalom.’ And then He said to Thomas, ‘Tom, come on, put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out put your hand into my side. Stop doubting and start believing.’ And Thomas just said, ‘My Lord and My God.’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me you believe and are blessed. But blessed are those who have not yet seen but they believe’.

Now I don’t know but I think I’m with Thomas. This is hard to believe when you’re close to it. What do you believe? Maybe it’s an uncomfortable question. Maybe it’s easy to consign this resurrection of Jesus thing back into the past. Kind of like a fable that we give some moderate level of intellectual assent to; a kind of vague, half-believing insurance policy thing. But the Apostle Paul takes it very seriously. In Romans Chapter 10 verse 9 he says:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead then you’ll be saved.

1 Corinthians Chapter 15 verse 17:

If Christ has not been raised than your faith is futile.

So for Paul the resurrection wasn’t some optional extra; it wasn’t some kind of distant myth; not something we can just kind of half believe, maybe. And we can say, "Look, I believe that Jesus rose from the dead." But see what Paul says here, "If you believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead then you’ll be saved and if you don’t believe from the heart that God has raised Him from the dead then you’re wasting your time."

What do you believe in your heart about the resurrection of Jesus? The resurrection can seem completely incongruous amidst the day-to-day realities of our lives. I mean, we get up and we go to work and we do all the stuff and we sit in meetings and we take the kids to school and we do all those day-to-day things. And you look around and you think, "Could Jesus in the midst of all this normality, could He have risen from the dead?"

Now stick the resurrection right in the middle of your day-to-day reality and ask me, "Berni, in the middle of all this, do you actually believe that this Jesus was raised from the dead? I mean, it seems incongruous, it’s an outrageous notion; it just doesn’t fit. Come on Berni, do you really believe this stuff?"

And my answer to you is, "Absolutely. I do. I believe in my heart that Jesus was raised from the dead." That’s me. What about you? What do you believe, and if Jesus did rise from the dead, so what? What does it mean to you here and now, today?

Living the Resurrection Okay, if Jesus did rise from the dead, what does it mean to you and me, here and now? What relevance is there in all of that for our lives? Can the resurrection of Jesus Christ have any impact on your life and mine today? I think they’re the right questions to ask. I mean, why have a resurrection at all? Why did God plan it that way, and why did He make it central to believing in Jesus? Earlier we saw how the Apostle Paul said it was essential that without faith in this resurrection there was no point:

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” “And if Christ wasn’t raised then your faith is futile."

Okay, that’s the theology if you like. Take that at face value. But why is it so important? Why does God put it right at the centre of believing in Jesus? It’s not an optional extra, it’s central. So I’m a pesky bloke; I keep asking these questions because truthfully, people never explained this stuff when I became a Christian at first, in terms that I could really understand and lay hold of. All these Christians were talking about the resurrection and the blood of the Lamb and all this sort of stuff, like it was really important. Well, great, but why?

Believing in Jesus for me is a process; it’s a lifelong thing that happens. And at some point I took the step of faith to believe in Him but what I discovered was there were lots of different parts of my life that didn’t fit with Him – selfishness, anger, judgement – and I’m a really judgemental person naturally in the flesh, all stuff that actually stunted my growth. It’s crazy how we want to hold onto the rubbish in our lives for dear life, but we do. And it turns out to rob us of life.

You know, I used to spend most of my time being angry with people because they didn’t measure up to my standards. They didn’t see the world the way I did. And you know what, that robbed me of life. So instead of peace and joy, I was always angry. There was always resentment in my heart. Not rocket science is it. Its one thing to believe with our head or our heart in Jesus and to live it out authentically requires change and that’s where the resurrection comes in. Again, the Apostle Paul writes in Romans Chapter 8:

If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit that dwells in you.

Let’s unpack that. You have the crucifixion, the death of Jesus, where Jesus paid for all our sins. You know, we turned away from God, we missed the whole point of creation, that’s what sin is (we looked at that last week) but God is loving and just. We’ve all fallen short and so Jesus died for us, and when we believe in that, our slate is wiped clean. We’re forgiven and we have a fresh start. Like a prisoner coming out of gaol having served his sentence. It’s fantastic.

But you and I know that getting rid of that rubbish in our lives that God calls sin, it’s a life-long process. Come on, we’re all naturally selfish. At least I am. Someone does us wrong somehow and we want anger and revenge and payback time. But Jesus turns around and says, "Do you want to believe in Me with your life? Well show me, go on. Go out and love your enemy, in fact pray for them."

I don’t know about you but that way of living just didn’t come naturally to me. So the process of changing we discover changing those things is really hard. I mean, it’s very hard, and in fact in some areas it’s downright impossible.

I was just talking recently with some friends and I know I’m a very outcome-oriented person and I expect everyone else to be the same. They’re not. Some people are wonderfully relationship-oriented, much more so than I am. Now those people aren’t outcome-oriented but we need them too. So what am I going to do? Do I spend my whole life getting angry with them? Do I spend my whole life complaining about people who are different to me and they don’t fit with my way of thinking and behaving? I mean, Paul bemoans this reality in Romans Chapter 7 when he says:

I can will to do what’s right I just can’t seem to do it. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The resurrection is learning to live again.

If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through that same Spirit.

God wants to bring life back to our bodies, colour into our cheeks. How many people need that in their lives right now, and they’re looking in all sorts of strange places. There a people who are broken and hurt inside; there are people who are suffering from low self-esteem; there are people addicted to anger like I was; and we go looking for solutions in all these wrong places when the solution is staring us in the face.

This isn’t some theory, its actuality. The same Holy Spirit who breathed life back into the dead body of Jesus is the Spirit that wants to give us victory over the sin of our humanity and breathe life back into our mortal bodies. That’s what the resurrection is about here and now. The Spirit wants to give us victory and a new life. Come on, this is great stuff, this is a great plan, this is good news. It’s fantastic news!

God wants to do for you and for me, here and now and every moment of every day for the rest of our lives here on earth, to keep changing us and setting us free and filling us with fresh new life what He did for Jesus when He brought Jesus back to life after the crucifixion on the Cross. God wants to give us a new life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Isn’t that awesome? In a moment we’re going to take a deeper look at that, because Jesus, as it turns out, has something very, very special for you and me.

A Certain Hope for Tomorrow Have you ever been in a place where you’ve lost all hope? Hope, as it turns out is a very precious commodity. We all need it in our lives to look forward to; to hope in the deep sense that I have future, I know where I’m going. And when there is no future it’s tragic. When we lose hope it feels like our life is over, and that’s the problem with death.

We all die at some point physically. Some die young; others watch their bodies progressively give up the ghost. If God is God though, if He loves us the way the Bible says He does, then hope will be very, very high on His list, because the last thing that would do or He would want for us is to experience hopelessness and it turns out that hope is very high on His list indeed. That’s what the whole resurrection thing is about.

It’s a funny thing, but when things are going bad in our lives, isn’t it funny how hope breaks really quickly. Have you noticed that? Look at the Disciples: over and over again Jesus told them, ‘Guys, I’m going to be crucified but I’m going to rise again. Come on!’ He told them lots of times, but when it happened, when He died, they were fearful, they were devastated, they were scattered to the four winds. They deserted Him; they completely lost sight of His promise of the resurrection, the thing that would give them hope.

Actually most of them, as we saw before, needed convincing that Jesus was alive again. Bit like us. Life takes a turn for the worst, the first thing you do is you throw hope out the window. It’s kind of natural. 1 Chronicles Chapter 29 verse 15 says:

Our days on earth are like a shadow without hope.

And let me get right in your face now for a bit, because we need some good teaching on hope. It’s not ‘hope that it rains tomorrow’ or ‘hope that it doesn’t rain tomorrow’, I mean the certain hope that faith in Jesus Christ brings. When we put our trust in Jesus in the good times and we lay down our lives and we love Him and we adore Him and we worship Him and we follow Him with our lives, I tell you what happens: when the storm clouds start to roll in, something strange and new and wonderful happens in our hearts. It’s like that hope shines and won’t go out. Peter the Apostle writes in His first letter, Chapter 1 verse 3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ …

It’s a beautiful passage, if you have a Bible grab it, and have a look:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” (I love that) “a new birth into a living hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead into an inheritance that’s imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for us who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this we rejoice, even though now for a while we’ve had to suffer various trials.

Boy that’s an understatement. The people Peter was writing to, the Christians, were being tarred and feathered, burnt at the stake, fed to the lions, killed and Peter writes to them and says, “… but you know something, when you look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ we have a certain hope for the future.”

Over and over again the New Testament talks about Jesus being the firstborn from among the dead. In other words, it points back to His resurrection. Jesus took all of our sin, He who knew no sin became sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. So He died because of our sin and He’s the first of many to rise again. He’s the firstborn, the first one in this resurrection cycle and we put our hope in that because we too when we believe in Jesus, will rise again and have eternal life. One day when my body gives up the ghost, one day I’ll stand before Jesus for ever and ever and ever.

It’s a historical fact that death couldn’t hold Jesus down, and when we put our trust in Him, that’s where we put our hope. Our problem is, we spend so much time hoping for the next pay rise, hoping for some temporal bauble here on earth that we lose sight of the living hope we have through Jesus Christ, through His resurrection. Let’s do it again:

By His great mercy He has given us a new birth. We are born again into a living hope, not an uncertain hope, not a hope that’s fleeting and fading but a certain hope – the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading that is there for you, that is there for me, if we put our faith in Jesus. And if we’re able to say before God in our hearts, ‘Jesus is your son, He died for me, He rose again’, it’s rock solid. And do you know the basis of that promise – it’s the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Look at your life for the moment, the things that aren’t going too well for you at the moment; the things that you might want to change. The reality is that we can’t change some of them. Maybe God will change some of them, I don’t know, but in the meantime He wants us to live life in the certain hope that we have a future, an eternal future. And we know that because we can look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He defeated sin on the Cross – the wages of our sin became His death. But Jesus defeated that. He paid for my sin, He paid for my sin on the Cross and still He rose again even though He bore all that sin. And that’s what awaits us.

That doesn’t compare to anything you and I can have on earth here. It just doesn’t compare. That certain hope of eternal life with Jesus far outweighs it far eclipses anything we could have here and now. John writes in the book of Revelation Chapter 21; he gives us a glimpse, like a crack opens up in heaven and he’s able to see inside:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, because the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. And I saw the Holy City – the New Jerusalem – coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them and they will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There’ll be no more death or mourning of crying or pain for the old things have passed away.

Nothing, nothing comes anywhere close to that. We wander around down here in the weeds and the murky mire and we try to get hope and satisfaction out of all sorts of things that are going to pass away. What things on this earth be able to take with us when we breathe our last, come on? That’s why God wants us to put our faith in Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s call to set our eyes and our hearts and everything we are and all our hopes and dreams on heavenly things because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ – the first among many. That’s where we are going when we trust in Jesus. Paul writes in Colossians Chapter 3 verse 1:

If you have been raised with Christ, set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things on the earth because you have died to them.

It is time my friend for you and me to start living our lives from an eternal perspective. When the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central truth, central to what we believe in our hearts, two things change. Firstly, the Holy Spirit starts taking away the rubbish that God calls sin and giving us life here and now – vibrant and abundant life. And secondly, no matter what happens, no matter how sick we get, how poor we get, we know that one day we will stand before Jesus Christ. Cry Hallelujah!

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That first Easter was so incredibly unfair. Jesus – the innocent man – was crucified and Barabbas – the man guilty of murder – walked off Scott free. If you were God, would you have done things that way?

Let’s Tarry a While It's interesting how when Easter passes us by we kind of quickly forget it and move on. It was a long weekend, it was a great time to have off and have a rest, have some chocolate. It comes, we eat chocolate, we have a long weekend, it goes, that's it, we move on, back to work, back to school, back to the empty house, whatever it is we do day after day and this week on the program and in fact over the coming three weeks we're going to dwell in Easter for a bit longer than just a long weekend. We're going to tarry and stay there a little bit longer.

And today's program is the first message in a series that I've called, "The Price He Paid For You" and as well as talking about Easter over the Easter period we're going to do the unthinkable and spend the next few weeks after Easter doing it as well. Can you believe that because it's a big thing this Easter thing? Not as a religious holiday, I don't mean that, I for one am definitely not into religion, it just doesn't work for me.

Not talking about religion, I'm talking about this big thing that God was up to at Easter. The thing that Jesus went through, the suffering, the persecution, the beating, the rejection and that death on the cross.

You and I are so incredibly special to God which is what makes you and me worth dying for. He's handcrafted us, He's made us, He's set us free in this amazing universe, always loving us but with the freedom He gave us a free will to accept Him or reject Him and when it comes right down to this, according to God, He made us, He loves us, He gave us free will and the point of all of that was for us to know Him and have this fantastic relationship with Him here and now and for all eternity.

But it doesn't matter which way we cut it each one of us in our own way we've rejected Him. I know I have, more often than we could ever imagine or count or recall and in doing that we miss the whole point. The whole point of creation, the whole point of life, the plan and the desire of God’s heart. When we turned our backs on God and we all have, we miss the whole point of life, that's exactly what the Greek word for "sin" actually means. It means to miss the mark or as we might say today to miss the point.

I know when I use the word "sin" people often write in or they call and say, "Come on, this is some kind of old fuddy-duddy concept, get with it Berni, get into today, sin just isn't relevant, it's something that priests or ministers talked about in the 1950's, get with it, it's old fashioned." I know, I know that some people think of sin that way but lets come back to Easter and the central point, the central problem of all creation is that we rejected God.

We turned our back on Him, it's hard to come to grips with. People say, 'Well I'm not a bad person, I'm not that bad, I'm okay' but let me ask you, from the moment you were old enough did you put God first? Was God always first in your life? Did you live your life as though you belonged to Him?

And the answer for all of us is, "No, we didn't." We've all done things; we've all turned away in our own way, in different ways; we've all turned our backs on God and at that Cross at a time that we now call Easter and we celebrate and we remember, on that cross God calls us home.

The consequences, what we should have paid for rejecting Him, were paid for by His Son Jesus; He died to give us a new life. Okay God calls us to a life of sacrifice, God calls us to a life of giving, He gives us a fresh new life, a wholesome life with real joy and because out of His great love He reached out to us through Jesus, He opens the door to a real and dynamic and exciting and beautiful and wondrous relationship with God.

At the heart of the message of Easter is the fact that Jesus paid the price of my sin and of your sin, of our rejection of God, our missing the whole point of creation and the fact that Jesus paid the price seems unfair don't you think?

Let's have a read, we're going to go to the Bible, if you have one grab it, we're going to open up at John chapter 18 beginning at verse 38 and we're going to read through to chapter 19, verse 16. Here it is:

What is truth, Pontius Pilate asked? With this he went out again to the Jews and said, 'I find no basis for a charge against this Jesus but it's your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release the king of the Jews? And they shouted, 'no, not him, give us Barabbas.

Now Barabbas had taken part in a rebellion. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged, the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head, they clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him and again and again and again saying, 'hail the king of the Jews' and they struck him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, 'I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.' And when Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe Pilate said to them, 'here is the man'. As soon as the Chief Priests and their officials saw him they shouted, 'crucify him, crucify him.

But Pontius Pilate answered, 'you take him, you crucify him. As for me I find no basis for a charge against him.' But the Jews insisted, 'we have a law and according to that law he must die because he claimed to be the son of God.' And when Pilate heard this he was even more afraid and he went back inside the palace.

Where do you come from?' He asked Jesus but Jesus gave him no answer. 'Do you refuse to speak to me?' Pilate said, 'don't you realise I have the power either to free you or to crucify you?' And Jesus answered, 'you would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.

From then on Pilate tried to have Jesus set free but the Jews kept shouting, 'if you let this man go you are no friend of Caesars. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.' When Pilate heard this he brought Jesus out and sat him down on the Judges seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement. It was the day of the preparation of the Passover week, about the sixth hour.

Here is your king' Pilate said to the Jews but they shouted, 'take him away, take him away, crucify him.' 'Shall I crucify your king?' Pilate asked. 'We have no king but Caesar' the Chief Priests answered. Finally Pilate handed him over to be crucified.

Pretty amazing story we're going to take a look at it in a moment.

An Innocent Man Not much regard for the rules of evidence if indeed there were any rules of evidence way back then. A good friend of mine by the name of Paul is a magistrate. Now, the more I get to know him, the more I realise how gifted Paul is to do that job. I’ve got to tell you, I’d hate to have to sit in judgment, this one goes free, this one gets locked up. And to make things even more difficult he’s a magistrate in the children’s court.

Now Paul has this really balanced thing happening in his outlook. He weighs this against that in almost everything he does. I was saying to someone else recently that when I look at Paul, what I see is someone that I’m really comfortable with being a magistrate. I’m really glad that this guy is on the bench in the children’s court because he’s absolutely the right person to be doing it.

When you look at the story of the crowd and Pontius Pilate and Barabbas and Jesus and this angry, ugly mob I see some of that in Pilate. When the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate and Jesus had been talking to him about truth, he says, "What is truth?" And he goes out to the mob and he says, "Look, I have looked into this man and I find no case against him, this Jesus."

See he wasn’t swayed initially in judgment by the religious leaders, who frankly just wanted Jesus dead because Jesus was threatening them. Jesus was going to the people and making sense to them and healing them and caring for them and loving them and standing up for them. That’s why the religious leaders wanted Him dead. That’s how poisoned that whole rule-based religion scene had become.

See Pilate wasn’t swayed by the same things that whipped up that mobbed. And all the way through this scene, over and over again, Pontius Pilate finds Jesus "not guilty". In verse 38 he says:

‘Look, I find no basis for a charge against Him’.

Again in verse 4 of chapter 19:

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, ‘Look I’m bring him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him’.

Verse 6 of Chapter 19:

You take him, you crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.

And then again, down in verse 12:

From then on Pontius Pilate tried to have Jesus set free.

See he was a man who was fairly objective and he found no guilt in Jesus the Christ. Of course there’s a marked difference between my friend Paul and Pontius Pilate in that ultimately Pilate was a weak man and he gave in to the crowd.

He never changes his judgment mind you, but based on this tradition he just rolls over because of this angry mob. And ultimately he said, "Look, look at the life of Jesus, this man who healed people and who reached out to them and who cared for them, who taught them stuff about life that made sense, of course he’s innocent." Innocent of everything except the fact that his goodness, his genuiness, stood out in stark contrast to the manipulation and the deceit of the religious leaders of the day. He threatened their power base, that’s why they wanted him dead.

Now the other player in this game is Barabbas. Barabbas is an interesting character. His name literally means "Son" which is what "Bar" means, "of the father" – "abba". "Barabbas" son of the father – Barabbas. We’ll come back to that a little later. But he is a criminal.

John tells us there in verse 40 that he’d taken part in a rebellion. If you go to Matthew’s gospel chapter 27 verse 16, Matthew calls him a notorious criminal, so it was well known that this man was a crook. Mark Chapter 15 verse 7 and Luke Chapter 23 verse 19, they both tell us that Barabbas committed murder as a part of an insurrection.

So here we have it. A well-known, notorious criminal, a murderer, Barabbas versus Jesus Christ superstar. This Jesus with rock-star status who healed the lame and the sick and the blind and stood up for the oppressed and the needs of the people against all of those of religious rulers from all that manipulation. He exposed the religious hypocrisy of those leaders. Huge crowds followed him, they listened to him, they saw him heal countless people, they saw miracles.

The same crowds just a few days before, on the day we now call Palm Sunday, when Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, they threw down palm leaves, they were shouting praises literally calling him "King of the Jews" – their Messiah, their Saviour.

Yet now, just a few days later whipped up by the religious leaders, manipulated by them again, here they are, baying for his blood. "Crucify him". What a brutal response. No wonder politicians say that the opinion polls are fickle. There’s a great saying: "A week is a long time in politics." And it was certainly true then as it is now.

Look at it again. When they’re given a choice they say, "We want Barabbas! We want Barabbas!" And of Jesus, "Crucify him!" When Pilate asked them about Jesus they said: "Crucify him". And ultimately Pontius Pilate went against his own impartial judgment. He was weak, he was afraid of the crowd. He had Jesus beaten, he had him handed over to be crucified. Wait for it, instead of Barabbas who got set free. Do you get it. It’s a switch, it’s a substitution that’s going on here.

Barabbas the son of the father was the murderer. He should have gone to the cross, but instead he was set free and the innocent Jesus was crucified in his place.

And here’s what God’s saying to us through what happened. Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of Man. "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." God said that of Jesus. Jesus was also man. He often referred to Himself as the Son of Man. He was human, He was God in the flesh, He was perfect without spot or blemish. He was totally innocent. The Son of God – Jesus; the son of the father, the son of dad – Barabbas. God is a loving Dad. There’s a radical concept here introduced by Jesus. The Jews didn’t refer to God as Dad but Jesus called Him Abba – Dad. And this man, Barabbas – Bar-abba, son of dad – is the one who gets set free.

It’s the swap over, it’s the substitution. The "Son of God" and the "son of God". Both with the same name. Jesus and Barabbas. The innocent is substituted for the guilty. Jesus went to the cross for Barabbas; Barabbas deserved it but Jesus wore it. Barabbas was the murderer but Jesus was killed. Barabbas was the one who hurt people and yet Jesus suffered in his place. Barabbas – the son of the father – was guilty and he went free. Jesus – the Son of the Father – was innocent and He went to the Cross.

And who judged Him? Not Pilate. Pilate wasn’t the one that sent Him to the Cross, it was the angry mob and the religious leaders – the very people whom He came to set free, whom He loved, whom He healed, whom He taught. They were the ones that turned against Him. They were the ones who had Jesus crucified.

So what does that mean for you and for me here and now?

Who is Barabbas Let me ask you something. Who was Barabbas? There was Pontius Pilate, there was Jesus, there was Barabbas. And then there was the angry mob in this story. To the angry mob, Barabbas was just that criminal and murderer and it was the Passover Festival. The Passover is the celebration of when God was releasing His people out of slavery in Egypt centuries before. He sent ten plagues on Egypt, on Pharaoh. And the final plague was the death of the first-born of all the Egyptians from Pharaoh’s son through to a slave’s son right through to the first born of all the animals. And yet here was the nation of Israel captive as slaves in Egypt.

And God said to them: "Look, get a lamb, kill it, takes it’s blood, smear it on the top of the door and the angel of death will pass over your house and you won’t suffer that death – that death in the tenth plague." It was only visited on the Egyptians but not on God’s people. And the way in which God’s angel passed them over was by the seeing the blood of the lamb on the door posts.

And so there’s this tradition where the Roman Governor at the Passover Festival all these years later would release one criminal to the people. And this year that criminal was going to be Barabbas. Someone who had been part of an insurgency, an uprising; someone who killed multiple people. I mean, the worst sort of all criminals possible is who Barabbas was. Bar-abba – "son of the father", one of God’s children. You see, you and I are Barabbas in this story.

I said before that attitudes to sin vary enormously in our society and so many people see "sin" as an outdated concept. But the whole point of creation was us to have a relationship with God and to give glory to God but in our free will we rejected Him just as Barabbas rejected God, just as Barabbas went out and sinned. And when we did that we missed the point. And that’s what God calls "sin". It’s conspicuous, you can’t hide it. We’re all guilty of that and ‘the wages of sin is death’.

See, God is wondrous and perfect and holy and awesome and a loving God and it’s hard to imagine love and judgment in one person. Yet my friend Paul, the magistrate, I was talking about him earlier, Paul is a really fair and compassionate man, he’s a great husband, he’s a wonderful father, but he’s also just. I look at him and it gives me some understanding at how those things fit together in God’s nature. In His love, instead of letting you and me pay the price, in His love God sends Jesus, His Son, to die in my place.

Now you and I might say, "Look, I’m no Barabbas. I haven’t killed people. I haven’t done all these horrible things." The point is, the moment we turn our back on God, the moment we reject Him, the moment we do one thing wrong – because God is holy, pure, perfect, clean – the moment we sin we deserve death. God’s Word tells us "The wages of sin in death", and yet when we put our faith in this Jesus, in this Jesus who died on our behalf, we’re forgiven.

You too are one of the sons and daughters of Abba – Dad – God. We too are loved by Him and we too can put our faith in Jesus and believe with our hearts and with our heads that on this very first Easter, on that Cross, Jesus paid the price of our sin and when we believe in Him we have complete forgiveness.

Finally, Pilate handed Him over to be crucified, so that the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying His own cross He went out to a place of the Skull which in Aramaic is known as Golgotha. Here they crucified Him and with Him two others, one on each side and Jesus in the middle. And Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the Cross.

It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’. Many of the Jews read this sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The Chief Priest of the Jews protested to Pilate, ‘Don’t write ‘King of the Jews’ but that this man claimed to be the King of the Jews.’ And Pilate answered them, ‘What I have written, I’ve written.’

When the soldiers crucified Jesus they took His clothes off, divided amongst them in four shares, one for each of them with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in a single piece from top to bottom. Let’s not tear it they said, let’s decided by lot who gets it. This happened so that the Scripture might be fulfilled which said, ‘They divided their garments among them and cast lots for my clothing’. So this is what the soldiers did.

Near the Cross of Jesus stood His mother, His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw His mother there and the Disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son and to the Disciple, here is your mother.’ And from that time on this Disciple took her into his home.

Later, knowing that all was completed and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I’m thirsty.’ A jar of wine vinegar was there and so they soaked a sponge in it and put the sponge on a stalk of hyssop plant and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When He’d received a drink Jesus said, ‘It is finished’. With that He bowed His head and gave up His Spirit.

That’s the price, the price that Jesus paid for you and for me and Barabbas. And as much as we here in the 21st Century might have a cultural problem with the notion of sin, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change God, it doesn’t change who God is, it doesn’t change why God created us, it doesn’t change the reality that you and I have fallen short of the glory of God. You and I have both rejected God and it doesn’t change the reality that He loves us so much that He sent His one and only Son.

So many people in our society have this nagging sense of guilt, this nagging sense of inadequacy, this deep down sense that they’re not good enough. And the reason is that we aren’t good enough. And God comes to us to the Cross of Jesus Christ and cries out and says to us:

I love you. You are my Barabbas, you are my child. I love you, I sent my Son to pay the price. Look at my Son, look at the Cross, put your faith in Him and you can have eternal life. A new life, a fresh life, a life that begins now, a life with me that goes on forever.

When we believe Jesus we have the forgiveness that Jesus purchased. When we believe the door is flung open into a deep relationship with God, when we believe we have eternal life, we do. Anybody, the worst criminal, you, me even if he had believed … Barabbas.

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Sin is such a funny word. Short – but judgemental. And yet this thing called “sin” lies at the heart of Easter. Jesus died to pay for our sin. So what does that actually mean – “sin”?

Sin By Another Name This week we’re still doing a retrospective on Easter and I thought we should ask a question. What makes Easter? Why did God do it? Why did God send His Son to die for you and me? Last week we saw that you and I are so incredibly precious to God. The Psalmist back in Psalm 8 asks the question. He says:

I look up your huge skies, dark and enormous, you handmade the sky, the jewellery, the moon and the stars are mounted in their settings. Then I look at little old me and I wonder, why do you bother with us? Why do you take a second to look our way, God?

It’s a good question. And the answer is that we’re so incredibly precious to God. And the more precious something or someone is, the more we do for that something or someone.

Sadly in our world today, people pick the wrong things and make them precious. People pick wealth or they pick fame or they pick career or they pick status – always these external things – and they end up sacrificing their lives to them to no avail. But you and I are different. You and I are precious in the sight of God, in God’s heart. And Easter is about Jesus on the Cross. Easter is about the most incredible sacrifice; the Son of God crucified, punished on our behalf.

We’ve had a look at that already on the program over the last couple of weeks. But He was punished for you and for me. And for a long time I wondered, why? I mean, why did God go to those lengths? Look at me, look at you – we’re not that bad. Okay, we’re not perfect, at least I’m not, but isn’t the whole ‘Easter, Cross, crucifixion’ thing just a bit extreme?

Christians talk a lot about "sin". Now for most of my life I thought of "sin" as being this really old-fashioned, stuffy, church concept. I mean, "sin"? Really? These days? Old fashioned, moralising, guilt trips. It belongs to a view of religion of the past that’s not relevant today. People are writing books about it. A well known scientist by the name of C. Dawkins wrote a book called "The God Delusion" and someone who was writing that book up said this:

The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly.

And part of that is this notion that we have in the world today, that sin is some man-made religious concept. We live in a society that denies sin, whatever that might mean to you. Right? Wrong? Well they’re fluid concepts, their circumstantial. It kind of depends what works for you.

But the word "sin" – which I, for many years thought of as this stuffy, outdated concept – the word "sin" in the Bible literally means "to miss the mark". Today we say ‘missing the point of life’. And because of the society we live in – the society that puts ‘me’ at the centre of my world, puts "you" at the centre of your world – we do whatever feels good to make us better and have more fun and more comfort.

Okay, there’s some social responsibility, but by and large we live in a selfish world. And in that society we kind of don’t notice somehow that sin’s going on. We notice the shotgun murders and that sort of thing, but in our lives day by day people deny the concept of sin.

There’s a wonderful parable called, "the boiling frog syndrome". You’ve probably heard of it. The notion that if you have some boiling water and put a frog in it the frog will jump straight out because it notices the water is hot. But if you begin with cold water and you gradually, gently heat the water the frog ultimately will die because he doesn’t that the water is getting hot and it kills him.

Global warming’s a bit like that. I mean, we’ve been denying it for years. Governments and big business have been denying it because it’s politically and economically expedient to keep pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, slowly cooking the earth. It’s been obvious but we’ve denied it.

A while ago I went to see Al Gore’s movie, "An Inconvenient Truth". Whatever your politics, whatever your views of matters "green" are, it’s absolutely a "must see" if you didn’t see it. He makes a point that the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes have almost doubled in the past 30 years. The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled in the past decade.

Malaria has spread to higher altitudes because of warming in places like the Columbian Andes – 7000 feet above sea level and at least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming by moving closer to the poles.

It kind of paints a picture of a world out of control. It’s so bent on consuming that we’re prepared to destroy the planet. When we look at the facts they’re obvious. The whole consumer treadmill, the economy based on greed, the boiling frog syndrome just denies that reality. We behave as though it doesn’t exist. We do that with a lot of things.

In the west where people are wealthy by global standards we ignore poverty, we ignore the wars and the starvation and the thousands of children that die every day of poverty. We just behave as though they don’t exist. They still do but we just ignore them.

The point of sin is that it’s a bit like that boiling frog syndrome. It’s deceptive. Through our selfishness we kind of rationalise; we deny the reality; we stick out heads in the sand and pretend. Well, it’s not my problem. I’m not the one getting things wrong. The Apostle Paul in Romans Chapter 7 verse 11 writes this. He says:

For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me and through the commandment put me to death.

You see, sin is deceptive. In 2 Timothy Chapter 3 verse 13 he writes:

Evil men and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

And Psalm 36 verse 2:

With his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.

And that’s right on the money. We kid ourselves. We try and behave as though sin doesn’t exist. Just stop and think about the last 24 hours and say, what did I do to hurt someone? What did I do to step on someone? What did I do to ignore someone? What did I do that ruined their lives and my life?

Come on, we are masters of self-deception. It doesn’t matter how much we deny it, when we look around the world, around society, around our own lives, sin is alive and well. "Missing the point of life" is alive and well and people are slaves to it like lemmings jumping over a cliff and the price … the price is being robbed of life itself. It’s walking around like a living dead.

But God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him wouldn’t perish but have eternal life.

That … that right there is what Easter was all about.

Simply No Excuse I’m going to ask you, have you ever been pulled over by a policeman for speeding. "Driver, do you know why you’ve been pulled over? Do you realize that you were exceeding the speed limit by whatever it is?" I have, and it’s a horrible feeling. And you know there is simply no excuse. Speeding kills – it’s as simple as that. Imagine speeding and killing a child coming out of a school, or someone you love or an elderly person crossing the road.

Measured against the consequences, speeding is crazy; it’s ludicrous; there’s just no way you can justify it or you can excuse it, the consequences of speeding is death. Yet most drivers speed every day. That attitude "I’ve got to get there, just got to get there. I’ll save 30 seconds, I’ll save 1 minute, I’ll save 2 minutes off my journey."

That attitude completely misses the point, doesn’t it? And that’s such a good example of sin. "Sin" means "missing the point". Come on, look at our lives, look at the stuff that we want to descend into – being selfish, being greedy, just lying a little bit, a bit of deception, pompous egos, treading on people, crushing them – and then do you know what we do? We rationalize it. We justify it. We say it’s everybody else’s fault. They don’t measure up to my mark, or they did me wrong, or that person over there hurt me and that’s why I had a go at them. Come on! It misses the point and in God’s eyes there is simply no excuse.

We began the program today with the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 8, looking up at the heavens and the stars wondering, "God who am I that you should even give me a second thought?" The Apostle Paul takes that one step further in Romans Chapter 1 and verse 20, and he writes this:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power, His divine nature, they’ve been clearly seen being understood from what’s been made, so we are without excuse.

In other words, you look around and you can’t help but come to the conclusion that God is God. It’s like speeding. When we deny God, when we turn away from Him, when we say, "No, no, no, I’m going to live my life buddy", there’s no excuse. It’s blindingly, glimpsingly obvious.

Look around. The fact that God created it all is so obvious; God’s majesty and His love and His wonders shine out through all the things He’s made. I’ve said before, we are masters of delusion and so we are.

Somehow for years I rationalised it but in my heart of hearts I knew that God was God, I knew that Jesus was the Son of God, but we get used to the fact that our lives are missing the point. We get used to the fact that we’re off doing stuff and ignoring God. And then we try even harder to have a life of meaning. We work harder to earn more money or more recognition or to get a better career or … even though in our heart of hearts we know it’s never ever going to hit the mark.

It’s like we’ve become slaves to it, we’ve become addicted to this sin, this treadmill, and we’re compelled to keep going in the same direction. Put yourself in God’s shoes for a moment.

He creates you and me out of love, in His own image, and He gives us in this universe on this earth that He’s made for us – He gives us the freedom to accept or reject Him. And this freedom comes from His love too. And He watches you and me take our freedom and reject Him and miss the whole point of creation and then suffer the consequences. And we do suffer.

Missing the point brings suffering. Sin has its consequences. Loneliness, pain, doubt, isolation, a lostness, hurts, no real sense of identity. We get to a point where we’ve completely lost sight of the fact that you and I have been created in God’s image – to delight in Him. And let me tell you, when God sees us in that state His heart aches for us.

I was reading a book in my personal time with God the other day. In the Book of Judges when Israel had rejected God so many times and they came to God because God had sent punishment on them. They were defeated and the Amorites were fighting against them, and God said, "No, forget it, you people have rejected me so many times, go worship your gods, go worship your idols, go and suffer the consequences." Then God looked down upon His people and He saw them suffering and the Bible says He just couldn’t help Himself. He had to go and help them.

That’s what God is like. He loves us. He wants to bless us. And when He sees us suffering the consequences of sin He can’t help himself. His heart aches for us. And that’s why, just at the right time, when you and I were still powerless to deal with any of that, when we were still busy rejecting God, just at the right time Jesus Christ died for the ungodly. He dragged that Cross to Calvary, He allowed Himself to be nailed to it. He took the burdens, the consequences, the pain of my sin and your sin once and for all.

He paid the price that you and I should pay and greater love has no man than to lay down His life for His friends. And whoever believes in Jesus, believes that’s exactly what happened there on the Cross of Christ at Easter. They’re set free from the burden and the consequences of their sin.

If we believe that with our lives we are free to have a relationship with God. We don’t have to live under the burden of sin anymore, as slaves to sin with our whole lives missing the point. The moment we believe in Jesus its ground zero, it’s a clean slate; it’s a start again fresh. When we look at the Cross of Christ and say, "I believe", God our Father says, "My child, I forgive you". When we put our faith in Him the gates of heaven are flung open wide and there’s a wild party.

You might say, "But Berni, I took that step years ago and look at my life!" And I say to you, have you taken that step with your life. I mean, do you live your life in that reality every day? Come on, that’s what Easter is. It’s Easter every day because by shedding Jesus blood on the Cross, by His sacrifice, you and I have forgiveness every day. Through that empty tomb you and I have a new life every day – today, tomorrow, the next day, for all eternity.

That’s it. That’s Easter.

A Personal Call Well you know, you and I are looking back on Easter. Here we are, a few weeks past Easter and you might think, why is this guy still yapping on about Easter? Why are we still looking back at Easter? Come on we’ve had the chocolate, we’ve had the long weekend. We’ve moved on, let’s get on with the rest of the year. Let’s get on with something new and fresh and exciting.

But hang on a minute, I just believe that it’s Easter every day. I just believe that God wants us to live and walk and breathe and have our being in the reality of the fact that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ and that He suffered and died to pay for my sin and your sin. He took our death, the death that we deserved, on His shoulders and He died that death for us. He rose again and He gave us a new life – a forgiven life, a life eternally in relationship with Him.

You see, you and I are so incredibly precious in God’s eyes. Do we get that? He loves us so much He’s given us this freedom to choose Him or to reject Him. And you know, every day we have that choice in the way we think, where we put our trust, what goes on in our heart, what we do, what we say, everything. Jesus died for every person who’s ever lived – for you, for me and for billions of other people. That’s a huge thing. He bore all of our sin.

Have you done something wrong and you woke up the next day – maybe you’ve hurt someone, you had an argument, you said something you wish you could take back right? – and you woke up the next day and you realise, you remember back the stupid thing you did and the consequences and the pain and the hurt. You know, you’ve hurt someone you love, whatever it is, and you just have to live through the consequences of that. It’s sin. It’s a terrible feeling. You know what I’m talking about.

Imagine if you could experience it in one time, the consequences of all the mistakes, every sin you have made in your whole life. How would that feel? It would be unbearable wouldn’t it? If we could feel all our sin and the consequences of it in one moment I think it would kill us. It would be unbearable. So now put yourself in Jesus’ sandals for a minute. He bares the pain, the punishment and the consequences of all the sins of the whole of the human race for all time at that one place on the Cross.

My, how Jesus suffered. We just can’t see this as some huge macro act of God in history – it is that but if we restrict it to that we miss the point. Jesus died for the one, He died for me, He died for you to set us free from the slavery of sin, the slavery of living a life that completely misses the point, the slavery of living a life that will end in eternal separation from God.

You know the worse bit about slavery? It’s the fear, it’s the lurking knowledge deep down inside that we’re missing the point of our lives. And at the end of the day there will be a reckoning. That makes the life of sin a true life of slavery. In Hebrews Chapter 2 verse 14 it says this:

Since we’re human, of flesh and blood, Jesus too shared in our humanity so that by His death He might destroy Him who holds the power of death (that’s the devil) and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For this reason He had to be made like His brothers and sisters in every way in order that He might pay the price for the sins of the people.

How many people live life in the fear of dying? I used to. I don’t any more because I know I believe in Jesus. I know that when I die I will go to be with the Lord my God, not because I’m such a great person but because I believe in Jesus. No more fear, no more lurking sense of a life without purpose, a life that’s missing the whole point. Paul in Galatians Chapter 5 verse 1 says:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

In other words, the reason Christ did what He did was to give us freedom.

Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

You know, we can run but we can’t hide. You and I can pretend that it’s not there. We can do the boiling frog thing and say, "Sin’s not an issue in my life. There’s no such thing any more in this day and age."

But sin is a reality, sin is slavery, sin has consequences. We keep on doing those same old, same old, same old things chasing after money or fame, treading on people, hurting people, whinging about people, whatever it is, whatever your brand of sin whatever your Achilles heal is – we keep doing that and it has consequences, it ruins relationships, it ruins our lives and it misses the whole point.

I want to ask you again today, have you given your life over to this truth. I mean day by day do you walk, think your thoughts, make your choices in the wonderful knowledge incredible gift of life. Jesus died for you. Jesus paid the price for you. Jesus, here and now is calling you to be free of the slavery of sin and death once and for all by putting your faith in Jesus. Not just a single one-time act but a life lived in the truth and reality that Jesus died for you, that you might be forgiven. Jesus rose from that grave for you so that you might have a life eternal.

This is not about taking a guilt trip here. It’s about God calling you to Himself through His Son. Do you want that more than anything? Do you want to be close to God? Do you want to be with Jesus for the rest of eternity from this moment forward? Why don’t you pray this prayer with me?

Father,I’ve heard the message of Jesus today. I believe that Jesus died on the Cross for me and I want to accept Him as my Saviour, the one who set me free from the slavery of sin. But not just my Saviour, I want to accept Him as my Lord. I give my life, God, into your hands for you to be the Lord of my life above all other things, all other hopes and dreams and desires. Father, I’m so sorry for the things I’ve done in the past. I turn away from them right now. I want you to fill me up to overflowing with your Holy Spirit. Father give me the new life Jesus died and rose again to give me. I want to know Your peace and Your freedom and Your joy and Your love. I give my life to you in Jesus name. In Jesus name, Amen.

This is where life is at. Not some rule-based constricting religion – freedom … freedom from all the things that we are enslaved to that ruin our lives. Freedom from wandering aimlessly through life towards a disastrous end, Freedom from the consequence of our sin and into a life with purpose and meaning and joy and wonder and glory, a life that only gets better and better, a life that goes for all eternity.

Will there be trials in this life? Is it tough following Jesus? You bet you. Jesus never promises a bed of roses, He never promises a cake walk. In fact Jesus promises that when we put our faith in Him, there will be trials, there will be people and spiritual forces that come against us. But ultimately putting our faith in Jesus is about a new life.

That’s it. That’s what Easter is all about. That’s what Jesus was doing on the cross for me and you. All we need to do is to hear that message and let it sink into our hearts and hold onto that deep inside and never ever let it go. Easter. Jesus. Freedom. Life.

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As we head towards Easter yet again, perhaps it’s time to think about – well, what makes us so special, that God would do this Easter thing for us?

An Intimate Knowledge It’s always something special to me, that time of the year we call Easter. So we are going to carry it on a little longer this week in the Easter story. This is my 17th Easter since I became a Christian. And it just never ceases to amaze me what the Easter story is all about. It’s a good time for us to think about what God was up to. I mean, Christmas seems like it was just a few weeks ago. Hey, you know, that’s when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the whole baby in the manger thing; Jesus becoming a man.

But Easter for Jesus didn’t happen just a few months after Christmas. Easter for Jesus happened about 33 years later during the Passover celebration. It was the time when Israel celebrated the freedom that they had out of slavery. They’d been slaves in Egypt for a few centuries; God had sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to let His people go and God sent a whole bunch of plagues on the nation of Egypt. And the last plague, the most powerful plague, was the first born of every Egyptian family, their animals as well, the firstborn was killed by God and that ultimately convinced Pharaoh to let God’s people go.

But it didn’t happen to the Israelites. You see, they were slaves in Egypt and God said to them, ‘Look, you get a lamb and you slay that lamb, and you put that lamb’s blood on the top of your door frame and the angel of death will pass over your house and this plague upon Egypt won’t befall your house. And so the Passover celebration was the celebration of the freedom that Israel received from slavery by the shedding of the blood of the lamb. And that of course is what Easter is all about.

So here Jesus was in His early 30’s and it’s the Passover celebration and it’s the time that we remember Jesus not only came to earth as a man, He not only walked through every trial and temptation that you and I do, He not only healed the sick and cast out demons and preached with power, He laid down His life for you and for me. He died for us!

Now we will look at the how and why of that, but for me, Easter begins long, long before that. You look at God and you say, "Well, why did you go to such an extreme? What was this all about – you sending your Son, your only Son Jesus, your beloved and you let Him be spat upon and beaten and crucified?"

Easter is God saying to us that you and I are "to die for". Now the term ‘to die for’ is a contemporary term. If you’re not aware it’s SMS shorthand; you know, the kids as they send the SMS messages to one another often put the word "to die for" They don’t write it out in full, they write it as 2di4 and it’s shorthand for something that you just have to have. A girl might send an SMS to a girlfriend of hers and talk about a boy, say, "He was 2di4". A boy might look at a car or a motorbike and say, "That car or that motorbike is 2di4". Something that’s ‘to die for’ is something that you just have to have. And so that’s why we’re talking about it right now because that’s what Easter’s about. And this term "to die for" started me thinking, God was prepared to send His son "to die for" you and me. You and I, in His eyes, in His heart, we are "to die for".

There’s a beautiful Psalm. You may have heard me talk about this Psalm before. We’re going to spend today looking at this Psalm. If you have a Bible grab it, open it up at Psalm 139 because Psalm 139 is a Psalm that I guess lays the foundations of Easter for me. It lays the foundations of "to die for". We’re going to unpack this whole idea and have a look at what was going on in the Father’s great and mighty heart. What was He thinking? How was He thinking about you and Me when He hatched Easter.

Easter’s a hard thing to get our hearts around; it’s a hard thing to get our minds around, but Psalm 139 is a great place to start. Psalm 139 tells us just what was going on in God’s heart. What drove God towards this amazing plan that we now call Easter? Let’s have a read. If you have a Bible open it up. Psalm 139. We’ll just look at verses 1-12 to begin with. This is what it says:

Lord, you searched me and you know me. You know me when I sit down, you know when I rise up, you know my thoughts from a long, long way off. You discern my going in and my lying down; you’re familiar with all my ways. Before even a word is on my tongue you already know it completely, Lord. You hem me in; behind me, in front of me, you laid your hands upon me. Such knowledge is just too wonderful for me. It’s too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens you’re there. If I make my bed in the depths of hell you’re still there. 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, your right hand me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me, even the darkness isn’t dark to you. The night will shine like day because darkness is like light to you.

Isn’t it a beautiful Psalm. They’re not just words. This man who wrote the Psalm is pouring out his heart about how wonderful God is. And the three things that jump out at me in this short passages, the first few verse of Psalm 139: firstly how intimately God knows us. "Lord, you’ve searched me, you know me. You know when I sit down, you know when I get up, you know when I go out, you know when I lie down, you know what I’m thinking. Even before I say a word you know what words are going to be on my lips. Lord you know me." God knows us intimately.

Sometimes Easter feels a little bit like a retailing phenomenon. You know, lets go buy chocolate eggs, have a long weekend, have a rest. And if God is a busy God and He doesn’t have time for us then He doesn’t love us. But that isn’t who God is. He knows you and He knows me, everything we’re thinking, everything we’re doing, everything we’re hoping for, everything we’re for hurting for … God knows us.

And secondly, He’s on this journey with us. "Lord you hem me in: you’re behind me, your in front of me, you’ve laid your hands upon me." It’s interesting you know, when this was written all the other God’s that all the other nations worshipped lived in static places. They lived in temples, on hilltops and people went up to the hills to worship them in their temples. But this God whom the Psalmist is writing about, this God spent 40 years on a journey in the wilderness with His people Israel. You can read some more about it in the Book of Exodus.

This God sent up home amongst His people in the temple in Jerusalem when they finally crossed over into the Promised Land. This God has a heart to be with His people. It’s His heart’s cry. We hear it time and time and again from the beginning of the Bible, way back in the Old Testament, to almost the end. In the second last chapter of the Book of Revelation. God over and over says this:

‘I will be your God and you will be My people. And I will make my dwelling place among you’.

God is a God who is on this journey with us. Even in hell, even in heaven, even if we go to the farthest part of the world, even there God is with us. His presence, His face – that’s literally what the Hebrew means – His face is there. Even when it falls dark, surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become like night around me. But God, even in the darkness it won’t be dark to you. The light will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you.

God is in those dark places and He’s not some distant God. This is not some unmoved mover. You know, someone who just doesn’t feel for us. This God is a God who knows us – wonderfully, and beautifully and intimately – and He’s on the journey with us. And I know that’s hard for us to fathom. There are billions of people who’ve lived down through the ages and He knows each one of us more and more intimately than we can ever imagine.

That’s what God’s like. He knows each one of us like that. And that for me sets the scene for Easter.

He was There We’re taking a look today at what was going on in God’s heart. What was He thinking when He was dreaming up this whole Easter thing? It’s an amazing plan. God sends His Son to earth to be beaten and spat upon and crucified, to die on that brutal Cross at the hands of men. Psalm 139, which is the Psalm we were looking at the break, tells us about His motivations behind Easter. It doesn’t talk specifically about Easter, but it tells us what God’s heart is for us.

And we just had a look at the first part of that Psalm to show us that God knows us intimately, He’s on every step of the journey with us. And that’s huge … to know that God is walking every step of the way with us. There is nowhere we can go and be alone or apart from Him, even in heaven or hell. But how is it that He knows us this well?

I mean, sometimes we don’t even know ourselves, do we. We can’t explain why we do what we do or how we react to something or why we did that. You and I are pretty complex creatures. There’s so many layers to who we are. Some things are so deep inside us, we can’t really understand them or talk about them ourselves. So how does God know?

Well the writer of the Psalm goes on to explain that. Let’s have a read now of Psalm 139 going on to verse 13 to 16. If you have a Bible, grab it. This is what it says:

For God, you created my innermost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that so well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days were ordained for me, they were written in your book even before one of them came into being.

That’s one of the most precious passages in the Bible to me. As I look back on my life, and you too, there’s a mixture of wonderful and desperate; beautiful and ugly. We’ve both done some brilliant things and we’ve done some really stupid things. There are great heights and there are dark valleys. But when you and I were conceived, God was there. My innermost parts – who I am; your innermost parts – who you are. A DNA blueprint – the way that we look and sound and all our gifts and abilities and strengths and weaknesses – all that, those layers of complexity He created in our innermost being. He knit you and me together in our mothers wombs.

Imagine you and I have been handcrafted by God. Distinctive, one of a kind, completely, utterly, amazingly, beautifully, wondrously made. Separated and different from any other person who has ever lived or any other person who will ever live. Intricately woven together, each strand of DNA laid down according to God’s plan.

But not only that, not only who we are, but everything that would ever happen to us. Look at it again. ‘All the days that were ordained for me, they were written in your book before one of them came into being.’ I so despair when I meet people who waste away their lives worrying and complaining about their lot. Yes, some people seem to have better lives than others. Some people seem to get all the breaks and the benefits and the blessing and other people seem to get handed more difficult lives – painful lives. A bit like Jesus; people like the Apostle Paul. But that’s all part of God’s plan.

There’s a beautiful poem, you might have heard it once before and it goes something like this:

My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me.I cannot choose the colours as He weaveth steadily, Sometimes He chooses dark threads and I in foolish pride Forget He sees the upper and I the underside.

Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly Shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reasons why The dark threads were as needful in the weaver’s skilful hand As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He hath planned.

You and I are what He made us to be. We’re living the lives He planned for us, lives He always knew that we’d live. Nothing is a surprise to God. And when we put our faith in Him we experience the most incredible joy.

I was having lunch recently with a women who is well into her 70’s now, whose husband, quite a few years back, committed suicide. How devastating would that have been. But she put her faith in Christ. She spent time in God’s Word and she has this quiet joy and a beautiful countenance about her. She could have lived the rest of her life bitter, but no, she’s live it in Christ.

And when we see the beauty of God’s plan, handcrafted as we are by Him to live the life that He laid out before time began, we get some sense of what was going on in His heart when He came up with this plan for Easter. Because we can only live the life He has planned if we live it with Him.

We have a basic problem, that problem is called "sin". It’s the things that we’ve done wrong that keeps us away from Him. And that’s what Easter’s about. We’re going to look at that shortly.

That’s Huge … As we continue to look back on Easter, one of the things that I hope we’ll ponder is the reaction of the writer, the Psalmist, the person who wrote Psalm 139 that we’ve been looking at today. There’s a sense of awe and wonder as He ponders how intimately God knows Him, how faithfully God hangs in there with Him, and the wonder of God’s craftsmanship and plan. Look again at what the Psalmist writes in verse 6:

Such knowledge is too high for me, it is so high I can’t attain it.

Verse 14:

I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, oh God, that I know very well.

Verse 17:

How weighty are your thoughts oh God, how vast is the sum of them. I try and count them but they’re more than the sand on the beach. I come to the end and I’m still with You.

Easter is the time when God sent His Son to die for us, to solve this basic problem of humanity that we have. A problem that God calls "sin". And I know, "sin" used to sound like such an old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy word to me too, but it is the problem of humanity. And we’ve been looking at that over the past few weeks. But the thing that oozes out of this Psalm for me – that speaks so much about God’s motivation behind Easter – is His incredible love. We will never ever be able to wrap our minds and hearts around God’s love completely. We’ll never, ever be able to understand how God feels about us.

God says in His Word that one day we’ll stand before Him and all things will be revealed. I can’t imagine … I just can’t imagine looking at God; I can’t imagine looking on the face of Jesus; I can’t imagine knowing and understanding fully how much He loves us. And when He created you and when He created me individually and wondrously and perfectly handcrafted you and me – intricately woven together in our mother’s womb – that was the most amazing act of grace because He knew when He did that, that you and I would reject Him. He always knew that.

He always knew that to bring us back to Him, to save us from ourselves, to save us from what we deserve – which is an eternity without Him – He’d have to send Jesus to die on that Cross for you and me. No if’s, no but’s, no maybe’s – you and I, our sin, our rebellion are no surprise to God. He always knew and He still created us. He still allowed us to be born and He still planned every day of our lives, even before any of those days existed at all. That blows me away. No wonder the Psalmist writes:

How weighty are your thoughts to me oh God, how vast is the sum of them. I try and count them but they’re more than the grains of sand on the beach.

Because behind Easter is this amazing act of grace. Not just that Jesus came to suffer and die for our failure but that God always knew that by creating us He would have to do that. And yet He created us anyway.

Could I encourage you never ever put Easter in some measured little box; never ever to consign Easter to some head knowledge thing, but like the Psalmist be blown away by God’s love. Every breathe you take, every step, every hilltop, every valley, every twist, every turn, everything that we have to suffer and bare – live it in this awe and wonder of who God is and how much He loves you in Jesus. Life takes on a completely new meaning and vibrancy and colour.

Doesn’t matter how much we have to suffer, how much we have to weep, how many tears we cry, we know that God has a plan and He always, and God was there when you were handcrafted by Him in your mother’s womb. God always had a plan for you to be who you are, for you to live the life that He’s given you and for you to have a life through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus. And for you and me to walk in wonder and awe of the completely unattainable knowledge of His love for us in Jesus Christ.

We’ve been looking at that over the last few weeks and we’ve seen how His love plays itself out on the Cross. But right now, unless we are completely lost in the wonder of His plan and His love, you know what, I think Easter just becomes another long weekend, doesn’t it? Listen to the Psalmist:

God I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are so wonderful that I know full well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you when I was made in that secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days that were ordained, they were already written in Your book before any of them as yet came into being. How precious to me are your thoughts oh God, how vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they’d outnumber all the grains of sand on the earth. When I awake I’m still with you.

You see, you and I are "to die for" in God’s sight. God created us. He knew that we’d rebel, He loved us and He knew that His Son would have to come and die for you and for me. That, my friend, is what Easter is about. Because your rejection of God, my rejection of God severed the perfect relationship that we can have with God. And God is good, He’s righteous, He’s perfect. Ultimately when we reject Him, when we sin, when we turn against Him, when we do what we know is wrong, somebody has to pay that price.

Now, if you look at our law and our judges, they don’t work perfectly, but if we do something wrong, someone has to pay the price. That principle of justice comes from the very nature of God. God is a just God and He’s a loving God and God’s justice and His love were in conflict. Justice demanded that we be punished, love demanded that we be forgiven. On the Cross they come together, on the Cross they merge. Through the death of Jesus the demands of justice are met and the demands of God’s love to set us free, to have a new life, are met as well.

Friend, Easter is about the central devastating sickness of humanity. Easter is about setting you and me free from our sin to give us a new life. That’s what it’s all about. That’s why we celebrate Easter. The chocolates are nice, the long weekend is nice, the church services are nice for those who go but bottom line God sacrificed His Son so that you and I could have an eternal relationship with Him.

It’s relationship that begins the moment we put our faith in Jesus Christ. Let’s call our sin for what it is – it is sin. And friend, as much as we look in the mirror and we see wrinkles and warts and failures and bad things, God knows those, that’s why He sent His Son Jesus to die on a Cross for you and for me, and that my friend, is Easter.

If you have never put your trust in Jesus, then you do not know the freedom of God’s forgiveness. The moment we believe that Jesus died to pay for our sin and through His death we’re forgiven by God, the moment we accept that and believe that my friend, we are set free to live a new life. That’s why Jesus rose again – to give us a new life. And that new life begins here and now. That is Easter.

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If God is a God of blessing – then what about all the suffering we go through? And anyway, if God does bless, does that just mean a new car and a bigger house?

Does God want to Bless Me? Perhaps you’ve heard people say that we’re “Blessed to be a Blessing”. But man, it’s so easy to get the wrong idea about what God really, truly means by that word “blessing”. I see so much misunderstanding about God and His heart and where He stands on blessing us.

There seems to be a couple of extreme positions on this whole subject of God’s blessing – two opposite ends of the spectrum, if you like. On the one end, it goes something like this. God wants to bless me, therefore, I should believe Him for the new Mercedes convertible, more money and a bigger house and a big diamond ring. In effect it kind of reduces God down to some sort of sugar daddy: it's all about me, I am at centre stage – I name it and I claim it. And you know something, lots of Christians believe that.

Now the problem that I have with that end of the spectrum is that when I take that and I hold it in one hand and I hold the cross of Christ in the other – when I look at Jesus, this Jesus that gave up everything for me; this Jesus who was nailed to a cross, beaten and bruised and brutalised, not even with the clothes on His back – and I compare those two things, you know something, this end of the spectrum over here, jars with that, don’t you think? And it leads to some of the worst excesses – the tele-evangelists pressuring people for money and flying around in their private jets. Is that where that should end up? I mean is that what God’s blessing is all about?

The other end of the spectrum is you have to be poor to serve God. Money is evil. In fact, we just had a phone call, just the other evening, in the middle of the night, someone responding to a program, saying, "money is evil". Well, no that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil”, but money itself isn’t evil. "People who are rich are evil."

I was talking to a man in India recently. India by and large, is a country of extremes – there is the very rich and there’s a large, large number of very, very poor people. And this man was being very critical of a Christian leader who just happened to have a nice house in a nice area. He believed that it was wrong for him to have money.

Then I looked at this end of the spectrum – you have to be a pauper to serve God. And then I go to the Bible and I read about Abraham, who was God’s chosen man; he was very wealthy. I read about King Solomon, he was very wealthy. Yet King Solomon was still God’s anointed leader over Israel. He was full of God’s wisdom.

Do you see the problem? You go to either end of the spectrum and you take teaching about God’s blessing to the extreme and you know, I think you end up with the wrong answer. God is a God of balance and when we look at our lives, what we see is that we go through times of blessing, where there’s joy and everything seems to be going well and we all go through difficult times.

You see the problem. At one end you can have people getting the extreme prosperity thing in their heads and we can end up thinking it’s all about us. It plays right into the hands of the world; it’s the me, me, me – the next plasma TV, the next car, the next big thing. If you don’t have that, obviously you don’t have enough faith.

On the other hand, if you have this perception that you have to be poor to be a Christian, well if that were the case, who would ever fund the work of the Lord on this planet? God has always chosen to fund His work through His people. And then on top of the pure monitory thing, there’s the reality of tragedy and pain and suffering. I mean some of these things are indiscriminate – earthquakes, tsunamis, a young person who loves God dies of cancer, in a car crash or there’s divorce or there’s retrenchment or there’s all that stuff of life that we all experience some times. Are you with me?

So what’s God’s plan? Does God want to bless me or not? Is it okay for me to ask for His blessing? Is it okay for me to expect His blessing, or is that presumptuous? This is an important question. It is in a sense where the ‘rubber’ of faith hits the ‘road’ of life. It’s when it comes to faith in God being active, right in the midst of life’s realities today, the things we all have to face. We get up in the morning, we pray, we look forward to the day … How do I pray, what do I give thanks for? That difficult situation that’s going be confronting me at work today, can I ask God to help me with that? Is God in all of that?

That’s why we are doing this series "Blessed to be a Blessing". I’m a simple man. I open the Bible, I see what God’s Word says on a subject and you know God is largely a God of balance. I love to be empowered with God’s Word and hopefully as we share these next twenty, twenty five minutes together we will both be empowered by God’s Word.

The problem with teaching on blessing is that you just can’t take one verse and say, "That’s it! See, God is a God who blesses; therefore I can ask Him for the next big car". You end up with an extreme position. Just as if you say, "You can’t have any money to serve Jesus. You have to sell everything you have, give it all away", because Jesus did say that to one young ruler. I’d like to look at God’s perspective; the whole thing. Is God a God who blesses?

Well, let’s just start with what we mean by the word "bless"? It has a number of different meanings but the main connotation is God’s divine favour – God intervening to make something better or to give us something that will bring us joy or happiness, financial blessing, spiritual blessing, physical blessing, healing, anything and everything. God’s divine favour – His blessing becoming active in our lives. The question is, is God in the blessing business?

The word "bless" or "blesses" or "blessed" or "blessing", appears three hundred and fifty eight times in the Bible. The first time you see it is in the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, verse 22. Let’s go there and have a bit of a look at what God’s up to. Genesis chapter 1 is the account of God’s creation. He creates the light out of darkness and the heavens and the earth and the oceans and the dry land and the plants. And the first time He creates a living creature, this is what He says:

So God created the creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems. According to all their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind and God saw that is was good and God ...

Listen to this:

... and God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas and let the birds increase on the earth’.

The second time that the concept of ‘blessing’ happens in the Bible is in that same chapter, a few verses on, verse 26:

Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image and in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female, He created them. God blessed them and said to them” – see, there it is again – “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over every living creature that moves on the ground.’

And then God said, ‘I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it, they will be yours for food and all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground; everything that has breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.

That’s creation! Let me ask you something – do you think God’s in the business of blessing us?

If God Blesses why do we Suffer? So we’ve looked at God’s own account of His creation, Genesis chapter 1. The very first living creatures He creates, He blesses them. He says, "Go and multiply, increase in number and fill the earth." And He creates humanity, man and woman, and He hands the whole of that creation over to them. What an enormous blessing! You and I are joint owners in creation! Why? Because God created us in His own image and then He handed the whole thing over to us. Just stop and think about that for a minute.

What a huge blessing! Right at the point of creation, God was in the blessing business. That’s profound! And His plan for us was to live in relationship with Him – Adam and Eve. Genesis, chapter 2, verse 15:

The Lord God took the man and put him is the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.

A perfect plan of blessing and as you probably know, Adam and Eve rebelled. They did the one thing that God said, ‘don’t do’ and there were consequences. Rebellion against God always has consequences.

To the woman He said, “I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing, with pain you will give birth. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” To Adam He said, “Because you listened to your wife and you ate from the tree about which I commanded you ‘you must not eat’, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you’ll eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken – for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Enter pain and suffering because humanity rebelled against God. And for the rest of the history of humanity, there are consequences. Now you might say to me, “Berni that is so insensitive. If there’s a still born baby, if tens of thousands are killed in a tsunami, if some young teenager is raped and murdered, how can you say that?”

Here it is, God made us in His image but when who He is doesn’t suit us, we try and remake Him into our image. God is a God of blessing – that was His plan, that’s why He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But they rebelled and when that happens there is an interruption of blessing, there’s an interruption in the relationship with Him.

Have a look at it. In Leviticus chapter 26 is a perfect summary of where God stands on this. It’s a summary of the old covenant; the relationship between God and Israel. And He lays out the relationship in this chapter. Let’s go there and begin at verse 1. He says:

Don’t make idols or set up a sacred stone for yourselves, don’t place a carved stone in your land to bow down to it because I am the Lord your God. If you observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary, I am the Lord. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commandments, I will send rain in its season and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field will be full of fruit and your threshing will continue until grape harvest and grape harvest will continue until planting and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.

I will grant you peace in the land and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid of them. I will remove savage beasts from the land and the sword will not pass through the country. You will pursue your enemies and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I will look on you with favour and make you fruitful and increase your numbers and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last years harvest when you have to make room for the new one.

I’ll put my dwelling place among you and I won’t abhor you and I walk among you and be your God and you will be my people. I’m the Lord God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yolk and enabled you to walk with your heads high.

But, but if your won’t listen to me and carry out all these commandments and if you reject me and my decrees and you abhor my laws and fail to carry out those commandments and so violate this covenant, then I will do this - I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease and fever will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies, those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee, even when there is no one pursuing you.

See, God first and foremost is a God of blessing. He wants to be in relationship with His people and He is God – He gets to say this is how it is. And when Israel turned against Him, there were consequences. And you and I both have rebelled against God; we both have turned our backs on God at some point in our lives. I was talking to a man just the other day. He’s my own age, he’s a good friend of mine and he was talking about his three adult sons. This man had a dream to bless his sons.

He’s an entrepreneur. He’s good at making money. He worked as a team with his sons; he wanted to build a business empire and to see them blessed and their children blessed. But one by one, they rejected him and his plans – they didn’t honour their father. They went their own way; they turned their backs on him. It sounds like a parable, doesn’t it? This is a true story – a friend of mine.

And this is what my friend said to me, he said, “Berni, I really wanted to bless them, I wanted to give to them but now that they have rejected that, in their self-centered, selfish ways, I can’t bless them.” and it’s the greatest sadness of his life. That man is made in the image of God. What he said about his heart to bless his sons is exactly, exactly where God is coming from.

God is a God of blessing, but when we reject Him, when humanity rejected Him, when you and I as individuals rejected Him, it interrupts the relationship. And it’s in that relationship that we are blessed – that’s God’s plan. So we’ve all done that. Can we still go to God and ask Him to bless us?

Can I ask for God’s Blessing? I hope that as we have looked into God’s Word so far on the program, it’s had a profound impact on you. God’s heart is to bless us – it’s in His very nature. That’s what creation was all about. A huge abundant, indescribable blessing from Him to us. But when we reject Him, when we try to reconstruct God in our own image rather than accepting Him for who He is, we interrupt that blessing. It’s as simple as that. Now we have all done that, so can we still ask God for His blessing, for His favour, for His grace? Absolutely, because God is a God of forgiveness.

I’d like to take you to a place, a prayer by a man called Jabez. Someone wrote a book about this a few years ago and it became very prominent, but this prayer is in the Old Testament. If you have a Bible, grab it. We are going to First Chronicles, chapter 4, verses 9 and 10. It‘s in the middle of nine chapters of genealogy, you know, so and so begat so and so who begat so and so who begat so and so - nine chapters - riveting! Smack bang in the middle of that God stops and tells us the story of this Jabez. Obviously He thought it was important enough to break this riveting flow of the genealogies. Good stuff, thank you Jesus. Here’s the prayer of Jabez:

Jabez was honoured more than his brothers and his mother named his Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, saying, “O God, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory and that your hand might be with me and that you might keep me from hurt and from harm.” And God granted his request.

Jabez gets called "You’re a pain" by his mother. Imagine if your mother or my mother named us that. Not a great start in life is it? Mustn’t have been for Jabez because Jabez cried out to God. He cried out to Him in desperation, out of his pain, out of his imperfect life. We don’t know much more about him but what we do know is that everybody has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and he rejected God in his life at some point, just the way that you and I have. And in his desperation he calls out to God.

You might say, "Berni, how do you know that Jabez rebelled?” Let me ask you, if you’re a parent, what’s the first or the second or the third word that every child learns? "No!" Isn’t it? And God’s Word clearly teaches that we all have turned our backs on Him. So Jabez is a fallen man just like you and I are fallen human beings. What does Jabez ask God? “God, that you would bless me indeed.” Not just any sort of blessing an ‘indeed’ blessing; not just an ordinary blessing of God, “I really, really, God, want you to bless me.”

Secondly he asks God to enlarge his territory. In the Old Testament, land was very important, in terms of blessing. I mean, land is somewhere we live. If you have a house in the suburbs, you might take that for granted. If you happen to live in a Liberian refugee camp in Sierra Leon, where you are listening to this program, you won’t be taking land for granted. Jabez asks God to enlarge his territory.

Thirdly that God’s hand might be with him. What a great blessing that is! And fourthly, that God would keep him from hurt and harm. And listen to what it says, (Jabez is a person just like you and me) listen to what it says next. It says, “And God granted his request.” This man put his faith in God and he asked God for a blessing.

Once I discovered this prayer, I started praying it regularly, with my own twist. I said, “God, that you would bless me indeed today. I want to see your presence; I want you to be with me. God, that you would increase my borders and my territory. That more and more people would listen to these programs.”

You know, I started praying that two years ago when these programs were being listened to by a few people on a few stations and now they are listened to by hundreds of thousands, even millions of people in over eighty countries around the world. God answers those prayers. “God that you would send your hand with me that doors would open for the work that we do and that you would keep me from evil that I wouldn’t cause any pain.” It is just the Lord laid on my heart.

The point is we can ask God for blessing. God is a God of great blessing and blessing happens in relationship with Him. When we reject God – listen to me – when we reject God it breaks the blessing. Just like that friend of mine that I was talking about with his sons. God wants to bless you … God wants to bless me and there’s a purpose; there’s a reason for His blessing. It’s not just for us but as we will see over the next few weeks on the program, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others.

But right from the beginning, right from the first creature that He created on this earth, He wanted to bless them. And when he created humanity, He wanted to bless them. And when He had a relationship with His people, Israel, He wanted to bless them. And we all turned our backs on Him and so God then gave us the greatest blessing that there could possibly be – He opened the door to a relationship with Him through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. God is a God of blessing.

Yes, we go through ups and downs in our lives, and we’re going to have a look at some of those things over the next few weeks, but when I open the Bible I see a God who wants to engage, not just with humanity as a whole, but with little people like you and me and His heart is to bless us.

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Sometimes, we can be walking in the promises of God, and things start getting tough. Opposition. Battles. What’s going on? Is it time to give up? What happened to all those promises?

THE SPIRITUAL BATTLEFIELD Well over these last weeks on the program we've been looking at the fact that it's time to take the Promised Land. God makes so many promises of peace and of joy and His protection and forgiveness and eternal life, the list goes on and on and you know you and I can come up with so many excuses in our lives as to why those promises couldn't possibly ever be for us. It's true, we do. In a sense those excuses are completely natural and understandable.

There was a young woman who wrote recently in response to a program, I want to share with you what she wrote because it's kind of a road we all travel sometimes, this is what she said:

For a while now I've been getting negative thoughts and saying negative things, I know the devil's doing it and not God but it won't stop. I want so much to do Gods will and to walk in His ways, am I going mad? Will this wreck my relationship with God? I so much want to do His will for His glory and not mine. I want to be a serving and faithful servant for Him.

I have all these problems; I say bad and negative things. I can say things without thinking, I tell lies and other unchristian things, what does it mean for me? Is it going to ruin my relationship with God?

See this young woman is struggling with the realities of life. She wants to live in that Promised Land but somehow she's just, she just can't see how it's for her, she just can't seem to get there. We all struggle with these things, we struggle with doubt, we struggle with our failings, will this wreck everything with God? We go over that over and over again. Listen to me, it is time to take the Promised land.

Over the last three weeks on the program we've been looking at Israel. God promised to Abraham, the father of Israel, this land of the Canaanites, the Promised Land. And centuries later, centuries, after Israel had grown into a large and mighty nation in slavery in Egypt God brought Moses and through a series of miracles he brought the nation of Israel, His chosen people, out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and they wandered in the desert for forty years as God purified them.

And then one day under the leadership of Joshua because Moses had just died, they're standing on the banks of the Jordan River and finally ready to cross into the Promised Land. And what they discover is that there's already a whole bunch of other people living there, the Canaanites and the Jebusites and the Amorites and all those other little vegemites were already there.

And even though this was Gods Promised Land it wasn't going to be delivered to them on a platter like a pizza, they had to go out and take it, they were on a war footing. They had to fight battle after battle beginning with Jericho, they went through a lot of battles to take the Promised Land.

You know something, it's the same with you and with me and with that young woman, we live on a spiritual battlefield. That is the reality of life. And the moment we step out and we believe in Jesus, the moment we step out and say, "Lord, I'm going to follow you in your promises", we step onto that spiritual battlefield.

John Eldridge in his book Waking The Dead makes this powerful statement, he says:

Things are not what they seem, this is a world at war.

And then he goes on to explain what he means, he writes this:

The world in which we live is a combat zone. A violent clash of kingdoms, a bitter struggle unto the death. You were born into a world at war and you will live all your days in the midst of a great battle involving all the forces of heaven and hell and played out here on earth. Until we come to terms with that war as the context of our days, we simply will not understand life.

See this is why over the last few weeks we've been working our way through this series in the Book of Joshua called, "It's Time To Take The Promised Land" because the context is war. The devil is not going to hand us God's promises on a silver platter. In fact, he is going to try to rob us of Gods promises at every turn.

We'd like to think, particularly those of us who live in the affluent west that being a Christian means living in the blessings of God and having a comfortable life and having plenty of money and taking it easy. Well I don't know if you've noticed but life is not like that especially when we step onto the spiritual battlefield by giving our lives to Jesus Christ. The moment we do that all the forces of hell are unleashed against us.

That's the reality, we shouldn't be surprised. I think that the surprise element is what makes it worse. We have these expectations of an easy and comfortable life and when satan unleashes all his devils against us, of temptation, of doubt, failure and opposition and trials and on and on and on, over and over and over, we start thinking 'wow there must be something wrong with me'.

Au contraire! Inevitably when we decide to take hold of the promises of God in our lives there will be a battle involved. Don't be surprised by this, it's in the Bible. C S Lewis in his book Mere Christianity put it like this:

One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament, seriously, was that it talked so much about a dark power in the universe. A mighty evil spirit who was held to be the power behind death and disease and sin. This universe (writes Lewis) is at war.

Wake up! The world is at war. The context of our lives following after Jesus Christ is a spiritual battlefield.

See Israel was promised this land through Abraham centuries before they even got there. Do you think when God made that beautiful promise to Abraham that he expected battles and wars and stuff? Listen again just briefly to this beautiful promise to an old man, this impossible promise in Genesis chapter 15.

The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. He said 'don't be afraid, I'm your shield and your very great reward'. But Abraham said, 'O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus.' Abraham said, 'you have given me no children so a servant in my household will become my heir.

And then the word of the Lord came to Abraham, 'this man will not be your heir but a son who comes from your own body will be your heir' and God took Abraham outside of the tent and said, 'look up at the heavens and count the stars if indeed you can count them' and then He said , 'so shall your offspring be.

And Abraham believed the Lord and God credited it to him as righteousness. And God also said to him, 'I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.' But Abraham said, 'O Sovereign Lord how can I know that I will gain possession of it?

So the Lord said to him, 'bring me a heifer and a goat and a ram, each three years old along with a dove and a young pigeon'. Abraham did that he brought all of those things and cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds however he did not cut in half.

And then the birds of prey came down on the carcasses but Abraham drove them away and as the sun was setting Abraham fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him and then the Lord said to him, 'know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years but I will punish the nation they serve as slaves and afterwards they will come out with great possessions.

You however will go to your father's in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.

And when the sun had set and the darkness had fallen, the smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and said, "To your descendants I give this land. From the river of Egypt to the river of the Euphrates. The land of the Kenites and the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites and the Rephaites and Amorites and Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Jebushites.

This was a serious promise, who would have ever had expected that is would involve battle after battle after battle after battle.

IT'S TIME So let’s go from that promise of God to Abraham centuries before into the midst of the taking of the Promised Land. Israel, under the leadership of Joshua, crossed over, they fought battle after battle, they'd taken Jericho and city after city has fallen before them. Why?

Because that's what God promised and we're going to pick up the story in Joshua chapter 18, they're not quite half way through taking this Promised Land. There are twelve tribes in Israel, five tribes have their land and seven are left to go, seven have yet to get their Promised Land.

It must have seemed like an eternity. You know when you face battle after battle, we're tempted to pull over and stop, to take a breather that kind of turns into a lunch break that turns into a holiday that turns into long service leave and before you know it we haven't got what it takes to keep going again.

I tell you, in my life in this ministry Christianityworks, I've been involved now for just on three years and the call on my heart as I took over to start producing radio programs again we weren't on any stations three years ago and today we're on over seven hundred stations in eighty countries around the world.

I have to tell you it was hard work, battle after battle after battle. Sometimes there were not enough funds and people said they'd help but then they realised how hard it was to do this work and they just didn't deliver and they fell by the wayside. And people criticised and people didn't understand, you know what I'm talking about and you get tired, you get exhausted.

It would have been so easy just to pull up, to slow down, to give up, what a temptation. And yet there was this promise of God in my heart that He'd called me to do this.

But we're all tempted to give up half way. You know the only reason I haven't is because along the way I've had some great teaching on this subject from a wonderful teacher called Joyce Meyer and there was just one message and God wrote this stuff on my heart, 'to keep going' and that's my prayer for you today, just this one message that in these few moments we spend together that He will write His word on your heart to keep on pressing forward into the promises of God.

Whether we're struggling with fear or sin or addiction or a tough relationship and we hear about Gods promises so we set out on that journey of faith but after a while, oh it's hard work and there is opposition and there are battles and we want to give up, you know what I mean. In fact my hunch is you know exactly what I mean.

And it was the same with Israel, they were almost half way into taking the Promised Land, if you've got a Bible open it up, lets listen to Joshua chapter 18.

The whole assembly of the Israelites gathered at Shiloh and set up there the Tent of the Meeting. The country was subdued before them but there were still seven Israelite tribes who had not yet received their inheritance. So Joshua said to the Israelites, 'how long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers has given you.

Appoint three men from each tribe, I will send them out to make a survey of the land to write a description of it according to the inheritance of each then you will return to me. You are to divide the land into seven parts. Judah is to remain in its territory on the south and the House of Joseph in it's territory on the north.

After you have written the descriptions of the seven parts of the land bring them here to me and I will cast lots for you in the presence of the Lord. The Levites however do not get a portion among you because the priestly service of the Lord is their inheritance and Gad and Rueben and the half tribe of Manassah have already received their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan, Moses the servant of the Lord gave it to them.

As the men started on their way to map out the land Joshua instructed them, 'go and make a survey of the land, write a description of it then return to me and I will cast lots for you here at Shiloh in the presence of the Lord'. So the men left, they went through the land, they wrote its description on a scroll, town by town, in seven parts and returned to Joshua in the camp of Shiloh.

Joshua then cast lots for them in Shiloh in the presence of the Lord and there he distributed the land to the Israelites according to their tribal divisions.

I love this passage because they're almost half way through and it begins by saying, "the whole land, the whole country was subdued before them". See so much of the work had already been done , God had done so many things, they were so far down the track and sometimes when we're tired of the battle after battle we lose sight of how far we've come. We look back and then, then we see the mighty hand of God at work in the victories.

Isn't it the same in our lives? You get tired and you think, "argh Lord this is too hard". It's time to just take a quick look back and see all the mighty things that God has done in our lives. I get such great courage from just looking back, even over these last three years in the ministry of Christianityworks and I think, "man, look at what God has done."

And once they've looked back Joshua asks the sixty four million dollar question. Joshua said to the Israelites:

How long will you wait before you take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers has already given you?

How long will you wait? See you're almost half way there. You take a breather, you pull over, you stop, you get set in your ways, you can't go any further, you lose heart, what are you people doing, how long will you wait?

What came next? There was work to be done. They sent the men out, they looked forward, they divided up the land into seven portions. See God always, ALWAYS involves us in what’s going on, He never lets us become spiritual couch potatoes, He sent three men from each tribe out to survey the land, to record the land and to choose the seven divisions.

And next they came back to Joshua and in the presence of the Lord Joshua cast lots. Really what Joshua was saying there is, "we're going to leave this up to God, we've got some work to do but God is in charge. We're going to cast lots for this land between the seven tribes in front of God and we will let God choose through the lots who gets what land."

See there's a message for us here. If we're a people thats pressing forward into the promises of God don't stop, don't pull over, don't give up. If it's a tough relationship that you've been praying over and the Lords has been leading you to do good things, to serve and to support, to humble yourself and you're tired and you want to take a breather and you think, "augh, it's just not going to happen" and get to thinking, "this isn't working, it's not going anywhere, it's time to give up".

Or God's called you to something, a ministry or a job or whatever it is that somehow, as you look back you can see all the good things He's done. But the promises seem like such a long way off. Whatever the situation, how long will you hang around here before you take the land that God has already given to you. Come on! Get up and do the things you know you have to do, do them under God and, and what?

Do you think God is going to fail you? Do you think God is just leading you up the garden path? Do you think that God has put you up the creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle? Are His promises faithful, are they worth following, are they worth it?

THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD Well are the promises of God real? In a sense in theory we can all answer, "sure, I mean if God is God and He makes a promise then it has to be real". But you know something, the theory and the reality can be two different things. I shared a little before about the battles over the last three years that I've travelled through in taking this ministry from, I guess, pretty much nothing to reaching millions of people each week.

Now I don't want any of that to seem remarkable because it's nothing that we did, God opened door after door and performed miracle after miracle to do that and it's what God's called me to do, He's called you to something different. So let's not compare as I share my story, hear what God is saying to you today about your story.

Now I'm someone who knows the theory of God's promises as well as anyone. I mean a big part of my job is to study God's Word to put together these programs. So I'm "in the theory" if you like all the time but the reality has been that it's been lots of hard work and there have been disappointments and setbacks.

And one of the hardest things has been often the people closest to us, people in our own Church, who haven't understood what we do or supported us or encouraged us, there's so many times the finances looked critical. It's still something that happens now and I find myself thinking, "why is it that the people in our own Church don't even support us?"

Or one station where we've had a huge audience for a number of years was talking about taking our program off air and we've had to pray and pray and pray and then finally see God's victory. And sometimes I think, "God why can't it be easier than this? God why does there have to be so many battles along the way?"

And you know what Gods answer has been to me, so that you my child would discover my faithfulness for yourself. See God wants us to experience his faithfulness, not in theory but in practice and you know something, I know so much more today about the faithfulness of God than ever have simply by travelling through battle after battle and seeing the victories that God has brought along the way.

And there is such an intense satisfaction as I look back on that and I can truly say, "yes Lord, it's been hard work but all the glory goes to you and not to me because I could never have done this".

The Book of Joshua that we've been travelling through these last weeks is about Israel's battles on the journey of taking the Promised Land. And when finally all the land is taken and allocated to all the tribes have a listen to what God's Word says, if you've got a Bible open it at Joshua chapter 21 beginning at verse 43.

So the Lord gave Israel all the land that He had sworn to give their forefathers and they took possession of it and settled there and the Lord gave them rest on every side just as He had sworn to their forefathers, not one of their enemies withstood them, the Lord handed all their enemies over to them, not one of all the Lord's good promises to the House of Israel failed, every one was fulfilled.

WOW! Let's just let that sink in for a minute.

Not one of all the Lords good promises to the House of Israel failed, every one was fulfilled.

When God makes a promise he never ever fails to deliver. When Jesus promised that He came that we would have life in all its abundance, that is a promise of God and it's a promise He intends to keep in your life and in mine.

And as we travel through battle after battle and hang close to Him and just let those promises of God glow in our hearts and we hang on to them through this spiritual battlefield the devil comes after you with a meat cleaver and you fail some days and you stumble and you remember Jesus on that cross, you remember He purchased that life for you, we can know in our hearts that now, now it's time to take the Promised Land.

And not one of all the Lord's good promises to you or to me will fail; every one of them will be fulfilled. It is time to take the Promised Land.

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You know something – you and I can read about and listen to the promises of God until the cows come home. But eventually, eventually the day comes when we have to cross over into the promised land. Eventually the day comes for us to lay hold of God’s promises and live in them.

Sending Spies into the Land We’ve been talking the last couple of weeks about taking hold of God’s wonderful and outrageous promises in our lives. It’s not easy sometimes; it seems that we face uphill battle after uphill battle. And we’re left wondering is this really what God’s promises are all about? But my hunch is that when God makes promises he means us to believe them and to press through those battles like we believe them.

A bit like Joshua: when he was about to lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land after centuries of slavery in Egypt and 40 years wondering through the desert, he was standing on the banks of the Jordan river, ready to cross over into that promised land.

As we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, God told Joshua that there would be lots and lots of battles. But he also reminded Joshua that this was the Promised Land and then, then Joshua did something that’s bothered me for a long time. He sent some spies across the Jordan to check out this so called Promised Land.

And you see here’s the dilemma for me: on the one hand we’re supposed to trust God. Without faith it’s impossible to please God, right? And look at what God said to Joshua about the battles that they were going to face when they headed into the Promised Land. You can read this: grab a Bible and open it up, Joshua chapter 1, beginning of verse 5 this is what God says, he says:

No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you so be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land that I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and courageous, don’t be terrified, don’t be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Isn’t that just the most awesome promise from God? And when you get a promise from God like that, that’s serious stuff. God is calling Joshua into a difficult place but encouraging him with his promises. And Joshua had a decision to make: to step across the Jordan, to head down the path that God had called him to and encounter battles one after the other, trusting in God, battling his way through to keep going.

And it’s exactly the same for us. When we step forward into the promises of God we’re going to encounter battles. So Joshua gets this amazing promise from God but look at what he does. He hears the promises of God but before he heads off, before he crosses the Jordan to go into the Promised Land, he sends some spies across to check it all out. To go to the very first city that they were going to have a battle with which was the city of Jericho. Read it: in Joshua chapter 2, beginning of verse 1:

Then Joshua secretly sent two spies into the land telling them: go and look over the land, especially in Jericho. So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

Can I ask you a question? Is that really trusting God? God promises you the land, he promises you that he’s going to be with you, he promises you that no one will be able to stand against you. And then, it’s almost like Joshua doesn’t trust him: he sends out spies into the land and they go and stay with a prostitute.

Now the rest of the story is, we’re not going to read it now, is that they check out the land. The king finds out and comes to try and kill them and Rahab the prostitute helps them to flee and they promise to keep her and her family safe when they come against Jericho. And when they came back to Joshua on the other side of the Jordan this is what they said, "The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands. All the people are melting in fear because of us."

Now this has bothered me for a long time. Why did Joshua do that? Why didn’t he just trust in God and go and take what God had promised him? And why is it that God didn’t get upset with Joshua for sending the spies and checking it out for himself?

Well they’re all good questions and the answer came to me one day when I was reading a story centuries later in the New Testament. It was when the apostle Peter was in jail and the angel came and sprung him out of jail. The angel woke Peter up in the middle of the night and said, "Get up quickly", and the chains fell off. And the angel said to him, "Fasten your belt, put on your sandals", and Peter did. "Wrap your cloak around you’ said the angel, "and follow me." And Peter did that and the gates swung open. You can read about it in Acts chapter 12, beginning over verse 6.

Do you notice something about that? The angel didn’t dress Peter because he could do that for himself. The angel didn’t put his sandals or his belt or his cloak on, the angel didn’t get him to stand up; Peter did those things for himself because he could. What the angel did were the miracles that Peter himself couldn’t do. The angel did the miracle of causing the chains to fall off him; the angel did the miracle of flinging the gates open.

Now for me, I’m a doer: I plan and execute and achieve. I’ve been like that all my life. I go and get it. I’m a Type A personality. And the struggle for me is when God comes along and promises me all these things that for my whole life have eluded me: relationships and peace and joy and a quiet, calm delight. The promised land of God.

I’ve a choice either to try and do this in my own strength, well that would never work, or I let God have the driver’s seat and let him be in control and follow after him in faith. It’s obviously the latter but you know something? We can say I’m not going to do anything and we become spiritual couch potatoes doing that. But God calls us to do our bit too.

Joshua receives the promises of God and then he sends spies ahead into the land. Why? Because any good military operation always does its forward reconnaissance to see what’s out there to plan ahead. And there’s an important principle here: Joshua receives the promises of God. He had to cross over into that land to do the things that he could do and should do to plan and to look ahead and to organise the people and the armies and to get them through and then rely on the miracles that God could only do.

Jericho was a fortified city, Jericho was impregnable but when they crossed over into the land God said to them march around for seven days blowing your horns and the walls will fall down. And sure enough, that’s what they did; that’s exactly what happened. God did the miracle.

The problem with us is we receive the promises of God and then we kind of expect it all to go smoothly. We expect God to put everything on autopilot and we never want to think ahead or do the forward reconnaissance to look at what’s likely to happen.

There are obstacles, there are battles and you know as we follow after the promises of God the enemy and the world are going to come against us. And we need to get our minds around those things, in a sense we need to think forward and look forward and plan to know what to expect. To use the brains that God has given us and then to rely on the miracles that he is going to do along the way to do the things that we can’t do to get us into that Promised Land.

My Way or the Highway Now most of us like to be in control of our lives but at the same time we like to experience the promises of God. Problem is, those two don’t always go together. It turns out that there’s only one way into God’s Promised Land.

Joshua sent those spies and they came back with a good report. I want to have a look now at how Joshua led his people through the Jordan and crossed over into the Promised Land. See, we have to take the Promised Land just like Joshua and the Israelites. God doesn’t deliver it like a pizza; it’s there to be taken.

Now I have a confession to make: I used to be a very much my way or the high way kind of guy. And every now and then that attitude still raises its ugly head. So it was a major thing for me to hand my life over to God. Not just kind of to believe in Jesus from a distance but to live my life for him, to truly call him the Lord of my life.

There’s a big difference and what I’ve discovered is that on the one hand you have to give up some things if you want Jesus to be the Lord of your life but on the other I can do so much more because instead of having to do everything in my own strength. He shows up and does miracle and after miracle in every department of my life and I look back on that journey and think wow I could never have done those things. But our natural instinct is to do things our way, to be in charge and in control and that problem is that that job belongs to God. And anyway, it’s hard work. So what is it? What do we have to do to make Jesus the Lord of our lives?

We’ve been looking at these last few weeks at taking hold of the promises of God, taking the Promised Land. Joshua leading Israel into the Promised Land after centuries of slavery in Egypt and 40 years wondering through the desert on the exodus. And this book of Joshua recalls the history. You go back to the promises of God and God promises to Abraham that he would give the descendents of Abraham this Promised Land. And God comes to Joshua when he’s about to lead Abraham’s descendents into the Promised Land and he says, "Everywhere where your foot will tread, I have already given to you."

So Joshua, as we saw before the break, sent some spies across to check it out. He did the normal military thing that you’d expect any commander to do. Now, now comes time to cross over the Jordan River. They’re going to have so many battles when they get there. Cities and nations who don’t want them to have the Promised Lands. So it was so easy for Joshua to say, "Well, I’m in charge here, it’s my way or this high way."

But what Joshua did next, well there are some pretty amazing things that he did, four things in all. And it tells us who Joshua thought was really in charge. The first is he sent his officers through the camp to tell his people this, "When you see the arc of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the priests, then you shall set out from your place. Follow it so that you may know where you should go for you have not passed this way before." You can read that in Joshua chapter 3, beginning of verse 3.

See, this whole nation of Israel was about to cross over into the Promised Land, who did Joshua put at the head of the nation? Was it Joshua? It was the arc of the covenant, the symbol of their relationship with God, the place where the presence of God rested. For Joshua God was at the head of the nation.

And then there was another thing they did. You can go to Joshua chapter 4, beginning of verse 4. So Joshua called together the 12 men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each of the twelve tribes. And he said to them, ‘Go before the arc of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of tribes of the Israelites. To serve as a sign among you. In the future when your children ask "What do these stones mean?" Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the arc of the covenant of the Lord.

See, Joshua got them to pick up these stones and on the other side of the Jordan River they built a monument honouring God. And what that monument was all about was saying: he did this, God did this, God achieved this. This is about recognising God’s goodness for generations to come. It’s about honouring God first.

And then you think right, we must definitely be ready now to cross over into the Promised Land. Now this next bit is going to seem bizarre to us and even in their context it must have been a big call. Joshua decided to circumcise all the men in the nation because circumcision was a sign, an outward sign, of the covenant relationship between God and his people. Abraham did it to all his household and all Israelite males under the law of the Jews should be circumcised on the eighth day, it’s part of their law. It’s a symbol of the relationship between God and Israel and on the exodus in the desert between Egypt and the Promised Land for 40 years they hadn’t been doing that.

So it was time to set things right between God and his people. God said make flint knives and circumcise them. Makes me wince, my eyes water. They’re ready to go, they’re ready to cross over into the Promised Land. They must all have been there with such anticipation and Joshua says, "Woah, stop! Got a great idea! We’re going to have a circumcision. All the males"’ And not only did they circumcise all the males, they then had to wait there for several days for them all to heal. This was about getting the nation of Israel right before God in their relationship.

And fourthly, before they went. Can you imagine this huge logistical operation of crossing over into the Promised Land? It was the time of the Passover, the time when they remembered back 40 years to when God had taken them out of slavery in Egypt. To the time when the angel of death passed over and killed all of the first born in the land of Egypt except for the Israelites because they killed the lamb and put the blood on the top of their doors and the angel of death passed over them. It was time to celebrate the Passover, to remember how 40 years before God had taken them out of Egypt. To look back and remember God’s goodness.

And see the four things that Joshua did? He put God at the head of the procession. He built an alter, a monument to God that would be remembered for generations. He got the nation right before God by circumcising all the males and then he celebrated the Passover to honour God.

Sure, we want to cross over in the Promised Land just like the Israelites did but what this is saying to us is that God comes first. The arc goes first, we follow him, we take his lead. We put a marker here in faith to remember for generations to come what God’s done. We get right before God, we honour God for what he’s done. See here’s the crunch: there’s this huge promise ahead of them but they were going to take hold of that promise not in their own strength but honouring God first. It’s not my way or the high way, it’s God’s way. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the outcome, his way and it’s the same for us today.

So many people believe in Jesus and they want to lay hold of the promises of God for their lives but they want to do it their own way. Jesus is Lord, we sing. Really? Then let’s do it his way. No little compromises, no little shortcuts, no "I’ll forget about him and not pray today", no "Oh well, I don’t have to read his word the Bible today." Wake up! God’s promises only happen one way, his way and Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." This radical, edgy saviour. Not into pampering himself; he was into going out there and following God.

The Promises of God I truly believe that the promises of God are for each one of us. Now let me share a part of my story with you because I’m sharing this not from a textbook but from a changed life. Twelve years ago my life was an incredible mess, I can’t tell you the dysfunction and pain.

Now that stuff happens to us. I’m not some kind of loser; I was a competent, successful businessman with all the trappings of wealth and success but inside, inside I was an incredible mess. And when you’re in that place the promises of God seem to be, well, so difficult to accept. When God records in John chapter 10, verse 10 what Jesus said:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life and have it in all of its abundance.

Literally superabundantly. Boy that can be hard to take when you feel down and out. When you think of Joshua there on the banks of Jordan, he really was on the threshold of a promise made to Abraham centuries before. And from Abraham the nation of Israel grew and they were in slavery and they were part of God’s miraculous escape plan as Moses led them through the red sea and then 40 years in the desert. And now, here they are and Moses has just died.

How impossible must it have seemed to Joshua when God spoke to him on the banks of the Jordan and said, "I have given you every place where you will set your foot as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to the Lebanon and from the great river Euphrates through all the Hittites country to the great see of the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life because as I was with Moses so I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you."

You know what our problem is? Sometimes when we look at God’s promises and then we look at our circumstances, in our hearts we let our circumstances win every time. Because that’s what we can see and it’s the circumstances and the difficulties and the obstacles that fill our vision.

Today I just want to say that God wants to remind us of what Joshua did. It was a step of faith against impossible odds. Moses was dead, all those people and nations and kings and armies were in this so called Promised Land. Jericho was fortified and Joshua sent some spies in the land to check it out. And they came back with a rosy report despite the fortifications around Jericho and he mobilised his people and he crossed over. But not only his own strength but by honouring God, by putting God first.

You know something? I think it’s time for us to do the same. No matter what circumstances we face, no matter how big the obstacles, no matter how big the fortifications of our enemies or how powerful they appear, I believe with all that I am that Jesus died so that we could live in the Promised Land, the kingdom of God, in a dynamic and vital relationship with him.

And it’s time to count the cost, to look at what that means, to send a spine to that land in a sense by opening up God’s word and reading those promises for ourselves. Because there is a cost, we need to read about that cost. The things that we might have to give up, the sin in our lives that we have to lay down in order to realise the promises of God and then stepping out in faith.

Just start honouring God, even when it’s a mess, even when things aren’t going well, even when it all looks impossible. Just as Joshua and the nation of Israel did, to start honouring God. Put him first in everything, draw close to him in prayer, in Bible reading, in the way that we live our lives.

Come on, honouring him with all that we are and all that we have and with every hope and with every dream just laying that down before him. Just believing in faith that his kingdom will come and that as we simply walk in faith, putting him first, he’ll step into those battles for us and with us and win them for us.

And before we know it, before we know it, we’ll look back and say, "Wow, look at what God’s done, I really am in the Promised Land." What do you think? Where are you in your life? What are the battles that lay before you? Is it time to take your eyes off the battles and set them firmly on God and believe his promises and honour him and step forward in faith into his Promised Land?

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Have you ever been standing on the threshold of something good – perhaps one of God’s promises – and all of a sudden it’s as though everything starts to go wrong?

On the Threshold Have you ever stood on the threshold of something good, I mean something really good, something fantastic? Maybe it’s the promise of a promotion, or the promise of a pay increase, or you’ve just fallen pregnant or your wife has and in the not too many months, there’s going to be this new life in your family, or a great holiday, or a new home, or peace where there was conflict and you stand there and you think, "This is going to be faaaannntastic. I just can’t wait".

And then all of a sudden, it’s like all hell breaks loose. Everything and everyone kind of comes after you with a pickaxe; at work and at home, in your heart and in your head, there’s turmoil. And you think, "Hang on a minute. I’m about to step over into this Promised Land and well, it’s supposed to be fantastic. What is going on?"

We’ve all been there, right? So has God and today we are going to look at His specific Word that He wants to speak right into that. This week on the programme, we are going to look at this ‘Promised Land’ thing. And the Promised Land was born when God promised a land to Abraham, the father of Israel, and centuries later Israel crossed over into that Promised Land.

It started with this beautiful promise to Abraham that we looked at last week. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it up at Genesis chapter 13, beginning at verse 14. This is what it says:

The Lord said to Abraham, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Lift up your eyes now and look from the place where you are, to the north and the south and the east and the west, all the land that you see, I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can count the dust of the earth, your offspring will also be able to be counted. Get up, walk the length and the breadth of this land for I will give it to you’. So Abraham moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which is at Hebron and there he built an altar to the Lord.

What a stunning promise! What an incredible promise! What an impossible promise! See, Abraham was an old man and he and his wife Sarah hadn’t had any children and from that promise began a long and winding road for the nation of Israel.

Centuries later they travelled through the exodus, they went through this desert and they’d gone on this long journey. And Israel ultimately is about to cross over into the Promised Land and all of a sudden their leader Moses, whom God used to set them free out of slavery from Egypt; to go through the Red Sea; that amazing miracle, to guide them through the desert for forty years – all of a sudden Moses, their leader dies. And God comes along to his successor, Joshua, with some godly advice – more than advice, admonition.

Now we are going to have a look at that today. It’s in Joshua chapter 1, beginning at verse 1. This is what God said:

After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, ‘Moses, My servant is dead. Now then you and all these people, get ready to cross over the Jordan River into the land that I am about to give to them, the Israelites.

I have given you every place where you will set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to the Lebanon, from the great river, the Euphrates, all the Hittite country to the great sea on the west and no one, no one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

I will never leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead this people to inherit the land that I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong; very courageous. Be careful to obey all My law that the servant Moses gave you. Don’t turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may be successful wherever you go.

Do not let the Book of this Law depart from your mouth but meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything that’s written in it, then you will be prosperous and successful. Haven’t I commanded you, Be strong and courageous? Don’t be terrified; don’t be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.’

Just think about it. They have been on this long journey for forty years, the exodus in the desert and they are about to cross over into the Promised Land and Moses dies. Oh, fantastic! What lousy timing. They had this tried and proven leader and he is gone, and so the reins get handed over to Joshua, his assistant and God repeats the promise that He made to Abram and that He made to Moses; He repeats that promise to Joshua: "I have given you this land - I have promised this land to you and no one will be able to stand against you."

Oh, that’s not good; that’s not good at all. If God has to promise you that no one is going to stand against you. All these different tribes and nations that are already in the land; they’re not going to invite Israel in to take their land. They are not going to say, "Oh, God said you could have it, well sure, go ahead, take all our land." Not likely!

Israel is in for a bunch of battles and then God says: "I will never leave you or forsake you." This is not looking good. God says: "Be strong and courageous," and again, He says: ‘Be strong and very courageous.’ And a third time in that passage we just read, He says: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged."

Now you are Joshua, you were there forty years ago, on the other side of the Red Sea. You saw the miracle when Moses lifted his staff and the Red Sea parted and Israel passed through and all of a sudden Pharaoh’s army tried to chase them and the sea came together again and Pharaoh’s army was drowned.

You were there. The euphoria of God’s amazing miracle. You’ve spent forty years in the desert and you think, "surely it must be over by now. We are just days away from crossing over into this Promised Land, from realising the promise that God made to Abram centuries before". And now God’s setting you up; preparing you for a tough time. He talking about battles and wars and being strong and courageous. This is life and death stuff. Is that what you expected of the Promised Land after all this time?

That’s why I’ve called this series of programmes, "It Time to Take the Promised Land" because it doesn’t get delivered to your front door like a pizza. God’s promise of a land flowing with milk and honey is accompanied by God’s reality - battles along the way. You have to take the Promised Land.

And it’s the same today. You know what I’ve noticed? The rest of the world doesn’t want me to have God’s peace and joy. The rest of the world doesn’t want me to live in God’s promises. The devil wants to spoil God’s plan for my life and every time God is about to do something amazing in my life, all hell seems to break loose. The devil just doesn’t want me to have the Promised Land.

Now Joshua could have sat up on his side of the Jordan River, heard what God was saying about not getting discouraged and about the battles and thought, ‘No, I’m outa here’, but he didn’t. He believed in God‘s promise and he crossed over and he went about taking the Promised Land. He knew it was time to take the Promised Land.

Courage in the Promises Well, here they are. They are standing on the threshold of the Promised Land after forty years in the desert and all the trials, after the nation being in slavery in Egypt. Centuries before, God had promised to Abraham this Promised Land and they are standing on the Jordan and they are looking over the Jordan and what they see is this so-called Promised Land but there are all these people and tribes and kings and fortified cities and armies.

On the one hand, they believe in God’s promise, but on the other hand, they’re looking at this reality. God calls us into His Promised Land here and now, today. There are promises all through the Bible about our relationship with God. Jesus said in John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life in all its abundance.

That’s a promise! Jesus wants us to have an abundant life. He said:

The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy, he went and sold all that he had and he bought that field.

Again Jesus said in Matthew chapter 13:

The Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who is looking for fine pearls when he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and he bought it.

Do you get the picture? When we give our lives to Jesus, lock stock and barrel, He invites us into a land of promise and He is saying that this land of promise; the Kingdom of God, it’s like … it’s like a treasure – that’s what it is meant to be like. And the promises are so different to what the world promises. Not a physical land or physical wealth or all that other stuff but a Promised Land that is quite different.

In Luke chapter 17, verse 20, Jesus put it this way:

Once having been ask by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said, ‘The Kingdom of God doesn’t come because of your careful observation nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is within you.’

The Promised Land isn’t something out ‘there’ – it’s not a new house or a new car or all that stuff. The Promised Land; the Kingdom of God is in our hearts. And so often we feel like Joshua standing on the threshold, looking back and then looking forward, wanting to believe in the promises of God but … they are so hard to believe-in some days aren’t they?

I’m going to talk right now about taking courage in the promises of God. This is so important because we normally focus on the things that we can see – all the problems and the obstacles that are in front of us. But God calls us to set our eyes on the things that are above; to set our eyes on heavenly things.

Look again at what God said to Joshua about this Promised Land. Joshua, chapter 1, verse 3:

I have given to you every place where you will set your foot as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to the Lebanon, from the great river, the Euphrates, through all the Hittite country to the great sea on the west. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you.

Isn’t it interesting, he uses the past tense; actually the Hebrew perfect tense. He says, "Every place where you will set your foot as I promised Moses, I have already given you." It’s a done deal! As far as God was concerned, the Promised Land was absolutely a done deal. It was given and when God gives, who can block that?

That’s God’s perspective, even though our perspective is all about the things that we can see – the obstacles and the enemies and the fears and the broken relationships and the people who are bugging us who are never going to change.

I tell you, when I became a Christian twelve years ago, I had so much dysfunction in my life, I can’t begin to tell you. And through that passage in John chapter 10, verse 10, where Jesus said:

I have come that you may have life in all its abundance.

I just let Him write that on my heart.

Jesus wants you and me to have an abundant life. And if I looked at me and my life and the predicaments I was in, I had no right to believe that promise from Jesus! But the Holy Spirit takes His Word and He writes it on our hearts and He gifted me to lift my eyes to look at heavenly things.

I believed so imperfectly, going through some things, I was so afraid some days and so lonely some days. But at the end of the day, what Jesus did on the cross for you and me was to remove all sin, all of the reproach of the past, and open the door to an abundant, outrageous, wonderful relationship with God. It’s a done deal! It’s past. It’s completed. The abundant life has been purchased for you and me.

And it’s now time to walk in it. And the point of what God said to Joshua was there will be battles:

I have given you every place where you will set your foot as I promised Moses. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you.

See, the promise is a done deal. When people come against us, they won’t be able to stand against us and rob us of the promises of God. And God will never leave us or forsake us. It’s a completely different way of looking at things. Instead of looking at the problems, we look at the promises. It’s completely different.

And for me in my life, over these last twelve years, in every day, here and now, where I get my courage is in the promises of God, because when God promises something, nobody can take that away. And the focus of that promise; our relationship with Him, the Kingdom of God, the peace and the joy that flows from that, is where it’s all at.

All that other stuff - that will come and go – relationships and health and money – they’re all temporary. What will last forever is our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Joshua literally means "God saves" and that’s the same name that Jesus had, (Joshua was His actual Hebrew name), to lead us into the Promised Land and it is an act of faith to take courage in the promises of God. And we can do that because they’re a done deal.

Prospering in God’s Word Now, God is expecting some stiff opposition for Joshua and his people when they cross over the Jordan to take the Promised Land. Remember we looked at that passage, Joshua chapter 1, verse 1 and the following verses. And three times – there is Joshua with all that he has been through, standing on the banks of the Jordan ready to cross over into the Promised Land – and three times God says to him;

"Be strong and courageous", "Be strong and very courageous", "Be strong and courageous, do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go".

I always a worry a little bit when God tell us "not to be terrified", you think, "Uh, oh, this is not going to be pleasant." That’s often the way as we decide to lay hold of God’s promises in our hearts. Things so often get a whole bunch worse before they get better. Jesus said:

Peace, My peace I leave with you - My peace I give to you.

Yeah man, that’s what I want; that’s God’s peace; that’s God’s promise, I want that promise. Jesus promised that to His disciples just before He was about to be crucified at a dangerous and fearful time where there would be pain and loss and fear for their own lives. So He explains what He is on about. He says this:

My peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I don’t give it to you the way the world does. Don’t let your hearts be troubled and don’t let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

We often have to deal with obstacles and fear to lay hold of the promises of God in our lives, I do, you do, we all do. And it’s at those times that we grow, when we understand that that’s the reality and that the promises of God stand amidst all the obstacles, all the uncertainty, all the things we look at and think, "I can never get through those on my own." That’s the whole purpose of God’s promises.

So what’s our part of this? Well, let’s see what God said to Joshua. He said:

Be careful to obey the law that My servant Moses gave you. Don’t turn from it to the right or the left, that you might be successful wherever you go. Do not let the Book of this Law depart from your mouth, instead meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything that is written in it, then you will be prosperous and successful.

See, God was saying to him, "You know where it’s at. Let My Word come to life in your heart. Don’t forget about it. Don’t let it depart from your mouth". In other words, "don’t let it leave your mouth permanently; instead meditate on it day and night. Do what it says and then you will be prosperous and successful."

Meditate so that it becomes part of you, so that you start living your life My way, says God, then you’ll be prosperous; then you’ll be successful. You know, I know so many Christians who own a Bible. "Well, it’s somewhere, I think. It’s up in the cupboard or maybe it’s at the bedside table or gathering dust somewhere."

I want to tell you something about the Word of God. I would be a nervous wreck by now if I didn’t spend time in God‘s Word every day. I’m in the front line of ministry, my job is leading people into the Promised Land through what I am doing right now, through these programmes; helping people to take a hold of God’s promises and the devil is not happy about that. The world is not always happy about that, even other Christians sometimes, they don’t always understand.

And here we are, my wife and I and the team here at Christianityworks, in a ministry that’s building and growing. Three years ago I started recording our first radio programmes. I didn’t have a single radio station who had committed to airing them. Nothing. Just this call from God in my heart – a promise from Him written on my heart by His Holy Spirit. And today, just three years later, these programmes are being heard on seven hundred stations in eighty countries. There are millions of people listening.

Now you might think, "WOW, that’s fantastic; that’s great," and it is. But do you have any idea how many trials, how many battles, how much opposition, the lack of funds, the uncertainty – any idea how hard that was along the way, and some days continues to be?

We all have to go through this stuff in our lives. Whatever story and plan God has written for our lives. Yours is going to be different to mine. But as we step out into the Promised Land, into what God has called us to do, we are going to go through some stuff.

And we will have a temptation to do it in our own strength or to give up or to compromise here and there. And the promise of God was, "Josh, get My Word into your heart. Meditate on it day and night; soak it in; let it never, ever depart from you and you will be prosperous and successful in what I’ve called you to do."

In other words, do it God’s way and not our own way. See, in His Word God reminds us of His promises and the Holy Spirit comes and writes them into our hearts in a way that we never could.

What soldier would walk onto a battlefield without a weapon? The Apostle Paul, when he was talking about the armour of God in Ephesians chapter 6 says:

The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God.

So many Christians walk out onto that spiritual battlefield and they leave God’s Word, the sword of the Spirit, in the cupboard and wonder why they suffer defeat after defeat.

That’s nuts! God’s promises are a done deal. People will come against us and they won’t be able to stand against us. God said:

I will never leave you or forsake you.

And when we meditate on God’s Word, when we let it become part of us, when we live it out through faith, that’s when His success and His prosperity show up.

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You know – God is full of promises. Amazing promises. But so often – it’s hard to see how those promises fit into the reality of our lives – here and now.

Promises, Promises, Promises Well, I am really excited because we’re starting a new series this week called, "It’s Time to Take the Promised Land". What sort of a series title is that? "It’s Time to Take the Promised Land".

Well, here’s my hunch. We live in a world that promises so much: A world of brands and products and experiences and travel and luxury – a world that promises so much. Marketers talk about the brand promise.

For example, here’s my favourite. On TV, the advertisements for margarine or breakfast cereal or low-fat milk. Right? Have you ever noticed them?

Here’s what they look like. Here’s the setting. It’s a kind of trendy, today kind of kitchen and the sun’s always streaming in through the windows. It’s never raining; it’s always sunny. Mum’s smiling as she prepares breakfast. She’s slim and happy and well-adjusted, and this well-adjusted teenager bounds in smiling and spreads margarine on their bread or pours the milk on their cereal or whatever, and then ... Then this cool-looking forty-something dad strolls in, and he is good-looking, and then he grabs a piece of toast and kisses his wife before he reads the newspaper.

This is the sort of family and breakfast that most people would like to have, but the reality ... Well, the reality’s a bit different to that ad. I mean, the reality is that there are millions of people watching that ad who don’t know where their next meal’s coming from. The reality is that a lot of the people watching that ad, their families and marriages are falling apart. The reality is, even if they aren’t, they’re bringing up teenagers and that’s tough and there’s dysfunction. The reality is, most people’s families and kitchens and lives look nothing like those glossy images on the ad.

Images selling margarine or cereal or milk, making a brand promise that if you buy this product ... well ... this is what your life will look like. You look at that in the cold, hard light of day, and it’s absolutely nuts. Right? I mean, it’s crazy to try to link a margarine to a well-adjusted family.

New car ads are the same. They’re always out on the open road; there’s only ever that one car on the road, and the brand promise is if you buy me, you’ll have the freedom to roam. Isn’t it funny how the car ads never have someone stuck in peak-hour traffic, ever?

See, there are so many things in this world that hold out a promise that they can’t deliver. On the one hand, we want to live out those images of success the marketers kind of dangle under our noses. On the other, we so often ... well ... we never do. We never quite get there. It never quite works the way that the advert says it will, and that’s the psychology of marketing.

You create an image that creates desire, and the person sees the gap between the image and their reality, and so they spend money to buy that thing to buy the brand promise, and they discover it doesn’t work, and so the marketers dish up the next image, and round and round and round we go, on this treadmill of broken promises. It makes our consumer economies go round, and here you and I are with this treadmill of broken promises, brands that never really deliver their brand promise, and God comes along with a promise.

God makes lots of promises. "I’ll be your God, and you will be My people, and I’ll walk among you. I’ll bless you and keep you and comfort you and guide you" ... Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life in all of its abundance."

It’s almost like God’s painting this picture of a promised land – a land that’s almost too good to be true – a land ... a life ... well, to you and me, it seems a bit like the kitchen and that family in the margarine ad. In the reality of our lives, the promises of God can be hard to swallow, especially when we’re still on that treadmill of broken promises, going round and round and round ...

In this day and age, God’s promises are harder to accept than ever. Now ... now we’re getting close to the heart of this new series, "It’s Time to Take the Promised Land", because God is a God of promise, and brand Jesus is the one brand that actually delivers. God’s plan is to lead you and me into His promised land – a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of blessing, but (here’s the but) He involves us in that process and we have a part to play.

The first step that we’re going to talk about today in this whole thing of walking into God’s promised land is accepting His promise in the first place; letting Him write that promise on our hearts, and believing it with all that we are; believing it with every fibre of our beings, with our very lives. You see, we can’t have the promised land (we can’t go there, we can’t settle) unless first we believe it in our hearts. God is a God that calls us to faith, and faith means believing before we see it.

Now we’re going to talk about that very thing today because if we’re going to talk about accepting the promises of God, you can’t go there without talking about it: Faith. It’s when we place our faith in Him. When we place our faith in His promises, then ... then He calls us on to cross over into that land, and to take the land.

Now that’s a shock and a surprise to me. We’re going to be looking at that a bit over the coming weeks. It’s really important that we understand the journey. God’s promised land isn’t like pizza delivery. You know, He doesn’t ring the doorbell and deliver the promised land; God actually calls us out of the front door, to take a step of faith, and it can be a tough journey with battles all along the way.

We’re going to be looking through the book of Joshua over the coming few weeks in the Old Testament, because the book of Joshua is about the time that Israel crossed over into the promised land. They’d been in slavery in Egypt and then on the exodus for forty years, and the book of Joshua begins right on the threshold of the promised land, and they have an upfront decision to make. Do I really want God’s promised land, really? And if I do, am I going to let Him write His promise on my heart, and carry it round with me through thick and thin – the bright sunny days, and the cold wet days?

Well, today’s programme is all about letting Him write His promise on our hearts, His plan for us to dwell in His promised land. As we’re going round and round and round on that treadmill of broken promises, where many people have this empty unfulfilled life, we have a decision today to make. We can decide that it’s time to step off that treadmill and to take the promised land.

One Man’s Promise So where does this term, "The promised land" come from? Well, it all begins when God promises some land to Abraham. Now God first engages with His people, Israel ultimately, through Abraham – the father of Israel. Abraham was living very comfortably indeed. He was quite wealthy, in a place called Ur, which is near Babylon or around modern-day Bagdad, and God calls him out of that place. If you have a Bible, grab it, and open it up at Genesis chapter 12. God calls him out of this place. This is what happens:

Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your family and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

Incredible promise for Abram and Sarai, who were old. I mean, they were well into their seventies; they were childless, and there is a two-part blessing here, two-part promise: Land and children, but there in the comfort and the wealth, they believe God, so they step out. They up and leave all of that. They take their possessions and servants and animals, and they hit the road and head westward to a land called Canaan.

Now, what happened when they got there? Well, we read about that in Genesis 12:6-8:

When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So Abram built an altar to the LORD who had appeared to him.

Now just think about God’s promise to this old man. Firstly, your descendants. The guy is seventy years old, and he and his wife have not been able to have children, but God promises him descendants. Not only descendants, but God says, "I will make you a great nation". Really? And, "I will give this land to your descendants".

Imagine Abram. "But God, I’m in my seventies. I don’t have any children. This land is occupied by the Canaanites". It was a pretty impossible promise, but right here, right in the middle of all this impossibility, the promised land is born.

God promised it to Abram, yet Abram believed this promise with his life. How do we know that? Because he actually left his comfortable existence in Ur, and followed down the dusty trail of God’s promise, over hill and dale, and he gets to this land of God’s impossible promise – a land filled with Canaanites, who weren’t about to say, "Well, yeah, sure, Abram. Take our land! We don’t mind", and the childless Abram ... what does he do? He builds an altar to God. He honours God.

He bows down and says, "Well, God, you know, even though this doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense, I’m going to believe You", and God knows what’s going on in Abram’s heart. He takes him up a hill and makes the promise again. You can read it. Flick over to Genesis 13:14:

The LORD said to Abram after Lot had separated from him, ‘Raise up your eyes now, and look from the place where you are: North and south and east and west, for all the land that you see I will give you, and to your offspring forever.

I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up! Walk the length and the breadth of this land, for I will give it to you.’ So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which were at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the LORD.

I love how God lays out the land before Abram. Can you see that picture? They’re on-top of the hill and God is speaking to Abram, who’s thinking about this impossible promise, and little by little God is breathing this promised land into the man’s heart. "Go and walk through it, as far as your eyes can see, and let Me make an outrageous promise," says God, "So many descendants you will have that they will be more than the grains of dust on the earth", and Abram built another altar and honoured God.

See what’s going on here? God is taking him through a process, a huge leap. He’s an old man with no kids, and God is promising him a promised land full of his own descendants, and God’s leading Abram gently into a place where he can believe. Like you and me, this guy’s a man and he’s human. He’s struggling with it in his heart. We can read about it in Genesis chapter 15. Abram goes to God and says, ‘Look, I still don’t have a son. I mean, this other man will have to be my heir. How’s this promise ever going to happen?’ Look at what God says and does (Genesis 15:4). God says:

'No, that man won’t be your heir. No one but your very own son shall be your heir.’ God took Abram outside and said, ‘Look towards the heavens and count the stars if you’re able.’ Then God said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be’, and Abram believed the LORD and the LORD reckoned it unto him as righteousness.”

What a beautiful picture! Abram is aching! He wants to believe in God’s promises. He wants to believe in the land and descendants and mighty nations, but it’s so hard. He just can’t see how God could possibly deliver on this promise, so God takes him out to the stars – the Milky Weigh; this unbelievable sight, without the city lights and the smog. There are so many stars there, and finally the word of God, the promise of God, God’s promised land drops into Abram’s heart.

Still he makes plenty of mistakes along the way. You can read about it in the next few chapters of Genesis, but the promised land is written on Abram’s heart. Ultimately he has a son, Isaac.

That’s the only part of the promise he ever sees, and Isaac has a son called Jacob and Jacob has twelve sons, who are the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. They ended up in slavery in Egypt and grew into a mighty nation and then Moses led them out through the Red Sea. And they experienced the desert, the exodus for forty years, and all of a sudden one day, this mighty nation of Israel was standing on the banks of the Jordan, ready to cross over into the promised land, but that took centuries to happen.

We’re going to look at that next week, but there on that night, under the stars alone with God, the promised land was written on Abram’s heart, and he believed.

God’s Promise to Us I’m always so touched by the story of how God reaches out to Abraham. Sure; it’s a story about Abraham, but Abraham’s not Mr Perfecto Super-Christian. He’s human; he’s frail; he has struggles like you and me, and he struggles to believe in this outrageous promise from God. Then gently, and tenderly, the LORD leads him to believe in the promised land – this mighty nation. If you and I put ourselves in Abraham’s shoes just for a minute, this old man, wouldn’t we struggle too?

Next week we’re going to be starting in the book of Joshua and looking what it means to cross over into the promised land, and the battles involved in taking that promised land, and why God does it that way. I mean, this promised land was supposed to be flowing with milk and honey. Wouldn’t you think you’d just arrive? Wouldn’t it be like a summer resort with a swimming-pool and a bellhop to carry your bags up to your suite?

Well, that’s the next few weeks, but over the next few minutes, it’s time for you and me to consider this promised land and whether we’ll believe. Faith is the key to the promise. Faith is the gift from God, and the reason you and I are together today (no doubt) is that God wants to unlock the promise in your heart, as He breathes faith into you through His Word.

As Israel went from Egypt through the Red Sea, and then forty years in the desert, how many Israelites that crossed through the Red Sea at the beginning of the exodus crossed through the Jordan into the promised land forty years later? Do you know? How many? Out of hundreds of thousands and probably millions, how many? Just two: Joshua and Caleb, and Psalm 106 tells us exactly why:

They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. So God said He would destroy them, had not Moses His chosen one stood in the breach before Him to keep His wrath from destroying them. Then they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe His promise. They grumbled in their tents and did not obey the Law, so He swore to them with uplifted hand that He would make them fall in the desert.

That’s why today’s message is so important. You and I, like Abraham, we look at the circumstances of our lives and we look around, and it’s hard to believe sometimes in God’s promises. Maybe we even have a grumble about God and His promises ... That’s going to keep us out of His promised land. People sometimes say, "Well, Berni, you talk about this promised land. It’s obvious what it meant to the Israelites back then, but what does it mean to you and me here and now?"

Well, we need to go from the Old Testament to the New Testament. There’s a transition from the physical land to the spiritual one - something that people struggled with when Jesus talked about the kingdom of God. They thought Jesus had come to kick the Roman occupiers out of the promised land, the physical land, but He was talking about something entirely different. There are so many passages we could go through in the New Testament, but a couple that really explain the promised land that God has given to us through Jesus His Son ... Let’s have a look at them. Luke 17:20. Flick over to there:

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The kingdom of God doesn’t come with your careful observation, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is”, because the kingdom of God is within you.’

The promised land isn’t something out there. It’s not a new house or a new car or all that stuff. The promised land is the kingdom of God; it’s God living and dwelling and ruling in our hearts. Again, Jesus explained it this way in Matthew 13:44:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

The promised land is the treasure of God Himself in our hearts, our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name; Your kingdom come. John 14:23. Jesus said:

If anyone loves Me, he will obey My teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to make our home with him.

There are plenty of people who believe in Jesus for their eternal life. Jesus died for my sin; therefore I’m forgiven; therefore I have eternal life. Then what they do is, they kind of put it in their filing cabinet and file it under insurance policy, and live a miserable life. Jesus promised a lot of things – a rich, abundant life, as well as trials and persecutions. He didn’t promise us it would be easy to follow Him; what He did promise is that our relationship with Him would fill us to overflowing with abundant joy and peace. That’s where the promised land is today – in our hearts; in our relationship with Jesus Christ; in that abundance of life that comes through that relationship.

Let me take you back to that starry night: Abram, and the LORD led him tenderly to the point where God wrote His promises on Abram’s heart – a promise that Abram believed against all odds; a promise that God delivered against all odds. You and I are each under our own patch of starry heaven today, and the LORD is whispering of His promised land in our hearts – a land purchased by Jesus on the cross, a land of blessing that goes on forever. The Spirit of God will write that on our hearts if we let Him. He will give us the faith to believe if we’ll ask Him. Is today that day when we open our hearts to God’s promised land?

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Stress is affecting so many people – in fact, it’s a global pandemic. And what we’ve all discovered is that the shallow, band aid solutions that the world offers us, simply don’t work. What we need is power. Power to deal with the stress in our lives, once and for all.

Have a Cheerful Heart Sometimes we need to be pretty direct, pretty blunt about dealing with the blockages in our lives that are interrupting the flow of the power of God in our life. Because God means to bring all His power to bear to deal with the stress that we suffer from, but sometimes, we’re working against Him and then we’re wondering – hang on, where’s that power that Jesus promised? So …

… Sorry to be a bit blunt here, but it doesn’t hurt every now and then we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves some questions like that. So – are you one of those people that exudes joy or sadness; a positive outlook, or a negative outlook; encouragement or discouragement? Which one are you? Are you a sad sack? Or do you fluctuate between the two – up on the mountain-tops one day, down in the dumps the next?

The reason I’m asking is that if you’re someone who spends more than a little time down in the dumps, then it’s having an impact on you … it’s having an impact on the people around you … and it’s having an impact on your relationship with them. That’s pretty far-reaching. Because if we damage relationships, we damage career prospects, we damage marriages, we damage our children.

This is serious stuff. Stress is debilitating and a negative, untrusting attitude that focuses on the problem rather than the on the God who can make all the difference, interrupts the power that He wants to pour out on us. On top of that, the world wants us to believe that we can wave a magic wand and make stress disappear.

Here’s what one of those body and soul web sites recommends. Ten quirky stress busters it’s called. Chew gum, eat chocolate (oh that’ll be just fine and dandy when you come down off your sugar high), get a cat, keep a diary, do some yoga, hum a tune, blow up a balloon, snack on walnuts (Well, that is a lot better than sugar filled gum and chocolate I have to admit), have a laugh or ring your mum.

Oh please … stress is so much deeper and more profound in our lives. It’s a constant companion for many, many people – everything stresses them, or if not everything, then they go through prolonged periods of stress over one or two very important issues or situations in their lives.

You’ve probably figured out that eating walnuts (as good as that maybe for you) is not going to solve the problems in your life or relieve your stress. At least I’m hoping you have.

You see the world’s answer to stress is to conjure something up out of nothing. Or to apply en external band-aid, to heal a deep, internal wound.

Have you ever had this experience? You’re driving along in the car and it’s bright and sunny – so you pop your sunglasses on. But gradually the clouds roll in and at some point you’re thinking, it is so dark and gloomy today. Then you realise you’re wearing your sunnies so you take them off and it’s only then you realise that it’s nowhere near as dark and gloomy as you thought it was. Sure the clouds have rolled in, sure it’s overcast, but not that dark and gloomy.

The attitudes of our hearts are a lot like those sunglasses. Some people are walking through difficult times, with a gloomy, darkened heart, and so the whole experience feels about a hundred times worse than what it really is.

God knows that and that’s why He’s concerned over the state of your heart. Have a listen to some of the things He says in His Word about what’s going on in your heart:

An anxious heart weighs you down, but a kind word, cheers you up. (Proverbs 12:25)

A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. (Proverbs 15:13)

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Proverbs 17:22)

God’s interested in the state of your heart. He’s interested in what’s going on in your life. Now last time we chatted about how to get God’s peace guarding your heart and your mind – do you remember? Philippians Chapter 4, verses 6 and 7:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Simply by praying instead of worrying, giving thanks, laying out our worries and concerns and needs openly before God, He will replace the fear and stress and worry with His peace which will actually guard your heart and your mind. Imagine, God’s peace standing guard around you to keep worry and stress away. That’s a pretty good deal.

But what the Apostle Paul goes on to say straight after that – writing as he is from his cell on death row – is equally instructive in terms of how to foster that peace and how to keep the cheerfulness and joy that God’s peace brings, strong in our inside. Philippians 4:8,9:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

So, instead of mulling over the bad stuff and what might go wrong, think about the good stuff. Now, you might say to me, I can’t control what I think. Sure you can. When you find yourself thinking about something negative, you can choose to think about something positive.

Try it, it actually works – and if you’re struggling you go back to prayer and the Holy Spirit, who is – remember – guarding your heart and mind with God’s peace, that same Holy Spirit is right there in you to be a part of that and to help you. Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as your counsellor and comforter.

And now the exciting thing that happens, is that we get benefit from that on the inside, but other people, the people around us get benefit from that as it oozes out of us on the outside.

Do you want to be glum? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life being downcast? Do you want to be feeling down in the dumps all the time? Of course you don’t. So now you implement these two simple things – pray instead of worrying, and when you find your mind wandering into the down things, grab it back – with the help of the Holy Spirit who is on your inside and who’s on your side – and focus it on the good stuff. The stuff that God is about in your life. The things that bring you joy, the things that God’s doing, God’s faithfulness, the fantastic things He’s done in the past. And now, you are living a much, much better life on the inside. You’re at peace. Your heart is cheerful – Jesus wants you to have a cheerful heart. Remember what He said to His disciples, John 16:33:

In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.

So, now your life is much better, now this peace and joy is oozing out of you, and all of a sudden – you can’t help it – you want to encourage others. You’re having an impact on their life:

A cheerful look brings joy to the heart and good news gives health to the bones. (Proverbs 15:30)

So the cheerful look on your face is going to bring joy to someone else’s heart. The encouraging word that you give to them, the good news that you can share with them, is going to give health and life to their bones.

Your joy touches their lives. Your life improves. Their life improves. Your relationship with them improves. All because you took the time and the wisdom of God to lay hold of the peace and the joy that God has for you. Talk about a stress buster! Not bad, eh?

And on top of all that, the Bible tells us that the joy of the Lord is your strength. Do you get it? When we let the joy of God fill us amidst the gloom, all of a sudden, we experience His strength, and His power.

Lift Up Your Eyes Well, over these last few weeks, we’ve been chatting about how to deal with the stress in our lives. Not that all stress is bad – some stress from time to time helps to get things done, gets us to sharpen our game and deliver and perform.

Think about an athlete about to run the 100 metre dash at the Olympics will harness that nervous energy, let’s call it, as they line up on the starting blocks. That’s a good thing. It’s just not good, if we’re constantly living our lives under stress.

And so we’ve been chatting –in this series that I’ve called Stress Busters – about dealing with the root cause of the stress. No band-aid solutions, like listening to soothing music, or having a nice cup of tea, or patting your cat. They’re all nice and lovely, but when we’re under real stress, all those things do is alleviate the symptoms for a short time.

What we need, is to deal with the root cause of the stress. Now immediately people think stress, root cause – oh right. It’s that person, that situation, that medical diagnosis, that thing out there – that’s what I have to deal with.

Well, perhaps you do. But pressure and stress are two different things. Those things out there put pressure on us. But stress is all about how we react to them, so if we're looking for the root cause of our stress, it lies inside us, in our hearts, in our minds. In what we feel and what we think.

So we’ve chatted in this series about some real, stress busters. Things that deal with the root cause. Learning to trust in God. Learning how to develop a quiet confidence in Him and how to pray the prayer of peace. How to have a cheerful heart – if you missed any of those messages, you’ll find them all in the Series Stress Busters on our website christianityworks.com.

So … I’d like to bring all of those lessons together in a practical, case study if you will, by sharing the story of a woman called Hannah. She was the Prophet Samuel’s mother in the Old Testament of the Bible. But as with many of the great things that God is doing, Samuel’s entry into the world wasn’t an easy one. At least, not for Hannah. It was a very stressful time. In fact, she was deeply, deeply distressed over a long period of time. So just sit back and have a listen to her story – it’s real, it’s stressful … and it’s beautiful. Here we go, 1 Samuel 1:1–18:

There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

Now this man used to go up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb.

Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. Her husband Elkanah said to her, ‘Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?’

After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: ’O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and do not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.’

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, ‘How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.’ But Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.’

So Eli answered, ‘Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.’ And she said, ‘Let your servant find favour in your sight.’ Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.

It's a beautiful story isn’t it? You can’t help but feel for Hannah and what she was going through. It was a really big thing in that culture for her not to be able to have a child. The basic belief was that if you were a good person who honoured God, He would bless you with many children. But if you weren’t, He wouldn’t. So Hannah was looked down upon by all in sundry.

Particularly, Penniniah, her rival we’re told. The other wife who was delivering plenty of sons. Just imagine how much stress this was putting on Hannah. Firstly, she couldn’t have children – any woman whose body clock is ticking and who desperately wants kids but can’t have them – knows how devastating that is, just on it’s own.

But now add to that the constant niggling and whispering and derision from ‘her rival’ – there they were, these two women, competing for their husband’s affections – I just can’t begin to imagine what an awful, additional layer of stress that heaped on Hannah. And then there were the social and religious expectations – everyone treating her like she was some sinner or leper.

She could have spent the rest of her life wallowing in that morass of pain and self-pity. But Hannah took some decisive action. She poured it all out to God. Instead of constantly looking down at her terrible circumstances, she lifted her gaze and looked up to Him and, deeply distressed we’re told, poured her heart out to God and asked Him to do something.

And before she even got an answer, before she even fell pregnant, listen again to the impact of this prayer on her whole being, on her countenance, on her life:

Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.

There you have it. The peace that passes all understanding. She did exactly what Paul the Apostle counselled his friends in Philippi to do over two thousand years later:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God and the peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7,8)

We don't need to clean up our act before we go to God. We don’t have to be all confidence and self-assured and ‘together’. He just calls us to come as we are and pour it all out. And you should never, ever be afraid to do that.

In fact elsewhere, in the New Testament book of Hebrews, this is what God says to us about this very thing:

Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

Don’t you love that word – with boldness. So as our time in this series – Stress Busters – draws to a close, let me counsel you to do exactly the same. Do what Hannah did – lift up your eyes and pour your stress out on God, and my friend, He will act. And whatever the outcome to your stressful situation, He will give you peace. That’s just what He does.

God is a God who brings His power to bear for the people whom He loves – His people, the people who have put their trust in Jesus His Son. He doesn’t always take away the person or the situation that causes the stress, but what He does do, is He works in our hearts, He gives us strength and courage and joy and peace and power to remove the stress. But there’s one thing … on thing that robs us of all that. And that’s the thing we're going to talk about.

Blackout Have you ever been in a power blackout? Here where I live, they’re quite rare. But in many parts of the world, they’re a daily occurrence and in some parts of the world, there’s no power at all.

I travel quite a bit and I regularly find myself in places where there’s no power or there are constant blackouts. In a sense, you get used to it pretty quickly. When you’re sitting and talking in a meeting and the power goes out, you just keep on talking until either the generator cuts in, or … if there’s no generator, until the power comes back on.

It’s just a fact of life. You learn to live with it. But when I come back home again, to a place where the power almost never goes out, I have to tell you, it’s a much, much better way to live. I think in the three years that I’ve been living in our current apartment, we’ve lost power perhaps once or twice.

Many people are living their lives, spiritually, emotionally, morally, either in a state of regular power outages, blackouts, or in a place without any power at all. And the thing that flicks the switch on God’s power in their lives, is their sin.

Have a listen to this, the Apostle Paul, Ephesians 1:17–21:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

Paul’s praying that his friends in Ephesus would realise the certain hope, the riches of their inheritance, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power that they already have in Christ. The very same power that raised Jesus from the dead and put Him above everything and everyone. Do you see – God means to bring that power, that life-giving power, to bear in your life, to give you the new life that Jesus died and rose again to give you.

But when we rebel against God, when we turn our backs on Him through our sin, the power stops. Why? What good father would continue to reward and bless his child when the child is rebelling? As much as the father loves the child, he stops the flow of blessing, so that the child will realise its mistake, and come back to him. It’s what dads do. And it’s the same with God:

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. (Galatians 6:7)

One of the most stressful things that we can ever do is to rebel against God – we talked about that earlier in this series. And as God calls us back to Him, often He turns the heat up on our stress, as we live through the consequences of our sin and our rebellion.

When we keep struggling against and kicking against God, when we run away from His goodness and His plans for our life, man, be prepared for a wilderness experience, right? And I know that there are a few people in that place right at the moment. You’re experiencing extreme stress, because you’ve turned your back on God. Well, in a moment we’re going to pray together. And this is what we’re going to pray about. Peter said to them:

‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’. (Acts 2:38)

Do you see, when you repent, when you turn back to God, He promises you the power, the power of the Holy Spirit. The greatest stress buster of them all.

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There are all sorts of things in this world that cause us stress. And I’ve heard so many ridiculous ways of relieving it – have a cup of tea. Take a hot shower. Okay – so they might relieve the symptoms for a short while. But what we need are some powerful solutions to the root cause of our stress.

Trust in the LORD When you Google stress relief, mostly what you discover is relaxation techniques. Take a hot bath. Watch some television to get your mind off things. Spend more time with friends. Some will even tell you to go and practise yoga and meditation. Play stress relief games. Identify your stress responses and manage them. Well, it all sounds great, but here’s the problem I have with all of those things. They’re a bit like taking an aspirin for a headache. They may alleviate the symptoms for a short while, but they don’t solve the problem by treating the cause. If your headache is caused by a brain tumour, hey; aspirin just ain’t going to do it. You need something that goes to the root cause.

The same is true with stress and anxiety. You know, a mistake we make when we think about the root cause of our stress is we imagine that the root cause is that thing out there somewhere that’s causing us stress. It’s that difficult person; it’s that difficult relationship; it’s the fact that I’m struggling with my finances or I’ve had a bad medical diagnosis from the doctor. It’s that thing out there that’s causing me the stress. If I can get rid of that, then I won’t have any more stress in my life. That’s our rationale. That’s what we think, but stress is our response to a situation. Stress is something we do to ourselves.

Of course, sometimes scary things happen. Someone we love dies, and the process of grieving is stressful. We lose our job, and the process of dealing with our finances can be stressful, but a lot of what we stress out about is totally manageable, except for the fact that we’re stressing out over it. Stress, anxiety, fear ... Those things immobilise us. They stop us from doing the things we need to do to deal with the situation, so when I’m talking about dealing with the root cause of stress, I’m actually talking about dealing with whatever’s going on inside you that’s causing the stress response, because each and every day of your life and mine pretty much is going to bring along circumstances and situations and people and stuff that have the potential to cause us stress. It’s one thing to have an initial response of fear or shock when something potentially stressful comes our way; it’s another thing entirely to spend the rest of the week, the rest of the year, the rest of your life, stressing out about it.

So let me share my number one, numero uno, stress buster with you right now. Trust in the LORD your God. I know it sounds like a cop-out; it sounds like a platitude, but in a moment, I’m going to tell you why it’s the one solution that decisively deals with stress. Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.

The thing that causes us stress by and large is when something that has the potential to negatively impact our lives is completely outside our control. Would you agree? The doctor tells you that she’s detected a tumour on your scan, but she doesn’t know yet whether it’s malignant or benign, or whether they’re going to be able to operate on it and get it all out. So much is out of your control in that scenario, and your very life hangs in the balance. Stress!

Now bring God into the picture. There are three key facts that I want you to note about God in this stressful scenario: Here’s the first one. He loves you beyond measure. In fact, He loves you so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die and to pay for your sins, to give you eternal life, so there’s absolutely no question about how much He loves you.

Secondly, nothing escapes Him. He never fails to notice what you’re going through. If He knows exactly how many hairs you have on your head, and He does because the Bible tells us that, then He surely knows what you’re going through, and the third thing is that nothing is outside His control. If He created the universe, friend, He has the power to deal with anything and everything that’s going on in your life.

Now, you put those three facts together and what you have is a compassionate, loving God who completely understands, and who has just the right plan for your life. He knows what to do, when to do it, and how to get it done, and He will do it. The Bible has a name for that: It’s called faithfulness. The writer of the book of Lamentations was looking over the destruction and the devastation after the Babylonians had completely and utterly destroyed Jerusalem, and taken God’s chosen people into captivity as slaves. He pours his heart out, which is why the book is called Lamentations, but then despite what he sees, despite the devastation and the pain and the stress that he feels in his heart, he comes to this conclusion. Lamentations 3:22-24:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my Portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him.

My friend, no matter what you’re going through at the moment, no matter what lies ahead, no matter what the devastation and the ruin that your eye can see, your God is faithful; and when you put your trust in Him, all of a sudden, the stress goes away because He can and will act to make sure that His steadfast love plays itself out in your life. Look. Each one of us is going to die sooner or later, and along the way, each one of us is going to have financial problems, health problems, relationship problems, inadequacies, insecurities ... There are more than enough in each week to get you and me to stress ourselves into an early grave. Listen. Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.

Let me tell you, no amount of relaxation techniques – yoga, TV, dinner with friends, hot showers, hot cups of tea – none of that stuff is going to come anywhere close to the impact of trusting your God with all your heart. He knows what to do; He has the power to do it; He loves you so much. Ok, we are going to die one day. That’s part of His plan, but in the meantime, friend, He loves you so much. Whatever you’re going through, He’s in that place with you, and He is worthy of your trust.

Develop a Quiet Confidence We kind of stress out about our kids and our jobs and how we look and what other people think. We stress out about tomorrow. What will that bring? We stress out about ... Well, we stress out about just about anything or everything. Let me ask you this. What are you stressed over right now? What’s the thorn in your side that keeps on making you worry about this or that? Pretty much everybody can name at least two or three things that are causing them to stress out right at the moment. Jesus hit the nail on the head when He asked this rhetorical question. Luke 6:27:

Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life?

Well, that’s pretty much it. That right there just shows us how utterly useless worry and stress are. They don’t achieve anything positive. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Stress and worry often immobilise us from doing the things that we can and need to do to deal with that situation that’s causing us the pressure and the stress in the first place. We just kind of sit there on the sofa worrying about it, when getting up and doing A or B would actually reduce the risk or fix the problem altogether.

Now you can call me crazy; plenty of people do ... Call me crazy, but let me throw this out there for you to think about. This is absolutely no way for you to live your life, or for me to live my life. Would you agree? I mean, being stressed all the time is totally nuts. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t achieve anything good, and yet countless people are caught up in chronic, repetitive, day-after-day, lifelong stress, and for what?

So let me ask you, what if you could replace that with a quiet confidence? Not some false bravado; just a quiet sense of confidence on the inside that you know it’s going to be fine. What if that were the overriding mind-set in your life, in place of the person who worries and stresses about everything? Would it be a worthwhile thing to achieve? Well, that’s what I’m aiming for in your life today, not because I happen to be particularly smart or insightful or brilliant; I’m none of those things, but because the Word of God has the power to transform your life completely and utterly. If only you will receive this mighty, powerful Word of God in your heart today, your life can be utterly transformed.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. ‘This guy hasn’t a clue what I’m going through. How can he possibly say that?’ And in part you are right; I absolutely don’t have a clue, but God does. I don’t have the wisdom, but God does. I don’t have the power to transform your heart and your mind and your thoughts and your emotions or your life, but God does.

Have a listen to this. It’s about a guy called Joshua. For the last forty or so years, he’s been playing second fiddle to a guy called Moses, leading God’s people (probably over a million of them) through the wilderness: Relying on God for food, and for water, and for protection every step of the way. Moses (the leader) has just died, just at the point when they’re about to cross over the Jordan river into the land that God’s promised them; just at the point where they have to gear up for battle after battle because the promised land is full of other tribes and nations, and they’re going to have to take it by force.

Just at that point Moses, the proven, trusted, experienced, wise leader ups and dies, and Joshua is put in charge. Stress? Absolutely! Stress with a capital ‘S”. This is life and death stress. If you put yourself in Joshua’s shoes, man, you’d really be stressing. Right? Well he must have been, because this is what God says to Joshua right at this point in his life. Joshua 1:1:

After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying, ‘My servant Moses is dead. Now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I’m giving to them – to the Israelites. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given to you, as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness of Lebanon as far as the Great River, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites and to the Great Sea in the west shall be your territory. No one shall be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them; only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with the Law that my servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it, for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful. I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.’

No less than three times, God says to Joshua: ‘Be strong and courageous’, and one of those times he says, ‘Be strong and very courageous’. Why? Because God has a plan. God is in this, and God will see His plan through, despite the overwhelming odds, despite the impossibility of the task. It’s about God and who He is, not the enemy and who they are. Let me say it again: It’s about God and who He is, not the enemy and who they are, and the foundation of Joshua’s confidence is to be what? God’s Word. "Stay in My Word; think about it; meditate on it day and night, so that it doesn’t depart from you."

As you read on through this book of Joshua, you see that under his leadership, Israel faced many, many life and death, stressful situations, but God called him to do it with confidence.

You know, sometimes, our confidence is misplaced. We put our confidence in our strengths and abilities; we put our confidence in money or other people, but won’t place our confidence in God. When He’s the One we look to and we trust, lean on and co-operate with, then that confidence – my friend, it’s never misplaced. Hey, listen. Without faith it’s impossible to please God. God wants us to put our trust in Him during those difficult, stressful, dangerous, scary situations. That’s the whole point! We develop this quiet confidence as we experience His faithfulness, and that’s what carries us through.

Pray the Prayer of Peace

Listen. You and I are going to find ourselves in stressful situations from time to time; we just are. It’s par for the course. In a very real sense, it’s kind of what’s meant to happen, and for anyone in a stressful situation right now, my prayer is that just knowing that gives you some comfort. We all end up there from time to time. The question now is, what do we do about it? How are we going to respond in this moment of crisis? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been taught that the right thing to do is to put your faith in God. That’s exactly what we’ve been chatting about on the program so far in this series of messages. Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.

And the other one that we looked at earlier, Lamentations 3:22-24:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my Portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him.

And what did He say to Joshua? Joshua 1:5-7:

As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you nor forsake you. Be strong; be courageous, for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them. Only be strong and very courageous.

You see, each of those Scriptures that we’ve been looking at point us in absolutely the right direction, without a doubt, but anybody who’s been in a deeply stressful situation, and particularly anyone who’s there right now in that stressful situation, is sitting there thinking: ‘Well, look, that’s all fantastic and nice, Berni. I know those Scriptures too, but how do I do that? How do I put my trust in God? How can I be strong and courageous when I feel so weak and helpless?’ And unless you get the answers to those questions, then the Scriptures we just read and plenty more of them to boot, they’re just going to make you feel more and more condemned – more and more like you’re failing God, because you can’t conjure up that trust and that faith and that strength. Am I right?

So right now, we’re going to get the answers to those questions and not from me, but from God because He always has the answers. God knows how you and I can lay hold of that courage and confidence in God, because He loves us. He tells us very clearly, very plainly in His Word how to do that, and to be honest, in my walk with the Lord over the past ... mmm ... almost twenty years, this has probably been the most important how-to that I have ever learnt. Are you ready? Here we go. Stress buster number three. It comes from Philippians 4:6-7:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

This is a very plain piece of Scripture. There are not a lot of hidden meanings there, but you’d be amazed, amazed at how easily we skate over the surface of it and completely miss the point.

I think I may have told this story once before on the program a few years back, so if you’ve heard it, just get over it (I’m just kidding). I was sitting in a Bible-study with a bunch of people who’d been Christians for many years, much longer than I had. We were studying this particular passage in Philippians 4. It was interesting; people hedged around – this, that; yeah, we all worry ... The discussion went on for ten or fifteen minutes and at the end of it, the Bible-study group-leader summarised it along these lines: ‘Well, yeah. God wants us to have peace but still, we’re just going to worry, aren’t we?’

The crazy thing was that everyone seemed to nod in agreement with him and we were about to move on. Well, I don’t know; I was only the new kid on the block, but I couldn’t help myself. I kind of let out this loud, agitated, ‘No!’ I don’t think anyone had ever heard that before because there was stunned silence and all the eyeballs were on me, and I think my wife wished that the floor would swallow us both up, so I went at it with both barrels. I said, ‘Look at what this says. It’s a promise from God through the apostle Paul, who (by the way) was sitting on death row in a dungeon when he wrote this thing.’ God’s saying, ‘Look. Instead of worrying, pray. The time that you would have spent worrying and stressing out about this stuff, take that time and spend it differently.

Take that time that you would have spent stressing, and pray instead’. Thank God. Let Him know your problems and your needs and your requests, right there in the stressful situation that you find yourself in, and when you do that, says God through Paul, here’s the promise bit: The peace of God which surpasses all understanding. There’s this peace that in this situation, in this circumstance, simply doesn’t make any worldly sense. That peace will not just fill your heart; it’ll guard your heart and your mind in Christ.

Now, think of the power of that. When worry comes along, when stress comes along and hits you, when it attacks you, when it knocks on the door of your heart and your mind, God’s peace in Christ Jesus will be standing as a mighty, powerful, God-given sentinel to the door of your heart and mind. God’s peace in Christ will guard your heart and your mind, and the impact of that: Think of a fortress being guarded by a mighty army. The opposing army simply can’t get in, and so in this case, the worry and the stress just won’t be able to get in because God’s peace will keep it out. Hey, that’s God’s promise here, so let me ask you this: Do you believe God’s Word or not? Do you believe that this is God’s promise to you, or not? It’s one way or the other.

I don’t know if they got it, these people in this home group that we were talking about, but I’m praying that you get it. The way that we appropriate the peace of God, the way that we lay hold of it, the way that we grab it with both hands and hang onto it, is by praying to God with a thankful heart, and pouring out our feelings and our needs on God.

Let me tell you something. If you’re in a stressful situation and you take this one promise, just this one Scripture (two verses) and start living it out by making it a habit to get away alone with God and pray and spend time with Him and pour your heart out and give Him thanks, I guarantee you that the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will become the sentinel of your heart and your mind and your life. There’s your stress buster. There’s your peace, and remember, it’s a peace that given your circumstances, you really shouldn’t be able to feel. You shouldn’t be able to have. It’s a peace that in the face of this stressful situation simply doesn’t make sense. That’s why Paul calls it the peace which surpasses all understanding, but you know what? It doesn’t have to make sense, because peace is peace, and God’s peace is God’s peace, and I will take that in place of the world’s stress any day. How about you?

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Sometimes stress is triggered by other people or circumstances – things out there, many of which we don’t have any control over. Other times, it’s something that we bring on ourselves. Whichever of those two it happens to be, you and I, we need to know how to handle stress.

The Stress of Circumstance I wish I could tell you that there is something that you could do to avoid every stressful situation and circumstance in this world. Wouldn’t it be fantastic? But it just wouldn’t be real. Because no matter who we are, where we live, how young or old we are, how rich or poor we are … there are going to be those days when tough, difficult, stressful situations and circumstances arise.

Sure, some stressful things are avoidable. We’ve been talking about those already in this series that I’ve called, "Stress Busters". And when it comes to dealing with needless, avoidable stress – I’m definitely all for that!

But some stressful situations are totally unavoidable, and they’re the ones that we’re going to chat about for a few minutes today. Because it seems to me that the trick isn’t to hide our heads in the sand and pretend that we can make them go away. The trick is flourishing amidst the stress.

Now, you might think that’s a crazy idea! Flourishing amidst the stress? Get off the grass, who are you trying to kid? I know … I know that’s what some people are thinking right now. But this isn’t my idea. It’s something that Jesus came up with. It’s something that He said to His disciples right at the most stressful point in His relationship with them.

He was soon to be crucified – the plot to kill Him was well afoot and His disciples could feel it. Not only was Jesus threatened, but they were probably wondering: well, are we going to be next? When they come to arrest Jesus and nail Him to a cross, are they going to do the same to us? There can’t be any greater level of stress than that.

So right at that point, right at that moment, this is what Jesus says to them:

The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you, so that you may have peace. In this world you will face tribulation. But take courage; I have conquered the world. (John 16:32-33)

So, the persecution is coming, they’re about to be scattered, running in fear for their lives, and Jesus tells them in this world you will face persecution. The original Greek word there that sits aback of the English translation for "persecution" is thlipsis, it means pressure, stress – literally it means to have the life squeezed out of you.

Just fantastic Lord, they must have been thinking. Thanks for that, just what we needed to know. A promise from God right in the moment when we’re in fear of our lives and Jesus tells us – in this world you will have the life squeezed out of you. Perfect!

But Jesus doesn’t leave it there. He goes on to say: but take courage, be of good cheer, don’t worry, because I have conquered the world. All this I’ve said to you so that in Me you might have … peace.

The exact opposite of stress. Which would you rather have in your life – peace or stress? Well, peace obviously! But here’s the nub of what Jesus is saying – you can have that peace, right in this place where the life is being squeezed out of you.

Did you get that? Jesus is saying – look, you won’t always be able to avoid the pressure, in fact one thing is for certain, you will have pressure, you will feel squeezed. But in the middle of that you can have confidence and peace, because I have overcome the world – something they would just see in a few short days later when Jesus rose from the grave and appeared to them.

And friend, that’s His message for you today. I love how this powerful truth works its way out in the life and the ministry of Paul the Apostle, who down the track, had more than his fair share of pressure. Have a listen to what he writes from out in the field, out on assignment preaching the Good News of Jesus into a hostile world. 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 8 to 11:

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction that we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we could not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

There it is again, the same word that Jesus used for persecution, that exact same word thlipsis – unbearably crushed so that in their despair they thought they were going to die. You’d call that serious stress, right? And yet in the middle of all that, what gave them strength and peace? They relied on God. They trusted in Him. They were at the end of their tether, they had nothing left, life itself hung in the balance – so they did the only thing that they could do.

That’s what happens, especially, let me say, when we’re in the business of getting out there and doing God’s business; serving God. I find it to be true that whenever I’m serving God, opposition comes thick and fast. The more powerfully I feel called to step out and serve my Lord, the more powerfully Satan hurls opposition my way. It’s as though the armies of hell muster in opposition and they unleash all their fury.

I remember once, it was the first time I was to lecture at my old Bible College, where I’d been taught. It was a Thursday evening and I drove off from my home. Before I’d gone half a kilometre, three different vehicles had tried their darnedest to run into me. What’s going on? I thought to myself. And then I realised. That’s what happens when you’re serving Jesus.

Opposition, disruption, stress, pressure, they all get hurled at you from every direction. So, let’s not be amazed. It happened to Jesus. It happened to Paul. It’s going to happen – guaranteed – to you and to me. It’s exactly what Jesus promised. In this world you will have thlipsisi – you will have tribulation, you will have the life squeezed out of you, but be of good cheer, be confident, don’t be stressed, because I have overcome the world.

And you know something, He has. Our confidence in those places at those times needs to be in Jesus – in Him and in Him alone. Sometime later, in his second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 8 to 15, Paul puts it like this:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So, death is at work in us, but life in you.

But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture — ‘I believed, and so I spoke’ — we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

Friend the message is clear. In this world you will have tribulation – but don’t worry, because right in that place, Jesus is there, and He will carry you through. And when I’ve had nothing left in the tank, that’s the only thing that’s carried me through. Jesus. Let your confidence be in Him and in Him alone. Now that’s what I call a stress buster!

The Stress of Evil Evil seems like a strong word, doesn’t it? I mean, by and large, you and I don’t think of ourselves as evil people. We’re not a murderer, or a rapist, or a child abuser, well, 99.99% of us aren’t. And so, the word evil seems just a tad strong.

I’m guessing you know the story of Adam and Eve. God put them in the Garden of Eden, they had a fantastic life, they could do whatever they wanted, except eat the fruit of one of the trees in the garden. That’s all. I don’t think there was anything particularly special about the tree – no magic potions, no hallucinogens in the fruit. It’s just that God nominated this one tree to give Adam and Eve a choice – either to obey Him or not.

God always gives us a choice. Genesis chapter 2, verse 9:

Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So, what was the tree called? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Where evil is defined as anything that rebels against God. You see, up until the point that Adam and Eve ate the fruit from that tree, they had no idea what evil was. It may have been a concept, but they’d never experienced it in their lives. They didn’t know it, they had no knowledge of it. And God warned them:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will die.’ (Genesis 2: 15-17)

They couldn’t say that they didn’t know, right? But then the serpent tempted them, and Eve made the first move:

So when the woman saw that the tree was in fact good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make someone wise, she took of its fruit and she ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was there with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. (Genesis 3:6-7)

Would you say at that moment, when they, for the first time, knew for themselves the difference between good and evil, they were stressed? I’d think so – because the very next thing they do is to hide from God when they hear Him coming in the garden. Just think about how silly that is! But eventually God found them, and the consequences of their actions were devastating:

To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’

And to the man he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ …

Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’ — therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now again, would you say that this evil that they’d done in God’s sight caused them stress? Absolutely it did, and it was a stress that lasted for the rest of their lives. Well, right there you have it – whenever you and I rebel against God, it is going to cause us pain and stress. I don’t care what it is we do to rebel against Him, but there are going to be consequences. Serious consequences.

A husband doesn’t cherish his wife; a wife doesn’t honour her husband. Stress? You betcha! A man decides that his life is all about making money and being wealthy – so he chases after riches and sacrifices everything. Stress? Well, let’s take another look at what may well be a familiar passage to you:

But those who want to be rich will fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6:9-10)

Now that’s what I call stress. What about anger and dissension and strife, back-biting, dishonesty?

Well the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like those. I am warning you, says Paul, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-20)

Now that passage tells us that all that stuff is going to end in some serious stress – for those who do those things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But from experience we know that all of those things will also create stress here and now. Strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, all that jazz.

Would you like to work in a place that has one of those things happening – factions and dissensions for example. Maybe you do – well, that’s what you’d call a stressful workplace. Would you like to live in a family where one member is constantly drunk? Anyone who has, will tell you that that causes tremendous stress.

You’re getting the picture, right? Sin – sorry to put that word up there, but that’s what God calls it, or if you’d prefer evil perhaps – evil always results in stress. That’s the bottom line.

It promises a lot up front, it’s so seductive, but it only ever delivers us stress and trouble. Some people, and maybe you’re one of them … I’m being very direct here, kind but direct … some people are wanting to hang on to some bit of evil in their lives, some particular sin and rationalise it away as though it was nothing. But it’s like a thorn in their flesh – it causes them stress and pain over and over again.

I am not going to forgive her for doing that to me!! Okay, don’t forgive her, but you’re going to suffer the stress of unforgiveness for as long as you care to hang on to that sin.

My friend, if you want to rid your life of unnecessary stress, then the quickest and easiest way of getting started is to root out the sin in your life, to pull it up by the root and throw it out. The moment you forgive, the moment you deal with your pride, the moment you stop quarrelling with people at work and stirring up trouble – the stress in your life starts to subside.

Why? Because God only labels something as evil, as sin, if it’s going to hurt us. Get rid of the sin, it stops hurting. It’s that simple. The only question is … what are you waiting for?

A Time to Reflect If you had to sum-up your life right at the moment, where you’re at, what you’re feeling, the things that are causing you to stress out, the amount of pressure and stress that you feel under. What would you say in twenty-five words or less, where are you at in your life when it comes to stress, anxiety, fear and uncertainty?

Is the picture that you’d paint me, a bright and sunny one? A bit overcast? Or maybe there is a great storm raging? I guess what I’m trying to do here is to hold up a mirror and get you to take a look at your life, yourself, your stress levels.

Stress is a bit like a chronic disease, well actually, for many people, it is a chronic disease. I was listening to an interview on the radio just the other day of a man who had kidney disease. In the twelve months leading up to his diagnosis and treatment, he started noticing the symptoms, but being a typical male, he didn’t go to the doctor.

You know how it is, you’re busy, you’re focused on this or that, and this little symptom niggles away at you over here, and then it seems to go away, and then another one happens over there, and its kind of incremental, it builds up really slowly over time.

After a while, he realised something was wrong, but he still didn’t go to the doctor. So, by the time he was feeling really sick, and had it checked out, he was actually seriously ill.

Its sometimes like that with the stress in our lives, tossing and turning at night, not feeling happy, this, that. But when you are busy, you kind of brush it aside, and all the time the stress is building up until something snaps.

That’s why people have break-downs. That’s why relationships are torn apart. Most of us don’t cut a pretty picture when we are under a lot of stress. It’s not good for us and its not good for the people around us.

So, how are you going? Are you noticing that things aren’t what they should be? Are you burning the candle at both ends, wondering: Why am I so tired? Are you letting certain people get to you? Are money worries worrying you?

Come on, what is it that has been niggling away there in your life? In you heart, in your mind? Bubbling away under the surface. And you’ve been trying to ignore it desperately, but the more you try to ignore it, the worse it seems to get. And as we sit here and speak about it now, you’re really beginning to realise: You know what, something isn’t right – I’m dealing with this stress and I’ve been trying to ignore it, and this is not right.

God is a really practical God. You don’t have to read very far in the Bible to discover that. And He is vitally interested in dealing with the stress in your life. Take Psalm 55 – its all about the treachery of a friend. Here it is in a nutshell – verses 20 and 21:

My companion laid hands on a friend and violated a covenant with me, with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war, with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords.

Its not very nice, but it happens, and it causes stress.

See how God deals with really practical stuff that happens in our lives? Just as He was interested in the plight of King David back then, who wrote that Pslam, He is interested in your plight, in your circumstances, and in your stress. And the solution to that stress, comes in the very next verse of that Psalm – verse 22 of Psalm 55, and that’s what I’d like to leave you with this week:

Cast you burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved.

Isn’t that beautiful? Cast your burden on the Lord. He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. And that is what I’d like to encourage you to do, starting this week. God wants to help carry your heavy loads. God wants to lighten your load. God wants to be part of the solution to eliminating stress and bring peace into your life.

Friends, listen to it again: Cast you burden on the Lord. He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved.

Come on, where are you at in your life? What stress are you grappling with? What are you struggling with and you are kind of thinking to yourself: I just can’t cope with it anymore. I’ve been dealing with this for so long. I’ve been struggling in this relationship for so long. I’ve been struggling with this problem at work for so long. I’ve been struggling with my money problems for so long. I just can’t deal with it anymore?

Friend, we are often going to be under pressure. Pressure is often something we cannot avoid. Stress is our reaction to the pressure. Stress is what we do with the pressure. When you are lying there at night, turning it over in your mind, struggling, worrying, imagining all the bad things that can happen.

Jesus is in that dark place with you. Jesus, who gave peace to His disciples is in that dark place with you. The Jesus that wants to bring peace to you is in that dark place with you. Cast your burdens on the Lord, He will sustain you, He will never permit the righteous to be moved. That is a beautiful truth.

If you are struggling with some dark thing at the moment and you don’t know how to deal with the stress, I want to take you and encourage you to read Psalm 55 this week. Maybe you read nothing else, just spend your time in Psalm 55 day after day after day. And experience the love and the power and the mercy of your Lord Jesus Christ.

And in our next programme, in fact the next two programmes, in this series called ‘Stress Busters’, we’ll be discovering exactly how to do that. Where? Well, in the Bible of course! God’s love letter to you. So I’m really looking forward to catching up with you again, next time around.

Remember, cast your burdens on the Lord, He will sustain you.

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Stress comes in all different shapes and sizes, but whatever its cause, none of us was made to be under constant stress and yet, that’s how many people are living. In a constant state of stress. Well, it’s time to do something about it.

A Stress Free Life? Stress. For most of us, that word sends a shiver down our spine, and why wouldn’t it? Who wants to be under stress all the time? And that’s what it feels like for a lot of us, so what is it? Well, it’s a state of mental or emotional strain or tension, and my dictionary adds, "Resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances", although I’m not sure that’s always the case.

We’ll explore some of the main causes of stress in this series, but first, what sort of impact is stress having on our world? Well, a recent study conducted in Australia by the Psychological Institute (and by the way, I’m sure you’d probably find the same results no matter where you live) ... Well, the study found some interesting things about the reach and impact of stress.

Here are the headline findings: 12% of people reported experiencing levels of stress in the severe range, with young adults experiencing significantly higher levels of stress and significantly lower levels of wellbeing than the general population. One in three reported experiencing depressive symptoms, with ten percent of these being in the severe range. One in four reported experiencing anxiety, with nine percent of these in the severe range. Young adults, 18-25, reported significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression than the general population.

Although women reported significantly higher levels of perceived stress than did men, this didn’t lead to differences reported in their levels of anxiety, depression, or wellbeing. Those people experiencing family or recent relationship-breakdown and those separated reported much higher levels of stress and distress, on all measures. If the relationship-breakdown had occurred more than one year earlier, reported stress levels were about the same as the general population.

In the US, things appear to be more extreme. Seventy-three percent of people regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress. Almost half say that stress has a negative impact on their personal or professional lives, and the cost to employers in stress-related healthcare and missed work is estimated, in the US, to be about three hundred billion dollars a year.

No wonder we want a stress free life! That idyllic life by the beach is looking pretty good to a few of us at this point. Right? But that’s just not realistic and in fact, the reality is that a bit of stress in our lives isn’t a bad thing. We enjoy a challenge, for instance, and working under a bit of pressure sometimes produces really good results. It’s like a guitar or a violin. If the strings aren’t under the right amount of tension and stress, it just doesn’t work the way it was meant to. I know for instance after a longish holiday, say three weeks off over Christmas, I’m really looking forward to getting back into the cut and thrust of work. If we had no pressure, no deadlines, life would be missing something; and in any case, sometimes we’re hit by circumstances that put us under a lot of stress, whether we like it or not.

Take Jesus. He experienced huge stress. Luke 22:39-46:

He came out and went, as was His custom, to the Mount of Olives and the disciples followed Him. When He reached that place, He said to them, ‘Pray, that you may not come into a time of trial.’ Then He withdrew from them, about a stone’s throw away, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.’ Then an angel from heaven appeared to Him and gave Him strength. In His anguish He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became like drops of blood falling down on the ground. When He got up from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and He said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray, that you may not come into a time of trial.’

The fact that Jesus’ sweat was like drops of blood tells us just how severe His suffering was. This was stress, and it only got worse from here, as He was beaten and nailed to a cross. No, that completely stress free life isn’t a reality for any of us. Even the rich and famous, in fact sometimes especially those people, suffer enormous amounts of stress. How many superstars have died from drug overdoses? What were they doing there in the first place? What drove them to drugs? The pressure and the stress of fame.

So, sometimes stress is desirable; sometimes it’s unavoidable, and sometimes we experience it because of our reaction to a particular person or set of circumstances, and yet the Bible says don’t be anxious about anything (Philippians 4:6).

So what sort of stress are you under right now? Is it the normal cut and thrust of life which, at the end of the day, you kind of enjoy anyhow? Then that’s probably not such a bad thing, is it? It’s manageable, and you know that with a few adjustments to your life, you could easily get things right under control. Then you’re probably in a good balance, but if the stresses that you’re under feel like a huge burden, like a heavy load that you’re carrying around twenty-four by seven ... well ... that’s not such a good thing. We’re not made to be under that sort of constant pressure and stress, and yet many people live their lives like that. That’s why we’re kicking the year off with this series called, "Stress Busters" because God has a lot of things to say about how to alleviate the stress that you’re under; lots of practical, powerful things to say.

Hey, why should that be a surprise to any of us? God cares so deeply about you; what you’re going through; what stress you’re under, and the stepping off point for that is what Jesus said. We see it in Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus said:

Come to Me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke of easy, and My burden is light.

Jesus wants to lighten your load, so over these coming weeks, we’re going to discover what He has to say about your stress, because Jesus didn’t say this lightly. Jesus didn’t say this flippantly. Jesus meant it – come to Me, all you who are weary and who are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Come on! Take My yoke upon you. Learn from Me. I’m gentle. I’m humble of heart, and with Me, you’re going to find rest for your souls.

Hey, that’s a powerful thing, and that’s why we’re doing a series over these next few weeks called, "Stress Busters" because God wants to deal with the stress in your life.

Stress we Put Ourselves Under You and I have this habit of putting ourselves under pressure and stress needlessly. Don’t believe me? Well, right now, we’re going to chat about how we do that exactly, and what we can do about changing our habits, because there are more than enough things out there that are going to cause you and me stress, whether we like it or not. There are going to be situations and circumstances completely beyond our control that cause us stress: The loss of a loved one; a difficult boss at work; financial problems; health issues ... There are plenty of things out there that are going to come our way, whether we like it or not, that are going to cause us stress.

So, why would we possibly want to needlessly cause ourselves stress? Well, right now, we’re going to chat about the main three reasons that we cause ourselves stress. I’d be surprised if you don’t recognise at least one of them in your life.

The first one is physical. Sometimes we think of stress as an emotional thing, even a spiritual thing; and of course, it is those things, but the physical reality is that God has given you and me a body, and there are three main things that we do to abuse this amazing body that God has gifted us. We eat too much of the wrong stuff, we don’t get enough sleep, and we don’t get enough exercise. How many times have you heard someone (including me) banging on about our diet and exercise and sleep? And yet still the first and most obvious thing that we can get wrong when it comes to managing our stress is how we treat our body, so come on. If the hat fits, wear it. Are you sick of feeling tired? Are you sick of feeling bloated and stressed and exhausted? Then do something about it.

Last year, we had a whole series on the programme called, "Healthy living to a Ripe Old Age" and all of those messages in that series are available in the Resources section of the ChristianityWorks.com website, under the heading of Health. Grab them, listen to them, read the transcripts and please, if you’re struggling because you’re not treating your body properly, do something about it. 1 Corinthians 6:19:

For don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

God expects you and He expects me to look after this amazing body that He’s given us, and when we do, let me tell you, our stress levels drop dramatically.

The second thing that we do to put ourselves under stress needlessly is constantly second-guessing ourselves: Constantly telling ourselves, "I’m not good enough. I’m not fast enough. I’m not smart enough." You know what that’s called? Low self-esteem, and it might surprise you to know that this is a trap that I too find quite easy to fall into. Shocked?

Here’s how it works for me. I’m something of an achiever. I drive hard at things; I work hard; I try to deliver on-time ... It’s just who I am, and when you’re that kind of person, you can see not only all the things that you have achieved, but all the things that you haven’t yet achieved, and so you start telling yourself, "Come on! You’re not working hard enough for God. You should be doing better for God. You should be getting up earlier and working longer and delivering sooner. You need to get more done. Look at all the things you haven’t done yet! Oh, Berni, you’re failing God."

You see how easy it is to do? Or at the other end of the scale, perhaps you only ever see your inadequacies, because you’re constantly comparing yourself to other people. Anyone recognise that? It’s like that song by Casey Chambers. "Am I not pretty enough or smart enough or liked enough or strong enough or articulate enough or" ... so we find all these ways to put ourselves under enormous pressure, and cause ourselves huge stress by believing this nonsense that we’re just not good enough.

Have you been there? Then I have a word from God for you today. 1 Corinthians 12:4-7:

Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; there are a variety of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each one, He has given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Did you get that? Each one of us has been given a particular set of gifts and abilities. They’re all different, but they’re given by the one God; and the gifts He’s given you, He’s given you by His sovereign will and choice. You are who you are because He made you that way. He didn’t make a mistake. You’re exactly who God purposed you and made you to be. Get your heart around that, and you’re set free from this nonsense of, "Am I not pretty enough? Am I not good enough for God?" Hello? Is anyone listening to this?

I for one need constant reminding of this stuff, because I can end up stressing out by having a wrong view of who I am. It’s about trading in your self-image for a faith-image from God, and this God says that you’re beautiful, and that you’re just who you’re meant to be. So you’ve been given gifts by God now to be that person, and to use those gifts. Hallelujah!

And finally, the third thing that causes us needlessly to put ourselves under stress is not letting go of the past. So many people are still holding onto the failures and the hurts and the regrets of the past. How many people are living under the reproach of the past? Come on, the past is the past. You and I can’t change it, and God is in the business of setting us free from it.

Mark this. Before Israel was able to cross over the Jordan River and enter into the promised land, God dealt with their past. Joshua 5:9:

The LORD said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away from you the reproach of the past, the disgrace of Egypt.’ And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.

You’ve heard that saying, "Don’t cry over spilt milk." Right? Yes, wipe it up. Yes, clean up the mess. Yes, learn from your mistakes so that you won’t spill the milk again, but don’t just stand there and wish you hadn’t spilt the milk, and spend the rest of your life living in that one moment of failure, because you can’t un-spill the milk. That just doesn’t make sense. This Jesus came to set you free from the past, to bind up your broken heart, to give you a vision for the future, a new set of eyes to see, a new set of ears to hear, and a new life to live. Jesus came to lift the reproach of the past off your shoulders, so that it won’t cause you any more stress.

Come on. There are enough things out there for you to stress out over without your health, without these false feelings of inadequacy, and without your hurts from the past doing it all for you. Do you think?

The Stress of not Enough It seems to me that there are three basic resources that you and I need to get by each day: Time, money, and expertise; and when we’re short of any of those three basic resources – time, money, or expertise, that can cause us enormous amounts of stress.

Let’s start by looking at time. I don’t know when the term time-poor started to fall into common usage, but these days, you hear it a lot. People are time-poor. In fact, once you have enough money to cover the basics in your life, time becomes an even more valuable commodity than money, and for many people, time is way too short. ‘If only I had a few extra hours in every day!’ I’ve heard people say. Really?

The more affluent we become, the more options we have for spending our time. Take social media. Right at the moment, eleven percent of the world’s population are active Facebook-users. Just think about that for a minute, and they are collectively spending seven hundred billion minutes on Facebook each month. That’s 1.33 million person-years every month on Facebook, and that doesn’t count watching TV and all the other entertainment options available to us. No wonder we’re time-poor!

So what’s changed? Why have we, all of a sudden, become time-poor? ‘Cos we’re trying to cram too much into our day. We’re always connected. We’re always working and chatting, and we’ve forgotten how to have disconnected, quiet down-time.

If that’s you, if you’re burning the candle at both ends, something has to give, otherwise the stress is going to kill you. Really, and in case you’re one of these workaholics, who just has to work eighteen hours a day otherwise civilisation as we know it is going to come to an end, here’s a different perspective – God’s perspective. Psalm 127:1-2:

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the LORD guards the city, the guards keep watch in vain. It’s in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for God gives sleep to His beloved.

It’s simply not God’s plan for you to live like that, and I’ve recorded a whole series of messages on that called "It’s Time to Stop Labouring in Vain". You’ll find it in the Resources section of our website, ChristianityWorks.com.

Now the second thing that causes us stress is a lack of money. Sometimes that’s because people simply don’t have enough money to get by, but sometimes, it’s because we squander the money that we do have on impulse buys or on things we don’t need; on food that we bought, and then because of our bad management, it goes off in the fridge, so we throw it out.

I want to deal with wastage first because that’s criminal. With people starving in the world, wasting money on stuff that we just don’t need is criminal, but the problem is that advertisers have it down to a fine art. They seem to be able to get us to part with our money like nothing else, so the question you have to ask yourself, the thing that’s going to get you to change your mind, is whether the stress of this is worth it; whether having all those things makes you happy or, at the end of the day, makes you stressed. 1 Timothy 6:9-10:

Those who want to be rich end up falling into temptation, and they’re trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

So ask yourself, "Is it really worth it for me? Really?" Or is it time to get your house in order? Is it time to get money-wise? And again, I’ve recorded a whole series called, "How to be Money-Wise" that you’ll find in the Living in Victory section of the Resources library at ChristianityWorks.com. Sort that out, and the stress goes away. Believe you me, it’s worth it.

And for those who are poor, desperately poor, let me say this to you: In fact not me, but Jesus. Matthew 6:31-33:

Don’t worry, saying, ‘What am I going to eat?’ or, ‘What am I going to drink?’ or, ‘What am I going to wear?’ For it’s the Gentiles who strive after all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father already knows that you need them all. But strive first for the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

God knows what you need, and He will provide it for you. So, Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. But in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.

Your God will surely provide for you, and once you learn to trust Him to do the things you can’t do and provide the things that you need that you can’t acquire for yourself, the stress will be replaced by the most amazing peace and assurance.

Finally, the other thing that causes us stress when we’re without it is expertise. When I look at the ministry of ChristianityWorks that produces these radio-programmes, ok, I’m the front guy; you hear my voice, but without Max on the opposite side of the glass here in the studio and our dedicated team around the world, there simply wouldn’t be any radio-programmes. One of the biggest things that you and I can do to cause ourselves stress is not to value and recognise the different abilities and capabilities of the people around us because when we don’t cherish them, they desert us.

I see this all the time: Leaders who think everybody should be exactly like them, so they drive their people hard and all of a sudden, there’s no one left to lead. A true leader recognises other people’s gifts and abilities. A true leader encourages and empowers people to be all that they can be, and whether we’re leaders or not, we need other people around us who will co-operate in getting things done; because without them, we are going to be under stress with a capital S; because without them, we have to do the things that they’re good at, and those things are invariably stuff that we’re not good at.

There’s something incredibly stressful about being a square peg in a round hole. If I had to do Max’s job here in the studio, I couldn’t do it, and I’ve tried to get Max on the other side of the glass in front of the microphone, and he’s not real keen on that either; because that’s not his gig, just as much as what he does is not my gig.

It’s easy to be stressed by not having enough: Enough time, enough money, or enough expertise. But when we lean on God – hey; when we really trust in Him (come on, really), the stress starts to go away because what we discover is that God provides richly for those whom He loves. He just does. So if you’re struggling under the stress of not enough, listen again, please, to this passage from Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding.

In other words, don’t look at the problem and keep turning the problem over in your mind, and just seeing the problem which then appears to be bigger than God. Instead, trust in the LORD with all your heart! Don’t lean on your own understanding. And in all your ways acknowledge Him, and God will straighten out your paths. God will make it happen. God loves you. Do you get that? God absolutely loves you, and often we are going to be confronted with things that are much bigger than us. Pressure is different from stress. Pressure is out there; stress is our reaction to it, and God doesn’t want you stressing out.

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Many people are prepared to accept that God exists, even that He has the ability to bless us – or at least bless other people. But when they look at their own lives, well the reality doesn’t appear to match up with the promise. What’s going on here?

The Blessing of Here and Now I sometimes think that Jesus would have benefited from the services of a good Public Relations consultant - you know, a spin doctor to dress up some of the difficult messages He had to get across. Take this one for instance: Matthew chapter 16, verses 24 and 25:

Jesus told His disciples, “If any want to become my followers let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake, will find it.”

I mean, that picture of a cross is a brutal one. It’s a picture of being nailed to a cross and dying a gruesome death.

If any want to become my disciples then let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.

I mean, "Give me a break! Who wants to follow someone like that? I want to be healthy, wealthy and wise. I want to live on easy street! Take up my cross?? You have to be kidding me." Yes, Jesus could have used the services of a good P.R. consultant to get some spin on His message – to make it more palatable. No wonder it says in John’s Gospel that many turned away from Him. Have a listen: John chapter 6, beginning at verse 63:

It is the spirit that gives life; and the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that would not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one comes to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.

Yep, Jesus definitely needed a spin doctor. And you know something? I so often hear people speaking about Jesus – whether it’s a preacher preaching or a person telling me what Jesus is doing in their lives and what I hear is not about this gritty, authentic Jesus who was prepared to lose followers, in a world where the measure of a Rabbi’s success – a key performance indicator, if you will – was the number of followers or disciples he had.

But Jesus was prepared to lose followers because He wouldn’t play by the world’s rules. He never let them squeeze Him into their mould. You know, they were looking for a Messiah; a King like David; a powerful warrior to raise up an army and drive the Romans out of this, their Promised Land.

That’s what Israel was believing for, when Jesus came on the scene. After He miraculously fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, the crowds wanted to grab Him and appoint Him King. Can you imagine that? He has been wandering around out there in the fields, speaking to and wooing the crowds, performing some amazing miracles, here he is – this obscure carpenter from Nazareth … Nazareth of all places; “Does anything good come from there?” And finally, Jesus hits the big time! He is pulling some serious crowds! Finally, they recognise how good He really is and they want to make Him King. Woo hoo!! So what does Jesus do? John chapter 6, verse 15:

When Jesus realised they were about to come and take him by force to make him King, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

He withdraws! "Jesus … Jesus, what’s the matter with You? You’ve made it – success at last. What are You doing?" He didn’t need just a spin doctor; He needed a couple of good strategic planning consultants, as well. And He continued His journey … His inexorable journey to that ugly, brutal cross, where He was nailed and left to suffocate, hanging by the nails through His hands and His feet. He tells us why He did it. He tells us in this outrageous promise, why He did that. Listen again with me – John chapter 10. Verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

He did this contrary to the thief, this thief who comes only to steal and kill and destroy. He did it that we may have life … real life and have it abundantly. Literally, it says in the original Greek language that sits aback of our English translation – "super-abundantly".

Now, He wasn’t talking here just about eternal life. Sure, He came that we could have eternal life and that’s something we are going to be looking at later, but He is talking about our lives here and now. And in this passage He is painting a stark contrast between the imposter and the truth. Let’s listen to a bit more of what He has to say. John chapter 10, beginning at verse 1:

Truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his sheep by name and leads them out.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

Do you see the contrasts in this passage: the real shepherd and the impostor; the true shepherd and the stranger; the good shepherd and the hired hand; Jesus and the thief who comes only to steal and kill and destroy? One sharp contrast after another. The real thing is Jesus and the impostor is the devil – the thin hollow promises of this world. And it’s only the True Shepherd who brings abundant life and we know Him because He’s the One who is prepared to lay down His life for the sheep.

So we can bow down to the impostor, just as the devil said to Jesus when he dangled the kingdoms of this world under Jesus nose. Luke chapter 4, verses 6 and 7:

To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then,” he said to Jesus, “will worship me, it will all be yours.

We can bow down to that, but the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Or we can obtain this abundant life by living out this truth:

Jesus answered therefore, “It is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.

That’s where the abundant life, that Jesus came to bring us, is to be found. The choice, however, the choice is ours and it’s a choice that has not just eternal consequences – it has those for sure and we are about to look at them after the break – but it has here and now consequences as well. Jesus was talking about a shepherd and his flock, about the protection and the peace and the safety that we can have in His flock, here and now.

Man, people are letting the devil plunder their lives, rob them of life, rob them of abundance, when all along, life in all its abundance is available here and now, through Jesus. And I ask myself, "Why would you do that? Why would you want to waste your life, dancing with the devil, into a Christ-less eternity, suffering all the pain of that deceptive dance along the way, when Jesus came to give us life and to give it to us in all its abundance? I mean, why would you want to do that?"

The Blessing of Then and There Well, we had a look earlier at the blessing that God wants us to have, here and now. But the days of our lives tick by very quickly, don’t they? You wake up and it’s Monday morning and the whole week is ahead and before we know it, it’s Friday again, heading into another weekend. And whether you just prayed that prayer with me during the break, or whether giving your life to Jesus is something you did years ago, or whether it’s something you still haven’t done yet, our time here on this earth is running out with every tick of the clock.

It seems to me that the weeks are slipping by ever more quickly. You blink and they’re gone and before you know it, another year is gone and we are into the New Year, and pretty much, we’ll blink and this one will be gone too. It’s like a video of a merry-go-round and someone speeds it up and before you know it that little merry-go-round is spinning around at a million miles an hour, and one day "BANG" with little or no warning – it stops! This little merry-go-round, called my "life" and your "life" stops – dead!

Life on this earth will come to an end. I was listening to an interview on the radio the other day of a woman who woke up next to her husband because the radio alarm was going off in the morning and he hadn’t reached over to turn it off. Well, there was a reason for that – he died of a heart attack in the bed next to her in the middle of the night.

It makes you squirm because a lot of cultures, particular Western cultures, we are not so good at talking about death and coping with death, even though death is very much part of life, here on this earth. "What’s the matter with Berni today," you might be thinking to yourself – "why is he going so morose on us?" Not really.

Over the last few weeks we have been talking about the promise that Jesus made to give us an abundant life. John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

And when you look at it, that promise is a life and death promise, isn’t it? The thief; the enemy; the devil comes only to steal and kill and destroy … to steal and kill and destroy, but Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. See the contrast? Death and life! It’s a contrast between an abundant life that Jesus wants to give us and the death the devil is hell-bent on delivering at our doorstep. Life and death.

We live our lives believing that they will go on forever – that we’ll never get sick and we’ll never die. Of course, the facts are, that unless Jesus returns first, you and I are going to die, there’s no denying that. But denying it is absolutely what we do, day to day. We sweep death under the carpet as though it’s never going to happen to us – always knowing deep inside that it will, but trying to ignore that inconvenient truth.

Life is for living, right? Who needs to talk about death and think about death? And so we try and squeeze as much out of life as we can, even if it’s not all that satisfying, in the vain hope that we will stave off the inevitable, death, as long as we can.

I used to be petrified of dying – absolutely petrified. I just couldn’t fathom that I would have to let go of this life here on earth one day, or at least, that it would let go of me. And the thought of what, if anything, lay on the other side of the grave was just horrid. Either there was nothing and I would lose everything with the last breath or there was a God and indeed a heaven and a hell. Man, I was in serious trouble in that department.

So I put my head down; I just concentrated on the here and now, living life, squeezing everything out of it that I could. And no, it wasn’t satisfying. A decade and a half ago, something happened to change all this and it happened without me noticing it. A decade and a half ago I gave my life to Jesus. Now I noticed that bit – but without me realising it my fear of death evaporated overnight.

I first realised it when I was flying in a plane to New Zealand. It was incredibly bumpy and rough flight and in the middle of this terrible landing in – wait for it – Christchurch, I all of a sudden I realised, I wasn’t gripping my seat anymore; I wasn’t afraid. I’d lost my fear of dying!

Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul writes on this subject – it comes from First Corinthians chapter 15, verses 51 to 58:

"Listen,” writes Paul, “I’ll tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

There it is – eternal life! The one thing we had all hoped for, delivered by Jesus through His death on the cross and His resurrection. What could be more abundant than that? I mean, it’s great that we can have a rich and abundant life amidst all the trials of life here on earth. That’s what we have been chatting about these last few weeks on the programme. Fantastic!! But the abundance; the overflow, goes beyond the grave, for ever and ever and ever and ever! And that knowledge … that knowledge of an eternal life is supposed to make a difference; a huge difference to how we live our lives here and now.

Look at that last bit of that passage from First Corinthians 15 again: Therefore, because of what I have just told you about eternal life:

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

In other words, the knowledge of eternity is meant to impact our lives, here and now, because it changes everything. It gives us hope, it gives us resolve, because at the end of this life there is something worth having; something worth more than absolutely anything and everything that this world has to offer – a life eternal. And yet, we are all so busy – head down, pedalling hard – that we have completely lost sight of the finishing line. And that finishing line is something, not to be afraid of but to look forward to. That finishing line is the best thing that can ever happen to us. Listen again to Paul, the Apostle. Philippians chapter 1, verses 21 to 24:

“For to me,” writes Paul, “living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ for that is far better but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.

You see this, Paul is not afraid of dying. Paul is torn between this life and an eternity with Christ. Not just does he have an eternal life foremost in his thinking, but he is literally torn between the two. Do you know what I think the Lord is saying to you and me as we are totally immersed in our respective here’s and now’s? He is saying, “Wake up, something much better is coming.” Again, Paul, Colossians chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. He says:

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on this earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Come on, wake up! Something much better is coming. Live life focused on eternity; with an eternal perspective because that is going to add a richness and an abundance and an anticipation that is better than anything this world has to offer. Come on, wake up!

Journey in My Shoes Well, we have been talking about this abundant life in Jesus over these last weeks and we are almost at the end of that. And as I reflect on our journey together through God’s Word, it seems to me that, well, this life in all its abundance can be an illusory concept. Something in a sense that we are content to hear some joker on the radio talk about because it makes us feel good and something that we are content to agree with, that Jesus could do that and He probably does do this "abundant life" thing for other people, in their lives but something that for many, well, it’s never entered their minds, that this promise could possibly be for them.

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.

Friend, I’m here to tell you – He absolutely means it for you! We are so conditioned to chasing the things of this world, some of us, that we have lost sight of the things of God. I was definitely like that. For most of my life, reality for me was the wealth that I could accumulate on this earth. Reality for me was being happy, only it didn’t really. I would sweep death under the carpet because I was too scared to think about it. And so I could hear the promise of an abundant life but it never meant anything to me. I was like that rich man that Jesus talked about in this parable:

The land of the rich man produced abundantly and he thought to himself, “What shall I do for I have no place to store my crops?” And he said, “I’ll do this – I’ll pull down my barn, I’ll build bigger ones and there I’ll store my grain and my goods and I’ll say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! For this very night your life is being demanded of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.

"The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy" – The thief is a deceiver; a liar; he robs us of the rich abundant life that Jesus came to give us. He robs us of life itself. As each day goes by, I have been walking with Jesus for a decade and a half, to this point – as each day goes by, I discover more and more this reality that richness is something we get from God.

The blessings of righteousness, peace and joy are something that nobody in this world and nothing in this world have been able to offer me. And the more I get into God’s Word, the more I discover the reality of who He is through Jesus Christ, the more I let the Holy Spirit scrape the muck out of me that God calls sin, the more this life in all its abundance is the reality that I am living out with my life.

Oh and please don’t give me this cop-out, "Well, Berni, you are a preacher on the radio. Of course, the promise is meant for you." Don’t give me that because when the Good Shepherd came to me, I was a sheep that was lost far more than most. I was a man full of pride and success on the one hand, but suffering through the deepest failures of life on the other. If you could have seen me back then, you would never have picked me for what I am doing now and you would never have thought that Jesus promise of life, in all its abundance could possibly have been for me. That’s the truth – it’s the cold, hard reality. And yet by God’s amazing … utterly and completely amazing grace, I can now tell you that I am like the man who found a treasure in a field.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which someone found and hid and then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

My life – I’m completely sold out to Jesus. Not because I’m so great and clever guy but because the life He has given me is abundant. The life He has given me is exactly what Jesus promised – an abundant life!

Imagine - He gave it to me – imagine!!

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Most of us want to be happy, so we go looking for happiness …. everywhere. No stone left unturned, only to discover that we can’t find lasting happiness. Because at the end of the day – happiness isn’t what we’re looking for. It’s joy that we’re after.

The Blessing of Righteousness Over the last few weeks we have been having a discussion on this programme about the promise that Jesus made; an outrageous promise, in fact, of an abundant life. Here it is, have another listen, John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

And I guess that the reason that it’s so outrageous is that firstly, Jesus is saying that His purpose in coming to this earth, in stepping out of heaven into the physical dimension, taking on flesh, becoming a man, dying on the cross, rising again – all that – the reason He did that was what? “That we may have life and have it abundantly.” And it is for us because this promise is made in the context of a parable, where Jesus is the Good Shepherd; the True Shepherd and we are His flock. It’s a beautiful picture with a deep and rich meaning to the agrarian audience to which He said it, back in the first century.

"An abundant life", but what does that mean? I had a student ask me that once when I was lecturing at a Bible College. I was rabbiting on about this "abundant life" thing as though the idea of an abundant life was completely obvious to everyone. And one of the students, a woman in her sixties, asked me, she said, "But Berni, what is an abundant life?" You know something, I think that is a really, really good question.

A little while ago we aired a teaching series called, “Financially Secure Once and for All”. It was all about the fact that God means us not to find our security in money; in wealth but in Him. However much we may have or may not have when it comes to financial wealth.

Now, I was interested in the response of one man to that. He sent me a sharp email, declaring that he couldn’t support anyone who preaches the prosperity doctrine. You know that false idea that if you believe in God in the right way and give lots of your money away to whoever is preaching that day, you will be rich. God will make you healthy, wealthy and wise, with a big house, big car, and a great job – on easy street! It’s a false idea and we should have nothing to do with that because it puts our own wealth at the heart of things, rather than God’s glory. And that is not – simply NOT what we are called to do.

Anyhow, the point of me telling you this story is that, the moment I open my mouth about financial security, the man who wrote me that sharp email, assumed that I was talking about monetary blessing from God. But that was, in fact, the complete opposite of what I talked about in that teaching series. What I was talking about ‘God security’ irrespective of the size of the bank balance, we might or might not have.

And I wonder whether that isn’t the obvious thing to fall into, precisely the same wrong assumption when we start talking about "an abundant life in Jesus"? That abundance must mean, well, healthy, wealthy and wise – easy street! And so people look at their lives and think, "Well, you know, I don’t fall into the healthy, wealthy and wise category. I’m on struggle-street, not easy street. My life definitely is not all good or hunky dory, therefore this promise must either be false or for someone else." Do you see my point? We can be like that man who sent that email – we judge Jesus wrongly; we judge what He said from a worldly standpoint, rather than from a godly one.

Back in the early church in the first century, a controversy arose about what foods they could eat and what drinks they could drink. Remember, early Christians mostly came out of Judaism with its legal demands about a whole range of things including food and drink. And the Apostle Paul was addressing this controversy in a letter to the Roman church. And the crux of what he had to say was this, Romans chapter 14, verse 17. He said:

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

In other words, boys and girls, stop looking at this whole thing from a worldly viewpoint, because in so doing you are completely missing the point. God’s Kingdom isn’t a physical thing – it’s something that happens inside you when you lay your life down; lay down your worldly desires, lay don’t everything you want, for Jesus. It’s about righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

We will look at each of those today, starting right now with righteousness, because that’s the heart of an abundant life. Righteousness is a word that is bandied around a lot in Christian circles at least, and used almost never anywhere else. So what does it actually mean, "righteousness"? It means ‘a right standing with God’; it means the state that we should be in; the condition in which we are acceptable to a holy God.

Now, we have all sinned and rebelled against God. That means there’s an enmity; a hostility between us and God but the moment we accept Jesus, the forgiveness we have through His sacrifice on that cross, there is peace. Because the debt for our sin, which is death, has been paid by Him and now through our faith in Him and what He has done, God sees us are righteous. Just as the criminal, who has paid his debt in prison, once released, is now right with the law; so we are right with God through our faith in Jesus.

That’s why elsewhere in his letter to the Roman church, Paul has this to say, Romans chapter 5, verse 1:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand.

See, we are back where we should be. We are justified; ‘made right,’ through our faith in Jesus Christ and so we have peace with God through Him. The war is over; the battle is over; the enmity between us and God is over; the running away from God is over. And then, does Jesus say, "Well, okay. Now, keep on doing all the things you were doing wrong – that’s fine, that’s not a problem?" No! Just as He said to the woman caught in adultery, whom the crowds had condemned and wanted to stone to death. In John chapter 8, verse 11, Jesus said to her:

… neither do I condemn you. Now, go your way and from now on, do not sin again.

So, we are forgiven, back in relationship with God and then we are called to go and live out our lives and stop doing the things that have caused the problem in the first place. That’s "righteousness", right there. Something that God gives us as a free gift through Jesus Christ – a right standing with Him and then something that we are called to live out in our lives. That’s what Jesus came to give us, an abundant life! A life that begins with God’s righteousness given freely to us and that then continues in that righteousness and there … right there is the blessing, because sin has its consequences. Sin is the thief that comes only to steal, kill and destroy but Jesus came that we may have life … real life, in all its abundance - righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The Blessing of Peace We are looking today at Jesus’ outrageous promise of an abundant life. John chapter 10, verse 10:

"The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came,” said Jesus, “that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Righteousness (we looked at that earlier) peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – those three are, in a nutshell, what the Kingdom of God brings to our lives. They are a fountain of blessing. And that little troika is put together not by me, but by the Apostle Paul, in dealing with the controversy over religious rules to do with food and drink that was raging back in the first century church. And in responding to that in his letter to the Romans he is saying, "Guys, guys, you have got a hold of the wrong end of the stick! Don’t you get it? The Kingdom of God isn’t about food and drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."

That’s the context and that’s why we are focusing on it today because in exactly the same way as some people were taking a "human; worldly" perspective of God’s Kingdom, over a bunch of religious rules, back then, you and I can easily take a worldly view of this promise of an abundant life, through our consumer oriented, twenty first century mindset. I mean, when you hear the promise of an abundant life, what’s the first thing that springs to mind? Enough money to get by? Being able to have a few of those luxuries? Aaah, easy street!

I mean, that’s the natural reaction, right? But is not what Jesus was saying. As I said earlier, this promise of an abundant life, comes set in a parable of a shepherd and his sheep, who lived in a difficult and dangerous world out there in search of pasture, where thieves often came and wild animals came to ravage the flock and where sometimes, the shepherd had to lay down his life for his sheep.

There is nothing "easy street" about that, I can tell you. But if we stopped and thought about this whole ‘abundant life’ thing for just a little while and thought, well, if I want an abundant life, what would be right up there … right up on the top of my list, numbers one, two and three, I think we might come up with the same list.

1. Righteousness – a right standing with God, finally; the enmity between us and God is gone. Finally, the threat of eternal judgement is gone. Finally, we are where we are meant to be – back in relationship and right standing with God. That is righteousness.

2. Peace – is there anyone here who doesn’t want peace on every side of their lives; the absence of strife?

3. Joy – a deep delight that springs out of our relationship with God; a joy that transcends the ups and downs of life - a deep joy that’s there 24/7.

But right now we are going to focus on the second one of these, peace! And again, remember, we are not talking here from a worldly perspective, we are taking a godly view. And that’s exactly what Jesus instructed His disciples to do when He gave them His peace. He was about to be crucified. The disciples knew that – they were in fear for their own lives as well. It was a scary, scary time. They had been following this amazing Jesus around for three and a half years – the miracles, the teaching, the crowds and now, all of a sudden, the dark cloud of death hung over their decision to follow Jesus. And Jesus says to them – He says, in John chapter 14, verse 27:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not let them be afraid.

Do you see this "peace", not from the world’s perspective; not the way the world gives it to you. He says, "Take My peace; My deep inner peace." The security; the safety that comes from being one of Jesus disciples - the sort of peace that sheep have when they are safe in the protection of their one true shepherd – the shepherd who is prepared to lay his life down for them.

And the clear thing that Jesus is saying to them is, Look, My peace isn’t the same as the peace the world offers you. That’s why your heart shouldn’t be troubled; that’s why you don’t have to be afraid.

And as I have said previously, that promise of an abundant life – John chapter 10, verse 10, comes set in this story of a difficult, dangerous journey in the existence of a shepherd with his sheep. It comes set in the realities … the cold, hard reality of life and it’s for that reason that you and I need peace because life is not always what we want it to be. Without that sort of peace we can’t have an abundant life, can we?

As I look back on my decade and a half now of walking with Jesus, through thick and thin, through some great places and some places that look very much like that valley of the shadow of death, that the Psalmist talks about in Psalm 23. His peace is one of the things that I value most about my relationship with Jesus – a peace that lasts, through every situation because it’s His peace; it’s His way, not the world’s peace; the world’s way.

Paul, the Apostle, in Philippians chapter 4, writes about a peace that surpasses all understanding; the peace from God that guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Can I tell you – I so relate to that because so often this peace from Jesus just doesn’t make sense? It completely defies logic and surpasses understanding because there are times when I should be afraid; I should be panicking; I should be running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but instead … instead I have a deep peace. Psalm 23, verse 4:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

That’s the peace that Jesus brings! Friend, it is better … better than any bauble or any trinket that this world has to offer – this deep inner peace from God. A peace delivered into our very beings by the Holy Spirit, Himself. And it’s a peace that only comes when we first have a right standing with God, through Jesus. That’s why Paul, in his list of three things that the Kingdom of God is about, kicks it off with righteousness first, then peace because peace flows out of the relationship that we have with God, through Jesus.

And then … then, once we have the relationship with God and the peace that comes out of that, the next thing; the icing on the cake is joy – the joy of the Lord.

The Blessing of Joy You ask people this question: "What do you want out of your life?" And ninety nine percent of them will answer, "Well, you know, I want to be happy." And why not? After all who wants to be sad all the time? Who wants to live out their lives in darkness when the light of happiness beckons, just around the corner? But, you know, happiness isn’t always what life dishes up, is it? As much as we want to be happy all the time, it just doesn’t work out that way.

In fact, happiness can be illusive because it depends on our circumstances; things going on around us. I mean, we are not happy when we are sick or when someone is giving us a hard time, or when we are struggling financially or when we are having an argument or a fight. I mean, you can’t be happy at those times. So as much as it is something just about everyone aspires to, happiness is not all that it is cracked up to be. Happiness is linked to our circumstances and when we say we want to be happy all the time, what we are really saying is that we want all of our circumstances to be favourable – easy street, that’s happiness. Well, my friend, life isn’t like that. Mine isn’t and yours isn’t. We might have short times on easy street, but most of life isn’t like that.

And so, then we come back to looking at this promise that Jesus made about an abundant life and it’s easy to imagine it’s a sham; it’s an unrealistic promise – the sort that politicians make before an election, only to renege once we have voted for them. I’m not saying all politicians’ promises are like that, but you understand what I’m saying. In my country, at least, many promises are made during an election campaign, which never eventuate.

And so happiness is a bit like that – a mirage in a desert. It can be illusory. John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. But I came … I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

Surely, if I am going to have an abundant life just as Jesus promises here, surely I have to be happy, right? Well, in unpacking and understanding this promise so far today, we have been looking at how Paul, the Apostle, summed up what the Kingdom of God is about. People back then, when Jesus and later the disciples, were going around talking about the Kingdom of God, well, people kind of imagined that it was something physical, there was the Roman Empire - that was THE kingdom. But there had been other kingdoms before that so they were expecting Jesus to come, riding in on His shiny white steed, with His sword held high, leading a mighty army to boot the Romans out of Israel.

That pretty much is what the Kingdom of God kind of painted to them; the picture that they thought of but Jesus had a completely different take, as Jesus often does. Luke chapter 17 and verse 20 – have a listen to this:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God was coming and he answered, “The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” for in fact, the Kingdom of God is among you.

So when it comes to Jesus coming to this earth in order that you could have a life and I could have a life, that we could live out abundantly, it makes sense to me not to look at from that human perspective, the way the Pharisees were, but from the perspective of God’s Kingdom.

And this is why we have been unpacking Paul’s nutshell of what the Kingdom of God is all about – Romans chapter 14, verse 17 – Paul writes:

For the Kingdom of God is not about food or drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Well, so far today on the programme we’ve looked at the first two of those: righteousness – a right standing with God, we live out in our relationship with Him and peace – the sort of peace that Jesus brings; the sort of peace that doesn’t make sense; that surpasses all human understanding.

But what about this third one; what about joy? You know what? I spent the first thirty six years of my life looking for happiness. I left no stone unturned in my quest for this happiness thing – wealth, a big house, expensive cars, marriage, children, status, career, fame, recognition, winning at everything I set my hand to – it was all about winning for me back then. Believe you me, I looked under every rock. I was persistent. And other than some fleeting experiences of happiness, I never found it.

Why? Because unbeknown to me, I wasn’t so much yearning for happiness, I was yearning for something much deeper; something more lasting and abiding. What I was after was "joy". And joy is different to happiness, in that, it doesn’t rely on our circumstances. It doesn’t come from out there, joy comes from within, from among us, from in our midst. It’s a well inside us that bubbles up, no matter what is going on, on the outside.

I have experienced joy on some of the darkest days in my life. Now you can’t experience happiness at those times. To be happy, things out there have to be on the up and up – the sun has to be shining. But I have experienced great joy, right, smack bang in the middle of great pain. How? Why? Because it’s a joy that comes from God and that well never runs dry.

Let’s listen again to what the Apostle Paul wrote, that the Kingdom of God was all about – Romans chapter 14, verse 17:

For the Kingdom of God is neither food or drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

You see, the righteousness, peace and joy come when we are immersed in the Holy Spirit. They come from God through the Spirit, not from us. And Jesus describes how this works in John chapter 7, beginning at verse 37:

Jesus was standing there and he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me, drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘out of the believers heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The joy of the Lord, which comes from His Spirit within us, is like that. It bubbles up and then it flows out of the centre of who we are, out of our hearts, like rivers – not a tiny little stream, not even a modest or large river but rivers, a Nile and a Ganges and a Mississippi and a Rhine and an Amazon – rivers of living water.

The Holy Spirit, with His righteousness, peace and joy, flows up out of us like a … like a flood tide of blessing from rivers of living water, into the lives of other people when we yield our lives; when we turn them back and live them for God. That’s what the Kingdom of God is!

And do you know what this overflow sounds like to me? It sounds like life in all its abundance and that’s exactly what Jesus promised.

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With all that life throws at us, not to mention our own foibles and quirks, it’s easy to end up with quite a distorted view of what God our Father means when He talks about His blessing in our lives. What Jesus means when He talks about giving us an abundant life.

The Child in the Father’s House We are chatting together this week on the programme about living out the abundant life that Jesus promised us, a life overflowing with His grace and mercy and love and peace and joy and blessing. By that we don’t always mean abundant finances or complete safety. God has a tendency not to wrap us in cotton-wool but to be with us out there in the middle of life – in the good times and the bad – with His presence, which is what gives us that sense of overflow; that sense of abundance.

It’s funny how most of us, in our heart of hearts, desire a life that’s, well, perfect, blessed in every way: every relationship perfect, finances perfect, home-life perfect, our own sense of self perfect … everything perfect. But life just isn’t like that. In fact, as you and I think back on our lives thus far, chances are that there are very few times, if ever, where we could tick the box in every part of our lives as having been perfect.

And yet somehow, we yearn secretly, even subconsciously, for this time in our lives when everything will be just perfect. And the mere fact that it isn’t can be so disappointing to many. And yet, I come back to the fact that Jesus promised this abundant life, not wrapped away somewhere in cottonwool, but out there in this precarious, sometimes threatening place that we call ‘life’. This is in fact, what He said – beginning at John chapter 10, verse 1:

Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Look, truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

As we saw last week, the life of a shepherd and the lives of the sheep back there in the first century, were indeed, precarious. As the shepherd would take his flock out onto the rocky plateau of Israel, in search of pasture, there were many threats – thieves, wild animals – and it wasn’t unusual for the shepherd to have to defend his sheep; sometimes with his own life.

And interestingly, in that beautiful prayer that Jesus prayed just before He was crucified, He actually said this about you and me, to His Father: John chapter 17, beginning at verse 12:

While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them and not one of them was lost, except the one destined to be lost so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Verse 15:

I am not asking you to take them out of this world but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.

In other words: Dad, let’s not take them out of all these situations and wrap them up in cotton-wool but rather, let’s be with them and protect them from the evil one.

Do you see how different God’s perspective is? His promise is for an abundant life not a perfect one. And I have to tell you, as I have sat and thought about that a lot; it makes an enormous amount of sense. I’m a father; I have children – I love them very dearly. When they were young they lived with my wife Jacqui and me in our house, under our care and protection and with our provision. And that’s right: that’s why God gives us children, that’s why He gives children parents.

But there comes a time, in fact, it starts quite early, where as they grow up, we as good parents give them more and more responsibility for themselves, because one of the main parts of growing up is shifting the responsibility for their care from their parents to the children, as they become capable of accepting that responsibility. It’s not always easy. It’s one of the reasons that those teenage years can be so stressful because often teenagers – I know this was true of me – want to behave like children but still be treated like adults.

In other words, they still want parents to do all the things that the parents ever did for them when they were little children, whilst at the same time, giving them all the freedoms that an adult has. Now there is tension, with a capital "T". They, in effect, want the best of both worlds – the perfect life. Sound familiar?

And it’s the same often, in our relationship with God. We want Him to fix everything; make everything perfect in our lives, whilst at the same time, we do things that don’t honour Him that have consequences. And yet He is the perfect Father. Have a listen again to Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 12:

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father”, it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

One of the most beautiful passages in the Bible, because it puts everything into perspective to me. Sometimes in the cut and thrust and the hurts of life, we lose our heavenly perspective; we lose sight of the fact that God is indeed our Father. In fact, Jesus called Him, “Abba”, which literally means, “Dad”. If we live our lives for Him; if we choose to be led by the Spirit of God, rather than by the desires of our own flesh, then we are indeed children of God and deep down, if we will let Him, the Spirit of God witnesses to us that we are His children – the children of the living God – and that means something. It means what Jesus prayed for you and me, back there in the Garden of Gethsemane. It means God’s protection from the evil one rather than being wrapped in cotton-wool.

I have to tell you, I for one would hate to be wrapped by God in cotton-wool, because I want to experience life and all that it’s meant to be. That means sometimes we get hurt; that means sometimes it’s hard; that means sometimes we are challenged. But, all along, God is our Father.

Fathers know this – when our children are growing up, we don’t stop being their fathers. We don’t stop being there to help and advise when they need it. We don’t stop caring and one day they will receive their inheritance from us. And it’s the same with Dad, God! We are and always will be His children and His protection is always available to us.

Can I tell you something? Somewhere in that knowledge, deep within, lies the source of abundance in my life – His abundance, not mine – His abundance in my life. He loves me, He wants me to know Him and to honour Him and to be all that He made me to be. To experience every day that He wrote down in His Book for me, before any of them ever existed. That’s where the abundance begins – in our relationship with God; out there in the middle of life.

See that story that Jesus told of the shepherd and his sheep: they were out there in this dangerous place, not wrapped away in cotton-wool, not sitting in a business class seat in a plane but out there in the cut and thrust of life. And it’s out there that the knowledge of the faithfulness of my God, my Father gives me a sense of abundance that nothing else can give me.

Above and Not Below We are looking today at the promise that Jesus made to give us an abundant life. Here it is in case you missed it earlier in the programme, John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

It’s a beautiful promise and it’s one that’s always … it’s always really touched my heart. It’s a promise from Jesus that I take seriously. He came so that you and I could have life and not just have life, but have it abundantly.

Now, "abundance" is an amazing word, isn’t it? It means "plenty"; it means "overflow" – a very large quantity of something. But what if I told you that the original Greek word used here for ‘abundance’ in John chapter 10 verse 10, literally means "super-abundance" – more than abundant; over the top abundance? Because that’s exactly what it means. That’s Jesus promise.

And yet the promise is made here as a point of comparison – the promise is the second part of the verse. The first part of the verse is about someone else – the thief, he’s called here in the story:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

And, in fact, as we have seen, this whole story where Jesus teaches us that He is the Good and True Shepherd of us, the sheep, is about the authenticity of who Jesus is as that Shepherd, verses the sham of the thief. Question is: why did Jesus make this beautiful promise in such a context? Well, of course the thief in the story is the devil and the original Greek word for the devil is "diabolos", which is the word from which we get our English word "diabolical". It means a slanderer; a false accuser.

And elsewhere in the New Testament, in Revelation chapter 12 verse 9, the devil is also called "the deceiver" – someone who tricks people and leads them astray; away from the right path; away from truth, into error. That’s the devil, here in the story – the thief who comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

And so here Jesus presents us with an alternative – the thief or the True Shepherd. Now, you might say to me, "Well, that’s no real alternative at all, is it? Who wants a thief who comes only to steal, kill and destroy? I’ll have the Good Shepherd thanks, who came to give me a superabundant life." Of course, it’s an obvious choice in the light of Jesus parable of the Good Shepherd here – He means for it to be an obvious choice because it is so obvious when you stop and think about it.

Problem is we often don’t stop; we often don’t think about it because the devil doesn’t always come to us looking like a thief. You know, like in a black beanie like he just broke out of prison. Quite on the contrary, in fact Second Corinthians chapter 11 verse 14, says:

Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Isn’t that true? The whole point of temptation is that it’s tempting; it’s seductive. Evil comes to us, wrapped in a wrapper that cries out to us, "Go on, open me, follow me, take me. I’m good, I’ll bless you." The very first deception and temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden was exactly like that. Evil was dressed up as having benefit. That’s why it’s so diabolical – that’s why the devil is a liar and a deceiver and so we are seduced by his lies and all of a sudden we are in the hands of a thief who truly came only to steal, kill and destroy – to rob us of the superabundant life that Jesus came to give us.

Do you see the power of this parable? God wants to bless us. God wants to heap His superabundant blessing into our lives, but like any father, when His children are rebelling, He can’t bless us because the blessing would reward the rebellion. When my children played up sometimes when they were young, the tap of father’s blessing turned off. Sometimes they were punished by the removal of a privilege – no internet access for three months. Why, was I being mean? No! Because I was teaching them right from wrong and the basis of that lesson is that blessing comes when you do right and you lose it when you do wrong.

Parents do that because, a) they love their children and b), we are wired by God to be like that. One of the very worst things that we can do – and you see it a lot these days – is to continue to bless our children when they are doing wrong. I want you to have a listen on one of the best explanations linked between obedience and blessing that I ever found in God’s Word. It comes from Deuteronomy chapter 28, beginning at verse 1. If you have a Bible, can I encourage you to open up here – this is a really powerful passage – listen carefully to what God says to His people. Deuteronomy 28, beginning at verse 1:

If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God.

Blessed you shall be in the city, and blessed you shall be in your field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, both the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed you shall be when you come in, and blessed you shall be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you; they shall come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing upon your barns, and on all that you undertake; he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. All the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give you.

The Lord will open for you his rich storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all your undertakings. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow.

The Lord will make you the head, and not the tail; you shall be only at the top, and not at the bottom—if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you today, by diligently observing them, and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I am commanding you today, either to the right or to the left, following other gods to serve them.

But if you will not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, which I am commanding you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in your city, and cursed shall you be in your field.

And then he goes on to list this whole bunch of not very nice curses. Do you see the causal link between obedience and blessing? Do you see that? And disobedience and the removal of that blessing - just as in any relationship between a parent and a child. But the thing that really strikes me here is the magnitude of the blessing – look at verse 2 again of Deuteronomy 28:

All these blessing shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God.

Don’t you love how the blessing will come upon you but it will also overtake you – they will chase you down the street? This is the superabundant life that Jesus spoke about. Verse 13:

The Lord will make you the head and not the tail – you shall be at the top and not the bottom if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I am commanding you today, by diligently observing them.

Friend, listen God wants to bless us. And that doesn’t always mean being rich and wealthy. Jesus wants to bless us with a life that is superabundant and rich so that His blessing chases us down the street and overtakes us. Do you get it? But that blessing happens when we are close to the Good Shepherd, safe in His care. It does not happen when we follow the thief and let him plunder our lives through deception and temptation because remember, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy but Jesus came that you and I might have life and have it abundantly.

Our Dad in heaven truly does want us to be the head and not the tail; the top and not the bottom. I mean, what dad wouldn’t want that for his children?

A Different Perspective You know what I think happens as we grind away at life or at least, life grinds away at us? I think we lose our sense of perspective. We hear these promises from Jesus about an abundant life and then we look at the reality of our own lives – all the trials and temptations tearing away at us – and we come to the conclusion that, well, it may have been possible two thousand years ago to have this so called "abundant life", it may even be possible for other people but this promise definitely is not for me; I mean, can’t be! Look at my life, I mean, really!!

I said it before and I am going to say it again: His promise is for an abundant life not a perfect one. His promise is that we can have His blessings in the middle of the ups and downs of life. Deuteronomy 28, verse 2:

All these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God.

Verse 13:

The Lord will make you the head and not the tail. You shall only be at the top, not the bottom if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I am giving you today by diligently observing them.

And how does that work? Well, Jesus told us – John chapter 17, verse 15:

I am not asking you Dad, to take them out of this world. I am asking you to protect them from the evil one.

See, we are blessed not by God taking us out of this world and wrapping us in cotton-wool, we are blessed in the middle of our lives, just as they are at the moment. We live in an "aspirational" world – by that I mean we are always hoping for something better out of life; we are always expecting things to improve. Sometimes they do but sometimes they don’t and sometimes it takes much longer than we would like and so people … many people spend much of their lives grumpy and down and complaining and, before you know it, life has slipped away and we haven’t enjoyed the life that God has given us.

Friend, God’s Word says that the joy of the Lord is our strength – Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 10:

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

Friend, it’s time to start enjoying what we have – like those sheep in the story of the good shepherd. They still had to walk miles over rocky plateaus in search of pasture. Some days it was hot, some days it was cold, some days it was wet and windy and blowing – it wasn’t always comfortable. But no matter, that’s life; it’s how it is. The point was that they were safe because they were with the good shepherd; the one true shepherd who they knew was prepared to lay down his life for them. And so they had peace and security and the deep knowledge of the life-giving love of their shepherd.

Friend, that’s what an abundant life is. So often in my life, in the past and yes, even now, I am confronted by circumstances that are difficult; circumstances that sometimes are painful; circumstances that I certainly wouldn’t have chosen for myself. And the temptation … the temptation is either to curl up in a ball in the corner and give up or to come out punching and hurt other people. Have you ever felt like that? I do some days.

I was sitting with a man just yesterday, over coffee, chatting about this very thing. He was going through some difficult things and I shared with him how, in my life – because I choose to spend time each day with Jesus; because I choose, albeit often imperfectly, to believe in Him with my life – I have this constant joy. Okay, sometimes I’m downcast, but it can’t last long because the joy of the Lord is my strength.

Friend, God is such a good God! He is the True Shepherd and He laid down His life for us. It’s a totally different perspective on life and it’s a perspective that, to me, has only come as I have developed a real, intimate relationship with Jesus. I believe it’s a gift from Him. I believe it’s the normative Christian life. I believe that it’s not just for the so called ‘super-spiritual’ but it’s for everyone and the reason so many are missing out is because they haven’t taken the step of faith to believe this promise from Jesus with their life.

Listen … listen very carefully, Jesus meant it for all the sheep. He meant it for you, He meant it for me. Listen … John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. But I,” said Jesus, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Friend, that is God’s promise for me and for you!!

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Life’s full of its ups and downs. You and I we know that. Jesus knows that. That’s why when He promised us an abundant life, He made that promise in the context of a story, a parable, about life’s ups … and downs.

The Shepherd and His Flock As we race through life day after day, one of the things that happens is that we somehow get conned or duped into the great lie of our times: if you earn lots of money and you spend it on this and this and this and this – this toy, these clothes, that holiday, this dining experience – if you live your life like that, then you are going to be happy.

So, we try it again and again and again. Many spend their whole lives chasing happiness, only to be disappointed at every turn. And before you know it, they are looking back on a wasted life. I mean, how tragic is that?

So, what’s the answer? I think, as we head into yet another new year, now is not a bad time to be asking that question. What is life all about? What’s my life all about? Am I going to be happy this year?

And so, that’s why today, we are kicking off a new series of programmes that I have called, “An Abundant Life in Jesus”, because so many of us have spent so much of our lives chasing happiness – me included. That’s what I was looking for and that’s what I could never find. So many of us wish we could be happy and yet we don’t really know what happiness is, so we go looking for it in the wrong places.

Jesus promised something outrageous to His disciples – to all those who follow hard after Him – He promised them an abundant life. In fact, a super-abundant life! Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Someone once asked me, ‘What does that mean, an abundant life?’ That’s a good question. I mean, ‘super-abundant’ sounds fantastic but what is it? What does it look like?

Well, let’s kick off by having a listen to what it is that Jesus actually says, so if you have a Bible, come with me please to John chapter 10 – we are going to begin reading at verse 1. Jesus said:

Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep then follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

'The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

'The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.’

That’s a really interesting passage. It’s a beautiful picture of a shepherd and his flock. Back in those days – let me explain the shepherd. The shepherd normally had a small number of sheep, fifty or a hundred sheep and literally, he knew each of them by name. Now sheep aren’t stupid animals; they are actually quite bright but they are short sighted so the shepherd calls them and they hear him, they follow the voice; he leads them; he goes ahead of them and his job is to find them pasture and water and keep them safe.

Now, being a shepherd was a tradition handed down from father to son. A real shepherd; the true shepherd who owned the sheep would literally protect the sheep with his life from wild animals and robbers. We will look at that later. And they would wander this rocky plateau and in winter he would bring them into the sheep fold, into the town or village by night and all the different shepherd’s sheep would be in the one pen. And the next morning, each shepherd in turn would come and call his sheep. And he had a personal relationship with them – the sheep knew his voice and so they would follow just their shepherd, not anyone else’s shepherd, just their shepherd and they trusted him and they felt safe with him.

So this is the picture that the people had in their minds in the first century as Jesus was telling this story. This winsome picture of the lonely shepherd tending his flock, protecting them with his life - that’s what Jesus was drawing on in this story. But did you notice they didn’t understand what He was saying. Verse 6 of John chapter 10. Jesus used this figure of speech with them but they did not understand what He was saying to them.

You and I, we wander through some difficult places in life – we truly do. When we are young, we think we are invincible; we think we can conquer every mountain, but life soon teaches us that we are more of a small boat on a great big, mighty ocean. And yes, Jesus promises an abundant life – we had it there in that passage. Again we will look at what that means, over the coming weeks.

But look at the context … the context of that abundance, is as one of His sheep in His flock under the safety and the care of the True Shepherd. It’s this picture of safety and protection and of a Shepherd who did, in fact, lay down His life to save us … to save us from the ravages of the devil; to save us from our own sin; to save us from God’s judgement.

Storms will come and go, wild animals will come in life and tear at our flesh, thieves will come to steal, kill and destroy, bad things will happen to good people. Is there any one of us who doesn’t have something going on in our lives right now, that’s hurts - something we wish wasn’t there? Is there? Jesus never, ever, ever promised His disciples a comfortable ride - in fact, quite to the contrary. He said to them, at a time when there was fear in their lives, in John chapter 16, verse 33. He said:

I have said these things to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you will face persecution but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.

The promise of this abundant life comes not as a promise to make all our circumstances, all our relationships, all our finances, all our futures rosy – that was never, ever what He promised. No! The promise of this abundant life comes to us in the context of the rough and tumble of life; in the context of a shepherd leading his sheep through a rocky plateau to find pasture and dangers all around. As we live our lives under the protection and the safety and the sacrificial love of this One True Shepherd, Jesus, then He says to us, “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.” And because of the world in which we live, that abundant life was purchased for you and me at a price … at a very great price.

The Thief and His Plan I was speaking recently with a group of people. It was a church service on a Sunday morning and I asked them this question. I said, “Is there anybody here in this room today that doesn’t have at least one thing going on in their lives that hurts? One thing that they wish wasn’t there? One thing that they want God to heal or to change or to solve or to take away? If you don’t have at least one such thing in your life, raise your hand up in the air."

There would have been, I’m guessing, over a hundred people in the room. Absolutely silence! I cast my eyes around the room – I just allowed the silence to hang there for a moment and not a single hand when up in the air – not one. These were people who believed in Jesus, these were people who had all heard Jesus say: John chapter 10, verse 10, that:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

They had all heard Jesus promise an abundant life to them. Literally what Jesus says here – the original Greek language – it means a ‘super abundant life’ and yet, everyone had something in their lives that was troubling them. And you know what it’s like: your whole body can be healthy but you jam your finger in a door and the excruciating pain in that one finger is all that you can think about. The fact that the rest of your life is just fine at that point, is pretty much irrelevant. It’s all about the bit that hurts – that’s what we focus on. It’s true isn’t it?

It’s so easy to live our lives, focusing on that one bit in our life that hurts just at the moment: that difficult relationship, that financial pressure, that problem at work, the worry about what other people are thinking about us. It’s pretty much different for each one of us. But when we have that one thing, or perhaps even two or three, that ache, that we wish would just go away - then it can consume us. It actually robs us of life.

And as we saw earlier, the context of this promise of an abundant life was the story; the parable of the Good Shepherd - Jesus the Good Shepherd, we the sheep in His flock. Now this was a really familiar metaphor to those who were listening. They knew that the profession of the shepherd was one of honour, one of protecting his sheep. They knew that as a shepherd led his sheep out over the stony plateau of Israel in search of pasture, thieves would come and often attack and try and steal the sheep. Wild animals would sometimes come and attack and steal a sheep to eat for dinner.

It was the reality of life for a shepherd and a true shepherd’s job was to defend his flock. But let’s focus for a moment in this story, on the thief. John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy.

Jesus is telling a parable here, a parable that’s meant to reach into our lives – and the thief in this story is the enemy; the devil; the tempter; the deceiver He had referred to elsewhere. The one who dangles glittering baubles under our noses – trinkets and treasures that are so alluring, so seductive. They appear to promise so much. Can he get us to wander off? And other times … other times he simply comes to attack us: through circumstances, through other people. We see that in Job’s story in the Old Testament, how the devil uses financial collapse, sickness, family breakdown, to attack Job.

Paul the Apostle gives us a glimpse into the spiritual realm to tell us what’s going on when we are under attack from this enemy, this thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12. He says:

... our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

See, there is a spiritual dimension to life and we ignore it at our peril. There is a devil who is our enemy; who sometimes comes dressed as an angel of light to deceive us. Other times, he sneaks up like a thief or attacks us openly, like a wolf. All that is in the Bible and we ignore it at our own peril.

But look with me again, if you will, at what Jesus says about Himself:

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come and go and find pasture.

In summer, the shepherds would stay out overnight with their flocks and dotted around the place, were pens that had been built using really dense hedges. So by night, the shepherds would lead his sheep into one of these pens. But those pens had no gate, so he would sleep across the opening and, in effect, the shepherd became the gate – to keep the sheep in overnight, to keep them safe and sound so that none would wander off and to keep the thieves and the wild animals out. He would fight any that came, with his shepherd’s staff and with his rod, a kind of club with spikes. He was the gate. He was their safety, so that they could come and go in peace. He gave them protection and so, safety and peace.

And that is Jesus in our lives today, my friend. Make no mistake about it. The thief will come to steal and to kill and to destroy, to rob us of the abundant life that Jesus has planned for us. The wild animals will come to tear at our flesh, to corrupt our flesh. And yes, we can wander off in our own directions, but out there on our own, we are sitting ducks. The place of safety is with Jesus. The place of safety is close to our Shepherd – the one true Shepherd who would lay down His life for His sheep.

Think about it. If we are constantly being ravaged by the devil, how can we have an abundant life? There are going to be struggles in our lives, and when they come, when things hurt, the place to go is Jesus – the One True Shepherd, the One who lays down His life for His sheep. He is meant to be our refuge. He can and He will protect us. What a pity that so many suffer through things alone when all along Jesus is waiting for them? The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy.

"I came,” said Jesus, “that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

A Super Abundant Life Happiness is great – it’s great to feel on top of the world but then, some of the most satisfying moments in life don’t always involve happiness. You can be exhausted; a complete wreck and yet experience a deep sense of satisfaction at what you have just been through or achieved. Or we can experience a deep sense of contentment in life even if all our circumstances and relationships and finances and all those things aren’t quite what we want them to be.

And we can experience a sense of peace knowing that we are safe, even though we might have some things going on in our lives that might be a threat. Or we can experience fulfilment at being comfortable with who we are and what we are able to do with our lives. And even more, being happy to let go of things that we aspire to, that maybe we are not able to do.

Do you see my point? Happiness ain’t everything! There are so many other things that go into making a rich and abundant life. And it’s that abundance that we are taking a look at today on the programme. And with good reason – an abundant life is something that Jesus promised to His disciples.

For me, one of the most fantastic revelations of God and this promise from Jesus of an abundant life, is that everything in my life doesn’t have to be going perfectly well for me to be living an abundant life. Let me say that again because I believe it’s incredibly important: everything in my life doesn’t have to be going perfectly well for me to be having an abundant life.

Now, this was a huge revelation because I don’t think I can ever remember a single time in my life – maybe a week or two or a month or two, here and there – but over all very few times in my life where absolutely everything was perfect: every relationship, everything to do with my finances, everything to do with my work, everything to do with my hopes and dreams and aspirations and sense of self worth. Do you know what I mean?

There is always something there to take the shine or the gloss off life. The Apostle Paul found that too. He had a thorn in his flesh. Now, we are not quite sure whether that was a physical ailment or a spiritual ailment, the Holy Spirit in His wisdom chose not to tell us that. Good thinking too! But have a listen to Paul. Second Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 7:

To keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’. So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Humph! And this, from a guy who wrote almost half the books in the New Testament! See, there is always something, isn’t there? And I wonder if that isn’t God’s plan. I wonder if everything was always going swimmingly well in my life, whether I would even bother seeking God out at all! I wonder if everything in my life was perfect, whether I would be of any use to you in these programmes. Much of what I talk about, in fact, pretty much all of what I talk about, is born out of the struggles and realities of life, bringing God’s wisdom to bear in our lives.

And interestingly, this passage where Jesus talks about His promise to give us an abundant life is set amidst the story of a struggle – the struggle of a shepherd to protect and feed his sheep. We read through it earlier in the programme. The life of a shepherd was a hard one – thieves, robbers, wild animals – the shepherd was called to protect those sheep with his life and many a time it cost the shepherd his life back then. Without the shepherd, the life of a sheep was precarious. A sheep out there on its own would be a sitting duck, to be picked off by a wolf or stolen or fall down some ravine.

Jesus is telling a story here about life and death struggles. It’s a parable that reaches deep into the realities of our lives. It’s a story about a life lived out there in a challenging world in which Jesus Himself, through His death and His resurrection, becomes our True Shepherd.

A pastor friend of mine told me a story once. He was ministering in a country area and one of his parishioners was a farmer, of sheep. Now the farmer told him, when he was a young lad, he always observed how the sheep would be standing grazing, but as soon as his father would go into the field, they would often lie down. So he asked his dad about that and his father told him that sheep only lie down when they feel safe and that when the shepherd is close, they know that they are safe, which is why they will often take that opportunity to lie down and have a rest.

Brings a whole new meaning to Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads me by still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk into the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

“He makes me to lie down in green pastures”, which means I feel safe. And even though you and I can end up in the valley of the shadow of death, we don’t have to fear any evil because God is with us – His rod and His staff comfort us. So often, friend, an abundant life is not about being taken out of the difficult circumstances of life. It’s about experiencing the peace and the protection of Jesus – that One True Shepherd – right there; right in the middle of the difficulties of life; right there, smack, bang in that valley of the shadow of death.

And the incredible power of that is this: if we choose that sort of abundance of life; the one that Jesus has to offer – the true one, not the imposters, not the false shepherds, not the ones that come to rob and to kill and destroy. If we choose the TRUE life, with the TRUE Shepherd, then it doesn’t matter much what our circumstances are – good, bad, up, down, positive, negative – it doesn’t matter, because even though we may walk through the darkest valley, we fear no evil because He is with us.

People sometimes ask me, "How can you be so upbeat in the middle of a trial?" and my answer is: this is how – it’s not me, it’s Him because I have decided to live my abundant life through Jesus.

The abundant life that Jesus promised – my One True Shepherd!

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This whole Christmas celebration thing is of course a birthday celebration. And birthdays are all about celebrating new life. Would it surprise you to know that that’s exactly what God has in mind for you to celebrate? Your new life.

SILENT NIGHT There's a bunch of guys in the Bible who I envy. Now I know what you're thinking, the tenth Commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or male or female slave or ox or donkey or anything else that belongs to your neighbour. (Exodus 20:17)

Yeah, we're not supposed to envy or covet anything because it leads to some really bad behaviour. I get that. But hear me out.

If there was anyone I could have been with in the Bible, it would have to be those shepherds who were out there watching their flocks by night. We don't quite know what night it was. But you have to gather by what the angel said to them that Jesus had already been born so I prefer to think of it as Christmas night. Only to them, sitting there in the field watching their sheep, it wasn't Christmas night at all. It was just another night at the office doing what shepherds did. It was a mundane part of their lives. They may have been enjoying the evening. They may not have been enjoying the evening. It doesn't matter. They were doing what shepherds did out there on the side of a hill somewhere just outside Bethlehem.

The sun had gone down like it goes down every night. And tomorrow morning the sun was going to come up again, like it did every morning and nothing much changed in between. Maybe the moon was out, maybe not. And in the absence of the bright light and the pollution you and I have to put up with these days, the Milky Way was spread across the firmament in all its glory and all was well with the world.

That's the picture, that's what was going on. But on that particular night God had a plan to break into this world in the most amazing and spectacular way.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night and then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel said to them, 'Don't be afraid for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people. To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord.’

‘This will be a sign for you, you will find a child wrapped in bands of clothing and lying in a manger’. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.’

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven the shepherds said to one another, 'Let's go down to Bethlehem and see this thing that's taken place which the Lord has made known to us'. So they went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in a manger.

When they saw this they made known what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them but Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all that they'd heard and seen as it had been told to them. (Luke 2: 8-20)

I often wonder how I would have reacted had I been with those guys on that starry starry night. I wonder how I would react if that happened to me tonight at home or on the way back from work or whatever mundane thing I happened to be doing tonight. Because for me, the idea of a cosmic light show and angels filling the sky and all that jazz, well for me, it's pretty easy to believe because it happened at a nice safe distance of two thousand or so years ago. Because you and I have watched the kids Christmas pantomimes so many times and sung the Christmas carols so many times, it's become part of our psyche that this thing with the shepherds actually happened. We accept it pretty much without thinking.

But bring it back to reality and how would we cope if it happened to us here and now or if we'd been back there with the shepherds’ back then sitting in that field on that night. I think I would be petrified like they were to start with. It would be so unexpected, so out of this world, so impossible and yet there they were and it was happening to them and God broke into their world in this startling 'in your face' kind of way.

You know something? I believe that that's what God wants to do today in your world and mine. I believe God wants to shake us out of our comfortable little Christmas ritual, our "business as usual" approach to Christmas and get right in our faces and say, "Don't you realise what this Christmas thing is all about? Today, I'm bringing you good news for unto you a Saviour has been born for you". And the reaction He's looking for out of you and me is the reaction that the shepherds had.

Because when the angels had left them and gone into heaven the shepherds said to one another, "Well, what are we going to do? Why don't we go down to Bethlehem and see what has taken place that which the Lord has made known to us." So they went with haste, they didn't dawdle; they went with haste. They found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.

God wants us to come to Jesus for ourselves – to worship Jesus for ourselves, to tell the world what we've seen. Imagine His frustration, His great frustration when He sees people, like you and me, just going through the motions at Christmas time. Imagine how that makes Him feel when on that first Christmas, He gave to you and He gave to me the single most precious gift that has ever been given in all of human history.

So how about it? Will you grab onto this Christmas present with both hands? Will you come to Jesus and worship Him? Will you rejoice at what you've seen? Will you tell people what you've seen? Will you let Christmas impact your heart in the most miraculous way? Well, will you or are you just going to do the same old Christmas ritual this year like you've done for the past umpteen years?

Because here's the thing, one day Jesus is coming back. One day, Jesus will return to this earth and when that happens it will make the cosmic light show that the shepherds experienced look like a little sideshow, I'm telling you. When Jesus ascended back into heaven this is what happened:

So when they'd come together they asked him, 'Lord is this the time when you'll restore the Kingdom of Israel?' And he replied, 'It's not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and then you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria and even to the ends of the earth’.

When he had said that as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards the heaven suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, 'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards the heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. (Acts 1: 6-11)

See, that's going to happen one day, just as unexpectedly as the angels appeared before those shepherds, just as unexpectedly as Jesus slipped into the world the first time. One day this Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead. One day He will break back into our physical world just as unexpectedly as He did back then. Only this time there will be no mistaking Him, this time He will come just as He left, in amazing glory to gather His own unto Himself.

So as yet another Christmas slips by, I'm going to ask you this … are you ready? Because one day Jesus is coming ready or not. And with all my heart, I want to wish you and those whom you love the most radically wonderful Christmas you have ever had.

IT'S ONLY JUST BEGUN Today, as they say, is the beginning of the rest of your life. It’s a funny time this time of year just after Christmas and just before we step into the hurly burly of a new year. It’s a time of rest and reflection for most of us. For some, it’s a time of regret. For others, it’s a time of celebration. For some, it’s a time of anticipation over what next year will bring. And yet for others, it’s a time of fear and worry.

At this time of year, we've all experienced those different emotions at different times so let’s spend a few minutes looking back on the year that's just been. And perhaps a few minutes looking forward at what might be in the coming year.

Christmas is such an incredibly special time because it marks a new birth, bringing a new life into this world is singularly the most special and privileged thing we can ever do. Any parent will tell you that, particularly the mother's in our midst, it's just so special. And it's that new birth that I want to revisit with you today because Christmas is a time to remember that in Christ you and I have a new birth, a rebirth if you will.

And there are a few people today I know that need to experience that rebirth for themselves because you're wallowing in the regrets of the past. In the regrets perhaps of things that could have been but weren't, in the regrets of the things that shouldn't have been but were.

But in Christ, something special happens. It's a new birth and for many, even for those who heard Jesus talk about it, it wasn't an easy thing to get a handle on.

See there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said, 'Rabbi we know that you're a teacher who's come from God for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God'. And Jesus answered him, 'Very truly I tell you that no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.

Nicodemus said to him, 'How can you be born after growing old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?' And Jesus answered, 'Truly, I tell you no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born both of water and of spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the spirit is spirit.’

‘Do not be astonished that I say, 'You must be born from above', the wind blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it but you don't know where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit’. (John 3: 1-8)

See, that new birth is about a new start in life. You've heard the term being born again Christian. Some people roll their eyes when they say it. They use it as a form of derision but Jesus means it for real. Jesus means it as a new start, as a complete rebirth, a fresh start, the slate wiped clean through faith in Him.

Every now and then when I've had a really long day, I'm one of these crazy early starters, so in the late afternoon I might have a short nap and a shower to freshen up. And I come out of the bedroom into the living room and I say to my wife, "Ah, I feel like a new man."

In a sense that's what Jesus is talking about because our faith in Him doesn't just bring forgiveness, it brings that 'new man' feeling as He wipes away all our sins and all the regrets and all the consequences of the past. See, new birth equals new start equals new life. When you're born again, the old life doesn't matter anymore, it's completely meaningless because your slate has been wiped clean.

The Apostle Paul put it this way, he said:

If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away. See, everything has become as new. (2 Corinthian 5:17)

So right at this special time of the year, I believe that God wants to give you a new start by reminding you that if you've accepted Jesus as your Saviour and your Lord, then you are a new creation, completely new. And the result of that, is that everything old is gone. It's completely wiped away which makes it completely irrelevant to you today and to all your tomorrow's.

The powerfully operative word in this little verse is the short word 'see'. Let's listen to it again, 2 Corinthians 5:17.

If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away. See, everything has become new.

God is imploring you to look at your life through His eyes. SEE! See that the effect of the new birth that you have in Jesus Christ means that EVERYTHING has become new. The past is gone, forgiven and done and dusted.

Now, you can look forward to the New Year ahead in a completely new way, completely uninhibited and unconstrained by the failures and the hurts and the losses and the regrets that you have over your past. Completely unaffected by your low self-esteem, completely unaffected by nasty hurtful things that people have said to you and done to you because by the miraculous power of your complete rebirth in Christ through the Holy Spirit – you are a completely new creation. And as a result of that, everything in your life, everything in your world has become new. SEE!

Nicodemus found that hard to believe and hard to understand. You and I can find that hard to believe and hard to understand. But your God wants you to live your life as though the slate of your past has been wiped clean. Because you know something? If you believe in Jesus, it has and what lies ahead of you is a completely new life full of exciting God-type possibilities and amazing things that God wants to do to bless you. And to let His blessing flow out through you into this parched land of people who are in desperate need of a Saviour.

To Israel, His chosen people, at the end of seventy years in captivity as slaves in Babylon, He said this:

‘For surely I know the plans I have for you,' says the Lord, 'plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. When you search for me you'll find me. If you seek me with all your heart I'll let you find me' says the Lord, 'And I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I've driven you', says the Lord, 'And I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29: 11-14)

Do you see? Are you looking? Are you hearing? Do you perceive what God is saying to you through His Word today?

God has great plans for you and those plans are about your future. And He has made all provision for you through Jesus, to wipe your slate clean and to restore you and to bless you. And all He needs now is just one thing … He needs for you to take His Word into your heart, to believe it, to act on it as though it's true. Because you know something? It really is.

And if you choose to step out into your future, a future that maybe would have been otherwise constrained by regrets and hurts from the past. But if you choose now to step out into your future knowing that the regrets of the past are completely wiped away – completely gone, completely irrelevant – if you choose to believe God and take Him at His Word and believe that you can live your life from this day forward on the basis of what God is saying about you is true, then what you're in fact doing is stepping out into your own rebirth.

Christmas is a time of celebration of new life – the life of Jesus who slipped into this world to set captives free, to bind up the broken-hearted, to bring Good News to the poor. This Jesus, He came for you, He came to set you free, He came to bind up your broken heart, He came to bring you Good News and this is the Good News that I bring to you today.

Today is the beginning of a new life – a life of freedom and a life of joy and a life of power and yes a life of sacrifice. A life that is so much more than any of us could have ever dreamed.

This past year is done and dusted and in Christ you can leave behind. This New Year is full of possibilities, full of potential and in Christ, you can step out into it with the confidence of knowing that you'll be playing your small part in Gods mighty plan.

Hey, if that's not Good News, tell me what is.

YES IT'S FOR YOU As you look forward to the rest of your life, I know that some of what we’ve spoken about today isn’t easy to swallow. Especially if you’re in the middle of a rough trot. But remember, Mary and Joseph didn’t have the big picture of what God was up to back then. They were immersed in trial after trial.

But the beauty of it is that you and I do have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’s accounts of what they went through. We know the big picture, we can stand back and see what God was up to in a way that the players back then simply couldn’t. To them, it felt like they were being swept along by events completely out of their control.

On top of everything, of course, Caesar had declared that a census was to be taken, which in the absence of today’s modern technology, meant that Mary and Joseph, like all the other people, had to travel back to their ancestral homes and that was a long slog.

But from God’s vantage point, these weren’t unconnected, random events. These were all part of His plan to usher a Saviour into this world. A Messiah that nobody expected. See, God is the God of the unexpected. There are no events or circumstances that are beyond Him. There are no events or circumstances in your life that escape Him or pass Him by.

He’s across everything, in absolute detail, in the minutest detail, everything that’s going on in your life. And I’m here to tell you that if your Christmas wasn’t quite what you wanted it to be, wasn’t quite what the advertisers said it should be, if you didn’t quite get the standard issue Ho, Ho, Ho kind of Christmas this year, then your God is still with you today.

Your God just showed up through His Word. Your God is with you in that place you’re in right now. And nothing, not death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate you from the love of your God in Jesus Christ.

And that my friend, is worth celebrating not just at Christmas time, but for every day for the rest of your life.

And just as He was with Mary and Joseph, even though they didn’t have the full picture, even though it was uncomfortable, so He is and forever will be, with you.

I’ve called this series of messages "Old Story, New Twist". I did that for a reason. Because I know that this Christmas story, far from being some distant, archaic tale of which pantomimes are born, is a gritty, real story of the journey of the Creator of the Universe into the lives of men and women, into the lives of you and me.

And when we look at that old, old story from His perspective (from the vantage point of heaven’s balcony if you will), when we allow God by His Spirit and through His Word to guide us on that journey over the dusty trails that Mary and Joseph trod, we discover a God who is on that same dusty, difficult journey with you and me today.

Peter the Apostle in 1 Peter 5 and verse 7 said that we should:

Cast all our anxieties on God because he cares for us.

So whatever anxieties and discomforts and fears and disappointments you happen to be carrying on your rocky road from this moment forward, this God who is above all your circumstances, this God who is in all your circumstances, this God who sent His Son to lighten your load, wants to take your burdens from you.

So how about it? Is it time to hand all that stuff over to Him and to get on the journey and head towards the rest of your life with the joy and the anticipation and the excitement of a new life in Christ for you?

Because Jesus came for you. He came to set you free. He came to bring you forgiveness and a future and a certain hope and an eternity with Him. That’s what He ushered in, on that very first Christmas. And that, I reckon, is something worth celebrating at Christmas … and beyond.

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Christmas is supposed to be a lot of things these days. And yet it doesn’t always deliver all that it’s meant to deliver. But then, the very first Christmas, it wasn’t all sweetness and light either. If nothing else, it was a decidedly uncomfortable Christmas.

OVERTAKEN BY EVENTS There are times in our lives when it feels as though circumstances or events outside of our control have completely taken over our lives. We've all been there and some people I know are there right now.

Perhaps you were looking forward to a family Christmas and your marriage or somebody else’s marriage in your family is starting to fall apart. Or perhaps, you find yourself completely alone or maybe sickness has struck and you're wondering how to get through it. And at this point, the whole idea even of celebrating Christmas seems completely irrelevant, off this planet.

Despite what all the happy Christmas ads on television would have us believe, Christmas is not a happy time for many people. It's sad but true. Now, that's not to say that we're all going to have a lousy Christmas, no. But when we scratch the glitzy veneer of what Christmas has become in the twenty-first century, when you go below the surface, most people have something going on in their lives that takes the shine off what should be (according to what everybody else is telling us) the celebration of Christmas.

Season's greetings, peace on earth, merrrryyyyy Christmas, ho ho ho. Yeah, right. Somehow the umpteenth re-enactment of the Christmas pantomime at Church and that nativity scene in the store window (if you can even find one anywhere these days) just doesn't seem to connect with life's realities when we've been swamped by a wave of whatever it is in our life, in your life, this year.

I've had many a Christmas like that over the years. Truly, I have. Life can be tough sometimes. And when you're involved in ministry in any way, shape or form, you'll know that it's even tougher because the devil is on your case. You run into opposition and attacks sometimes seemingly from every direction and on those Christmases the pantomime version of Christmas simply isn't enough. You with me?

But let's wind the clock back to the old, old story, to the days leading up to the birth of Jesus, the Christ. Because when I go back to that story, there's nothing safe, there's nothing comfortable, there's nothing pantomimey at all about it. The road to that very first Christmas was a hard road and it's on that road that we discover a God who's prepared to get on the journey with us.

Think about the circumstances that had overtaken Joseph and Mary's lives to that point. Firstly, they'd fallen in love. Hey, that's a good thing, that's a great thing, that's a special thing. But then Mary falls pregnant to the Holy Spirit, out of wedlock in a day and age where that was a scandal. You can imagine how Joseph felt, right? – robbed, betrayed, dismayed, hurt, alone, disappointed, angry, the full gamut of emotions. Events had overtaken his life.

This one painful event which was completely outside of his control. It hurt so much but being the good guy that he was, he planned to cut off the engagement and to dismiss Mary quietly so as not to make a big thing of it in public. Events, circumstances, things out there that were going to rob him, unbeknown to him at the time, of the very first Christmas.

You see if you're in that boat, you're not the first one. This old, old story has a modern twist in its tail, does it not? The truth of that first Christmas (even though it happened two thousand years away) is here and now when you get behind the pantomime version and you check out what really happened.

So there's young Jo about to be robbed of that first Christmas and then God. Whenever circumstances are about to roll over the top of us, it's always, always a case of 'then God' because this God who loves you beyond any measure that you would care to apply to His love, He always shows up. He showed up back then for Joseph. Let's have a listen:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph but before they lived together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he had resolved to do this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the Prophet, 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel which means God is with us'. When Joseph awoke from his sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son and he named him, Jesus. (Matthew 1: 18-25)

I wonder how many times you and I have skimmed over that old, old story with the attitude, "Oh yeah, I know that one. Yeah sure, it's fine," without ever really thinking about what it meant for Mary and poor old Joseph. The stress it put on their relationship, the glances and the whispers of scandal that happened in their tight-knit little community.

And just when Joseph was about to do what he thought was the decent thing out of his pain – God showed up. God showed up in a mighty way to speak truth and comfort and love and destiny into Joseph's heart.

I don't know how real that dream felt to him at the time, probably it was a really powerful dream if it was from God. But when he woke up it was still only a dream but it was enough for Joseph to act upon. He didn't have the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John to rely on back then, like you and I do have now, he didn't know how it was all going to turn out. But when he heard the voice of God he acted on it.

Christmas is about difficult circumstances. Christmas is all about God breaking into this world in an exquisite blend of love and power and humility. Christmas is about God and it's about you.

A LONELY JOURNEY Now I know that this is not going to come as any great surprise to you but I have never been pregnant. Something (by the way) that I've often given thanks for because I'm your typical male – the idea of going through childbirth is something I can't comprehend. Which is why, I guess, God didn't leave it up to men to be mother's – wise move God, wise move.

Anyway, back to Christmas, I'm trying to imagine what it was like for Mary who was pretty much full term to travel from Nazareth the Bethlehem for the census. We don't think too much about it because these days the drive from A to B would take, umm, two to three hours I'm guessing; maybe four, if you took it slowly and you had a break for lunch along the way. You'd probably do it in a comfortable air conditioned car although even then, let’s say a three to four-hour car ride wouldn't be particularly the most delightful experience for a woman who was close to full term, would it now? But back then it was a one to two-week journey.

Tradition has it … if you believe all the paintings and drawings that Mary rode on the back of a donkey, of course, there's no Biblical evidence for that, we're not told how she got from Nazareth to Bethlehem. But for her sake, I'm hoping she was on a back of a donkey or riding in the back of a cart somewhere rather than walking the whole way because one thing's for certain she wasn't riding in an air conditioned car.

My point is this … we often look back on the old, old Christmas story as though it’s a fable or a pantomime or, I don't know what. It was so long ago and we've heard it so many times that we just have this two-dimensional view of what went on. Yeah, yeah Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds, wise men, Bethlehem, manger, yeah all that jazz. And when we look at Christmas that way, it's almost as though we're closing our hearts off to the wonderful real, gritty, here and now things that God’s wanting to speak into our lives.

Mary and Joseph didn't have an easy run of it. It was time for a census. The Roman emperor had decreed that it was time to do a people stocktake. And the way they did it back then (before marks sensing, computer readable census forms distributed to each household) was that you had to head back to your ancestral home and for Joseph that meant Bethlehem.

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and the family of David. He went to be registered with Mary to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. (Luke 2: 1-5)

See, the Romans were nothing if not efficient administrators. They, in fact, had a huge impact on the distribution of the Gospel after Jesus' resurrection and ascension because of the road and port infrastructure that they'd built and the relatively peaceful and homogenous Roman Empire that dominated the known world at the time.

But on this occasion, as far as Mary and Joseph were concerned, they were being a right proper pain in the backside. Quite literally for Mary if she was fortunate enough to have travelled the journey on the back of a donkey. I imagine that if you or I had been Mary or Joseph, we would have had a few choice words and thoughts about the timing of this rotten, lousy census. Why now? What a pain! How inconvenient! Mary is almost full term and she and Jo are travelling with a sea of humanity in all different directions heading for their ancestral homes, in their case that was Bethlehem.

Isn't that how it feels when circumstances and events beyond us seem to dictate the course of our lives? Pretty frustrating, isn't it? – inconvenient and sometimes, downright dangerous and hurtful.

But this census wasn't just some random event. It wasn't a happen chance thing. As with everything, God was in it because centuries before through the Prophet Micah, He had spoken to His people about their Messiah whom He would send who would be born in, yeah you guessed it, Bethlehem. Let's take a look, Micah 5: 2 and 3:

But you O Bethlehem of Ephratah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel whose origin is of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth, then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.

See, God had a plan. His plan was that Jesus, the bread of life as He later referred to Himself as, would be born in the town of Bethlehem, a word which literally means 'the house of bread'. God’s plan was to speak powerfully to His people through the Words of Micah's prophecy and through the fulfilment of that prophecy in the birth of Christ in Bethlehem.

My point is this, events are never random. Events that seem to roll over the top of your plans and your hopes and your dreams even never just happen by chance. Sometimes the most difficult and devastating events are the most powerful moves of God in our lives and through our lives and into the lives of other people around us. Of course, it never feels like it at the time. And rarely (if ever) does God give us the big picture if you will to explain what's going on and what He's up to when He's doing that and letting these things happen to us.

But that doesn't change the fact that God's sovereign will is playing out right there and then. Psalm 135 verse 6 says:

Whatever the Lord pleases he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps.

So whatever that looks like in your life right now, remember your God is up to something good … I mean really good.

NO ROOM AT THE INN Well, here we are on Christmas Eve and I’m guessing you know where I’m headed with this story, right?

I remember a few years back, my wife and I flew from Australia to the US, to Chicago, in fact. That's a long flight, about twenty-four hours door to door. We had a room booked at a hotel on the Golden Mile in Chicago because I was speaking at an IT conference there and the conference organisers had set it all up for me.

In LA where we had to clear customs, we discovered that they'd lost Jacqui's suitcase (along the way), fantastic! And then when we landed in Chicago, we had to part ways because I had to fly on for a couple of days to Minneapolis, St Paul. So the plan was Jacqui would catch a cab to the Chicago hotel and I would join her in a couple of days time.

Now, it was her very first trip to the US of A. She doesn't do a lot of travel so heading to the hotel on her own was just a little bit daunting. So not only is her luggage missing but she has to find her own way to downtown Chicago and when she arrives, get this, she's told, "No, sorry but the hotel is fully booked."

"Hang on, there's a conference here and my husband is the keynote speaker and the conference organisers have booked a room and ..." Well, you can imagine her despair, right? She was ready to cry and she's been travelling now for the last twenty-four hours so she's exhausted. She's alone in a foreign country, her luggage is missing and now they tell her there's no room at the hotel.

Two hours it took to get it sorted. At one point they found a room but because the booking was in my name and not hers they weren't going to let her have it. Fortunately, the hotel manager got involved and saner heads prevailed. We did, by the way, eventually find her luggage but that's a whole another story.

Now, if you have any sort of heart beating inside you, you'll be feeling a bit sorry for poor old Jacqui. A bit like a lost soul in a foreign land, all alone with waves of exhaustion and despair crashing all over her. For her fortunately, it all worked out.

But if I now take you back to the old, old story, the first Christmas story, there was a couple who rocked up to Bethlehem for whom things didn't work out so well – Mary and Joseph. They've come down to Bethlehem from their hometown of Nazareth, up north. A few hours by car these days, as we saw yesterday but for them it's been a one to two-week journey by foot perhaps with the aid of a beast of burden to carry the full term, very pregnant, almost due Mary but perhaps not.

It's a journey that makes our twenty-four hour flight from Sydney to Chicago look like sheer luxury by comparison. They're tired, they're exhausted, they're ready to get to their room and dive into the Jacuzzi and relax, but let's pick up their story:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration that was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered, Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and the family of David.

He went to be registered with Mary to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there the time came for her to deliver her child and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them at the inn. (Luke 2: 1-6)

Much of the nation of Israel was on the move at this time because of this wretched census ordered by the Emperor Augustus. So, there really was a convention in town when they arrived in that small village, as it was back then, the village of Bethlehem. They weren't in downtown Jerusalem there on the Golden Mile but out of town in this hamlet. And frankly there weren't a lot of five-star or even two or three star hotels available, those that were choc-a-block.

And so after, presumably, a few hours of schlepping around and discovering there wasn't a room to be had anywhere some kind inn keeper, seeing Mary's condition, offered them a shed out the back which housed animals. Now I don't know, sheep, goats, maybe the odd cow if he was really wealthy.

Can you imagine how Mary's heart sank when she entered that stable where she knew she would give birth? After that whole fanfare with the angel and falling pregnant, not the normal way but through the Holy Spirit? Hey, surely God was with her. Surely, God knew what was going on, His Son, the very Son of God is about to be born. "My son too" Mary is thinking to herself and now I get a stinking stable?

Come on you women who have had children put yourself in Mary's shoes, how do you feel? Not all that impressed, right? Your water's break, the pain starts and you lie down on the floor of a stable that's been pooped on and weed on by the assemblage of farm animals watching you give birth. Just fantastic.

I don't know what you're expecting of Christmas this year. It's almost upon us and it's supposed to be great. The world hypes it up as being a great celebration, Christians and Churches hype it up as being a great celebration. I don't think that's how it felt for Mary on that day and I know that's not how it feels for a whole bunch of people today.

But let me tell you this … God was in that place with Mar. He was watching over her, He was with her and yes He chose a humble, uncomfortable place for His Son – the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, to be born as a man. God often chooses humble, uncomfortable places for His people. It's just His way.

But no matter how uncomfortable it may be for you, no matter how God forsaken this place may seem in which you've found yourself, I want to tell you this, God is with you because Jesus on that first Christmas, Jesus came for you.

Do you remember what it was that the angel said to Joseph in his dream when he was explaining to him what had gone on with Mary falling pregnant? Matthew 1: 21-23:

‘She will bear a son' said the angel, 'and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins'. All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the Prophet 'behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call him Emmanuel which means 'God is with us'.

Jesus is God on the journey with us.

Back in Chicago when Jacqui stood negotiating with those difficult hotel employees over the counter, she no doubt felt incredibly alone, lost in a foreign land. Her husband off in another city, completely uncontactable.

Perhaps, as you face whatever it is you're facing the same thoughts race through your mind as no doubt went through Mary's when she lay eyes on that crummy, stinking stable for the very first time. Doesn't God get it? How can He let this happen to me? Why doesn't He fix it?

And so you're sitting here on this Christmas Eve wondering even what Christmas is all about. If that's you, if that's a bit of what you're feeling right now, then I have just one word for you from the Lord, 'Emmanuel'. God is with you. You are never alone.

And though He may have chosen circumstances for you right now that you may not have chosen for yourself, on this day, on this Holy day, know this … your God is with you and that beautiful wondrous truth, this truth that we are celebrating right now, at this time that we call Christmas, that truth is something that nothing and nobody can take away from you.

Your God is with you.

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I don't know if you’ve ever thought of this, but on the surface of things, Christmas is a crazy idea! I mean, what exactly was God thinking by sending His Son to become a man – and to be born in some drafty, smelly shed out the back of Bethlehem?

CHRISTMAS IS A CRAZY IDEA On the surface of things, Christmas is a crazy idea. I mean stand back and think about it … God's God, He created the whole universe. Okay, He's Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one, something that's not that easy to wrap your mind around. But let's just leave that to one side for the moment.

God is God. God creates everything. We read about it in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis. It's pretty straightforward description of what He did and it was amazing. And the crowning glory of all His creation is humanity – you and me, male and female. And the very last thing that He does before He rests to enjoy His handiwork of creation is that He hands the whole thing over to us. God said:

Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind, cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind and it was so and God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind, everything that creeps along the ground of every kind and God saw that it was good."

Then God said, 'Let us make humanity in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’

So God created humanity in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.’

God said, 'See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to every thing that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life I have given every green plant for food' and so it was.

God saw everything that He'd made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning of the sixth day. (Genesis 1: 26-31)

So far, so good. Adam and Eve go and enjoy all of this amazing creation but God does one thing, just one thing that is so crazy, inexplicable.

The Lord commanded the man, 'you may freely eat of every tree of the garden but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16)

Well, you know the rest. They couldn't help themselves, Adam and Eve, they just had to try to be like God. They ate from that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the rest as they say is history.

Sin entered the world, sickness entered the world and just as God had promised them death entered the world. Life became hard. That's something you and I can attest to – life is hard and all because God had to forbid them that one tree and they just had to try it anyway. Could it be all of your misery and mine hangs on just that one crummy apple? For Pete's sake, that's nuts!

And then as humanity spirals ever downward, as we become ever more debauched and depraved, after that moment God mounts a rescue mission – He sends Jesus to save us. What's that about? Why didn't He just give them access to every last tree? Why did He have to hold that one tree back from them and why did they have to blow it for the rest of us and after all that, why did God mount that rescue mission and send Jesus?

It defies human logic until you realise that love and logic have nothing more in common than their first two letters. Love isn't logical. Have a listen to this:

But the free gift is not like the trespass for if the many died through one man's trespass, Adams, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift and the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man's sin for the judgement following the one trespass brought condemnation but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.

If because of the one man's sin death has exercised dominion through that one much more surely will those who receive the abundance of the grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man's trespasses lead to condemnation for all so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.

For just as by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. But the law came in with the result that the trespass multiplied but when sin increased grace abounded all the more. So just as sin exercised dominion in death so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. (Romans 5: 12 - 21)

There you have it. There you have the reason that God did what He did. If you love someone you give them free will, right? He gave Adam a free will by excluding that one tree and Adam chose against God and so sin, with all its consequences, entered the world for you and me.

Now, before you think to yourself, "I am going to punch Adam in the nose when I see him in heaven." Ask yourself, if nobody in all of history before you had sin and ultimately you were living in that garden, would you have resisted the temptation?

So sin entered the world through one man and forgiveness came though one man as well, Jesus. God sent Him into this world as that little babe we remember each year around this time so that we could be forgiven. And notice how that 'grace' word comes in. Forgiven by the free, unmerited favour of God so that we could know what? God’s love.

What greater expression of love is there than to forgive someone who doesn't deserve it? I guess only one, to do it and to take his or her punishment on their behalf, to give your life to suffer in order to purchase their forgiveness and their freedom. To step out of heaven into this hurly-burly of a sinful world and be punished even though you'd never done anything wrong.

And this is not as some Plan B because Plan A didn't work. This was always Gods Plan A. God always knew Adam would blow it. He always knew that you and I would blow it. None of that was ever a surprise to Him and yet out of His great love, He gave us a free will to accept or reject Him. And out of His great love, He came to purchase us back from death by offering up His Son as His sense of justice demanded – to take all the fall for you and for me, to pay the price, to die the death.

Now, I know you have a lot going on in these days leading up to Christmas – those last-minute presents to buy, the things to clear off your desk perhaps before you have a few days off, the turkey to buy, the decoration to get up, all that stuff.

Now I know that you may not have a lot of time to think about this Christmas stuff but at the heart of Christmas lies a Father's love. At the heart of Christmas – in the most unhygienic, feed trough called a manger, in that even more unhygienic stable filled with animals, right where that child was born and lay and cried and gurgled – is a love so sublime that there are not enough words to describe it. There are no words ever invented that can really explain a love so great.

So as you hurtle towards yet another chaotic Christmas, let me say to you quietly, kindly, gently, ‘Take a moment to wrap your heart around that love. Just let that love touch you deep inside and change you and change your life and change your world."

After all, what do you have to lose?

YOU WON'T DIE ALONE I know, it’s kind of a weird perspective from which to come at the story of Christmas, but hopefully as we chat together, it will start to make sense.

Death … dying is pretty much the one taboo subject left in our society. We can talk about pretty much anything else but not dying. And the last thing that you and I really want to think about is dying. But humour me because I want you to put yourself on your deathbed. Hopefully, quite a few years away from now, and imagine how you'll feel. Would you be afraid of dying alone? I'm guessing you would particularly in a hospital room, sterile, white, disinfected, clinical, with tubes coming out of you, those squeaky sounds the nurses shoes make on the floor. The idea of being completely alone at the end is a terrible thought.

Now and then, you hear about an elderly person who died all alone in their home and their body wasn't discovered for seven or eight years. That's frightful. Imagine how the end must of come for them. Of course, you don't have to wait to die in order to be alone.

So many people are desperately alone, sometimes through circumstances but mostly as a result of their sin. That may sound a bit weird but sin – turning our backs on God and going our own way usher's in death very quickly. That's what God promised Adam and Eve would happen if they ate from that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he forbade them to eat from.

The Lord commanded the man, 'you may eat freely of every tree in the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16)

The result of that apparent minor transgression? Well, God said to them:

I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers, he will strike your head and you will strike his heel. To the woman he said, 'I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing, in pain shall you bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.

And to the man he said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and you have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you 'you shall not eat of it' cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of it you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3: 15-19)

The immediate result of that sin was broken relationships, a broken relationship between God and Adam and a broken relationship between Adam and Eve. And broken relationships mean loneliness and strife.

So … what was God's solution to that distance that we put between Him and us through our sin? How did He address that?

Well, it's simple really. It was a complete no brainer for Him. All He had to do was to follow the longing of His heart and we know what that is because He tells us what it is over and over again in the Old Testament. Let's have a look at just one example, Leviticus 26: 11-13, God said:

I will place my dwelling in your midst and I shall not abhor you and I will walk among you and I will be your God and you shall be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be slaves no more, I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you to walk upright.

The longing of God’s heart is to be close to His people. He's our Father, He loves us, of course, that's the longing of His heart. And yet, through the whole of the Old Testament we see how God's people struggle to honour Him. In fact, the name Israel literally means 'to struggle with God'.

They failed, all the time, over and over again. And over and over again, He forgave them. It was this constant merry-go-round and it wasn't working so here was His plan, a plan that, as I said yesterday, wasn't some fall back, it was always His Plan A. Are you ready for it? Here God's plan, John chapter 1:10-14. Speaking about Jesus, it says:

He was in the world and the world came into being through him yet the world didn't know him. He came to what was his own and his own people didn't accept him but to all who received him, who believed in his name he gave them power to become children of God who were born not out of blood or out of the will of the flesh or of the will of a man but of God and the word became flesh and lived amongst us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and of truth. (John 1:10-14)

The plan was for God to take a giant step towards us even though we'd drifted so far away from Him that we really didn't know Him anymore. This God who had an intimate personal relationship back then in the beginning with Adam and Eve, the Word (that's Jesus), the Word became flesh and lived amongst us. That's what we celebrate at Christmas

But can I give you the literal meaning of that verse because when you have that, it makes a lot more sense. It literally says that Jesus became flesh and tabernacled amongst us, set up His home amongst us, it's the language of the Exodus where God's presence travelled on the forty-year journey through the wilderness with His people in that tent, in that tabernacle.

Jesus coming to this planet is Jesus stepping out and coming close to you to travel on your journey with you on your exodus. That's what makes this Christmas thing so amazing – to set you free, to make sure that you are never alone. Not through the problems of this life, not through the fractured relationships and the enmity that exists in this world through our sin, not through that time where we come to the end of this life and not for the rest of eternity.

Christmas is Jesus coming close, Christmas is God following the desire of His heart to be close to you and me by sending His Son to be on our journey with us.

Are you getting this? Is this touching your heart as I tell you this age-old story with a new twist? That new twist is that Jesus came for you. Jesus came to be on your journey. Jesus came to bring you comfort to bind up your broken heart, to bring release from captivity of your sin, to be on this journey every step of the way. And what a terrible price He paid for that so that we could see His glory and know Him and experience a one on one intimacy with Him.

Now let me bring you back to your death-bed … what if, instead of being terribly alone on your deathbed you experience the very presence of Jesus right there with you on your journey with His love and His forgiveness and His grace and His peace and His mercy? What if instead of being terribly alone, you come to know as each second ticks by on that clock, you are drawing closer and closer to that time that you will see that Jesus face to face?

I don't care what bad things have happened to you in your life. I don't care how lost and alone you may feel. It doesn't matter because Jesus is in this place with you and He will never leave you and never forsake you because on that starry starry night in Bethlehem, He came for you.

He came to say, "I love you", He came to suffer and die for you. He came to rise again and give you a completely new life with your slate wiped clean. He came to set you free. He came to bring you peace. He came to be with you for every minute of every day for the rest of eternity.

That's Christmas. That's what God was doing by sending us His Son. That's what we're celebrating or at least, what we're pretending to celebrate over this coming week.

Do you get it? Jesus came for you and if you have nothing else to celebrate this Christmas then celebrate that. It's all you need to make your Christmas the best one ever.

And remember, I'm praying for you that this message, this incredibly Good News of Jesus, will light up your heart with a joy unspeakable.

A QUIET REFLECTION I just want to pick up on something really insightful my pastor said last Sunday, about being with someone who is dying. He made the point that one of the most powerful things that we can do is simply to touch that person. Whether it’s holding their hand, or giving them a hug.

I remember when my dad was in intensive care just before he died, that’s exactly what the nurse told me to do. Why? Because that sort of intimacy brings a powerful comfort and reassurance to the person who is dying.

You know yourself, just knowing that someone is here, standing with you, caring for you when you’re going through a difficult time, is in and of itself truly powerful. It may not make the problem go away, but it brings a comfort that nothing else can bring.

And in many respects, that is what the physical Presence of Jesus, which began on this earth on that first Christmas, is all about. Of course, you and I can’t touch Him physically right now, but one of His great promises, just before He ascended into heaven was that He would pour out His Holy Spirit on every man, woman and child who believes in Him.

I just want you to quietly reflect on that powerful, powerful truth. Because according to Jesus, that’s even better than having Him around physically. Speaking about His departure and the Holy Spirit, He said this: John 16:7:

Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

The Holy Spirit, better than Jesus, according to Jesus. More intimate than Jesus, because when the Holy Spirit fills us, He never leaves us. He is always there to empower, to comfort, to guide and to give us wisdom and power.

With Jesus, if the disciples were in another place, then He wasn’t there physically with them. But with the Holy Spirit there is no place that you or I can go to flee from His Presence. As the Psalmist writes:

Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness isn’t dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

What we tend to do is we chop God’s great story up into little bits. We separate the birth of Jesus from His death, from His resurrection, from His pouring out of the Holy Spirit, from the powerful things that were ushered in through the early church.

But you can’t do that. All of those things happened because Jesus stepped out of the Spiritual dimension into the physical dimension, onto this planet to be close to us.

That closeness, that intimacy, is like touching a dying person. You and I, until Jesus touches our lives, we are dying people. And then, He brings new life. And then He fills us with His Holy Spirit and then, you and I are never, ever, ever alone again for the rest of eternity.

That’s what Jesus’ coming has given you. That’s why Christmas is such an amazing time to remember this radical plan of God’s to show us His love by being close to us, by touching us, even though we were dying in our sin until He came.

My prayer for you … is that as you drink in this wondrous message of Christmas. As you reflect on it in your heart, the Holy Spirit will do an amazing work of joy in you, to cause your spirit to soar into heavenly places – and receive this amazing Christmas present that we call Jesus.

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Question – When is Christmas not Christmas? When is Christmas anything but Christmas? Answer – when we just follow the well-trodden paths of the Christmas ritual, and forget completely what God was saying to us on that very first Christmas.

THE PROBLEM WITH CHRISTMAS I don't know if you've ever thought of this but Christmas is a real problem for guys like me, preachers I mean. Year after year, we have to crank out yet another Christmas series. And for the first few years, that's pretty easy but then after a while you start thinking to yourself, "Well, how am I going to put a new twist on Christmas this year?"

Last year, I approached it from this perspective, the year before from that perspective, the year before that from ... well, you get the picture. There are only so many different perspectives on Christmas. Well, we've all been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Yeah, so it's Christmas again, so what?

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere it’s an excuse for a few days off.

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere as I do, it's probably the summer holidays that you're looking forward to more than Christmas itself. A chance for a decent break, a bit of a much-needed R and R and sure Christmas is part of that but the Christmas bit can be a bit of a hassle. Buying presents, figuring out who has Christmas lunch with whom and then perhaps scooting off to Christmas dinner with another part of your family. Kids, uncles, aunts, grandparents – it all gets complicated. And then there's the fact not everybody in the family gets on. You know Christmas day is one of the peak times of the year for domestic violence.

Even if it doesn't get that bad you know there are going to be clashes or you're going to have to smile sweetly at someone that you don't really like or you just know that so and so is going to have too much to drink again this year.

Those are the burdens that many people carry into Christmas, it's just the reality of life. So as things turn out, Christmas isn't just a problem for preachers like me who have to dream up something fresh and new each year, it's a problem for many, many people. I heard someone say once, a Bible believing Christian she was, "I hate Christmas, I wish we could just skip over it." It's pretty sad but it's the reality for many people even those who actually believe in Jesus. So Christmas gets something of a bad rap, I wonder how many people who are out there who would just love to skip Christmas. I wonder?

Well, as you look ahead to the next ten days or so in the run up to Christmas, I wonder how you're feeling about it all, exhausted, frustrated, anxious, stressed. What are the emotions that generally accompany this thing we call Christmas in your heart in your life? What are you feeling? Is Christmas a problem for you?

Can I be honest here? I struggle with the kids pantomime version of Christmas. I struggle with the whole Carols by Candlelight phenomenon around Christmas where people get together in parks and sing Christmas carols as though they believe them, when most of the entertainers up on the stage and on our television screens don't have the remotest faith that Jesus is actually the Son of God.

It's like we wrap this whole Christmas in tinsel and lights and tie a neat bow around it. And we make it out to be this happy time, when the truth is, for many people, well, they struggle with Christmas. Now I don't mean to be a Christmas Grinch here. Personally, I love singing Christmas carols because they mean something to me but what I really want to know is why don't we sing Christmas carols all year round? Why don't we celebrate the coming of Jesus all year round?

I remember hosting a Christmas in July service at our Church some years back. It's a bit of a phenomenon down under as many restaurants put on Christmas dinners in the middle of winter when it's cold and at the service we actually sung Christmas carols. I can't tell you the number of people who came up to me afterwards and told me how weird it was singing Silent Night in the middle of July.

Yeah, we wrap a whole bunch of rituals up in a nice neat package in December and we call it Christmas. And it's all supposed to be sweetness and light and yet how much of it really, really, really speaks into our hearts about the wonder of what God did on that first Christmas?

What I want to do today is to unsettle you, to drag you out of your Christmas ritual comfort zone and ask you, "Why do you do what you do at Christmas time? Why are you racing around buying presents for people who don't really need anything? Why do you put tinsel and Christmas decorations around your house and maybe even a Christmas wreath on your front door? What are the candles and the Christmas tree and presents and all that food really about? What do you do it for?"

If you stripped away all that packaging and paraphernalia what would Christmas actually be for you? Luke 2: 8-14:

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel said to them, "don't be afraid, for see I am bringing good news of great joy for all people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord."

"This will be a sign for you, you'll find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger" and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, "glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours."

So if you took the packaging and the paraphernalia and the ritual and the racing around away, is that what Christmas would mean to you? Would you in your heart shout out, "Glory to God in the highest heaven. Glory, glory, glory. Hallelujah?" Because if not, don't you think you just might be wasting your time with all this Christmas nonsense that you go through each year?

All this pressure you put yourself under, all these presents you buy and the money you spend and the decorations you put up and the food that you stuff yourself with – is that what Christmas is all about?

Or in your heart, is it about the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God to be the Saviour of this world? The biggest Christmas gift of all history – the Son of God given to all humanity, given to you and given to me.

So let me ask you, what is your Christmas all about?

THE PROPHECIES OF OLD I guess when it comes to this whole Christmas thing; we see it from where we sit. And for most of us, our perspective (our take on Christmas) comes through the ritual that surrounds it – a ritual that we've acted out year after year for as long as we can remember.

Sure, it's changed a bit. When we were kids it was all about the excitement of presents. But you know the deal, you know all the things that you do in the weeks leading up to Christmas, you know how Christmas Day is going to pan out. You know the carols you're going to sing and the food that you're going to eat and the people you're going to celebrate Christmas with. If it's at all possible, this exciting celebration of Christmas has become something of a routine for you. A bit of a contradiction but it's true for most of us, life is full of contradictions right?

When it comes to Christmas we kind of narrow our view, we lower our gaze and focus on the well-worn familiar path of the Christmas ritual. Whatever that looks like for each one of us, we narrow our perspective and like Pavlov's dogs we get on with that part of life and in many respects, that's how it was on that very first Christmas two thousand odd years ago. Although it wasn't called Christmas back then. In fact, the first record of there being some celebration of Christmas doesn't appear until 354 AD, three and a half centuries after the birth of Jesus.

And of course many of the modern-day traditions of Christmas that we celebrate on December 25th – for instance, eating turkey, having a Christmas tree, Santa Claus, presents, tinsel, lights, all of those are much, much more recent. In fact, the Christmas ritual that you and I take for granted today, as though it's been around forever, is little more than a hundred years old, it's a bit of a surprise, isn't it?

But let's wind the clock back even further to that first Christmas. People by and large were just going on with their daily business. The big news in town was of course the census. The Romans had ordered a stock take of all the people and in the absence of the technology we use today, the way you did it back then was to go back to your ancestral home.

And in the case of Joseph and therefore Mary, his embarrassingly pregnant betrothed, that meant going back to Bethlehem. The inns were full, the shepherds were out doing what shepherds did, tending their flocks in the field by night. Other than the disruption of the census, it was pretty much business as usual. And then wham, the light show in the skies in front of these shepherds. God broke into that "business as usual" in a spectacular way. You know what, I'm praying for this Christmas, God is going to break into your "business as usual" in a spectacular way too.

All these people were just living their lives, just like we do, head down, doing stuff that they did day after day when all along God had promised a Saviour.

There are quite a number of prophecies in what we now call the Old Testament (the Scriptures to the Jewish people) of the coming of a Saviour and principle among them is that He would be born in Bethlehem, Micah 5: 2-5:

But you O Bethlehem of Ephrathah who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel whose origin is of old from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel and he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God and they shall live secure for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth and he shall be the one of peace.

The prophecy of the coming of the Saviour in great power in this tiny humble little village of Bethlehem and by the way the word Bethlehem means literally "the house of bread". Remember how Jesus said, "I am the bread of life."

How appropriate that He should be born in Bethlehem – the house of bread. And then there was the prophecy that He would be born to a virgin, now that's pretty outrageous when you think about it, Isaiah chapter 7:14:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look the virgin woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel which means 'God is with us.

And that is, of course, exactly what happened. There are quite a few more prophecies about the birth of Jesus that were given centuries before that He fulfilled – His lineage, the slaughter of the infants by Herrod, His need to flee to Egypt. The bottom line was that there were plenty of signs, plenty of prophecies, plenty of predictions.

Okay they were cryptic. I mean God revealed His Son in mystery and wonder. We always try to analyse God and put Him in a box. We try and figure out how He operates and then make a bunch of rules about Him. But you can't do that with God. He does startling, creative, outrageous things like sending His Son, Jesus as the son of a carpenter in humble circumstances in some shed out the back of Bethlehem.

But the picture was always there, the big plan was always there. God had given some predictions about what was going to happen even as way back as His promise to Abraham. Right back there in the first Book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, God said to him, "Through you all nations shall be blessed" pointing forward to Jesus. But the people were just chugging along, business as usual and it was difficult (if not, impossible) for many of them to see, to perceive, to understand. Not all of them had the light show like the shepherds and the wise men.

As I look at the world today, it seems to me that still today most are asleep to what God did back then and what God is doing now. The only difference is that we know the whole story, we know what was going on and how it ends.

So as this Christmas approaches, you find yourself asleep to the wonder of what God is doing then let me say to you with all love and with all care, "Wake up. Don't be asleep through yet another Christmas." The wonder and the power of what God did back then, the doors that He opened for you through the coming of Jesus, the joy of what He brings to you today, the unspeakable glory that He opens up through His Son for you to spend eternity with Him, why would you want to sleep through that? Why would you want to be blind to that?

Those prophecies of old which is the faintest hint of what was to come. But now we know, now we can see … the sheer wonder.

THE REALITIES OF LIFE There is something incredibly powerful about "business as usual". If you think about how your life has played itself out, so far, I suspect that it's been ninety nine percent humdrum and about half a percent of wonderful mountain top joy and another half a percent of tragedy and loss.

Sure, some people seem to have better lives than others. Some are born rich, some are born poor and very sadly for some people life is one long tragedy. I wish I could wave a magic wand and take all that away for those people who find themselves in that boat. But I just can't and yet for most of us, most of our lives are occupied by the normal every day, business as usual, monotony which consumes most of our time, most of our attention and most of our focus. Am I right?

But beneath that monotony there is always, always, always a sneaking suspicion that there must be more. You've had that feeling, right? This sense that something is oppressing you, something is sidling you out of the sort of life that you think you should be living. There are in fact very few people on planet earth today that don't have that feeling.

I used to have it but I don't have it anymore. I've always been someone who's tried to get out there and live life to the full. And all along, as hard as I tried, something was missing, things weren't quite right and I couldn't put my finger on it.

I want to wind the clock back to what was going on in the history of Israel around when Jesus was born. Not just the history of the nation but the lives of the ordinary people like you and me. In fact there's a particular bunch of guys I want to focus on because they, to me, exemplify this "business as usual" but something was not quite right in their world. What am I yabbering on about here? I'm talking, of course, about the shepherds who were out watching their flocks by night.

Now, no doubt you've sung the Christmas carol many times and heard their story many times. By the way, the fact that they were out there watching their flocks by night makes it pretty certain that Jesus wasn't born in December, Israel's winter. Average December maximums of fifteen degrees Celsius or around sixty degrees Fahrenheit and of course nights were quite a bit cooler.

So in winter they generally brought their sheep into town where there was a communal pen where they were cared for overnight. So even though we celebrate Christmas in December, it probably didn't happen then on the first Christmas.

Anyhow, here were these guys living out their "business as usual" tending their flocks by night but they weren't living as free men, they were living as men in an occupied country. The Romans of course had occupied and ruled most of the known world back then. And in fact, the Romans had been the rulers for the last sixty or seventy years in Israel.

Now, in the overall history of Israel that's pretty short but for those shepherds it was all that they could remember. The Romans were tough task masters and what made it even harder for the Israelites is that they knew they were God’s chosen people. They knew they were meant to be free and so they expected, kind of, sort of, maybe one day for God to send them a King – a Messiah, as He was called back then, God’s anointed King – in order to boot the Romans out and restore the kingdom of Israel, to set God’s people free. After all, God had done it before.

He'd set them free from captivity in Egypt. He'd set them free from captivity in Babylon. He'd set them free from the Seleucid Empire through the Maccabean Revolt only a century and a half before. That was their simplistic understanding of what should be going on.

So there they were, business as usual. But something wasn't quite right, they were oppressed and that simply wasn't the way it should have been. They were being robbed of the freedom, the life that they knew they were entitled to as God’s chosen people. Does that sound vaguely familiar to you? Does that sound like anyone that you know?

Now, people back then were kind of expecting this Messiah to come. But when you and I used this term "Messiah" we think of Jesus, right? That's not who they were thinking about at all. They were thinking more about a strong warrior king, someone like King David of old who could muster an army, defeat the Romans and set the people free. After all, isn't that what God promised to David years before? 2 Samuel 7: 12 and 13, He said to David:

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come forth from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

So in effect, they were looking in the wrong direction for a saviour because they misinterpreted what God was on about. They thought they were going to get another King David. Again a bit like, in fact a lot like people today, that's what was going on in the popular consciousness of ordinary people like those 'business as usual' shepherds back then and in many respects it's what’s going on in the popular consciousness of ordinary people today.

People are looking for someone or something to set things right. They know that life is not all it should be so they turn to money or career or reputation or luxury or holidays or friends, you name it. They turn to it expecting "it" to make things better but it never does.

People have been looking in the wrong direction for a Saviour for thousands of years just like those shepherds and then God breaks into the world with such power and with such might and in such a surprising way that we can't even begin to imagine what He's up to. Luke 2: 8-14:

In that region were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel said to them, 'don't be afraid for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people. To you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord.

This Messiah, this Saviour, He wasn't what they expected Him to be – He still isn't what we expect Him to be. What are you expecting Jesus to be? As we roll inexorably towards Christmas, yet again, what are you expecting to discover or are you so busy looking in a different direction that you're going to miss this amazing surprise in Jesus?

Or are you running away as I was for many years because like the shepherds I was kind of afraid? This idea of God breaking into history by becoming one of us is too startling and too incomprehensible to begin to make sense.

Just listen with me quietly to what the angel went on to say to those startled, frightened, 'business as usual', confused shepherds. Luke 2: 15 – 20:

This will be a sign for you, you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

And so ...

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven the shepherds said to one another, 'let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place which the Lord has made known to us'. So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and a child lying in a manger.

When they saw this they made known what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen as it had been told to them. (Luke 2: 15 – 20)

Seems to me that you and I, like the shepherds, have a choice. We can continue to get on with business as usual, stay in our field and ignore Jesus. Or, we can go and check Him out for ourselves.

The only question that I'd ask is this; so how well has your 'business as usual' worked out for you so far?

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When I first started reading the Bible, it seemed to me that it was all about the things I had to give up - what I was going to lose. But what I discovered is that actually, actually God wants to bless us. His Wisdom brings blessing to our lives - as counterintuitive as it may seem, when we’re sitting there wrapped up in our selfish desires.

The Fruit of Discipline I can honestly say, as I look back on my life, that there is not a single time ... not one, where I have enjoyed being disciplined. I remember as a child – I was a lively sort of a lad as you can probably image. I was into everything and inquisitive and full of beans and since I was old enough to sleep in a bed, rather than a cot, I’ve been getting up at four or five o’clock in the morning – that’s just the way I’m wired. I was never shy or retiring – I was always out there and into everything.

So it’s not surprising that growing up, I had more than my fair share of discipline – more than the odd belting when I grew up. Not that I am necessarily suggesting that’s always the best way of discipling a child. And then as a teenager and a young adult when I was studying at the Royal Military College Duntroon, to become an officer in the Australian Army, that’s where you learn what discipline is all about. And then later on in the workplace.

I can honestly say there is not a single time that I have enjoyed being disciplined. But looking back on it, without that discipline, I think I would have grown up to be a horrid person, completely unbearable. See, discipline is never fun at the time but it’s an important part of our lives.

And I think it bears some thinking about so today we are going to spend some time unpacking this whole thing of "discipline". There’s not one of us, I suspect, who can’t think back to the time when we lived with our parents – those of us fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to grow up with our Mum and our Dad, or at least one of them. As we think back to those times what we remember is being disciplined and some of those memories are frankly, not very happy ones. I can remember how unfair discipline felt at the time – how much I hated being disciplined. Aw, man, why do things have to be like that? Why did God have to invent a world where we would have to learn by being disciplined?

Well, today we are continuing on with this series that I have called “Wisdom that Works.” And right in the next passage of the Book of Proverbs, a book of wisdom, written by a wise old King Solomon to his young sons – right in the next bit that we are up to, we get an answer to this question: Why do we need discipline? So let’s have a listen – we are looking at Proverbs chapter 6, beginning at verse 20:

My child, keep your father’s commandment, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them upon your heart always; tie them around your neck. When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, to preserve you from the wife of another, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.

Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes; for a prostitute’s fee is only a loaf of bread, but the wife of another stalks a man’s very life. Can fire be carried in the bosom without burning one’s clothes? Or can one walk on hot coals without scorching the feet? So is he who sleeps with his neighbor’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished. Thieves are not despised who steal only to satisfy their appetite when they are hungry. Yet if they are caught, they will pay sevenfold; they will forfeit all the goods in their house.

But he who commits adultery has no sense; he who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away. For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he shows no restraint when he takes revenge. He will accept no compensation, and refuses a bribe no matter how great.

Now, the example that Solomon uses here to his sons is that of adultery. He kicks off by talking about the huge investment that he and the mother of these young men have made in them, through their commandments and their teaching and their wisdom and their reproof. And their council is to hang on to that – to bind it round their hearts, to tie it round their neck – why? Because the things that you have learned when you are young through discipline will protect you – they will watch over you, they will council you.

When we head off and we want to do something stupid like adultery – but it could be anything – it could be dishonesty or it could be dissension or back biting – it could be anything – when we want to head off in the wrong direction, the wisdom given to us by our parents will be like a lamp and a light and show things for what they are. The wisdom of our parents and, for you and me, the wisdom of God, will protect us.

Now wisdom always involves discipline – it always involves us being taught the hard way not to head off in a certain direction because that’s where we are going to get hurt. You and I, we naturally shun discipline, but have a listen to what Solomon says to his lads and what God is saying to you and me, here and now:

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, to preserve you from the wife of another, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.

Did you pick that up? “… the reproof of discipline is a way of life.” – to preserve us from the consequences of wrong doing. And then, of course, Solomon goes on to lay out the horrible things that happen to a young man who commits adultery, notwithstanding the seductive nature of what’s on offer. Discipline is a way of life. Ouch!

You see, we have this idea that if we are succeeding, things should always be getting better, things should always be on the up and up and we should be getting more influence and more success and more this and more that. That’s the picture we have of life! And then all of a sudden, when things take a turn for the worse, we think to ourselves, "Oh, woe is me! Has God forsaken me? Where’s God – what’s He doing? Why is this happening to me – ME of all people – me?" Right? That’s how we want to carry on.

Come with me to the New Testament – a thousand or so years later on, after Solomon wrote the Book of Proverbs to the Letter of Hebrews chapter 12. Have a listen to what God has to say about discipline: Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse 7:

Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later on it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

See, discipline is a way of life, as God’s way of helping us to grow. Jesus said, “Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it to make it bear more fruit.” So the next time God is disciplining you – and this is not about punishment and justice – that happened at the cross when Jesus died for us – discipline is about teaching and learning and pruning so that we will be able to bear more fruit. So the next time God is disciplining you and disciplining me, let’s remember there’s a purpose that goes way beyond our desire for comfort and convenience – that purpose is that God has a plan. And instead of flapping around, wondering what the blazes is going on here, here’s God’s advice:

Discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time. So, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight the paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

In other words, don’t fight it! Go with what God is doing – don’t get your nose out of joint, instead, be healed. Now that … that’s wisdom that works!

Our Heart’s Desires To be frank, when I first started reading God’s Word in the Bible, my expectations of that stuffy old Book were pretty low. I thought it was pretty much irrelevant – truly! And that, "Well, if I am going to call myself a Christian, well, I suppose I’ll have to pray and I’ll have to read the Bible, just one of those chores; the price you have to pay to get eternal life!" Seriously, that’s what I thought!

So the last thing I expected was to discover this vibrant, living thing – God speaking His love and His grace and His wisdom into my life, in a way – get this – in a way that actually works. In a way that radically, makes my life better. And the last thing I expected was a God who wanted to bless me and having taught me His ways, to give me the desires of my heart. But that’s exactly what I discovered.

Page after page, verse after verse, as I read it and thought about it and how it might work in my life, I met a God; a Jesus, who wants to make my life better by getting rid of the sin out of my life. The stupid things that we all want to do and they end up robbing us of life – the life He always planned for us. And then, by taking our hearts and filling them with His love and humility and showing us the depth of joy that comes from living our lives for Him – living our lives with love for other people.

My friend, let me tell you – with all that I am, that was the very last thing I expected to find. See, the funny thing is, the reason I held back my life from God for the first thirty six years of my life was that, I was afraid of what I would have to give up. I have always been pretty clever – I’m fortunate I have a quick, sharp mind, I have always been industrious and resourceful and so what I had done in my life was to take those natural talents (other people have different talents, but these were mine) and to use them for … well, to use them for me, of course.

I’d figured out that I could use them to make lots of money. I knew that because I was strong and articulate and driven, I could crash through just about any obstacle that got between me and my objective of getting the sort of career and recognition and wealth that I hungered after.

And deep, deep down I knew that if I invited God into my life to be my Lord and my Saviour, I’d have to get off my throne – I’d have to surrender that to Him! I’m not sure if I could have quite put it in those words back then but that was it. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God – I believed pretty much for most of my life, that He was out there somewhere. Yet I had this uneasy dread that one day, the day of reckoning would come.

It’s just that I duped myself into believing that my brand of evil and frankly – let’s call a spade a spade – that’s what my selfishness was – that my brand of evil was somehow, okay. It was good that I was driven; it was good that I was getting wealthy and recognised in my field and industry – it was good that I was making it. And that con job, my friend, is a con job that the devil is working out in countless people’s lives walking this earth today.

‘It’s not evil what you are doing – it’s good; it’s fine, it’s okay; it’s good that you are making it – sure, go for it. And if someone gets in your road, just roll over the top of them – squash them like a fly.’ I wonder if, perhaps, you don’t relate just a little bit to what I’m saying. This is a universal human condition. It’s the condition that God calls ‘sin’ and the worst thing is … the most dangerous thing is that we end believing that it’s okay; that it’s good.

So have a listen with me now to God’s wisdom on the difference between good and evil. It’s wisdom that shines light on this oh-so-important subject and it’s the sort of light I think, that makes us see evil for what it is. And my prayer is that it makes us desire good over evil. Let’s have a listen – Proverbs chapter 10, beginning at verse 22:

The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it. Doing wrong is like sport to a fool, but wise conduct is a pleasure to a person of understanding. What the wicked dread will come upon them, but the desire of the righteous will be granted. When the tempest passes, the wicked are no more, but the righteous are established forever.

See, God being God, He always starts off by telling us about the blessing He has in store for us. God reveals Himself to us as our Father – Jesus literally called Him “Dad”. Listen to me, every dad wants to bless his children – we do! We love to bless our kids. God’s no different.

Look at verse 22 again – Proverbs chapter 10:

The blessing of the Lord makes rich and he adds no sorrow with it.

Friend, God wants to bless us and when He does, He makes us rich. I’m not talking about money – sometimes He blesses us financially – but money isn’t what makes us happy. There is something deep inside that makes us happier – a deep abiding joy; the sort I could never find when I was working out my particular brand of evil on this earth - the sort that always eluded me. I thought I’d have to give something up, by giving up my evil ways, and sure, in a sense, I did. But the reality was that the prize was that one thing I’d been looking for all my life.

I was living in the first part of this next verse without realising the blessing in the second part.

Doing wrong is like sport to a fool but wise conduct is pleasure to a person of understanding.

As I said earlier, I always had this deep dread down inside that one day this would all come unstuck – that one day something bad would happen – that one day this whole house of cards would come crashing down and that is exactly what God says is going to happen next verse:

What the wicked dread will come upon them, but the desire of the righteous will be granted.

I proved the first bit of that in my life because that’s exactly what happened – it did all come crashing down. But I’m also discovering the profound truth of the second part now that I am living my life for Him, that “...the desire of the righteous will be granted.” God grants the desires of our heart when we are living our lives for Him. Elsewhere: Psalm 37, verse 4, he tells us to:

Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

God wants to give us good things, like any father. And now the desires that I have going on in my heart – for the most part – spring out of a delight that I have in God. My point is, we all have things still to deal with – you do, I do – but more and more my desires flow from God’s desires. You know what? God is a great Dad; a fantastic Dad! I am discovering that He really does wants to bless me with His joy and His peace and His love, right in the middle of the storms of life; right in the middle of the trials and the challenges.

A lot of those haven’t gone away, in fact, the more we step out onto the spiritual battlefield, to weigh in with our lives for God on this planet earth, the more things are going to come against us; the more our enemy, the devil, is going to come against us. But in the middle of all that, God wants to bless us.

Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

That’s the point! And how does it all end – this story of life, when we either live out a life of rebellion against God or a life of honouring God – what is the end game? Proverbs chapter 10, verse 25:

When the tempest passes, the wicked are no more but the righteous are established forever.

Friend, all those years I was conned, I thought to myself, I was going to lose something; I had to give up something to serve God. What a fool I was because what I have discovered is when we do lay our lives down; when we do give everything we are and everything we have to God, WOW! The blessings of the Father, God in heaven, flow in our lives and they make us rich and He adds no sorrow with it. That’s who God is! That’s the wisdom of God – lay down your life and you will find it. Try and hang on to it and you will lose it.

Back to the Beginning Well, over these last four weeks – isn’t it amazing how much wisdom there is in God’s Word, as we have stepped through the Book of Proverbs in this series that I’ve called, “Wisdom that Works”? But we have only stepped through just a few chapters – there is so much more there. And that’s the thing – people sometimes ask me – they say, "Berni, you produce hundreds of episodes of your radio programmes every year and you write books and all that stuff, don’t you ever run out of ideas; don’t you ever run out of fresh content?" And my answer to that is a huge NO! Absolutely not! If I get to do this every day for another hundred years, I’ll still only have scratched the surface of God’s wisdom.

Is that because it’s big and complicated, so that you need a PhD in Theology to understand it? No! God’s Word is actually simple, practical and straight forward. It’s just that, well, I’m such a slow learner – I need to feast on God’s Word every day. And little by little He changes me. And you know, the more time I spend in God’s Word each day, the less of it I read. Now, that sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it? Let me explain.

I used to try and plough through several chapters each day as though somehow, it was a race to see who could get to the end first. But then I stumbled on a passage written by Paul the Apostle. He was old and experienced and much wiser for it, writing to his young ministry protégé Timothy. This is what he said. First Timothy chapter 2, verse 7:

Think over what I say for the Lord will give you understanding in all things.

In other words, stop and think over what is in God’s Word. That’s when it makes a difference. I had a young listener email me recently and she said, ‘I have a problem – I am trying to read my Bible but by lunch time I can’t remember what I read this morning.’ So I said to her, ‘I had that problem too so what I started doing was reading less – not less often, but less in volume. And I started thinking and praying about it more. See, that’s when it came together for me. God’s wisdom is so powerful! But just like good food, we need to chew it over and swallow it for it to do us any good.

So I encourage you to do that – to take His wisdom, chew it over, think about it and then, in prayer, swallow it. Let the Spirit of God write it on your heart – that’s when it becomes part of us. And over a decade and a half of doing that I can honestly say that God’s Word has become part of the fabric; the essence of who I am. That’s what transforms us – that’s how His wisdom starts working in our lives. We take it in little by little and the old maxim is true, we discover that "we are what we eat".

And the place where I think is the best place for us to draw this four week series to a close, is the place where we began four weeks ago. Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

If we read this stuff with a proud heart; if we are full of pride that we know better and we should be able to hang on to our own attitudes and our own sin– my friend, that is so often how we at first come to God’s Word. So often! If that’s how we approach God’s Word it will profit us nothing! The beginning of wisdom; the starting point is the fear of the Lord. The beginning of wisdom isn’t a hard, prideful, puffed up, a "full of myself" heart.

The beginning of wisdom is a humble heart, a soft heart, a teachable heart, a heart that knows that without God it is poor, wretched, feeble and naked. A heart that seeks first to honour God, that’s the place, my friend, where wisdom begins. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” – nothing else!

And unless and until we are ready to humble ourselves at God’s feet; unless we are ready to say, "Lord, I know I have been trying it on my own; I know I have been doing all this stuff; I know it doesn’t work. Lord, I am going to lay my way down. I am going to lay my life down at Your feet. I am going to lay my pride and crucify it and lay it down." Unless we go that way then we are not demonstrating the fear of the Lord. And without the fear of the Lord our heart is hard and the wisdom can’t get in.

That’s sad, because without God’s wisdom; without His wisdom – let me tell you because I have been there, without His wisdom, frankly, it’s a lousy life.

My friend, I am going to bring you back to this verse – Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10 and ask you to consider in your heart where you are at.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

May the Lord soften your heart and open your heart and pour His wisdom and His love and His power and His grace into you.

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God is a God of love and so we don’t often think about Him hating things. But He does - He clearly tells us so in His Word. So - what are the seven things that God hates … things that are an abomination to Him? Do you know - because my hunch is … they’re worth avoiding.

Proud Eyes and a Lying Tongue One of the most common responses we receive from people who listen to this programme around the world is: well, how they’ve been blown away by how practical and down to earth God’s Word actually is. Many people have never realised that God, in this thing that many consider to be a stuffy old book, the Bible, gives us such incredible, practical wisdom that makes our lives better.

It’s pretty sad because He does; God loves us. He reveals Himself to us as our Father. To the shock and the horror of the religious leaders of the day, Jesus actually called Him "Abba", which translated means "Dad". So if God’s our Dad; if He loves us so much, why wouldn’t He want to give us down to earth, practical advice? Well, He does and He has.

That’s why we are continuing this week in the Book of Proverbs; a father’s godly wisdom and advice – King Solomon to his sons; God our Father, "Dad", to us. And today we are going to take a look at seven things that God hates. Now we don’t often think of God hating anything; we think of God as the God of supreme love; a love so great that He would send us His only begotten Son.

And that’s the point: He loves us so much and He hates our sin so much that the way He sets us free from this sin; the sin that ruins our lives and separates us from Him, is through the supreme act of love in all of history – the death of Jesus Christ, His Son on the cross to pay for my transgressions and yours.

So, does God love us – you and me right now, given all that we have done to rebel against Him? Right at this instant, in Jesus Christ, the answer to that question is a huge, resounding YES! Of that we can be absolutely certain. Believe in this Jesus who came to die for you and me, to pay for our sin and to rise again to give us a new life – believe in Him and we are forgiven. Full stop! End of story! But does God hate our sin? Well, in Jesus Christ, the answer to that question is also a huge, resounding YES! So gravely does God view our sin that He deals with it by letting His Son die for us to deal with them.

And through King Solomon, God tells us the sorts of sin that He really hates. We will have a look at just two of the seven, right now. But first have a listen to them all – Proverbs chapter 6, beginning at verse 16:

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.

Now, for much of my life, I thought of all this religion stuff, "God stuff", as being a whole bunch of outdated moralising but the list we just read out there – the seven things that are an abomination to God – well, I’d have thought that none of those, well, we wouldn’t have a problem with any of them. Take the first of them: haughty eyes – fancy God hating haughty eyes! But have you ever been around someone who looks down on you?

I remember before I became a Christian, I visited a woman’s home; an elderly lady, the mother of a friend of mine and I looked around it as if to say, "Well, this isn’t decorated to latest fashion." And years later when I was in a desperate time in my life; when God had brought me down low, she was the person who gave me somewhere to live and encouraged me and strengthened me. And it turns out that she had noticed the way I had looked around her place all those years before; she had noticed my haughty eyes and remembered them. Why? Because haughty eyes are a sign of arrogance and superiority in the heart - looking down on people belittles them in order to exalt ourselves.

I remember a woman, a Christian, who would every now and then would stick her head into our office here at Christianityworks and instead of engaging with our staff – asking them how they were, how things were going – instead of caring for the people, she looked around with haughty eyes. And those haughty eyes have brought her so much grief since that time – much, much grief.

Listen to me – that sense of arrogance and superiority that some people have because of their ability or their position or their status or their wealth or ... or just their own distorted self-view, or all of the above – this is an abomination to God. God hates it! The original Hebrew word for "haughty" means "to lift up, to raise up, to exalt on high" and the only person we are meant to exalt on high is Jesus, God Himself. God doesn’t share His glory with anyone and those people who look down their noses at others, for whatever reason, are doing something that is an abomination to God. It’s something that God really hates.

Now, number two on this "hit parade", on this list of things God hates, is a "lying tongue". Let me ask you, do you like it when someone lies to you? Do you like it when someone deceives you? Of course we don’t! Lying equals deception; deception equals dishonesty and dishonesty makes a person rotten to the core. They purport to be one thing on the outside – sweetness and light – but on the inside they’re something completely different. And so that we don’t notice, they tell us lies.

You know, I don’t even like lies where people are trying to protect me and not hurt my feelings. Back in the days when I was in business, if we bid on a job and then missed out, ninety percent of those prospective clients – well, they wouldn’t even give you an answer as to why. Me, I’d really like to know why even if it’s because the CEO of our opposition was a friend of the senior manager and the client. That’s okay, but tell me the truth so that I know; so that if there is anything that I can do better next time, I can take steps to improve.

The lying tongue takes all sorts of different forms – from not telling the truth; in other words a bald faced lie – to (as a character in one very funny British sitcom, "Yes, Minister" once said,) being economical with the truth. In other words, not telling the whole truth! Even telling the truth in theory, but playing on the situation and the context so that the recipient gets the wrong impression – that is dishonest. We can be so clever in hiding the truth; we can think we are so smart, but listen to me: a lying tongue is an abomination to God; it is something that He hates.

Now, let’s just say – humour me – let’s say that God is in fact God; that He is all powerful; that one day He is going to judge the living and the dead and that that judgement will have a huge eternal impact on us – you and me. Well, maybe the things that God hates are things we should avoid!

God Hates Evil Now, as we continue looking at the sort of wisdom that works, God’s wisdom, I’d have thought that it makes a lot of sense to look at things that God hates. So let’s have another look at the things that God hates – the next two on the list. Earlier, we looked at haughty eyes – the sign of a proud heart - and a lying tongue. Right now we are going to look at the next three on that list, in fact, not two, three, that I read out earlier from Proverbs chapter 6:

... hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans and feet that hurry to run to evil.

Those three seem to go pretty naturally together, don’t they? “Hands that shed innocent blood” – I can’t tell you the number of times I have seen this. Of course, I’ve never seen bloodshed – thank God for that – I’m absolutely sure there are many, many people listening around the world today who in fact have. In my experience what I have seen through, is people who lord it over and punish and riot and bully other people ... other people who don’t deserve it.

It’s exactly the same – bullying is something that takes place all the time amongst kids at school, in the workplace. Someone who is strong, either because of their personality or their position or both, decides to start playing with someone else the way a cat toys with a mouse. It’s so incredibly cruel. And sometimes the perpetrator doesn’t even realise they’re doing it – they are shedding innocent blood because the pain that this behaviour is causing the recipient, is beyond anything words can describe.

Can I tell you: bullying; just toying with someone; treating them this way isn’t some sport; it’s a sin. It’s something that God hates; it’s an abomination to Him. It’s something I used to do before I became a Christian – it’s something I don’t do now because it’s wrong and because I don’t one day want to be a sinner in the hands of an angry God.

And some people ... some people in their hearts devise wicked plans – Proverbs chapter 6, verse 18. There are people who scheme: "How can I get back at this person; how can I make it so that they will never, ever do this again?" Now that old adage, "don’t get angry, get even". Or, "How can I get my hands on something that I don’t deserve or haven’t earned? Perhaps if I do this and twist that and lie this way and deceive that person that way, perhaps then I’ll be able to trick them out of that thing that I want for me."

Jesus said, “Murder begins in the heart.” If you are angry with someone it is the same as murdering them in God’s eyes. If you look at a woman or a man who is not your wife or your husband, with lust and desire, it’s exactly the same as committing adultery. That’s what Jesus said. What we do in our hearts and in our minds – what we think, the anger, the resentment, the vengeance we harbour, the scheming and the planning and devising in our hearts – that matters an awful lot to God. And wicked plans in our hearts are an abomination to God.

Sometimes people make us angry and sometimes we want revenge or at least, justice which ultimately involves some form of recompense. It’s a natural reaction but if we let that brood in our heart, bubble away instead of forgiving the person, the more it takes hold of us and grips us and takes over our lives, well, ultimately it turns into wicked plans.

That’s why the Apostle Paul, centuries later, wrote to his friends at Ephesus in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 26. He said:

Be angry but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

In other words, don’t let it fester because if we do something else happens. There is a natural consequence to that and it’s the third thing on our list that we are looking at right now, of the things that God hates – things that we do that are an abomination to God – it’s “feet that hurry to run to do evil.” What happens in our hearts, overflows into our lives. The thoughts turn into actions, just as sure as God made little green apples and the more we allow some injustice or some evil desire to fester in our hearts, the more prone we are to devising wicked plans and the more likely we are to go and run towards evil, as a moth flies into a flame, to its own destruction.

It’s exactly what James writes in the New Testament, centuries after Solomon wrote this wisdom in the Book of Proverbs. James chapter 1, verse 13:

No one, when they are tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God”; because God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt any one. But we are tempted by our own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. Do not be deceived.

It’s a natural cycle: cause and effect. Think evil, devise evil plans and ultimately our feet are going to run towards doing evil and towards our own inevitable destruction.

This isn’t some reluctant sinner here – let’s understand – this is someone who is running towards sin; embracing sin; launching themselves into an evil act because of the darkness that they have allowed to fester and to brood in their hearts and their minds and ultimately, a darkness that controls them; a darkness that causes them to run to towards evil.

This is such great wisdom from God. There are things that God hates – He hates them to the point where they are an abomination to Him. That’s why our hearts are so important to God. That’s why it is so important that we spend time each and every day with God, alone – to let Him direct our hearts; to warm them, inspire them, lead them, fill them with His Spirit and goodness and love and peace and mercy, because where our hearts are set upon God, friend, there’s no room for evil desires to take hold, to conceive sin.

Whatever it is in our lives – we are all different – whatever it is, this is wisdom from God that works and I implore you to heed this wisdom. If there is something going on in your heart – some unforgiveness, some evil, something you want to do that you know is rebellion against God – I want to encourage you, right now, to lay it down at God’s feet. To go to God and say, "God, You have just spoken to me through Your Word. You don’t tempt me, I am being tempted by my own evil desires and I know that that’s going to lead to destruction. Father, I repent, I turn away from it and I come back to You because You are my God."

I want to encourage you – this is God’s Word; this is God’s wisdom and it works.

Lying and Dissension Today so far on the programme, the third message in this series that I have called, “Wisdom that Works”, we have looked at the seven things that God hates. Let’s just recap - Proverbs chapter 6, beginning at verse 16:

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.

And we have managed to chat about all except the last two in that list: “the lying witness who testifies falsely and the one who sows discord in the family.” Now, law courts are not a place where I have spent a whole bunch of time. Once for a car accident I was in when I was nineteen years old, several times with soldiers who had been charged with this or that, when I was an officer in the Australian Army and once to be sworn in as a Justice of the Peace. I have never, for instance, been at a murder trial or anything like that. But I can imagine the gravity of proceedings in a serious trial.

There is a lot at stake. I mean, justice itself in at stake – that there should be a fair trial with the burden of proof resting on the prosecution. The defendant is on trial – his or her whole future depends on the outcome. I mean, imagine if an innocent person were convicted. And to some extent the victim or the victim’s family or both are on trial, depending on the nature of the alleged crime. In a sense, they feel as though they are on trial. For them, a large part of the healing and recovery process involves seeing justice being done.

So, imagine in a highly charged; high stakes trial for a major crime with so much at stake, imagine that a crucial witness gets up on the stand and lies; that bears false witness and as a result there is a miscarriage of justice - either in one direction or in another. That’s something of an abomination, isn’t it?

We can totally understand why God hates this and yet, people lie all the time, in day to day life. They say and do things in the workplace that will get their work colleagues into trouble. They tell the boss one thing and something else entirely is the truth. "Aw, well, you know, that’s not the same as lying under oath in a murder trial." But what God is saying to us here through Solomon, in the Book of Proverbs ... what He is saying is "Yes, it is! It is exactly the same thing. It is an abomination to Me and it is something that I hate.”

I trust that you find this bit of insight into God’s nature and God’s wisdom as sobering as I do. Last week we saw that Solomon kicks off this wisdom Book of Proverbs with a statement that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, I trust that is becoming so clear why he said that.

You know, we start bearing false witness pretty early on in our lives. Of course, I never once blamed my sister for something I did wrong! Not much! Of course I did! And I’m sure if you have brothers and sisters; you have been on the receiving end of that and the dishing out into that as well.

And that leads us to the last of the seven things in this list of things that are an abomination to God – “... someone who sows discord in a family.” Families are such a precious thing – hard sometimes, isn’t it, to be a part of a family? Whether it’s husband and wife, with the stresses and strains of modern life, tearing away at the marriage and conspiring, seemingly, to pull them apart. Or the pressure of bringing up children, or holding down a job and paying the mortgage and putting food on the table.

And as I remember, it’s not that easy being a child and growing up in a family either. As we move into those teenage years, we want to spread our wings and have our own way and we are yet we are still subject to the authority of our parents, which is why there is so often conflict in families.

Guess the point that I am making here is that there is already so much going on in life that puts pressure on families, the last thing that a family needs is pressure from within. The last thing a family needs is a husband; a father who is so domineering that his wife’s personality is being suffocated or his children are being provoked. The last thing that a family needs is a mother who doesn’t show respect to her husband and who undermines his authority in front of the children. And the last thing a family needs are children who deliberately set about rebelling and dishonouring their parents.

In each of those cases it’s about sowing discord into the family. And it’s like sowing seeds for weeds – those weeds grow and thrive and take over the good fruit that should be growing in the family. I know that relationships in families can be highly charged and that’s why God hates it when we sow discord into our families. Husbands - love your wives. Wives - honour and respect your husbands. Mums and Dads - nurture, love and discipline your children. Children - obey and honour your parents.

It ain’t complicated! And in living our lives that way in a family, that’s how we honour God – that’s how we show that this family who says it believes in Jesus; who professes a faith called Christianity, is different from the rest.

Is a family ever going to be perfect? No! Am I ever going to be a hundred percent perfect father or husband? No! I’m me – I make mistakes, just as you do. But friend, when we set about being peacemakers in the home; when we turn the other cheek; when we discipline our children out of love rather than out of anger and resentment, then what we are doing is sowing good seed that will bear good fruit.

I know it’s a journey, this wisdom thing. I know it frustrating and I know that to sow peace rather than discord, involves sacrifice and pain sometimes. But it’s pretty obvious isn’t it - all seven things in this list that God hates, this list of abominations, is so obvious. Let’s just look at them one more time. If you’ve got a Bible, go there and open it up. Proverbs chapter 6, beginning at verse 16:

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him; haughty eyes (which are the sign of a proud heart), a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely and one who sows discord in a family.

It’s quite a bundle of things! And let’s make no mistake about it – God hates them. They are an abomination to Him and as much as we might want to sweep them under the carpet; as much as we might want to tell a little lie here and maybe upset the family there and look down our noses at this person there, and as much as we think, "Ah, no one notices – none of that matters," friend, these things are things that God hates. They are an abomination to Him and as we saw earlier, the beginning of wisdom; the place where wisdom starts, is with a fear of God.

One day you and I will stand before God and we will be judged. One day we will have to stand before Him and give account for our actions. Now, I believe that I am saved and I am forgiven through Jesus Christ – it is pure grace; it has nothing to do with my works – but once we accept that, God calls us to start living in obedience to Him. Not many things – I mean, there only seven on that list - not many things He says, “Don’t do!”, but there are a few. He loves us, He cares for us and the very few things He says, “Don’t do”, are the things that are going to hurt you and me and the people around us.

It is not rocket science – it is wisdom. It is wisdom that works.

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Well this week we’re kicking on with our second message in a series called Wisdom that Works - looking at some of God’s mighty wisdom through the Book of Proverbs. And we’re going to be chatting this time around, about trust, truth … and temptation.

Trust and Honour God Welcome to the programme again this week and yes, we are continuing in a series that I have called, "Wisdom that Works". Now wisdom is an amazing thing – a seductive concept. I mean, who doesn’t want to have more wisdom; who doesn’t want to be wise? That’s ridiculous isn’t it? Of course we all want wisdom; of course we all want to be wise, but wisdom ... well, it’s a double edged sword.

Sure, it’s about having the knowledge that comes from experience but theory is aren’t enough. Someone who knows that treating other people well and loving them and sacrificing for them; someone who knows that but spends most of their lives not doing it, well, we wouldn’t call them wise would we? In order for someone to be wise, they need to know it and do it. That’s wisdom! And the sort of wisdom that God shares with us is the sort of wisdom that actually works.

So we are spending some time again this week ransacking the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, written by King Solomon – one of the wisest men that ever walked the earth. And my encouragement to you is that we take this wisdom from God and actually apply it to our lives. Why? Because it works! Bottom line is that if we will take God’s wisdom to heart; if we will take God’s Word to heart it will make a real difference in our lives. God will make that difference in our lives through His Spirit and through His Word. And if we don’t take it to heart, He won’t! Can I say that again? If we don’t, He won’t!

So let’s get back into this great Book of wisdom; the Book of Proverbs and see what wisdom Solomon has for us about trusting and honouring God. Proverbs chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. He says:

My child, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments; for length of days and years of life and abundant welfare they will give you. Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favour and good repute in the sight of God and of people.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body.

Honour the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. My child, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves the one whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.

So we’re chugging along through live, stuff happens and we get impatient and we want to head off our own way and here’s Solomon with the wisdom of age telling his sons, "Guys, this is just going to happen. You’ll want to drift away from God – you just will – but don’t do that. Don’t forget what I told you: be loyal, be faithful. I know it won’t always make sense to you but listen to me, write these words on your hearts."

So, stuff is happening and life is not going the way we planned it and it’s not making sense and so we have a wisdom decision point here in that place. We can flap around, we can carry on, we can head off our own way – most people do – or we can say, "Hang on a minute; hang on! Remember what God told me through Solomon?" That was wisdom that works:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding. In all you ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

You see how we have a decision to make? Either we can believe this stuff and take God at His Word or we treat it like some useless theory lesson. Here’s the promise: trust in God – don’t try and figure it all out because you can’t – just acknowledge God in how we live our lives. And listen, here’s the promise; here’s the dividend; here’s the return on investment: if you do that God will straighten it all out. Listen to me, if we just honour God through the difficult times in what we say and what we think and what we do, God will straighten it all out.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don’t rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.

Now, let me ask you: which bit of that don’t we get? Why do we have to make everything so complicated? Are we going to be like those people I was telling you about the other week? Are we going to spend hours and hours and hours studying the Bible for studying’s sake, as though it was some intellectual exercise, without ever really believing that it is meant to be true in our lives or are we going to take God at His Word? Are we going to take God’s wisdom to heart?

See, he goes on to tell us what it means to honour God:

Trust the Lord with all your heart, don’t rely on your own understanding, acknowledge him in all your ways and he will make straight all your paths. Don’t be wise in your own eyes – instead fear God and turn away from evil. It will be a healing to your flesh and refreshment to your body.

How often do people pierce themselves with many pains by turning away from God– by going and doing it their own way; by being proud; by being greedy; by being selfish?

Honour the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce.

In other words, put in first with all that you are and all that you have:

... and then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine. My child, don’t despise God’s discipline and get weary of his reproof? He loves you! He reproves the one whom He loves as the father does the son in whom he delights.

See, this is such simple wisdom ... it is so simple. We want to go off and do it on our own and flap around and carry on and wander away from God and then we wonder why it is all falling apart. This is about trusting God and honouring Him – and the two go hand in hand. I absolutely love how practical God’s truth actually is!

And when we just simply put this into practice in the everyday things that happen in life – in the tense relationships, in just forgiving people, in moving on, in honouring God, in blessing other people when they curse us, in the simple things of life – they might be simple but often they are difficult – if we will just put this into action in our lives; when we choose to stop mucking around, flapping around, complaining, doing the "woe is me" bit and just sit down and decide, "God, come hell or high water, I am going to trust in You. I am just going to do the best I know how, I am going to honour You the best I can with what I have and who I am", do you know what happens? God honour that; God springs into action; He starts sorting out the mess.

My friend, this is not – let me say this in capital letters – N-O-T ... this is NOT a theory lesson. God’s wisdom is imparted into our lives when we take His truth into our hearts and live it out.

Don’t forget His teaching, let your heart keep His commandments because there is a blessing at the end of that – for length of days and years of live and abundant welfare they will give you. Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart so you will find favour and good repute in the sight of God. As you sow so shall you reap.

Do it God’s way and you reap the blessing – do it your own way and you reap the pain. This is not complex; this is not rocket science.

True Wealth Now the next thing that Solomon talks about in the Book of Proverbs is money and wealth. Now a man that I have come to have a lot of respect for is a guy by the name of David Bussau. For a good many years we have attended the same church as David and his wife Carol. He is the founder of a ministry called Opportunity International; an organisation that now creates a new job in the developing world, something like every twenty second, or something outrageous like that.

I heard David one day talking about the "economics of enough". Now he lives in a comfortable home and they constantly have people staying who are visiting for ministry reasons. He drives an ordinary car, dresses in ordinary everyday clothes. And he said he came to the conclusion many years ago that he had more than enough "stuff" – he just didn’t need any more. It was the "economics of enough".

Remember we are talking this week and the next few weeks about God’s wisdom; wisdom that works. And we are doing that by taking a step through some of the powerful wisdom that we discover in the Old Testament Book of Proverbs which was written by King Solomon to capture the wisdom that he was handing down to his sons. And not surprisingly, fairly early on in the piece he talks about money – not so much money but wealth. Have a listen to what he says – Proverbs chapter 3, beginning at verse 13. He says:

Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy.

Now, there was a time in my life, in fact, for much of my life where I would have scoffed at this suggestion. "Aw, give me a break please. How can wisdom possibly be better than silver or gold and precious jewels? How can wisdom be better than anything that my little heart desires? No, I’ll just have the cash thanks – show me the money."

And for all that to make sense there are two things we need to know about Solomon. Not only was he blessed with great wisdom – he was one of the wisest men that ever lived – but he was also one of the richest men in all of history. And it all comes to Solomon when he prays to God – have a listen – as a young man. It comes from First Kings chapter 3, verse 5 right through to verse 13, so grab your Bible. First Kings chapter 3, beginning at verse 5:

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted.

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked for, both riches and honour all the days of your life; no other king shall compare with you.

Right from the beginning, as a young man, Solomon had preferred wisdom over riches so he asked God for wisdom. What a brilliant thing to ask for! I wonder what you and I would have asked for if God had said to us, “Ask what I should give you?” So, all of his adult life, Solomon had both great wisdom and great riches. And having lived his life with both, out of his experience he was able to say to his sons: wisdom is so much better than anything else that you can imagine. Why? Why did he say that? Because the dividend; the return that this wisdom gave him was huge.

Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy.

You know, that’s a dividend statement that Solomon makes after a life of wisdom. As much as we try and kid ourselves, we know – we know through experience, we know deep in our hearts – that riches can never deliver that sort of dividend. We chase after money alone and it’s a lonely, unhappy life. Believe you me, I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt and I can tell you ABSOLUTELY that wealth simply doesn’t deliver that sort of dividend – a dividend of riches and peace and pleasantness and joy and happiness.

Wisdom ... wisdom means that we learn God’s truth and we put it into action in our lives. Even though sometimes; in fact, most times it involves sacrifice up front, like any other investment. We live out God’s truth in our lives – that’s what wisdom is – and we reap the rewards – peace, life, joy. Why? Because we know how to avoid the dumb things we used to do that caused us so much pain; because we know how to make good choices that bear good fruit.

True wealth is living a life of abundance in Christ. True wealth is having the wisdom to build strong relationships and enjoy serving others and getting over our pride and our stupid tantrums. Wisdom is about ultimately enjoying life – whatever life throws our way.

Friend, this is such great advice! But it only becomes true wisdom in our lives when we put it into action and the thing to put into action here is to seek after wisdom above and before riches, because nothing ... NOTHING compares to the dividends paid by wisdom; God’s wisdom. The sort of wisdom that works!

Impurity and Infidelity I remember back in college one of our lecturers in a subject about, I guess, the foundational issues of Christian living – said to each one of us who were training for some form of ministry or another - he said: there are three things that can bring you unstuck: girls, gold and glory (or in the case of women, guys, gold and glory.) In other words, people whom God calls to serve Him, often stumble in infidelity or because they start loving wealth too much. We spoke about that last week. Or because they seek the glory and they fall to pride. It’s not a bad executive summary, is it? Girls or guys, as the case may be, gold and glory.

Well as we roll on to the next piece of wisdom from Solomon in the Book of Proverbs, we are going to chat a bit about the girls, guys thing, or impurity and infidelity, because it’s huge. Statistically, almost half of all marriages fall apart – and in fact, of those that remain, only fraction are what you would call happy marriages – the sorts of marriages where people really thrive.

The facts about marital infidelity – sexual unfaithfulness to a spouse are astounding. Polls in the U.S. show that, although ninety percent of married people disapprove of extramarital affairs, fifteen percent of wives and twenty five percent of husbands have experienced extramarital sex. Now those numbers increase a further twenty percent when emotional affairs and sexual relationships without intercourse are included - so thirty five percent of women and forty five percent of men have been unfaithful to their spouse. That’s frightening, isn’t it?

Marriage is supposed to be the most wonderful relationship - fulfilling, lifelong soul mates and yet, almost half of all men and over a third of all women have some sort of extramarital affair. That blows me away! But it’s nothing new! Almost three thousand years ago Solomon, when instructing his young sons with the wisdom of his years, spends a whole chapter, in fact, a couple of chapters – the 5th chapter and another chapter in the Book of Proverbs, on this very subject.

It’s one of the first subjects he deals with comprehensively – maybe the stats were pretty much the same back then as they are today. Let’s have a listen to what he had to say to his sons about infidelity. Proverbs chapter 5, beginning at verse 1:

My child, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, so that you may hold on to prudence, and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her steps follow the path to Sheol. She does not keep straight to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.

In other words, the grass may well appear greener on the other side, guys, but this seduction that promises so much is going to kill you. Even though the thought of an affair may be oh so seductive, oh so tempting, it leads only to bitterness, pain and destruction.

I remember a man I used to work with back in my days in the I.T. industry and he had two affairs outside his marriage – two that I know of anyway. I knew the husband and the wife quite well. He was lured into this trap; he followed his desires and his emotions and it almost destroyed both of them. By God’s grace his wife was a godly woman and strong and with great faith and their marriage weathered the storm. But the pain and of course, as much as all may be forgiven, the memory never, ever, ever, goes away. And the crazy thing was, they had everything.

And here’s the advice that Solomon has for his sons – here’s the wisdom that really works – Proverbs 5, beginning at verse 7:

And now, my child, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. Keep your ways far from her, and do not go near the door of her house; or you will give your honour to others, and your years to the merciless, and strangers will take their fill of your wealth, and your labours will go to the house of another; and at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, and you say, “Oh, how I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. Now I am at the point of utter ruin in the public assembly.

The advice - the wisdom that works? Keep away from relationships that can lead to infidelity. “My child, listen to me, keep away from her door.” Don’t go there! Don’t put yourself in a position of temptation. Don’t spend time alone with members of the opposite sex. Don’t form close bonds and relationships that could head in the wrong direction. Keep yourself to yourself – just don’t go there or it will ruin you and you will spend the rest of your life regretting it.

And the alternative? Well, it’s pretty obvious – Proverbs chapter 5, verse 15:

Drink water from your own cistern; flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for sharing with strangers. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by another woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For human ways are under the eyes of the Lord, and he examines all their paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them, and they are caught in the toils of their sin. They die for lack of discipline, and because of their great folly they are lost.

My friend, if you have a wife, enjoy her – if you are a woman with a husband, enjoy him. Do not be enticed into an extramarital affair, like almost half of all men and over a third of all women who are married are. Enjoy each other – God has given the wife to the husband and the husband to the wife so that they may truly enjoy each other, emotionally and physically and spiritually and be the best of friends and live their lives together for one another. Find fulfilment husbands, in arms of your wives; wives find fulfilment in the arms of your husbands.

Sure, they are not perfect! Let’s get a revelation here today – they never will be, ever – but they are the lifelong soul mate that God has given you and that ... that is the right place, the only place in God’s eyes, to discover and to experience and to enjoy and to revel in the beauty of intimacy.

Remember, forty five percent of men and thirty five percent of women – now you may think this is an odd subject for us to be discussing today but judging from the statistics, Solomon was right to make this one a high priority.

My prayer is that you will never; never know the pain and the bitter regret of adultery. Please listen to God’s Word today; please heed His warning! This is God’s wisdom - it is wisdom that works.

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Most of us intuitively know that wisdom’s a good thing. Sometimes we’re full of it - wisdom that is … and sometimes, we’re full of ourselves and that’s when we come unstuck. So - where do we find the sort of wisdom that really makes a difference?

Wisdom Starts Here Hey, it’s fantastic to be with you again this week. How quickly the weeks roll on by! And today I am really excited because we are kicking off a brand new series of messages called “Wisdom that Works”. Now, I don’t know about you but I have done some pretty silly things in my life. We all make mistakes and the thing is that the mistakes have consequences.

Sometimes those consequences are mildly annoying but other times, they are devastating. Sometimes we don’t even notice some of the silly things that we’re doing – they seem so trivial and yet we do them over and over and over and over and over again and the consequences compound and before we know it, we have a situation on our hands.

Wisdom is about avoiding mistakes so that we can avoid the consequences. Wisdom is about taking the goodness and the experiences and the knowledge that others have developed and decide to apply in our lives so that we have a better life. Fewer mistakes, fewer consequences! And it’s not just about avoiding mistakes, it’s about knowing how to handle difficult situations. It’s about knowing how to be proactive in making good things happen, rather than wallowing around in the consequences of repeated stupidities.

In fact, there is a lot to be said for wisdom – the sort of wisdom that actually works. Okay, so exactly what is wisdom? I mean, intuitively, we know that wisdom is probably a good thing and most of us wouldn’t mind having a bit more of it but have you ever stopped to think exactly what is it? Well, here’s a dictionary definition: Wisdom is the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgement and the soundness of action or decision by applying this experience and knowledge and good judgement.

That’s not bad! You boil that down and there are two parts to that. Firstly, knowing what to do and then doing it. Knowing what to do and then not doing it is pretty dumb and that’s why I for one have done some dumb things in my life. Yes, sure, sometimes I didn’t know what the right thing was to do, so I ran into a brick wall and it hurt and I learned that that particular thing doesn’t work. Or perhaps, even better, I listened to someone else who had run into that brick wall before me and I learned from their experience.

But sometimes, you know, we know the right thing, either because we just know – I mean, I know that it’s wrong to rob a bank and I know that if I do, there are going to be some undesirable consequences – or because I have been down that road before or because I have listened to someone who has. So, sometimes we know the right thing to do – we have access to the knowledge but then we turn around and we don’t do it.

I know that drink driving is dangerous. I know that. Seen the road statistics lately? Seen the random breath testing stations on the road? Yea, so I have the knowledge, but if I get into that car, having had too much to drink and run over a pedestrian – you know, some people do that – then do I have wisdom? No, just the knowledge! For it to be wisdom you have to have the knowledge and then put it into action.

Wisdom isn’t just having the experience and the knowledge and the good judgement, wisdom is using it; acting on it; doing it; living it. Wisdom is only wisdom when it involves the knowledge and the doing. Does that make sense?

Quite a few thousand years ago, King Solomon, King of Israel, David’s son, was pretty much recognised as one of the wisest men on the planet. He had a few sons and so he decided to jot down some of that wisdom. We have access to that in the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament and over these coming four weeks we are going to spend some time ransacking this Book for wisdom - getting as much of the proverbial Wisdom of Solomon as we can, so that we can put that to work in our lives. And that’s the key: putting it to work.

I can help by unlocking the treasure chest of wisdom, I can help even by encouraging you to put it to work but only you can make it happen in your life – only I can make it happen in my life. Remember this series is called “Wisdom that Works.” Okay, where do we find that wisdom? Where do we start? Well, let’s start at the beginning of the Book of Proverbs, chapter 1 – the preamble; the introduction; the reason for wisdom. That’s what it’s all about. Proverbs chapter 1, beginning at verse 1:

The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: For learning about wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young. Let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. Hear, my child, your father’s instruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching; for they are a fair garland for your head, and pendants for your neck.

Well, isn’t that what we have just been talking about? It’s about getting good wisdom into us and for it to have a good outcome. God’s wisdom – the sort of wisdom that actually works. There is plenty of wisdom out there that purports to be real but it’s fake; it’s a ‘me’ centred wisdom which will eventually come unstuck. Not a God-centred wisdom at all and that, my friends, is the starting point of wisdom – shifting our thoughts and our hearts away from the seductive slight-of-hand that passes for worldly wisdom and coming back to the source of real wisdom – the sort of wisdom that actually works.

Have a listen again to what Solomon writes about where to find wisdom that works – Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

And the meaning of that word ‘fear’ in that context isn’t just fear of the consequences of God’s judgement if we are rebel against Him – and there is that and it will happen – but awe and respect and reverence. When I was a young lad, if I played up, I knew I would get a belting from my Dad – but much better to live in respect of my Dad, knowing of course, that a belting was in the offing if I mucked up – but living instead in a good respect for my father and avoiding the belting all together.

See, there are two sides to that "fear" thing and it’s when we finally decide to stick our pride in our pockets, to realise that all along, "I’ve been trying to do it my way and hey, you know what, it isn’t working so brilliantly well. It isn’t bringing me the joy and contentment and the satisfaction that I’ve been craving for." Admitting that and saying, "You know something, God? I have been wandering out there, trying to do it my way and it’s not working. I can reject and despise Your wisdom and instruction and live with the consequences, God, or I can yield my life to You and do it Your way."

And throughout the Book of Proverbs there is a contrast between the wise and the foolish, between good outcomes and bad outcomes. And that’s what we are going to be exploring over these coming weeks on the programme. But the starting point is here: Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

And the choice is yours for your life and mine for my life. Question is: which way will we choose?

Good Friends, Bad Friends Do you remember when you were growing up? You know when you were in those teenage years, your parents would tell you this or tell you that and we would just roll our eyes into the back of our heads, wouldn’t we? "Don’t hang out with the wrong crowd; be careful of the company you keep". "Yeh, yeh, yeh, right, what would they know – the oldies?"

But it’s really interesting in this Old Testament Book of Proverbs – thirty one chapters, packed, verse after verse with lots of wisdom. One of the very first things that Solomon talks to his sons about, in fact, the very first thing after talking to them about where to find wisdom - which is what we chatted about earlier - the very next thing is the crowd they hang around with.

You know, maturity is an interesting thing. As we grow, we grow in our ability to discern what "good advice" is. Sometimes we reject people’s advice because it is inappropriate or self-interested but what we are about to hear is some very good advice – some stunning advice, in fact and if we put this into action then it becomes wisdom.

Now, any parent knows that if our kids keep bad company that doesn’t auger well for their future because that bad company is a bad influence and it can be terribly, terribly destructive on our kids when they are growing up. And this is what Solomon has to say to these young me – his sons – about keeping bad company. Proverbs chapter 1, beginning at verse 10. He said:

My child, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood; let us wantonly ambush the innocent; like Sheol let us swallow them alive and whole, like those who go down to the Pit. We shall find all kinds of costly things; we shall fill our houses with booty. Throw in your lot amongst us; we will all have enough in the one purse”, my child, do not walk in their way, keep your foot from their paths; for their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed blood. For in vain is the net baited while the bird is looking on; yet they lie in wait—to kill themselves! and set an ambush—for their own lives! Such is the end of all who are greedy for gain; it takes away the life of its possessors.

Okay, hopefully most of us aren’t murderers – hopefully most of us aren’t going to go and lie in wait and mug someone and rob them but we kind of do that sometimes in life, through our behaviour and our attitudes and dishonesty and aggressively looking after our own interests above other peoples’ interests. And it turns out that keeping bad company is different from being around bad people. You go to work, you go to church, you are a member of a club, you interact with people and some of them are great and some of them are fantastic – they’re wonderful to be with – and some of them are downright awful. That’s life!

When we deal with people sometimes, we have to deal with those people and everything in between. But it’s not whether we are around them or not, so much, it’s a question of influence. Let’s go back to what Solomon said – Proverbs chapter 1, verse 10:

My child, if sinners entice you, do not consent … My child, do not walk in their way; keep you foot from their paths; for their feet run to evil and they hurry to shed blood.

Look what Solomon says – he says, "Look don’t be tempted by bad company or listen to them when they say, ‘Come on, let’s gang up on someone and kill them, just for the fun of it." It’s a question of whether we take their advice and go with them; whether we keep their company; whether we let them influence what we think, what we feel and ultimately, what we do.

Here’s the chain of events: they speak, we hear. Now, when we hear, we have a decision to make – we either accept or reject. And if we accept, it changes our behaviour and if it changes our behaviour, that has consequences – that’s the important bit. When we hear, do we accept or reject? Do we rely on them or not? Do we trust them or don’t we? Do we put our faith in them, to the extent that we let them change what we do?

It’s not that we are around bad people; it’s not even that we hear them speak – that’s not the problem. It’s when we are tempted by them and when we allow them to change what we do. It’s a question of influence. Bad company can discourage us; it can lead us to complaining; it can be disruptive; it can make us suspicious; it can make us envious; it can make us dishonest; it can make us violent. Bad company is an entry point of bad influence from other people and I have enough issues in my life to deal with without taking on bad stuff from other people.

Now, at the end of the day, all of us want to live a good life. Sure, we want to be comfortable, we want to be happy but part of that is knowing that we are living a good life - that there’s a goodness that we are reaping the fruit from and God comes to us here – this is stuff from Solomon, it’s from the Bible. And we might go, ‘Aw, come on, it’s three thousand years ago. Aw, it’s from the Bible – it’s not for me.’ Come on, this is good advice! God is giving us Fatherly advice, born out of His love because whilst bad company may entice us into action that appears to give us a quick win, ultimately that bad influence ... ultimately that bad influence leads us to destruction.

Listen again to the consequences – Proverbs chapter 1, verse 17:

For in vain is the net baited while the bird is looking on; yet they lie in wait, ultimately to kill themselves – they set an ambush ultimately, for their own lives. Such is the end of all those who are greedy for gain – it takes away the life that it possesses.

See, they think they are ambushing the other guy through their bad deeds but in fact, they are ambushing themselves. They want to kill the other guy but their evil desires are going to destroy them. Come on, who do you hang around with? Who are the people whom you allow to influence you and are any of those ruining your life with a bad influence? Because if they are, it’s like drinking in poison from them – it’s time to do something about it.

Bad company drags us down – bad company has consequences and we are going to sit here and go, "Well, that’s a nice story from Solomon, Berni," and we can ignore it but there will be consequences. Or we can take it on board; we can say, "You know what, this advice from God through the Book of Proverbs; from Solomon – this is great advice!" I never really thought of it that way. Do you know something: there are some changes I need to make about the people I hang around with?

The Value of Wisdom Now, the very next thing that Solomon talks about in the Book of Proverbs, after the beginning of wisdom and the impact of bad company, is the value of wisdom. Now, why do people make investments? Why do they take their hard earned money and buy shares in a company? Well, it’s not for the fun of it so much – people make investments in order to reap a return. On the stock market, the price of a particular share goes up and it goes down, according to the market’s perception of the return that they can make on their investment in that particular company.

If the company has good prospects, the value goes up – if there are some bad returns, the value falls down. It’s the way of the world! But it’s not God’s way – God has an investment that we can make in the good times that actually pays dividends in the tough times. In fact, that’s the whole point of this particular investment.

Intuitively we all know that wisdom is a good thing – we would all like so more of it and so you have to ask yourself, why is it that we are not all as wise as we can be? Why is it that we are not full to overflowing with the Wisdom of Solomon? Well, the answer is simple – because like any investment, wisdom requires a sacrifice up front. If I invest some of my hard earned cash in this company or that company on the stock market then the point is I have to use the money that I would have spent otherwise, for that investment. I have to make a sacrifice up front.

It’s locked away – the money – and hopefully it’s locked away because it will earn me a good return. That’s the concept of investing – sacrificing now so that we can benefit later on. It’s the same with wisdom but the mistake that we can often make with wisdom is that we imagine that it’s just about having the knowledge and the experience and the principles. I mean, all those are necessary but they don’t become wisdom until we put them into action – until we live them out. That’s when we demonstrate that we have wisdom – by living it.

So, back to this question: why is it that we are not all living virtuous lives, reaping the harvest of our wisdom? Because we haven’t bought into it! And when do we buy into a company? We do it when we think there is going to be a good return. The problem for most people is that they don’t perceive a return on investment – the upfront sacrifice – when it comes to this precious commodity that they call "wisdom".

So right now we are going to look at what accountants and economists call "ROI’s" – return on investment. So let’s dive into the Book of Proverbs; Solomon’s advice to his young sons and let’s see what it say about the ROI on our investment in wisdom. Proverbs chapter 1, beginning at verse 20:

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you. Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at you in your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you, when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.

Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices.

For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me, (says wisdom,) will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.

I love the old Hebrew writings and the way they use picture language. And here we have this picture of wisdom as a person, calling out to us from the street corner in the middle of life, stretching out her hand – but everyone walks by and ignores her – they are too busy with life.

Doesn’t this just hit the nail right on the head? Earlier we looked at Solomon’s advice to his sons about the company they keep – keep bad company and they will lead you astray and it will cost you a lot of pain. That’s it in a nutshell! So times were good – his sons had a choice: listen to Dad; take his advice; turn away from the bad company or continue to hunt with that pack.

Wisdom is something that so often comes to us when the times are good. When the economy is buoyant and returns are strong – she cries out to us; she stretches out her hand – invest in me! So we have a choice – we either go and invest; we act on the advice of God’s wisdom; we live out that wisdom in the good times when it appears that we don’t actually need the wisdom; when it appears that we don’t need to make a sacrifice - we either do it then or we don’t. And the whole point of wisdom is that we need to act on it in the good times in order to reap the reward in the bad times.

Let me say that again: wisdom is the one investment we can make that delivers a dividend in the tough times. All the other investments come crashing down in the tough times but it’s the dividend of wisdom that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Listen to what Solomon said again – Proverbs chapter 1, verse 32:

For waywardness kills the simple and the complacency of fools destroys them but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease without dread of disaster.

So wisdom either helps us to avoid the bad times - as in the case of the advice about keeping bad company - or when the bad times hit, which of course, they inevitably do in life. We don’t want bad times to hit but they always do. Eventually the cycle turns and the bad times hit. And see, wisdom helps us in the bad times. It’s like putting away some savings today so that we have some spare cash on a rainy day – bad choices in the good times inevitably lead to bad outcomes and bad consequences. Wise choices however, the sacrifices that we make in living out God’s wisdom, pays dividends.

It may not lead to perfect outcomes that we always planned but wisdom pays dividends. In fact, it pays huge dividends in tough times. This is wisdom that works!

Wisdom cries out to us – God cries out to us, "Listen to Me – sacrifice the things I ask you to sacrifice and I will be with you there in the tough times; in the bad times because God’s wisdom is wisdom that works."

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The world is full of good and of evil. You and I, we’re called to live a life of good. A life that honours God. But what we need, are the life skills to allow us to do that. Fortunately God’s already thought of that – and His Word is packed full of wisdom, full of the very life skills that we need, to live a life that glorifies Him.

Treat People as Individuals One of the things that’s incredibly precious to each one of us is our own name. It’s an odd thing when you think about it. I mean, a name is just a label; it’s a unique identifier, but if that’s all that there was to it, we could just have a number. Why don’t we change your name to 7449018? ‘G’day, 7449018! How are you?’ It just doesn’t have the same ring about it, does it?

And there’s a reason for that. Our name speaks something of our uniqueness into this world, and so we become incredibly attached to our names. I love the fact that my name is Berni; B e r n I with no e on the end, because that’s how my parents spelt it, and that’s how it is. I often find myself telling people when they’re writing down my name, ‘There’s no e on the end.’ Why? I mean, does it really matter? Well, actually yes, it does matter to me, just as your name matters to you

Think about this: God knows you by name. Isaiah 43:1:

But now, thus says the LORD; He who created you, o Jacob, He who formed you, o Israel: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, and you are Mine.’

When God thinks of you, He thinks of you by name. When He looks at you, He sees you and He knows your name. When you’re in trouble (in distress) and you cry out to Him, He knows your name. Jesus put it beautifully in John 10:2-3:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice; he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Imagine, then, how it feels for someone else when you forget their name: When you’ve met them once, and then you see them again, and you just don’t remember their name. That person’s name is one of the single-most precious things they have, just as your name is one of the single-most precious things that you have, and when we remember other people’s names, it so honours them. It speaks to them of the respect that we have for them.

Honestly, I sometimes struggle to remember people’s names. I travel round the world and meet many, many people, so for me, it’s really quite an occupational challenge, but as best I can, I try to remember their names. I enlist help from our local staff to coach me, and to remind me of people’s names.

God remembers us by name. That’s incredible! God Himself knows your name. How does that make you feel? So imagine the power of remembering and using the names of the people you meet. What a life skill! And imagine building on that and treating each person, interacting with each person, building a relationship with each person, based on who they really are.

It’s tempting, you know, to treat everyone the same, as though somehow we are all the same. Let’s face it: By and large, our default position is that everyone sees things the way we do; everyone experiences things the way we do. Of course in theory, we know that’s not true, but in practice, that’s pretty much how we behave.

And when people don’t see things the way we want them to, when they don’t react to things the way we expect them to ... well, we respond with surprise, with annoyance and oftentimes, in anger. Just as everybody has their own unique name, so everyone has their own specific God-given gifts. They tend to see things (just as, in fact, we do) through the lens of those gifts, and through the lens of their experience: The good things they’ve been through, and the bad things as well.

Come on. What makes us imagine for one moment that people all see things the way we do? And why is it that we’re so surprised when they don’t? God’s Word is pretty clear on this. Romans 4:4-6:

For as in one body we have many members, and not all members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us.

Take a look at any roomful of people: Thirty, forty, a hundred, a thousand, and what you’ll notice is that other than the odd pair of identical twins, everybody looks different; different hair-colours, styles, eye-colour, complexion, the way they dress, the way they talk, and even the identical twins when you get to know them are often quite different.

So imagine ... I mean just imagine ... if we started working, living, interacting with people, building relationships with people, on the basis that everyone’s actually different, rather than everyone being the same; on the basis of getting to know them – their likes and their dislikes; their strengths and their weaknesses, even in just the little things. Some people don’t like to be rushed, so don’t rush them. Some people like to be punctual, so when you’re catching up with them, be on-time.

Imagine if you took the time to figure out what makes people tick: Your wife, your husband, your children, your brothers, your sisters, your work-colleagues. Imagine how differently you’d be able to interact with them if you knew just these two things about them: The one thing that annoys them most, and the one thing that they find the most pleasing. Do you think that would improve your relationships? Do you think it’d bring more peace and joy to your life? It’s not rocket science. God made everyone to be different, and it’s time to start treating them that way.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly God is a God who rewards the good in us. It’s a really simple fact. Like any good father, He wants to see His children live a good life. I know that’s what I want for my children. Yeah, I want to see them succeed in their chosen profession, but more than that, I want them to be good people: People with good morals; honest; decent; hardworking; loving; caring for others. And like any father, when they were growing up, I tried to teach them those things. It didn’t always go that well.

Kids being kids, they didn’t always get things right and as you well know, as teenagers, they often pushed the boundaries as teenagers do. And as an imperfect father, I didn’t always get things right either, just quietly. But what was in my heart for them was to bring them up to be good people, and the best way as a parent to do that was to reward the good behaviour in them; to teach them that good behaviour, unselfish behaviour, honest and decent behaviour, has its rewards. I think that approach is pretty common to all fathers, even if (as I’ve said) we don’t always get it right, and in fact, that’s exactly the approach God takes with us. Galatians 6:9:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time if we don’t give up.

So what God’s saying to us here is, yes, sometimes the going does get tough, but hang in there. Keep on doing good because one day, at harvest-time, you’re going to reap the reward that He has ready and waiting for you. God blesses and rewards the good in us. That’s why Jesus said (John 12:26):

Whoever serves Me, the Father will honour.

In a world in which people more and more are preferring fifty shades of grey to simple black-and-white, you know, I think that’s not such a bad model. It’s so easy to take the good in people for granted when all along, the good in other people is really a blessing from God that could and should be rewarded in a way that encourages more good in this world.

Just think for a moment how powerful-an agent of change the rewarding of good would be in your life, through your life. Think of the missional impact that the rewarding of good could have through you, as you implement God’s approach – God’s model of reward, and the rewards don’t have to be all that big: A simple, "Thank you. I so appreciate what you did," will often suffice. So who in your life is doing good? Who could you reward today to encourage them to do more good? Because that’s the model that God has ordained.

Of course, not everyone is good all the time. Sometimes people are downright evil. The question is, so then what? By and large, the simplest thing to do when someone is doing something wrong, something that we know is bad, something that quite clearly is going to have terrible consequences, is ... well, just to ignore it.

My wife and I were recently at a café having a quiet cup of coffee or at least, we were trying to. At the next table was a young mother on her mobile phone, chatting away. Opposite her was her one-year-old with a cup in his hand, banging it hard and loud on the table. Now back in my day, I would have taken that cup off him, and taught him that that was the wrong thing to do, even though it probably would have resulted in a tantrum. They have to learn, right? And the sooner the better because one day, that one-year-old is going to be a teenager and then, watch out! But not this mum. No, she simply ignored the child’s bad behaviour and apparently oblivious to it, just kept on talking on her mobile phone. How that cup didn’t smash in his hand I’ll never know.

This ignoring of bad behaviour thing starts quite early-on, and because dealing with bad behaviour takes energy – because it’ll probably cause conflict along the way, we’ve all become quite adept at turning the blind eye; at ignoring it, hoping it’ll go away, but that’s generally not what happens. When we ignore bad behaviour, whether it’s in a one-year-old at the café or in a work-colleague who’s bullying someone, it almost always gets worse, so what’s the answer? What do you do? How do you deal with that bad behaviour? Galatians 6:1:

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.

In other words, God’s calling us to deal with it. God’s calling us, albeit in a spirit of gentleness, to confront the bad behaviour with the aim not of exacting revenge, but of restoring the person who’s doing bad; with the aim of bringing them back to good behaviour.

Now that bit about doing it in the spirit of gentleness is really important. If that young mother had put the phone down and screamed at the child in frustration ... well, that probably wouldn’t have been the right approach, any more than you or I responding angrily (with revenge in our hearts) to someone who’s doing us wrong.

Take care that you yourself are not tempted into that, but when we do it in love, when we do it with gentleness, when we point out the mistake quietly and offer a better alternative to the person who’s behaving badly, something surprising happens. God shows up. God honours that, and more often than we might expect, that person who’s been behaving badly is restored to good.

But that doesn’t always work, so then what? People behaving badly in this world is simply a fact of life. We can try and do the right thing; we can try and talk about it to them gently, quietly, privately, to restore them to good behaviour, but let’s be honest: It doesn’t always work. It should; we wish it did, but it doesn’t always work, so then, what do you ordinarily do in that situation?

Let’s say you tried once or twice to help someone deal with their bad behaviour, but they haven’t responded well. What happens next? Well, most of us, we just give up. ‘Well, you know, I tried, but he’s a hopeless case. He’s never going to change.’ Sound familiar? Sure it does. We just write them off and move on, leaving the bad behaviour to fester and harm not just them, but everybody around them. I’m not so sure that’s the best approach. What do you think? Have a listen to the apostle Paul’s advice to his young ministry protégé, Timothy. 2 Timothy 4:1B-2:

I solemnly urge you, proclaim the message. Be persistent, whether the time is favourable or unfavourable. Convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching.

In a nutshell, the older, more experienced Paul is saying to young Tim here, ‘Don’t give up. Keep telling people about Jesus – the good news, the fantastic news about Jesus, whether the conditions are favourable or unfavourable.’ Does that mean shoving religion down someone’s throat? I don’t think so, but what it does mean is not giving up on them.

I have a very good friend who knows that some of the things that he’s doing are wrong. The lifestyle that he’s chosen for himself is just wrong, plain and simple. Now I care deeply for him, and so on the odd occasion, I’ve shared with him the good news of Jesus and by the way, deep in his heart, I know he believes, but his lifestyle is pulling him away from the Lord. He can’t have his cake and eat it too, as the saying goes.

As much as I care for him though, the one thing that I will not do – the one thing that I will never do – is endorse his bad choices; tell him that it’s all ok, because whether the time is favourable or not, my heart is to convince and rebuke and encourage him with as much patience as I can muster, and of course to pray for him, because there’s such incredible power in prayer. James 5:16b:

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

People are going to behave badly, but don’t give up on them. Perhaps God’s put you in their lives for a time such as this to be the one through whom His love, His grace, His mercy, flows into their lives. Don’t give up.

Have an Open Heart Can I ask you today just to picture the face of the person who’s causing you the most grief, the most pain, the most problems in your life right at the moment? Ok. Do you have their image in front of your eyes? So now let me ask you: Yesterday, how did you respond to that person, in your heart, in your mind? What thoughts have been running through your head about them? What scenarios? What responses? What reactions have been playing themselves out over and over again in your head, and in your heart? How do you feel about that person right now?

I’m guessing that there are a few answers there that you’re probably not all that comfortable with. Perhaps those questions have taken you to a place where you’d rather not be because when people sin against us, we harden our hearts towards them and close off our lives, so (and here’s my final question for you today) how did Jesus react to exactly those same people? Matthew 9:9-10:

As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ Then he got up and followed Him. And as He sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came, and with sitting with Him and His disciples.

Tax collectors were the scum of the earth back in those days. They were fellow-Jews who’d colluded with Roman authorities to exhort exorbitant tolls from people who passed by their tax collection booth on the road. So not only did they collude with the enemy who occupied and oppressed their land, they lined their own pockets at the very same time. No wonder they were hated and despised!

But Jesus, instead of shunning them, invited one of them to become one of His disciples and then ... Then He went and had dinner with a bunch of these sinners, with the very same people who were hated and shunned by good, God-fearing Jews. Read on, and you discover He copped quite a bit of criticism for that, but His take on it was that it was exactly the people like them that He’d come to this earth to save, and let me be blunt here: If you believe in Jesus, if you claim to follow Him, it’s exactly for people like these that God has put you on this earth: To share the love of Christ with them so that perhaps, some of them will be saved.

So back to that one person I had you picturing a moment ago: Your most difficult person, your tax collector if you will. It’s that person to whom Jesus has sent you. Be open. Be engaging. Show them the love that Christ has shown you, and the easiest way to get started in doing that is to look for the good in them. When someone’s treating you badly, and you want to write them off because they’re just too much trouble, and they’re more than you can cope with right now, I want to encourage you to do something radical. Are you ready?

Try looking for the good in them because let me tell you, no matter how badly someone’s behaving, deep-down, there’s always some good in them. That’s exactly what Jesus did when He went to dine with the sinners and the tax collectors at Matthew’s house. Matthew 9:11-13:

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with the tax collectors and the sinners?' But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what it means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners.’

Where others saw only sin, Jesus saw something worth redeeming. Jesus knew that if only these sinners, these social rejects, could experience the love of God first-hand, then the good in them would come to the surface. So often, the people who behave badly do so because they’ve never experienced unconditional love in their lives. No one’s ever stepped into their lives looking for the good in them, and helped them to rediscover that good that they thought had been lost for ever.

I’m here with you today because when I was one of those bad people, some of those who call themselves Christians stepped into my life, as Jesus did in the lives of these tax collectors and sinners, and they believed somewhere deep-down inside me, hidden though it may have been to their sight, that there was some good in me worth redeeming. All too often, we approach people like those tax collectors and those sinners with the attitude of, ‘Well, what’s in it for me? How will they treat me? What will I experience? Will they hurt me again? What will other people say about me?’ It’s always with this me, me, me thing. Have you noticed? And yet Jesus had no thought whatsoever about what was in it for Him.

The religious leaders, the religious powerbrokers of the day, the ultra-conservative, legalistic, rule-based Pharisees, they criticised Him. ‘Why does He mix with all those undesirables?’

"Because I came to heal the sick," said Jesus. "Because I came for them; because these sinners are made in the very image of God, and I’m here to show them mercy."

We can go to church; we can sing the songs; we can hear the sermons; we can pat ourselves on the back, but let me tell you, unless and until we look for the good in the sinner, we’re just kidding ourselves.

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If only you and I could always come first. You know, be numero uno in this world. But as much as that’s our desire sometimes, Jesus doesn’t give us that option. Because in order to be first, actually you have to come last. What a pain!!!

The Power of a Tender Heart Kindness is a much underrated quality these days. Sure, we love it when other people are kind toward us in a world that seems to be moving ever faster, where things appear to be getting more and more transactional. In a world where people are retreating into digital, electronic friendships rather than real ones, yeah kindness when we experience it really stands out.

When you hear that word kindness, you know exactly what it means; no definition required, right? But exactly what is it? Well, it’s being nice to other people, surely. Hang on but which people? Because it’s ever so easy to be kind to the people who are nice to us but a dictionary tells me that kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate. Great, and I’m sure that there are people in your life toward whom you find it incredibly easy to be kind quite simply because they’re kind to you in return.

But what about the difficult people in your life? Conflict lies all around us and it’s conflict, in all its forms, that robs us of our peace and joy because we’re quite simply not made to be in conflict all the time. Ask anyone would you rather have peace or conflict? Well, you know the answer. So let me ask you again, what about those difficult people in your life?

Here’s what Jesus had to say on this very thing. Luke chapter 6, verse 35:

Love your enemies, do good and lend expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great and you’ll be children of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, eh? Well, he is. In fact he’s been kind over and over again toward you and me. Even when we’ve been ungrateful, even when we’ve done the wrong thing, even when we’ve been wicked over and over and over again. Love your enemies, then. Do good to them, lend to them, be to them just as God has been to you: kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. Why? Well it always bring peace? No, not always although it will substantially increase the chances of peace.

Think about those times when you’ve been acting like a fool and the person you’ve been hurting turns around and responds to you in kindness. Nine times out of ten it’s enough to disarm any sense of hostility you may have had in your heart, right? And whilst that won’t always happen, what will happen is that God will notice. God will see you and your reward from him will be great.

Like I said, kindness is such an underrated quality these days yet it has the power to bring peace and blessing to your life. But it’s hard to be kind when you have bitterness and anger in your heart. One of the things that God’s word talks an awful lot about is what’s going on in our hearts, in your heart and in mine. There’s a reason for that. The heart is the seat of our emotions and when we have bad stuff happening in there, deep on the inside, we can’t help it, it bubbles to the surface. We end up speaking and acting that bad stuff out. So it’s easy for me to say to you be kind to other people. It’s easy to say but it’s incredibly difficult to do with anger and bitterness bubbling away in your heart.

Might I ask you today: who do you feel angry towards right at this moment in your life? Whose words or deeds have hurt you and left a root of bitterness in your heart? Toward whom have you hardened your heart in a defensive response against that pain? Because today I’m believing that God wants to set you free from that as only He can by his spirit and his word. Are you ready? Ephesians chapter 4, verses 31 and 32:

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice and be kind to one another. Tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.

It’s quite a list there of destructive emotions: bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander and malice. And if I said to you today: put them away, get rid of them, let me tell you it wouldn’t make an iota of difference in your life. But today, right here and now it’s not me that’s saying it, it’s God through his word and he, he has the power to help you to do exactly that.

When God speaks through his word as he is here, through Ephesians chapter 4, verses 31 and 32, when the Holy Spirit lifts that word off the page and writes it on your heart, He gives you the power you need to change. More power, in fact, than you’ll ever need.

So friend, take his word into your heart right now. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice and be kind to one another, tender hearted. Forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. Replace all those negative emotions with a tender heart, as soft heart, a heart that feels and loves and gives. Just as God in Christ through His terrible suffering has forgiven you.

Because armed with a tender, gentle, kind, forgiving heart, you can change lives with God’s love. Armed with a tender, gentle, kind, forgiving heart, you can build bridges of peace, bridges into hurting, desperate lives that one day, one day, Jesus will walk across. Be tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Chris has forgiven you.

It’s one thing to talk about kindness and tender heartedness. They’re good things but words are cheap. A little bit of kindness here and there can be an incredibly powerful thing. When someone’s having a bad day and you come along with a word of encouragement it can light up their whole world.

But if all we ever do is speak, well it starts to wear just a little bit thin after a while because sometimes people need a helping hand and there’s nothing quite as powerful as doing love. Not just speaking it but doing it in a practical way, right into someone’s area of need. Actions, as they say speak louder than words. That powerful truth played itself out on the cross on Calvary 2000 years ago. 1 John chapter 3, verses 16 and 17:

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us. And so we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or a sister in need and yet refuses to help? We know that God loves us not just because he says he does but because through Christ’s incredible suffering on that cross, we know he does. As a direct result of that sacrificial love that God poured out through the suffering of Jesus for you and me, you and I are called to lay down our lives for one another.

That implies sacrifice, that implies suffering. It’s not always convenient to lay down your life for someone else, in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s rarely if ever convenient or comfortable to lay down your life for someone else. And then, just to remind us that we’re not talking about some lofty theory here, the Holy Spirit guided the apostle John to bring it down to our level, to apply it practically to our lives and to our relationships.

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need yet refuses to help? The more economically developed a society becomes, the more self-sufficient we become, the less likely we are to help one another in practical ways. In places where life is an economic struggle, look people routinely help one another in practical ways because they have to to survive. But the wealthier we become the less likely we are to help.

Listen Before You Speak Now when it comes to life skills that really make a difference, knowing how to listen, how to shut up and then when to speak the truth, well I think that they would have to be right up there in the category of absolute essentials. So why is it that so often we get this so wrong?

Isn’t it just the most amazing thing when somebody actually takes the time to stop and listen to what you have to say? I don’t mean that they stop talking just long enough to figure out the next thing that they’re going to say, I mean when someone actually takes the time to listen to you and really understand what it is that you’re trying to get across.

I have to confess, I am not naturally a good listener. I’m born to talk, to do what I’m doing right now. As a brash young IT consultant I used to think that communication was all about me talking and showing other people how clever I was. Fortunately, I had a mentor, a man 20 years my senior who took the time to teach me the incredible power of listening.

It’s something, by the way, that I’m still learning and I suspect that many of us need to keep working on it because listening, stopping, taking the time to understand someone else even if you don’t agree with them, is one of the most important, the most powerful, life skills that we can ever learn. James chapter 1, verse 19:

You must understand this my beloved, that everyone be quick to listen but slow to speak.

We live in a world where the exact opposite is true. Whether it’s face-to-face or on social media, everybody it seems is talking but very few are actually listening.

Recently a good friend of mine in his 80s passed away and his widow asked me to take his funeral service. I was sitting with her, her daughters and the funeral director in their home planning the funeral and for the most part I just listened. At this point I quietly gave thanks to my mentor who all those years before had taught me the power of just listening. There were times in that two hours or so where frankly I thought they could have made up their minds much more quickly about this detail or that, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about me, it was about them, their grieving process and the way they wanted to say farewell to their husband and father.

I noticed too that even though she had a job to do, the funeral director was an incredibly good listener. I walked away from that time feeling so privileged at having been able to be there and just listen to them talk. Come on, it’s a privilege to hear what’s going on in someone else’s heart. And it so honours the other person, it shows them such respect when we simply sit down, shut up and take the time to listen.

Let everybody be quick to listen and slow to speak. But of course listening isn’t something that comes naturally to many people. Most of us, I think, are uncomfortable with silence. We think that in order for the conversation to flow somebody needs to be talking and if nobody else is we’d better say something. Anything will do, just something to get rid of that uncomfortable silence.

How often have you stupidly blurted something out just to break the silence? Pretending that you know about something that really you have no idea about? We’ve all been there and the people around you don’t know whether to laugh or just be embarrassed for you. The more we speak, our thinking goes, the more knowledgeable it makes us look. When in reality the exact opposite is true. Along with the skill of listening, the skill of simply being silent is one of the most important life skills that we can ever learn. Proverbs chapter 17, verses 27 and 28:

One who spares his words is knowledgeable; one who is cool in spirit has understanding. Even fools who keep silent are considered wise; when they close their lips they are deemed intelligent.

At this point, I’m reminded of the young man by the name of Ben with whom I’ve been working recently. He’s an expert in social media and digital communications. And of all the people I’ve met in my life, he more than anybody embodies this scripture. I recall we were in a meeting with some web developers planning something new. I jump here and ask a question there, share a thought. The head developer asked Ben whether he had any questions. ‘No’, he said, "I’ll just wait". He sat there without saying anything for quite a while, observing, thinking, listening. But when he did open his mouth, his few words displayed a wisdom and an insight well beyond his years. Instead of being keen to impress he was very much cool in spirit, calm, measured. Let me tell you, very, very impressive.

At what point did we start thinking that talking was the most important part of communicating? At what point did we begin to imagine that battling on about things that we really don’t understand, showing off with our many words, was the way to impress other people? This proverb is spot on. The one who speaks fewer words ultimately comes across as the more knowledgeable one and even the fool when he sits silent appears to be wise.

In a world where everybody’s trying to put their best foot forward, where so many people are trying to impress us with what they have to say, silence, knowing when not to speak, is more important than ever.

The Bible is full of life skills, essential life skills. And these skills are very rarely taught explicitly in our upbringing. We’re meant to pick them up I think by osmosis. But God doesn’t leave these things to chance. One to spares words is knowledgeable; one who is cool in spirit has understanding. You’ve no doubt heard that old saying: we have two ears and one mouth so we should use them in the same proportion. In other words we should listen about twice as much as we speak. It’s a good adage that remains every bit as true today as it was back when the pace of life and the pace of communication were much slower.

But when we do finally speak, when we do open our mouths having listened and understood other people, what should we say? Well, let’s start with another question. What do people usually say? In my experience it’s one of two things. They either tell me what they want me to hear or what they think I want to hear.

All too often people are pushing their own agendas so they tell us what they want us to hear, trying to get us to agree with them. That’s why the shop attendant invariably tells you that you look fantastic in that item of clothing you’ve just tried on because what they want is the sale.

Other times they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear, to butter you up and gain favour that they can call upon at a later time because frankly, telling someone something that they don’t want to hear often doesn’t get good results. It’s awkward, uncomfortable and often time leads to conflict. So when you open your mouth what should you be telling people? Ephesians chapter 4, verses 14 and 15:

We must no longer be children tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

What should we be telling people? Answer: we should be speaking the truth in love. Not what we want them to hear to get them to agree with us and not what they want to hear to curry favour with them, but the truth. And not the truth in a rude, confrontational, disrespectful way. The truth delivered that way will rarely be accepted, even though it is the truth. No, we’re called to speak the truth in love with kindness, with gentleness, with the other person’s interests at heart.

The older I get the more I find myself looking for people who’ll tell me the truth. I want to know what they really think, what they really feel. I want to be dealing in the facts that will help me to make the best decisions even when the facts happen to point out one of my weaknesses, mistakes or faults. I respect that. What should we be saying when we speak? The truth, in love.

Be the Hands and Feet of Jesus Now in the few minutes that we have left today I’d like to chat with you about the single most important, the single most powerful life skill of all. It’s a skill, no perhaps skill’s not quite the right word, it’s a sacrifice that Jesus demonstrated on the cross toward you and me and it’s a sacrifice that he’s calling us to live out for the rest of our days on this earth. And that thing, that one most important thing is unconditional love. So let’s dive back into God’s word because this is truly powerful stuff.

The thing about the unconditional love of God is that it’s proactive. God stepped out of heaven in the person of Jesus Christ while we were still sinners. He didn’t wait for you and me to clean up our acts, he didn’t sit back like the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and judge and criticise us. God looked down on the likes of you and me and said, hey, they need help. I’m going to do something about this.

Of course that was no surprise to him. He didn’t wake up one day shocked at the sin that was ruining humanity, the sin that was ruining your life and mine. From before the beginning of time he knew, he always knew that one day he’d have to do something radical for you and me. Romans chapter 5, verses 6-9:

For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, oh perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Most more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.

That’s what love is, that’s what love does. It doesn’t sit back and wait, it steps forward and acts and love is proven in the suffering of Jesus Christ which was decided upon and which happened before you and I ever cleaned up our respective acts. In fact it happened because God knew that without that act of radical love you and I would be doomed to the consequences of our sin.

And that very same love, that very same proactive, radical love, the sort that steps out in sacrifice rather than sitting back in criticism, is the love that you and I are called to live out in the this world. Nothing more and nothing less. Radical, unconditional love. Jesus said this about you and me: very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact will do greater works than these because I am going to the father.

Sometimes we just apply that saying to the miracles that Jesus performed and that’s great. When God performs miracles through us that’s awesome but the greatest miracle, the greatest work that Jesus performed was his sacrificial love on that cross. And over and over again we, you and I, are called to live out that sacrificial love. The sort that steps forward and acts instead of sitting back and criticising.

Jesus is calling you to great acts of love in a world that’s hurting, in a world that’s desperate to receive the love of Jesus Christ. Now I know, I know absolutely that living out that love isn’t easy. We do it, you and I, so imperfectly, so often we feel completely inadequate to the task, completely overwhelmed. And when you do feel that way remember so did Jesus. John chapter 12, verses 27 and 28:

Now my soul is troubled and what should I say? Father save me from this hour. No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name!

Yes his soul was troubled yet still his focus was on glorifying God through his suffering. Living out the unconditional love of Christ towards other people is going to trouble your soul, it’s going to bring you pain just as it did for Jesus. Loving sinners always, always involves sacrifice and pain and yet it is to the father’s glory that you do that very thing for him.

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So let me ask you, is ambition right, or wrong? I mean is it okay to be ambitious, or, if you believe in Jesus, is ambition something that you need to give up? As things turn out, it’s not ambition itself that’s the problem, it’s the sort of ambition, the type of ambition that you have in your heart, that brings you unstuck.

Dealing with Ambition So let me ask you, is it right to be ambitious? My dictionary tells me that ambition is a strong desire to do or to achieve something. A desire, a determination to achieve success. As someone who believes in Jesus, I’ve often struggled with this one, because success, well that can be truly self-seeking, self-fulfilling. Jesus, after all, said this – Luke chapter 9, verse 23:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

I don’t know, but that radical view – and it is a radical view – of what it means to believe in Jesus, to live your life for Jesus, well, it doesn’t seem to fit too well with this notion of success. And frankly, I’ve lived my life, at least the first thirty-six years of it, often with the wrong sort of ambition in my heart.

Here’s what it looks like, this wrong ambition. You want to make a splash, you want to be noticed, you want other people to think well of you. You want, you want, you want … to be successful. Yeah, there’s money involved. Hey, who doesn’t want to have money? Who doesn’t want to live in a nice big house and drive the sort of car that other people will notice? Who doesn’t want to be able to afford the sort of clothes that’ll make them look sharp and catch people’s eyes?

That’s precisely how the thinking goes. And so what you do, what I did, is you climb over the top of other people, you walk over them, crash through them, even destroy them to get to your success. That’s what wrong ambition looks like. I ought to know. When I was in business, I was known to make grown men cry. I wanted to win. I wanted to succeed. How about you? Does any of that sound even vaguely familiar?

And I can tell you, sadly, you see that sort of behaviour even amongst people who profess to believe in Jesus. Jesus saw it too and this is what He had to say about this wrong kind of ambition. John chapter 5, verse 44:

How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?

That’s the bottom line isn’t it? How can we possibly believe in Jesus, how can we possibly follow Him and serve Him and love Him with all that we are, when we’re seeking glory for ourselves? And that’s what many people do. We want to put our best foot forward. We want other people to think well of us, to admire us. And when you do that, when you seek glory for yourself, it becomes virtually impossible to believe in Jesus. That sort of ambition, well, it’s simply not God’s plan for your life. But there is an ambition, a zeal that God does want you to have.

Jim Collins is a man who, with a research team that he established, set out to determine what it is that sets the great companies apart from the ordinary ones. What are the common threads, the common attributes that run through truly great companies, when compared to the also rans? That was the question.

So, he chose a number of stellar performers on the New York stock exchange, and set about doing the research to get answers to those questions.

What he discovered, not surprisingly, is that one of the things that set the great companies apart was great leadership. And one of the essential leadership attributes that he writes about in his book, "Good to Great" is this:

Great leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitions, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not for themselves.

I’ve thought about that … a lot. And the conclusion I’ve come to is that Collins’ research simply bears out the truth of what Jesus had to say about ambition. Mark chapter 10, verses 42 to 44:

You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognise as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are like tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; whoever wishes to become great must become your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all.

The sort of zeal, the sort of ambition that Jesus is looking for, in you and in me, is the sort that sets out to serve others. The sort that removes us from the limelight, the sort that gives up the clamour and the desire for glory. The sort that is driven to seeing others experience the love of Christ through the sacrifices that we make.

Think about it. Who are the people you admire most in your life? Who has achieved greatness in your eyes? Come on, it’s those who’ve served you the most, right? Those who’ve sacrificed the most for you, correct? Not the ones who’ve been self-seeking and sought to lord it over you. Later on in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul puts it this way, Romans chapter 12, verses 10 and 11:

… love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, but be ardent in spirit and serve the Lord.

Yes be zealous. Yes be ambitions. Yes be driven. But for the purpose of showing honour to others. For the purpose of serving God.

So, what drives you? What motivates you? What are you ambitious for? Yourself? Your own image? Your own success? Or for outdoing others in showing honour, and serving the Lord? Because God is looking for ambitious people. Driven people. Zealous people. People who will get on and serve Him for His glory. Are you one of those?

I was at a function recently and I ran into a retired businessman, a man whom I’d met one time before. Now this man, over his career, had been extremely successful. He’d been the chairman of boards of some very large public companies. He would often appear in the business pages of the newspaper, being reported on with great respect. By any measure, he had been very successful and, you’d have to imagine, he was pretty wealthy by this time, in his early seventies.

Now, he and I happened to pull up in our cars outside the function at the same time. We parked next to each other. And the first thing that struck me was the modest vehicle that he was driving. Certainly not one of those cars that screamed ‘success’ at you. And as I chatted with him during the course of the evening, one thing stood out for me.

His great humility. You don’t often hear those two words in one sentence – greatness and humility. But actually, and this becomes pretty obvious when you think about it, true greatness only comes to those who are humble. Or put it the other way around, humility is an essential ingredient, perhaps the essential ingredient, to greatness.

I think sometimes we over-complicate life. We try to imagine what success looks like and we think we have to jump through this hoop and that one, impress this person and that one over there, dress like this, speak like that, be seen, be admired … in fact what I see when I look around is a lot of people trying to please one another. So, let’s take it back to basics. Let’s look at something truly simple that leads to true greatness. Micah chapter 6, verse 8:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Right there is a path to greatness – and let’s face it, your greatness is a legacy that lives in other people’s hearts. Greatness is how other people perceive you.

Firstly, do justice. Be honest and decent. Stand up for those who are in a difficult place. Be the one that the other people can trust and rely on.

Secondly, love kindness. Don’t you love being around people who are kind to you? You want to be around them. You love them, because first they showed kindness to you. Love kindness.

And thirdly, perhaps most importantly, walk humbly with your God. Don’t seek the glory or the limelight. Don’t try to be better than anyone else. Don’t forsake God and go your own way. Just walk humbly with your God.

That’s what godly greatness looks like. Justice, kindness, humility. That’s the greatness that’s ready and waiting for you.

Becoming a Good Person Wickedness is rather a strong word. I don’t think that any of us really thinks of ourselves ever as being "wicked". According to my dictionary, wickedness is the quality of being evil or morally wrong. Someone who intends, or at least is capable of harming someone else. Wickedness is something that broods in a person’s heart and then comes out in their words, their demeanour and their actions. So, might I ask you today – are you a wicked person?

At this point, most of us are prepared to cut ourselves some slack. Well, you know, I’m not that bad. Sometimes I have bad thoughts about people and yep, sometimes I hurt other people, but ‘wicked’, no that’s too strong a word to apply to me.

Really? Isn’t it amazing how we want to flee to the middle ground when we judge ourselves, our own thoughts and intentions, our own actions? We forsake the black and white of right and wrong, good and evil, and we soften the blow of self-judgement with shades of grey. And in any case, other people, well, they compromise as well don’t they? They make mistakes too. They do things that are morally wrong too. I’m not the only one, right? It’s so easy to be led astray in a world that has such incredibly low standards. Psalm 1, verses 1 and 2:

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.

How easy is it in this world to take the advice of the wicked, to follow the path that sinners tread, or to sit in the seat of the scoffers? It’s so easy to do in the workplace, or in a social setting or even, let me say, in a church setting. When other people are behaving badly, we have a tendency to follow their lead, by stooping down to their level.

The original Hebrew word used there for "happy" literally means to be happy because you are blessed. God wants to bless you. God wants you to be happy as you receive His blessing into your life. But that’s not going to happen, if you follow the advice of the wicked, or tread in the path of the sinner, or sit in the seat of the scoffer.

So whatever wickedness you have bubbling away in your heart, wherever you know you’ve gone astray by following wicked advice – right now is the time to turn away from it and instead, delight in God’s Word. Instead meditate on it day and night. Because that’s where God’s blessing is to be found and that’s the only place where true happiness will overtake you.

Sometimes we find ourselves mired in the consequences of the mistakes that we’ve made, in the consequences of our sin, in the consequences of, let me be blunt here, our own wickedness. And when you’re that low, it seems virtually impossible to work your way out of it. How can I possibly move on from this place, from all the things that I’ve done wrong?

That’s the question that rattles around in the hearts and minds of so many people. And sadly, because they can’t see a way out, many of those same people end up wallowing in their sin and their wickedness for way too long.

Me? I knew in my life that many of the things I was doing were wrong. I knew there was a God out there somewhere. And I knew I needed to find Him. My problem was, that I also knew that I didn’t measure up. That He was good and I wasn’t, no doubt, if I bumped into Him, I’d be in some serious trouble.

Just in case you find yourself in that place, I want to share with you the way out. Unless and until our slate is wiped clean, unless and until the sins of the past are atoned for and our conscience is clean, the reality is, we simply can’t move forward. So here’s the good news. Are you ready? That’s exactly why Jesus died for you. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 3:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

Plain and simple, if you put your trust in that one truth, if you trust completely in Jesus, your sins are wiped away. You are forgiven. God’s wrath is removed from you. It's an act of God’s grace. It's an act of God’s mercy. Where once you were mired in your sin, now you are completely free, completely forgiven.

And it’s at this point, that you can make the decision that you’ve been longing to make. To start living your life the right way rather than the wrong way. To start living for good, rather than for bad. Because after all ... Romans chapter 2, verse 4:

Do you not realise that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

"Repentance" seems like such an old-fashioned word. But it literally means to turn – in this case, to turn away from evil and to turn back to God.

It's a decision that we all long to make. We all want to live a good life. But the power to make that decision, comes only when we trust in Jesus. So, no matter what evil, what wickedness, what sin, the consequences of which you’re living out right now, Jesus stands ready to forgive you, to set you free ... to give you a new life. And at that point, your life is going to start bearing good fruit. Really, really good fruit.

I love fruit trees. I remember as a young boy, Mum and Dad had nectarine trees, peach trees, apricot trees, plum trees in the backyard. Man, in spring and in summer when those trees started producing their fruit, my sister and I would just go outside and it was amazing.

What do I feel like today? Oh those plums look good, so I’d just pluck a plum off the tree, sit down on the grass and eat it. So sweet and tasty. And the nectarines, when they were ripe, wow! There’s something about fruit trees, right? So long as they have their roots down in good soil, and they get plenty of water, they are going to keep on giving. They are just going to yield their fruit in due season. And interestingly, it’s that luscious, tasty, amazing abundant picture that God uses to describe the life that He wants you to live. Psalm 1, verses 1 to 3:

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of the scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all they do, they prosper.

Chances are, you’ve never really thought of yourself as a fruit tree. But let’s just sit down on the grass and look at this picture that God’s painting for us. When we choose to do good rather than to be wicked, when we choose to become a man or a woman of God’s Word, feeding on God’s Word the way that a fruit tree feeds on the soil and the streams, the promise is that our lives will indeed yield rich fruit in season.

Do you feel sometimes like there’s not quite the overwhelming abundance of fruit that there perhaps should be in your life? Do you feel as though sometimes your leaves seem to be withering, your emotions are frayed, you’re spiritually dry, you’re completely spent?

Then it’s time to deliberately get into God’s Word. Interestingly, the original Hebrew word used there for ‘streams of water’ implies irrigation channels. In other words, a deliberate, man-made decision and act, to bring the water to the trees. And it’s that same deliberate decision and act that you can make, to become someone who is immersed in God’s Word.

Because then, with goodness flowing into you, you won’t be tempted to follow the wicked, the sinners and the scoffers. Instead, you’ll be like one of those amazing fruit trees I was telling you about, yielding a bounty of stunning fruit in due season. That’s the natural consequence of a tree that’s planted in good soil, by streams of living water.

Get Comfortable In Your Own Skin So here’s the question. How comfortable are you in your own skin? How comfortable are you with your natural gifts and abilities, and your natural weaknesses and limitations and with handing over the sin that God wants you to deal with in your life?

Once we believe in Jesus, our lives are meant to bear fruit. In other words, the faith we have in Jesus, is meant to change us, to flow out of us, and to impact the people around us. That’s what Jesus said, John chapter 15, verse 8:

My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

But the problem is, all too often we compare our fruit with the next person’s fruit, and we feel as though we’re coming up short. I can’t do what he can do! I’m not as clever as she is. How come they can do that, but I can’t?

You’ve had those thoughts, right? And our reactions to that comparison can be really, quite negative and unhelpful. You can be a good person, honouring God, following Jesus, and yet ineffective in impacting this world with his love, make sense?

In fact, I know people whose emotions are curled up in a hard ball like an armadillo simply because they think they don’t measure up. It’s like they have a cramp in their soul, wrapped up all tight and hurting, with this sense of, "I’m not worth anything. My life doesn’t count for anything." But I believe that God wants you just to relax, to open yourself up to Him and to trust Him. 1 Peter chapter 5, verses 6 and 7:

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all of your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

Part of letting go and letting God in, is humbling yourself. Accepting that the gifts and abilities that He’s given you, different though they may well be from those people around you, are unique and special and valuable.

Fruit comes inside skin. A banana looks different from an apple, which looks different again from a plum, or a peach, or an apricot, or a mango, or … whatever.

So often, we look at the next guy’s skin and come to the conclusion we’re no good. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. Your particular gift, your particular type of fruit, is what He has chosen in His Wisdom and His love to give you.

And His plan, Jesus’ plan, is that you should bear much fruit, for His glory. God cares for you, so cast all your anxiety on Him. Get comfortable in your skin, humble yourself under His mighty hand, for God will – He absolutely will – exalt you in due time. In the meantime, bear much fruit, for this is to the Father’s glory.

I don’t know how you feel about that, but for me, it’s really, really exciting. Of course sometimes we doubt ourselves. Take that self-doubt and cast it on God. He cares for you, He really does. And He wants you to bear much fruit, just the sort of fruit He created you to bear, for His glory.

What God’s doing with and through the next person, is completely irrelevant. Completely! That’s His sovereign choice. Your job is to bear much of the fruit that He’s made you to bear. And when you get those doubts happening, as we all do, cast yourself on God, for He cares for you!

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When it comes to developing the life skills that we really need, the life skills that are going to lead to a much, much better life, there is none more important, than maturity. But what exactly is maturity, and where do you get it?

Grow Up Let’s be honest. Some people never grow up. Now, there are different aspects to growing up: Moving from childhood through those difficult teenaged years, into adulthood. One of them is taking responsibility for your life. Of course, not everything that happens to us over the years, good or bad, is under our control. Often storms blow in that we didn’t see coming, and yet it’s surprising how many things in our lives are, in fact, under our control; how many things we can change or influence through the decisions we take.

A child look to his or her parents when something’s too big for them to handle. In fact, even for the day-to-day, children rely on their parents for somewhere to live; for the food on the table; for the clothes on their backs. They rely on mum and dad to run them here and there, to come and watch them play sport or to get that award at the annual school speech night ... That’s all as it should be, by the way, but the reason that teenaged years can be so difficult is that those are the in-between years when parents want to teach their children to take responsibility for themselves, and yet still live under their authority.

That’s confusing for the teenager and for the parents. It’s why there’s so much conflict often in those teenaged years. When we come through that process though, what we should be is responsible young adults. Sure; we have lots to learn, but we’re meant to be responsible for providing for ourselves and for taking control of the direction of our lives, as much as that’s possible, and for owning the consequences of our own actions.

Yet so often as adults, we want to abdicate those responsibilities. We want to blame other people or our circumstances or whatever for our predicament, and that frankly is no way to live. There was a time in Israel’s history where they knew, they just knew, that they’d gone astray. Ezra 10:1:

While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women and children he gathered to him out of Israel. The people also wept bitterly.

Now they had some incredibly difficult decisions to make, and what they came to was to take responsibility for their mistakes, and (listen to this; it’s really important) to take action to rectify those mistakes. Ezra 10:4:

Take action, for it is your duty, and we are with you. Be strong, and do it.

What is it in your life that you need to take responsibility for? What is it in your life that you need to grab a hold of and, as difficult as that may be, deal with? Because until you take responsibility, things just won’t be right, and yet one of the things that stops us from doing that is the blame game. Have you ever noticed how easy it is when something goes wrong to blame someone else? It’s often our first instinct - our first response when something in our lives goes awry. In fact, in this day and age, it’s almost a rarity to see someone taking responsibility for their own mistakes or shortcomings.

There’s a business bestseller called, “Good to Great” by a man called Jim Collins. He and his team undertook a huge research project to determine what factors set apart those companies with sustained stellar performance on the stock exchange from the also-rans; the run-of-the-mill; the everyday companies. On the question of leadership of the successful companies, he writes this:

The leaders of truly great companies look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and they blame themselves, taking full responsibility.

The comparison CEOs often did quite the opposite. They looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out of the window to assign blame for disappointing results.

When things don’t go the way they should, what do you do? Do you blame someone else, or do you own the problem with all your heart, taking responsibility to the extent that some or all of it was as a result of your failings or limitations? Think of the last time something went wrong. Go on, be honest with yourself. What did you do? People blame their past; their parents; their upbringing; their spouse; those people out there ... In fact, some people (be honest) have become exemplars at living out the blame game, and the problem with that is that in your own eyes, your life is completely out of your control. It’s everyone else’s fault and never your own.

Who or what do you blame when things go wrong, and how different would that be if like the truly great leaders, you instead took ownership of the situation? Because (listen to me) when we take ownership, all of a sudden, God has something to work with. When we take ownership, God steps in, in such incredible power.

King David is arguably the greatest king that Israel ever had; the greatest leader, until Jesus came along a thousand or so years later. Here’s the conclusion that David comes to. Psalm 51:1-4:

Have mercy on me, o God, according to Your steadfast love; according to Your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified in Your sentence and blameless when You pass judgment.

That’s why he was a great leader. That’s why God got right behind him, and I don’t know about you, but I want God working for me and not against me.

Like it or not, we have to live with the consequences of the choices that we make, so on that basis, I don’t know about you, but I’d like to make the best choices that I possibly can. Good choices, most times, yield good outcomes. Not always, of course. Sometimes other people don’t like it when we make good choices; I’m sure you’ve experienced that. Sometimes unpredictable things happen to rob us of the good consequences that should have resulted from our good choices; that’s just the way it goes sometimes, but most of the time, good choices lead to good consequences and bad choices lead to bad consequences.

And as much as we may wish that it weren’t true, sometimes we don’t have what it takes to make the good choice; to take the high road. Maybe it’s because of our own blind spots or because we’re tired, or we don’t have all the information, or our emotions lead us in the wrong direction. There are plenty of times in my life when I don’t have what it takes to make the best choice.

It intrigues me that even Jesus the Son of God, the Creator of the whole universe, found Himself in that place on more than one occasion because when He became a man, He laid aside His glory and His power, and became just like you and me.

So, He had a big decision to make. Out of all those who’d been following Him, who would He include in His inner circle – those who, ultimately, would go on to build this fledgling thing called the church, when His business on this earth was done? Big decisions with huge ramifications there, in choosing those twelve, remembering that one of them was destined to betray Him. So how did Jesus handle it? Luke 6:12-13:

Now during those days, He went out to the mountain to pray and He spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples and chose twelve of them, whom He also named apostles.

He involved God. I mean, seriously, all night He called out to His father in heaven; sat and listened, and received the guidance He needed to make the right choices – God’s choices.

Think about it. God sits above all; He sees all; He knows all, and above all, He loves you more than words can say. You and I do have to live with the consequences of the choices we make, so why wouldn’t we involve God in them? I can’t tell you the number of times that the answers have come to me just in the next passage of the Bible that I was due to read, or just waiting quietly on God in the early morning. God loves you. He wants to be involved in your life, and He’s waiting right now to help you make the best choices.

Be the Best you can Be There are certain things that, no doubt, you’re incredibly good at. You have certain gifts, certain motivations in your hearts, certain things that you know you can do better than just about anyone else. Sometimes of course, we don’t value those natural giftings enough because you live with your gifts and abilities twenty-four seven. The easiest thing for you to do is to think to yourself, "Well, you know, my gift – my ability? It’s nothing special. Not like that person over there. If only I could be like her. If only I could do the things that guy over there can do. If only I could be as successful as them."

Have you ever found yourself thinking those thoughts? Making those comparisons? Sure you have. We all have, and at that point, you beat yourself over the head with your natural limitations. At that point, you look in the mirror and realise how far you fall short in certain areas. With me, it was my lack of pastoral gifting. Hey, I’m supposed to be a minister. I’m supposed to care for people, and I do; incredibly so, but it seems that I don’t have a pastoral bone in my body. There’s no gifting; there’s no anointing there. Not like my good friend Greg, who just seems to be an absolute natural at it.

Do you see how easy it is to fall into those comparisons? Have a listen to God’s take on all of this. Romans 12:4-8:

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ and individually, we’re members of one another. We have gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us: Prophecy in proportion to faith, ministry in ministry, the teacher in teaching, the exhorter in exhortation, the giver in generosity, the leader in diligence, the compassionate in cheerfulness.

The bit that leaps out there for me is the bit that says we have gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us. So by God’s sovereign choice, He made you and me differently, with different purposes in life, just as my nose has a different function to my big toe. Without my nose, I couldn’t smell or taste. Without my big toe, I probably wouldn’t be able to stand up and balance, and walk properly. Totally different, but equally important.

Here’s what I think. In our process of growing up – of maturing in Christ, one of the most important things of all is celebrating the gifts that God’s given us, and equally, being completely comfortable with the gifts that He hasn’t given us. God made you who you are. That was His sovereign choice, and He wants you to be completely delighted both with who you are, and who you aren’t.

You and I both know that there are always areas in our lives where we can improve and come up higher. Even though I’m not necessarily pastorally gifted, that doesn’t give me a license to be rude and detached or uncommunicative. My people skills and relationship skills are really important.

It’s the same with you. Perhaps you’re one of those pastorally gifted people. Praise God for that, but pastorally gifted people are rarely on-time for meetings, because they’re the sort of people who will always make time for someone in need. That’s in their nature. Equally, it’s simply not right to use that gifting as an excuse for constantly being late.

So, yes, there are always areas where we need to come up higher; areas where we need to work on our behaviour, even though they’re not necessarily in the sweet spot of our gifting. Excellence honours God; it’s as simple as that. I’m sure as we’ve had this conversation, God’s touching your heart with one or two things that He’d like you to be working on, but (and this is such an incredibly important but) equally, struggling and trying to become someone who you aren’t is never going to work. Here’s God’s take. Ephesians 1:6:

He destined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

Now, let’s think about what’s going on in God’s mind (in God’s heart) when He destined you for adoption as one of His children through Jesus. Adoption is a big decision. Huge, in fact! And He did that out of His love for you; out of His pleasure; out of His will, pouring out His glorious grace on you, through Jesus. Just ponder that for a minute. What was going on in God’s heart when He destined you for adoption into His family, through the incredible suffering of Jesus, His beloved Son? It’s a whole different view, isn’t it?

What’s the matter with us, that we can’t get comfortable with how God made us, who He made us to be? What’s the matter with us, that we want to compare ourselves and wish we were this or wish we were that? Get a revelation. God loves you just the way you are. Hey, He made you just the way you are. Do you have a few rough spots that need sanding back and polishing? Course you do. God the Holy Spirit has that process well underway; don’t you worry, so instead of beating yourself up about who you are and who you aren’t, what God wants with all His heart of love for you is for you to join hands with Him in that process of change, for His glory and His love. God wants you to be comfortable in your own skin, while at the same time working with the Holy Spirit to deal with the sin in your life, and we all have sin that’s holding us back.

Developing Your Faith-Image If I asked you, in twenty-five words or less, to write down who you are, what would you write? No, not some bland generalised statement. I want a sentence that captures your essence; your value; the important things about you. So, what would you write? What evidence, what feelings, what feedback would you draw on to write it? It’s hard because we don’t think too much about who we are, and yet who you believe you are, what you believe about yourself ... It shapes your thoughts, your opinions, your feelings, and your reactions and mostly, we rely on what other people tell us. Perhaps you were told once by a teacher or a parent, "You worthless child! You’ll never amount to anything," and that, like it or not, has had a huge impact on your self-image, or perhaps you were always the last kid to be chosen on the team, as I was in the schoolyard; and even though you don’t think about it all that much anymore, it still has a huge influence on how you see yourself.

Self-image is a dangerous thing. The lies of this world are ruining many a life, even (let me say) the lives of people who with all their hearts believe in Jesus, so what’s the alternative? One of my professors back in Bible-college days used to talk about replacing your self-image with a faith-image. In other words, deciding to believe what God says about you, rather than what the world says about you. For instance, try this on for size. John 1:12-13:

But to all who received Jesus, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

Children used to taunt me at school because I was chubby and short; because I was gifted in the classroom and not on the sporting field, and it hurt – a lot, so then I’d come home and talk to my dad about it. He’d help me get my perspective right. He’d get me believing the right things about myself. I got a lot of comfort from my dad just being my dad, and I’m absolutely certain that it’s because of him that those things from my childhood don’t affect me these days, but not just him; also my Father in heaven. As I read my Bible day after day, my heavenly Dad speaks those words about who I am into my heart, and for me, it’s been a simple decision to believe what Dad says about me, rather than what the world says about me. That is my faith-image.

Do you believe in Jesus? Then He has given you the power to be His child; it’s as simple as that. There’s an important reason why believing what God says about you has such a huge impact on your life. Most of us believe the world, and that’s what self-image is all about. The problem with that is that it’s like looking into one of those distorted mirrors on Sideshow Alley, and believing that that’s your body-shape. It’s not reliable. Believing what God says about you ... well, that’s a lot harder because often, God says things that the world doesn’t say.

The world may tell you you’re worthless, while God tells you your worth by showing the price He was prepared to pay for you by letting Jesus die on that cross. The world tells you you’re not talented, but God tells you that He has given you a unique gift – a unique ability and not only that, He has a call on your life: A destiny planned for you to live out.

A carpenter hangs different tools off his belt. Two of the most common tools you’ll find there are a hammer and a screwdriver. Let’s say he takes the screwdriver and starts to hammer a nail into a piece of wood by gripping the shaft, and whacking the nail with the plastic handle. Is that a good use of the screwdriver? No! Is that the best way to get a nail into the wood? No! And yet how many people are living their lives like that, simply because they haven’t yet figured out what God has to say about them? Because they don’t know the unique gift that God’s given them, the call that God has placed on their lives. 1 Corinthians 12:1, 4-6:

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. There are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

In other words, God has given you certain gifts, and those gifts are for the purpose, for the service, the activities that He has planned for you to do. Hammers are for driving in nails. Screwdrivers, on the other hand, are for screwing in screws. It’s obvious! But you know, people tell you this; they tell you that; they shove you into a job that you were never made to do, and then ... then we wonder why we’re not happy; why we’re under stress and pressure at the moment.

Just picture that screwdriver being used to hammer in the nail. Is that what your life looks like today? Are you doing something you were never designed to do? God made you with a purpose in mind. He gave you a gift that fits like hand in glove with the things that He has for you to do, and it’s time to start believing what He says about you, rather than what the world says about you.

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Have you ever wondered – how to live an extraordinary life? I mean no one wants to live a boring ordinary life. We all want to have some impact in this world. But … how?

The Theory is not Enough When I finished high school almost 40 years ago now, my grades were good enough to mean I was selected to study medicine at Sydney University. And so I applied for a range of courses at different universities – that’s how it worked back then. You applied for several things that interested you and then, depending on your grades, you had several offers on the table from which you could choose.

One of the things I was accepted for was medicine, but something inside me – well, I just didn’t want to do it, even though my parents wanted me to do it. I mean, what do you really know at aged 17 about what you’d be good at and what you’d enjoy – what you want to spend the rest of your life doing? Nothing! Fortunately though, they left it up to me and being a young lad with a sense of adventure – that desire to spread my wings and fly, I chose a career in the military instead.

Now I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked back on that decision in the years since, and thanked God I didn’t become a doctor. See, I hate the sight of blood, and well, I just couldn’t imagine it! It’s just not me. I chuckle to myself, and every time we talk about the idea of me becoming a doctor, my wife Jacky ends up shrieking with laughter, or rolling her eyes into the back of her head. She knows me better than anyone on the planet, and saying that I would make a good doctor would be like telling me that I could fly to the moon by flapping my arms.

Now, given that I’m a bit of an academic, I wouldn’t have any problem at all with the theory. I’m sure I could cope with all the study and the exams – no problem, but my problem would be when I had to come to stick a needle into someone, or cut them open with a knife and poke around inside them, and then put all the pieces back in the right place and stitch them up again. My problem with being a doctor isn’t the theory; it’s the practice, and that’s the way it is with many of us when it comes right down to living an extraordinary life.

We don’t have any problem whatsoever with the theory. There are plenty of us who want to lead an extraordinary life, and we dream about it, but you don’t plough a field by turning it over in your mind. People who live extraordinary lives are the ones that realise the theory isn’t enough. The people who live extraordinary lives are the ones that get out there in the game, and give it a crack – the ones who are prepared to sacrifice and fail and get up and dust themselves off, and give it another go. And that’s exactly what Jesus taught us about living an extraordinary life. Have a listen. Matthew 7:24:

He said, ‘Look, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rain fell, the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it didn’t fall because it had been founded on a rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell, and it was such a great fall.’ Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at His teaching, for He taught them as One having authority, and not as the scribes.

Well, should they have been amazed? All the religious leaders of their day were teaching waffle and theory and how to follow all these rules and laws that didn’t make people’s lives any better at all. In fact, it was making their lives worse. But the stuff Jesus was talking about – sure; it was about the very same God that all the religious leaders were teaching about, but He was teaching stuff that seemed to matter – real stuff; real-life things – things that people could take and do and live by, that would make their lives better and other people’s lives better.

But Jesus was warning them here. He was saying in effect: ‘Sure, you can come along and listen and be wowed by all that you hear, and entertained, and challenged, and that’s great. But if all you do is listen, what good is that going to do you? None! Because when push comes to shove, when the going gets tough, it’s all going to come crashing down round your ears. But, if you actually do the things that I’m telling you, it’ll be like building your life on firm foundations. So don’t just sit there and listen to me; do it!’

Hey, maybe that’s where Nike got their slogan from. And here’s the bit that caps it off for me. When Jesus was done teaching them, what did He do? Did He go back to the office and get out His textbooks and get in some more theory so that He could dish out yet another sermon, yet another theory lesson to the masses? Let’s have a read here at the very next thing that He did after His sermon on that mount. Matthew 8:1:

When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed Him, and there was a leper who came to Him and knelt before Him, saying: ‘Lord, if You choose, You can make me clean.’

So Jesus stretched out His hand and touched the man, saying: ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’ Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him: ‘See that you say nothing to anyone, but go. Show yourself to the priests and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’

See, what was the very next thing Jesus did after His message on doing instead of just listening? He went out and touched the leper. See, it was against the law to touch a leper, but He was so moved by compassion, He reached out and touched the leper, and healed the man.

Now I’m not sure if you’ve heard this saying, but it’s a great one. "A shepherd should never lose the smell of sheep from his clothing". In other words, we should always be hands-on when it comes to living out our faith. We should always be prepared to do our faith, not just believe our faith. With all my heart I believe in Jesus, and it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to be a theoretician – sit here in a nice, safe, clean, cloistered, albeit boring little radio-studio and just churn out these programmes – dish out the theory. But if there’s one thing that Jesus teaches us, it’s that theory isn’t enough. The theory has to work its way out in practice in our lives. The easiest thing in the world is to nod wisely as we hear Jesus’ words today, but it’s much harder to go and do them.

Let me leave you with this thought: Theoreticians aren’t the ones who end up living extraordinary lives; it’s the practitioners who do. Who’s the great sportsman – the one who teaches the players, or the one who picks up the ball and runs with it? Who’s the great teacher – the one who stays in the classroom, or the one who pulls alongside the student on the journey in his life? At some point, if we want to live extraordinary lives, we have to go and live them. We have to go and do them. For some of us, it’s time to stop listening, and it’s time to start doing.

Powered by Faith In your life, let me ask you: Where do you get the sort of power that keeps you going, despite some of the difficulties and the obstacles that you face? Do you have that sort of power? Well, no, me neither – well, that’s not quite true. Of course, in and of myself I don’t have that sort of power, but when from time to time things get beyond me, I do know where to go to get it. Sound interesting? Well, let’s take a look.

In this razzmatazzy kind of world in which we live, we’re supposed to have our own power. We’re supposed to be strong and self-sufficient. We’re supposed to be quick and smart and clever and all that stuff. That’s the theory, and I guess in part, I’d agree with that. We should grow; we should mature; we should use the strengths and the abilities we’ve been given, but I don’t care even if your name is Hercules, there are going to be times when the job before us is way, way, way beyond us. So, then in that place, where do you get that power – the power to live an absolutely extraordinary life? Well, let’s take a look.

The question is, what are you powered by? Here’s what Jesus has to say on the subject because of course in our journey of discovering how to live an extraordinary life over these last few episodes, we’ve been following Him around through the account of His life in the gospel of Matthew to discover how it was that He lived His extraordinary life, and here’s what Jesus has to say about power and where to get it. Matthew 8:5:

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, appealing to Him, saying: ‘Lord, my servant’s lying at home paralysed and in terrible distress.’

And Jesus said to Him: ‘I’ll come and cure him.’

But the centurion answered: ‘Lord, I’m not worthy to have You come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go’ and he goes, and to another ‘Come’ and he comes, and to my slave ‘Do this’, and the slave does it.’

When Jesus heard him, He was amazed, and He said to all those who were following Him: ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and they’ll eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ And to the centurion, Jesus said: 'Go. Let it be done for you according to your faith’, and the servant was healed in that very hour.

Now here was this centurion, a Roman soldier of the Italian cohort. He was faced with a problem that was way, way, way beyond him. His servant was sick, and obviously this servant meant a lot to him. What to do? No fancy emergency clinics back in those days; none of the advances in medicine that we take for granted these days as yet existed. Yet he’s heard about this miracle-man Jesus, and in his simple mind, he decided that Jesus must have the power.

But how to lay hold of that power? Well, get up and go and see Him! With a bit of luck, being a centurion, you’d get through the crowd to ask Jesus if He could help. But how does the centurion ask? Let’s take another look (verse 8):

The centurion answered: ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have You come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I say to one, ‘Go’ and he goes. I say to another, ‘Come’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this’ and the slave does it.’

The centurion sets out the simple soldier’s logic of his faith in Jesus. He explains his reason for putting his trust in Jesus, and Jesus is totally blown away by this man’s faith, and the moment this faith is expressed, it releases power. See, the centurion in and of himself didn’t have the power to heal the servant, but he knew where to get it, and how to get it – by placing his trust in Jesus. See, is that it? Is that the end of the story? Well, not really.

Of course, the centurion received what he asked for by faith, but interestingly, Jesus also received what He asked for by faith. It seems that Jesus actually practised what He preached, which is a pretty refreshing change when you think about it. Matthew 8:23:

When Jesus got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. A windstorm arose on the sea, so great the boat was being swamped by the waves, but Jesus was asleep. So they woke Him and they said: ‘Lord, save us! We’re perishing!’

And He said to them: ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then He got up and rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was dead calm.

They were amazed, saying: ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the seas obey Him?’

Well I’ll tell you what sort of a man He was – He was a man of faith. He rebuked the disciples for their lack of faith, and then in faith He stilled the storm. Remember, Jesus had laid all His power aside to become a man. Yes, Jesus was the Son of God, but also the Son of Man! He had, in and of Himself, the same power as you and I do. What He relied on to do the extraordinary things that He did was God’s power by faith, and as a result, He was able to still the storm; to feed the five thousand; to heal the sick; to raise the dead – by faith.

Now, I try my hardest in my life. I marshal all my abilities and strengths whenever I’m faced with something I can’t manage, because I kind of figure that I should be capable of doing these things, but there are plenty of times I’m called to do things that are actually way beyond me. I was sitting preparing this particular message at the international airport in Dubai, on my way from Delhi in India to Nairobi in Kenya. I’d just been to India to grow the reach and the impact of these very same radio-messages there, and now I was heading off to Africa to do the same on that continent.

I can’t tell you how often I’m on these trips, and I sit there and I look around and I think to myself: "Who do I think I am? What am I doing here? I mean, Dubai, for crying out loud! I can’t make a difference in all these countries. These are all so foreign to me. I don’t belong here", and then I remember the centurion – his simple logic. To him it was patently obvious that Jesus could do what he asked of Him, and then I remember Jesus who by faith stilled the storm, through the power of God Himself.

See, for Jesus, it wasn’t complicated. For the centurion, it wasn’t complicated – not for the Christ, not for the soldier. Faith is faith – simple, sweet, pure, and it’s that childlike faith that lays hold of the awesome power of God to do the extraordinary things – the things that are way beyond the natural – the supernatural. Looking for the power to do the extraordinary things? Looking for the power to live an extraordinary life? Well, I know exactly where you can get it.

Tough Choices Now, in these last 4 episodes of the programme, we’ve only managed to get to Matthew chapter 8, out of 28 chapters, so we’re going to cheat somewhat by jumping forward to the end of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life and times to see, in part, how it ended.

A lot of what our lives end up being worth has to do with the decisions that we make. We all make many decisions every day – dozens of them. Sometimes we make really lousy decisions and other times, we make good decisions. So, I’d like to look at perhaps the single-most important decision that’s ever been taken in the history of humanity – the decision that Jesus took all alone, late at night, in a dark, lonely, scary place. They’re the hardest decisions to take, don’t you think – the dark ones, the lonely ones? And this was one of the hardest decisions that anyone will ever take, and also, the most important one. Matthew 26:36:

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to His disciples: ‘Sit here while I go over there, and pray.’ He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then He said to them: ‘I’m so deeply grieved, even unto death. Remain here, and stay awake with Me.’

And going a little farther, He threw Himself on the ground and prayed: ‘My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from Me, yet not what I want, but what You want.’ Then He came to His disciples and He found them sleeping and He said to Peter: ‘So, couldn’t you stay awake with Me for just one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into a time of trial. The spirit indeed is willing, but your flesh is weak.’

Again, He went away for the second time and prayed. ‘My Father, if this cannot pass from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.’

Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, He went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words. Then He came to the disciples and He said to them: ‘Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? See, the hour is at hand. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let’s be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.’

Now this, of course, was the decision of laying His life down for you and me, so put yourself in His shoes, and imagine being there deciding whether or not you’re going to die for someone else, and not just die; suffer – not a quick, painless injection, as awful as that would be – not even the electric chair; certainly some pain there, but over pretty quickly ... Wouldn’t that just be awful? But Jesus knew He was going to suffer for hours – the best part of a day, around 17 hours. Trial after trial, 5 of them in all; beating after beating, thorns driven into His skull, nails driven into His hands and feet, hanging there by those nails in excruciating pain for hours, until finally He didn’t have the strength to breathe.

That’s how you died when you were crucified; you’re suffocated. He actually lost the strength to breathe, hanging there by those nails, and so you died of lack of oxygen. All the while those nails tore at your wrist and your Achilles tendon – your whole bodyweight being taken on those 4 painful points. And so here Jesus is, hoping that His friends would support Him, but they fall asleep. Can you believe that? They actually fell asleep, and He’s sweating blood in His most crucial hour, and He prays and He prays ‘Dad, if only You can take this whole thing away from me!’

I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other things that passed between God the Father and God the Son in that dark, lonely, fearful place on that night. He was grieved – deeply grieved – greatly agitated. Why wouldn’t He have been, with all that lay ahead? He was dying to pay for my sin and yours, so that we could be forgiven. He threw Himself on the ground and prayed: ‘Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want, but what You want’, and that’s the key to the most important decision ever made in all of history. No, He didn’t want to die; but even in this dark place, He said to His Father in heaven: ‘Yet not what I want, but what You want.’

Right there in that yes is where the ordinary becomes absolutely extraordinary. Jesus made a decision to submit His life – literally His very life – to the will of God His Father, and that changed the course of history.

There are going to be times in both our lives – in your life and in my life – where we have one of those Gethsemane decisions to make, and they’re never easy. They’re always huge. I look back on a few in my life and I never, ever want to have to go through them again, but how we decide at that point has everything to do with the sort of life that we end up leading. If we’re prepared to lose it all for God, then that’s extraordinary!

So many people want to hang onto their lives, and when we cling onto the things that we want in life, that makes for an ordinary life. When we’re prepared to lay it all on the line, when we’re prepared to go with the outcome that God has for us, even when it deeply grieves and agitates us, as was the case with Jesus, that’s where true greatness lies.

Most of us will never be called physically to lay down our lives for God. Some will, but most won’t, and yet Jesus called His followers to take up their cross every day and follow Him, because there are much smaller Gethsemane decisions to be made each and every day in submitting our lives to God, so that we may live. "If any man would save his life, then he’ll lose it. But the one who loses it for My sake", said Jesus, "Will save it."

Weird – that last bit, but what He’s saying is that when we try to hang onto everything for ourselves, that’s what makes for an ordinary life, and eventually, an ordinary life comes to an end, but the one who lays down their lives for Jesus will live an extraordinary life, and that’s a life that goes on for ever and ever and ever. Amen.

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Jesus didn’t do things by half measures. His compassion wasn’t ordinary, everyday compassion. It was radical compassion. His power wasn’t religious power. It was God’s awesome power.

Radical Compassion I have a confession to make. I’m not naturally a compassionate person. How about you? Now that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about people deeply. I do, but I’m not naturally compassionate.

So, what’s compassion? My dictionary tells me that compassion is a sympathetic pity and concern for the suffering or misfortunes of others. It’s derived from an old middle-English word, that comes from an even older French word, that’s derived from an even older Ecclesiastical Latin word, that means ‘to suffer with’. In other words, to feel someone else’s pain, and then to act on that, and to do something about it.

I’m pretty good at the second part – acting on it and doing something about it. I’m not always that good at the first part – actually feeling someone else’s pain. Why? Because of the way I’m wired on the inside; because of my motivations and my personality-type. Read Romans chapter 12 in the New Testament, and you’ll find several motivational giftings. Some of them involve a lot of compassion, and others don’t. A leader who’s too compassionate just won’t get anything done. On the other hand, people involved in caring for others – well, they’re naturally good at feeling someone else’s pain, which is why we absolutely love people like that.

So, why am I telling you this? Because today we’re continuing our look at what it means to lead an extraordinary life by looking at how Jesus lived His life, and one of the things He had in His makeup (we see it quite clearly on a number of occasions) is compassion. And I guess, as we take a look at this side of Jesus, I just wanted to make the point that just because we don’t all have compassion naturally wired into our DNA doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t show it from time to time. Have a listen to one of the compassionate things that Jesus did. Matthew 8:1:

When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed Him. And there was a leper who came and knelt before Him, saying: ‘Lord, if You choose, You can make me clean.

He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying: ‘I do choose. Be clean.’ Immediately the leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him: ‘See that you say nothing to anyone, but go. Show yourself to the priests, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’

Great crowds followed Jesus. He was a celebrity, a megastar, doing what I do, preaching the gospel. Often I’m dealing with crowds, whether here through the radio, or when I’m speaking at a church or an event, and as someone who’s naturally wired with not a huge amount of compassion, can I tell you how safe and how easy that is? Speaking in front of people, you’re detached. You rely on the fact that as the guy upfront, you are separated from the crowd, and that could easily have been the attitude that Jesus took. "I’ll stick away from the messy individuals with all those problems and pains that are going to inconvenience Me, and I’ll just preach to the big crowds."

We all have our ways of isolating ourselves from the pains and the problems of difficult people. Some live in gated communities. Some have stopped attending churches. We withdraw and we try to make ourselves comfortable, but Jesus met the leper – the leper who was smelly with open, pussy wounds; the leper whom others reviled, and whom God’s own Law segregated from mainstream society. And when the leper said to Jesus: "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean", Jesus did the one thing that no one had done since this man started exhibiting the signs of leprosy. Jesus reached out, and touched him. Touching the leper – now that’s compassion.

That speaks of the value that Jesus placed on this one man in his isolation and pain and suffering. In fact, Mark’s gospel account tells us that Jesus was moved with compassion, and that that’s what caused Him to reach out and touch this outcast. And the sense of the original Greek word translated into the English word compassion was that it was a deep, gut-reaction. It was something that Jesus felt in the core of His very being, and it was that feeling (literally the feeling of suffering with that leper in His heart, in His belly, in His gut) that caused Jesus to reach out, to touch him, and to heal him.

One of the reasons often we don’t suffer with people is that we’re too busy. When I think about who I am – because I’m a driven, outcome-focused, delivery-oriented kind of guy – time is at a premium for me. Now don’t get me wrong. In the mix of things, we need people like that, just as we need people who are nowhere near as time-focused, but who have buckets of compassion in their hearts. And what I’ve noticed is that when I slow down and just focus on the individual at hand, when I take the time to understand them and what they’re going through, I too can experience that sense of compassion, just like the next person.

It’s the speed at which we move sometimes that stops us from feeling and showing compassion. See, I want to skip right over the feeling bit, and the showing bit, to the doing bit. "What can I do to help this person?" That’s my natural desire, and there’s a 50-50 chance that you’re like that too, but often that’s not what they need. The biggest thing that someone who’s suffering needs is someone to stop and to be moved and impacted by their suffering. Sometimes just to understand them – to listen to them – to be with them.

I remember at a time in my life when I was suffering the biggest thing I’ve ever suffered in my 50-something years on this earth, there were some people who wept with me. That’s in fact the most powerful thing anyone’s ever done with me or for me. A truly extraordinary person is someone who shows compassion, whether or not it comes naturally.

Truth is, if we’ll just slow down a bit, take the foot off the accelerator a bit, we’re all capable of suffering with someone. We’re all capable of feeling their pain. We’re all capable of showing them that we feel their pain, and that will be one of the most transformative experiences of their lives. I can tell you that because I’ve had to learn it – because it doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m still learning it, and I’ll be learning it until the day I breathe my last breath.

That leper – I mean, I’m sure that he was absolutely over-the-moon at being healed. In fact, we know he was. Mark tells us he went racing round showing people what Jesus had done, even though Jesus had expressly asked him not to. This guy was completely, totally over-the-moon, and why wouldn’t you be? I would be; you would be. But I’m absolutely certain that in the days, weeks, months, and even years that followed, as he sat quietly by the fire in the evening at home, remembering that day in his life when Jesus reached out and touched him, that it’s the love and compassion that Jesus showed him that would bring tears to his eyes. What do you think?

Compassion is one of the things that sets a person apart. Compassion is one of the things that enables an ordinary person like you and me to live an extraordinary life. Compassion, in this day and age, truly is extraordinary.

Radical Power I wonder what the word power means to you. There’s electrical power, there’s political power, and then – then there’s another type of power. It’s a power that’s completely set apart from any other power that you and I know about, think about, or have ever experienced, and that power is the power of God. Why is it different? Because it’s greater than any power that you and I can ever experience anywhere else.

Think of the immense power in a lightning bolt. It’s so powerful, it’s seriously scary. Well, all the power in every lightning bolt that has ever bolted down since the dawn of time is just a drop in the ocean compared to the power of God. And we’re going to talk about that power right now, because it’s that very power that is the key to leading an extraordinary life.

When I was young, I learned the harder you work, the longer you work, the faster you work, the more you’ll get done, the more items you’ll be able to tick off your to-do list, and the more impact you’ll be able to have in the lives of other people. But quite a few years ago, God convicted me to in fact pray more and do less. Let me say that again. Pray more and do less.

Recently on the programme, I mentioned a young woman at my church – Lucy, who was convicted through one of the posts on my blog to do just that. And do you know what she reported? She said, "Wow! The things I do just have so much more impact now." After just a month, she said: "I’m having all these conversations with my friends about Jesus and one by one, they’re coming to faith." I just smile to myself, because that’s exactly what I found when I decided to pray more and to do less.

And do you know why it is that when we pray more and do less, we get more done? It’s because prayer unleashes the power of God, and it’s the power of God that makes for an extraordinary life on this earth because the power of God is so much greater than anything we can ever begin to imagine.

Now, engaging that power is something that Jesus didn’t seem to have a problem doing; He just did it. You and I, of course, will say: "Yeah, sure, right. What do you expect? He’s the Son of God, of course He had all the power. That’s Him; I’m just me." But let’s take a look at how Jesus tapped into that power – the power of God to do extraordinary things. Matthew 8:5:

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, appealing to Him, saying: ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed in terrible distress.'

And Jesus said to him: ‘Look, I’ll come and cure him.'

But the centurion answered: ‘Lord, I’m not worthy to have You come in under my roof, but just speak the word, and I know that my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me, and I say to one, ‘Go’ and he goes. I say to the other, ‘Come’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this’ and the slave does it.’

When Jesus heard him, He was amazed, and He said to those following Him: ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from the east and west, and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ And to the centurion, Jesus said: ‘Go. Let it be done for you according to your faith’, and the servant was healed that very hour.

Let me ask you something. Was there any uncertainty in Jesus’ mind about the power that God had given to Him? Apparently not. He just did what came before Him, and what came before Him that day was a man of faith. Importantly not one of God’s chosen people – not a Jew, but a Roman officer – one of those whose job it was to occupy and to oppress God’s chosen people, but he was a man with faith. In fact, it was faith so great that Jesus marvelled at it:

I tell you, many will come from the east and west, and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And it was this faith that caused the power of God to flow through Jesus and on into this centurion’s servant who, by the way, was nowhere to be seen! Remote-control distance healing. Pretty amazing stuff! No wonder Jesus marvelled at this man’s faith.

By way of sharp contrast, when Jesus was in His hometown of Nazareth, He was able to perform very few miracles indeed. Why? Well, let’s have a look. Mark 6:3:

Because they took offence at Jesus and didn’t believe in Him, He did hardly any deeds of power there.

In fact, Mark 6:6 says He was amazed at their unbelief. I love that. With the centurion, Jesus marvelled at his faith. But here, with God’s own people, He was amazed at their unbelief! In His own hometown.

It seems to me that one of the keys to an extraordinary life is extraordinary faith. Let me say that again. One of the keys to an extraordinary life is extraordinary faith – faith that goes against reason, in the miracle-working power of Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus never turned anyone away who came to ask Him to perform them a miracle – to pour the power of God out upon their lives. Not one.

Why do we walk around in the miry clay – feet heavy, shoulders hunched, when we have access to the indescribable power of God to get His will done on this earth? Question for you today: Would you rather that Jesus marvelled at your extraordinary faith in Him, or at your extraordinary unbelief in Him? Well, would you rather He walked away pinching Himself to make sure that the faith He’d just seen in you was for real, or that He walked away shaking His head, wondering: "How could you display such manifest unbelief in this Jesus you confess to believe?"

There are so many things in this life that we can’t do – so many mountains we can’t move. There are so many things Jesus calls us to do in His name that, for some reason, we think we have to do in our power. Sure, life’s full of mundane; full of challenges; full of hardships, but life is also full of the power of God, and it seems to me that the difference between the extraordinary and the ordinary is a bit like the difference between the centurion and one of those locals in Nazareth.

It’s Time to Go We are such masters of self-delusion, you and I. Come on, we are – well at least I am, and I know for a fact that so often the church is too. Take Jesus’ great commission to His disciples.

'All power in heaven and on earth has been given unto Me,’ says Jesus. ‘Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And remember, I’ll be with you wherever you go, even unto the end of the age’.

Matthew 28 – the very last thing Jesus said to His disciples.

Notice what He told them to do. He told them to go – "Go on, get out there, get amongst them, this is what I’ve called you to do." And here we are, two thousand years on, building massive cathedrals – still sitting in our pews, expecting them to come to us. Now that’s a little unfair. So many of God’s people and God’s ministries and God’s churches are out there amongst it – going, just like Jesus told them to.

Jesus didn’t invite us to build a country club. He called us to go out into the world and be His hands and His feet, scarred as they are, and His voice and His heart of compassion to a lost and hurting world – to the parents of that little boy in the soccer club whose marriage is on the brink; to the guy who sits on the bench in the mall alone each day, a bit on the nose, in need of a good wash.

When I was at Bible-college, I was required to go and spend two semesters with a ministry, doing practical field training. The ministry I went to as a raw, wet-behind-the-ears seminary student was Christianityworks – the very same ministry I’m involved in today. It makes me speechless to think, at a time when I knew so little, I was already writing and producing radio-programmes that would be heard by rather a lot of people.

What was the principal of the college thinking? What were my lecturers thinking and come on, what was Jesus thinking, unleashing me in my ignorance to preach the gospel? Scary thought. Surely I needed to graduate first. Surely I needed to become a much deeper theologian first. Surely, there had to be something more – well, I wonder.

Not long into His public ministry, Jesus sent His disciples out to do some field ministry training. He sent them off completely without Him, and without anything much else either, it would seem. These guys were just fishermen and tax-collectors – seriously uneducated, unqualified, unreligious dudes, with absolutely no qualifications to do what Jesus was calling them to do. I seriously wonder sometimes if Jesus really knows what He’s up to. I mean, come on! Really! Have a listen to this. Matthew 6:6:

Then He went out among the villages teaching. He called the Twelve and began to send them two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread; no bag; no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them: ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you or they refuse to hear you, as you leave shake the dust off your sandals as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, anointed people with oil who were sick, and cured them.

Now just stop and imagine that that had been you that Jesus sent out like a sheep to slaughter. He gives you the authority to cast out demons. You’ve known Him for ... mmm ... 5 minutes at this point. Are you feeling confident? ‘Oh and by the way, don’t take any food or money or a change of clothes, ‘cos you won’t need them.’ What, is He dead-set crazy – this Jesus? Maybe He’s on the same stuff as John the Baptist, that lunatic in the wilderness, was on not so long ago.

Do you see how easy it is for us to think in conventional terms? Do you see how easy it is for us to sit in comfortable pews, in a comfortable church-building, and complain about the air-conditioning that’s not working properly? See, to us, conventional equals comfortable. Conventional equals convenient. Conventional is all about enjoying the experience. In any case, we’re not that qualified yet. We need to sit in those safe, comfortable pews just a little bit longer, before we get our hands too dirty.

Let me tell you something, friend (and this is for me as much as it is for you) if we’re someone who believes in Jesus, then Jesus has given us the authority to cast out demons. He has given us the authority to minister in His love, in His compassion, in His power, to those around us. And not only has He commissioned us, He’s commanded us to go!

Conventional wisdom says that I should never have been allowed to go out back then when I was so green, and tell people about Jesus, but that’s what led me on to doing what I’m involved in now, that reaches far wider – to many more people than I ever, ever could have imagined back then. ‘Cos when God calls us, when God commissions us, His power flows around us and through us to achieve what He always planned to achieve.

It was the same with those early disciples. Conventional wisdom says they should never have been sent out there on their own, but they weren’t on their own. The power and the presence of Christ was with them and around them, and ahead of them and behind them, through the presence of the Holy Spirit. And as a result, they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, they anointed many with oil who were sick, and cured them.

You know what I get out of this? Greatness is just about going. Just get up and go – go where Jesus calls you to go. Go where Jesus leads you to go. Just take the first few steps, as whacky and as weird as it may seem to you, because when He gives us the authority to do what He’s called us to do, watch out! His authority gives us the power to prevail in what He’s called us to do.

There are many comfortable, suburban, pew-sitting Christians, who will live out their very ordinary existence in that church. Then, there are those crazy disciples who dare to go – who dare to accept the authority given to them; who dare to live out a truly extraordinary life.

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There’s an old proverb – never put things off until tomorrow, that you can do today. Jesus was a master at that. In just three and a half years, He turned the world completely upside down.

A Team Player Other people can be such a pain in the neck, have you noticed that? I don’t mean you I mean other people. It’s always those other people isn‘t it? Its never you its never me we always blame someone else. They’re the one that’s being difficult; they’re the one that’s got it so wrong again! We’re so full of ourselves aren’t we?

We imagine you and I, that we’re indispensable, that no one else can do it as well as you and I can. If you want a job done right, you just have to do it yourself, and to some extent that is true other people are a pain in the neck sometimes and deep down we’ll even admit that sometimes … ahh yeah ok, sometimes, yeah sometimes it is me. Sometimes it is you, and all the more reason then just do it then yourself! It’s so much easier without the other people and ok you don’t get quite as much done but there are far fewer headaches.

Now we don’t think like that all the time, but working with other people while it can be rewarding it can also be challenging, we’re looking this week at how to live an extraordinary life. We’re doing that by following Jesus around a bit like one of those twelve disciples, and watching Him, listening to Him, learning from Him, about how He lived His extraordinary life.

On our last program we saw that the very first thing He did in His public ministry was to submit to God through baptism. One of the next things He did was to build a team. He was baptised, He suffered in the wilderness and then He began proclaiming the Good News: "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near."

Well that’s all well and good, but the reason that there was no telly evangelists back then is that there were no tellies, there was no newspapers, there was no radio, there was no T.V, no internet, no mass medium of any sort. In fact, there weren’t even sound systems or bull horns to speak to a large crowd! Nothing. Just Jesus, this carpenters son from Nazareth, the self styled Messiah who’d come to save the world. His ministry was about walking the dusty highways and byways of first century Israel and building a following. That was the reality and to do that He needed some help.

So here it is, here is what He did. Mathew chapter 4, beginning at verse 18:

As He walked by the sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers Simon who is also called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting their nets into the sea for they were fishermen. And He said to them, look follow me and I’ll make you fishers of people. Immediately they left their nets and they followed Him. As He went from there He saw two other brothers James the son of Zeberdee and his brother John in the boat with their father Zeberdee mending their nets. And He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and they followed Jesus.

Now this was totally extraordinary in two regards. Firstly the rabbi went and called His followers, generally this was completely the other way around. You see some Rabbi’s were just a bit more prestigious than others, so young men only men, would try and climb the social ladder by following the highest pegged Rabbi in the social scale that they possibly could.

So it’s a bit like trying to get into Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard to study a PHD. They’re far more prestigious establishments than where I studied, you have to apply lots do only a few get in. That’s how it was with the most recognised of Rabbi’s. Whole families would caught them to try and leverage their social network to try and get their sons in as follows, as disciples – that’s what they were called – of the most prestigious Rabbi, because that would advance their prospects.

First extraordinary thing about Jesus team building approach was that He called disciples to follow Him, instead of the other way around where the disciples applied for kind of like an apprenticeship with him. And secondly, He went for fishermen to start with. Salt of the earth guys to be sure but very working class, very down the social order, very well … you know, fishermen. Smelly, not that educated, certainly not that well regarded and they came not from Judea, not from Jerusalem but from Galilee like Jesus. Really?!

You can just see how the religious establishment in Jerusalem the chaps, the chaps trust, would have looked down their nose at these uneducated bumpkins. I caught the bus the other day and ran into a man who I’d known years before so I sat next to him and for the next 20 minutes or so he told me about all the important people he’d been having dinner with, he was just about to head off to the US to attend Harvard, he’d just had this well known Politian stay at his place … it went on and on and on. He didn’t ask me about me, once! So I didn’t offer.

Sometimes I think that we think that a team if you’re going to have one at all has to be full of classy people: people who have their act together. People who are well known, well regarded, people who are rung or three above us on the social ladder. A few rungs higher, so that by associating with them we can climb up a bit further, but not too far away that they’re out of reach.

Sometimes I think that we think that we have to go and chase after people and grovel to them and follow them, surround ourselves with winners not losers. Jesus turned that whole thing completely on its head. He didn’t have people grovel to Him, He went and chose His team. He surrounded Himself with real salt of the earth people, almost deliberately picking the anti-establishment team. Tax collectors to sinners, the lot of them!

See Jesus didn’t go out there and pick the obviously "A" Team, He built an "A" Team. And what makes the Jesus model of team selection and team building so amazing is that this rag tag team of uneducated bumpkins founded what we today call the church, to which a couple of billion people still belong two thousand years on!

Now that’s an extraordinary life. Did having those twelve disciples have it’s moments? Absolutely! Remember once His disciples failed to heal a boy and Jesus exclaimed “how long must I be with this faithless and perverse generation?” sure it was frustrating! Sure these twelve guys required Jesus to pour Himself into them, Sure one of them even betrayed him. But Jesus life was made all the more extraordinary by this down to earth heart desire to part off to lead to disciple a team, no matter what it cost Him.

His life lives on still today through the Church all because He was passionate about the team, passionate about a community. Sounds like the makings of an extraordinary life doesn’t it? What do you think?

A Job to Do Now not only was Jesus a team player, but He was focused. He new He had a job to do, and that’s what we’re going to look at next. A great part of that was preaching and teaching. So, how do you kick off a career as a preacher? That was the challenge for Jesus. He was an absolute unknown. He was poor, not rich. He came from rural not very upmarket Nazareth, not from religion central Jerusalem. He was a carpenter, not a highly qualified Rabbi. He had all those rumours of an illegitimate birth hanging over His head from His childhood. And then there was the stigma of Herod killing all those innocent children under two, because of Jesus.

See Jesus had a lot to contend with, and He had three and a half years to tell the world the Good News, to build a team that would go on to become the foundation the church for several millennia and to die and to rise again for you and me.

Now, when you think about it that’s a pretty tall order and a pretty short period of time. So how do you go about from being an unknown to becoming a respected teacher? Well oddly enough in my own little way, that’s something of a journey I’ve been on and I can tell ya … it ain’t easy! It involves a lot of hard work and a lot, I mean, a tonne of help and anointing and provision and empowerment by God. So let’s have a look at how Jesus went about it. Mathew chapter 4, beginning at verse 17:

From that time Jesus began to proclaim ‘Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near!’ Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So His fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought to Him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases, and pains and demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics He cured them all! And great crowds followed Him from Galilee to the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and even from beyond the Jordan.

So, how does Jesus do it? Well to put it bluntly, He hit’s the road. He puts himself out there. He starts to proclaim to declare to preach what was he preaching, what was he declaring? Anyone who’s a Christian would have heard these words over and over again so that won’t be anything new. "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near."

But to the people listening, what He was preaching and proclaiming and heralding and saying and exhorting was outrageously radical! Here they were in this back water of the Roman Empire, this nowheresville if I can call it that, miles and light-years away from the seat of power in Rome. These people where less than pawns in the emporia’s chess game I mean had it suited him he could have whipped them all out and turned their precious farm land into a car park and a shopping mall! I mean that was the reality.

They’d been living this same subsistence life, just surviving boring insignificant little lives somehow believing that somehow because they were God’s chosen people, maybe one day He’d send another King like David to set them free or if not when they died they might go to a better life although the Sadducees who were the religious leaders and the social elites, they didn’t believe that. So who could be certain that if you were one of those poor uneducated farmers, or carpenters living there in bumpkins-ville Galilee and along comes this lunatic. Okay He was a very articulate lunatic and He starts crying out Repent! Just like that John the Baptist guy and look what happened to him! I mean, they chopped his head off!

Repent. What does that mean? it means change your mind. It means turn around, it means stop living the way you’re living. When you think about it that’s just what the prophets of old had been telling Gods chosen people but other than perhaps John the Baptist, God hadn’t sent one of them for 300-400 years! "Repent! The Kingdom of God has come near."

Hang on a minute. God’s in the temple over there in Jerusalem how could He possibly come near to us in Galilee? I mean only the high priest gets to go into the Holy of Holies and then only once a year and that’s a big deal on the Yom Kippur on the Day of Atonement. How can the Kingdom of God possibly have come near to us? Here in Galilee? Impossible. This was an outrageous message and yet they listened. He got their attention. He was pulling massive crowds. Why? Because not only was He proclaiming good albeit unsettling and confusing news, He was healing every disease so they brought their sick and lame from far and wide.

See the thing that got Him noticed was the power of God. God’s anointing on His ministry. Without that there’s no way He could have done what He did, and certainly not in such a short period of time - three and a half years - so what are you and I learn about Jesus, something that made His life extraordinary? He left the confines of His safe little carpenters shop in Nazareth, He hit the dusty road and went and did what God had called Him to do and what God had anointed Him to do. Was it safe? No! It got Him killed in fact. He always knew that’s how it would turn out. But He did it anyway. I saw a great Tweet the other day and it said this:

Many Christians worship on the alter of safety before they ask, ‘is this the will of God?’ They’ll ask, ‘is it safe?’

You and I aren’t called to precisely what Jesus was called to do in precisely the same way and yet in our own ways according to the gifts and the abilities and the resources that God’s given us, according to the place He’s put us in, we’re called to do exactly that. To get out of the safe comfort zone our own comfortable little carpenters shop whatever that is, and hit the track Jack, and go and tell people about Jesus.

And maybe you’re a builder or an accountant or a cleaner or a counsellor or a web developer or what are you? Well we’re using that. You and I are called to get out into this dangerous place and go and tell people the Good News. Not necessarily as preachers, perhaps a service as encouragers, as people who pull along side someone and proclaim Christ not with our mouths necessarily but with our hearts, with our hands, and with our lives.

What sort of life would Jesus have lived had He stayed silent in the confines of the carpenters shop in Nazareth, extraordinary? I don’t think so.

Gift Based Ministry Over these past few programs we’ve seen that Jesus overcame His past which involved a pretty rocky start in life, we’ve seen that He drew a lot of His power from that fact that He humbled Himself and submitted Himself to His father in Heaven. We’ve seen that despite the initial cost to Him, He was a real team player and it’s the team He built that ended up impacting this world. And we saw how focused He was on mission and objectives. Some great insights there, if you missed any of them I’ll share with you at the end of today’s program how you can catch them again online.

But we’re going to finish off today’s message with an observation about how Jesus used His gifts to have an impact, because today in particular we’re seeing how He went about getting the job done, being that team player being focused on His mission and right now as we’re about to see, by using His gifts and abilities in the most extraordinary way. Lets pick up the story again, Mathew chapter 4, verses 23 - 25:

Jesus went through Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people so His fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought to Him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases, and pains and demoniacs and epileptics and paralytics, and he cured them. Great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis Jerusalem, Judea and from even beyond the Jordan.

Now you’re sitting there thinking, well, I don’t have the power to heal people, I don’t have the power to cast out demons, if I did I guess great crowds would follow me too! But I don’t, so they won’t. So Berni, what are you banging on about here? Am I right? Sure I am! We all think that. But let me tell you what I think are the two most powerful, most powerful words in that passage. And they’re not the words about curing every disease, every sickness; they’re not about His fame spreading or great crowds following Him. You want to know what I think the two most powerful words in the passage are? I think that they’re the first two words … "Jesus went”.

And the reason they’re so powerful is that unless He’d gone, unless He’d gotten up off the sofa, left His comfortable safe little carpenters shop and gone out throughout Galilee which by the way was the immediate surrounding area or region in which He lived, then none of what He did would have been done! And none of what He achieved would have been achieved! None of these people would have been healed, God wouldn’t’ have revealed Himself and it’s pretty certain you and I today, 2000 years on wouldn’t be talking about this Jesus. Would you agree?

It all happened because Jesus went. And would you please notice the other thing about this with me, He didn’t go to some far flung remote impossible place to start with. He didn’t’ even go up to Jerusalem in the beginning, He started in His own home region. Sometimes I think, that we think that in order to do something worthwhile for God we kind of have to set sail and go to the farthest place on this Earth.

Now sure, some people are called to do just that and we call them Missionaries but far more people are called to use their gifts, their gifts and abilities that God’s given them right in the place where they live, where they work where they socialise. It’s about just taking whatever we have in our hands and using it to benefit others.

I know some people who sit there and say, "Well how come God doesn’t use me to have an impact in other peoples lives?’ In my experience is that God is always up to something and if we’re not involved its probably a whole bunch more about us not going that God not doing.

There’s a great guy who works in Christian media in the UK is name is David Letterhue. He’s just one of those good guys, recently he tweets this:

The winds of God are always blowing, but you need to set the sails.

It’s about hoisting our sails, its about throwing our hat in the ring, its about getting up off the sofa and going and just using what we have to hand. It can be as simple as knowing that your neighbours just out of hospital and fronting up with a meal and taking it over to their house. It can be as simple as offering to have a cup of coffee with someone at work who’s looking a bit down and distracted.

Ok maybe, God hasn’t’ given us the gift of healing the way He did to Jesus, but when we take stock of the gifts and abilities and natural strengths and motivations and resources that we actually do have, we start to realise how much God really has given us.

I was sharing this story of the ministry of Christianity Works, this ministry that I work in producing these very radio programs with a group of business people just the other day. It’s an amazing story, from nothing to a weekly audience of around, well, over 10 million. They were impressed. Hey I’m totally gob smacked every time I think about it or tell people about it! But my point to them is always this: we have a massive team let me see … eight people world wide, a whole organisation plus a handful of dedicated volunteers. None of us, none of us is anything very special at all!

We just got together, we just each threw out our gifts in the ring, our abilities and our resources, we just believe that God was calling us and there’s something. We took some financial leaps of faith I have to tell you, other people might call them risks, and off we went. Did we have a strategic plan? … oh well I guess … but we never imagined that God would do what He’s done. We never dreamed for a moment that we’d be sharing the Good News of Jesus with so many people around the globe. The numbers and all the glory and the impact belong to God, because He did it, He’s still doing it, not us. We just kind of figured that if Jesus went, well maybe we could follow along after Him? Maybe we could step out of our comfort zones and go too?

So let me ask you, in your life, right where you live and where you work today, what are the opportunities, who are the people that you can go to with a helping hand? With your natural abilities and motivations and make a positive impact in their lives?

So exactly what are you waiting for?

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Life is no dress rehearsal. You blink, and it’s gone. So … it makes sense to live an extraordinary life. Okay … but how? Where do you start? How do you turn things around?

Why We Need A Mentor We’re going to kick off something really exciting today on the program. Over the coming few weeks we’re going to be looking at how to live an absolutely extraordinary life. I mean, we all wish we could. Some people are, some people … well, and some people not so much right? But just stop and think about this for a minute, what if you and I could live a totally outrageously extraordinary life, I mean a life that really impacts other peoples lives for the right reasons, instead of the wrong ones?

A life that people will remember with a fondness and a gratitude, the sort of life that will have people queuing to deliver our eulogy at our funerals. And I know there are one or two people listening to me rabbitting on, thinking to themselves, "Yeah well that would be nice but …" you see there is always the butt.

Well here is my challenge. No if’s, no butts, do you want to live an extraordinary life, yes or no? If the answer is yes then lets have a chat huh? So what stops us from leading and extraordinary life?

We can blame all sorts of things. We can blame our circumstances, we can blame our parents, our DNA, our personality type. The place or family or the time that we were born into and grew up in, the bad things that happened along the way and ok, perhaps just maybe a few of the mistakes we’ve made.

But who we are, the abilities the limitations we’ve been given. How tall we are, the colour of our hair and our skin, how smart we are or aren’t, all of those things are things we just can’t change. I can’t change who I am, you can’t change who you are, but what we can do is make the most of what we’ve been given. The problem is with a lot of the self help rhetoric about the place, a lot of the motivational speakers, a lot of that genre of stuff is they tell you that you can be whoever you want to be; you can do whatever you want to do; you can have whatever you want to have. And my answer to that is … no you can’t! it’s just not true.

I mean, I’d love to be a great artist but I can’t draw or paint for nuts. I’d love to be a great photographer, but I just I just don’t have the eye for it. I’d love to be a basketball player but I’m just too short. I’d love to be … Do you get it? It doesn’t matter how positively I think, how hard I strive or how focused I am, I am never ever, ever going to be tall enough to be a great basketball player. Forget the fact I’m just getting a little old for that now anyway.

So its not about being, doing, or having anything our little heart desires that’s fairy land stuff. Its all about being realistic about who we are, what we’re capable of and saying to ourselves, you know something? I want to make my life count, given the obvious constraints and we all have them even though they’re different. I want my life to count. I want my life to make a positive difference in this world. Because if it’s not, then we’re living a sort of a meaningless existence an unfulfilling existence. I’ll tell you want I think is the biggest reason that most people don’t live lives that count its because we model ourselves on the wrong principles, the wrong beliefs and the wrong behaviours.

We go to school, we learn how to read and write and do arithmetic but they don’t seem to be any formal school to teach us life and how to live. How to be effective, how to be gracious. That bit of leaning, the most important bit of learning when you think about it, is pretty much left to chance in some cultures but not so much in others. And so we pick things up by watching our parents and mimicking them.

Some of that is good, some of it’s not. Which is why bad traits like anger and abuse get handed down from one generation to the next. We watch our teachers, we pick up things in the school yard and on television and on adverting billboards and somehow that all goes in the blender and our pops you. Out pops me. Good, bad and sometimes ugly.

I mean, that’s about it isn’t it? And when you look at it that way, its just a little bit crazy and no wonder we’re not living lives that count, lives that positive difference in this world. We’ve picked up some good habits and lots of bad habits. Some good attitudes but lots of wrong ones too. And the bad stuff we’ve picked up, that stuff you might hear Christians talk about and calling it sin, that bad stuff holds us back from really realising our potential to do good. Our potential to make a difference our potential to experience that satisfaction of using who we are and what we have to help other people.

So what’s the answer? Do we need a classroom and teachers and a curriculum on how to be the best person we can possibly be? You know, maybe. But probably in small doses. In a sense that’s what these programs are about. But you know that old Chinese proverb:

Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.

Its exactly what Jesus does and He still does with his disciples.

Consider those first Twelve Disciples, they hung out with Him for about three and a half years. He taught them, He listened to them, He dealt with some of their wrong attitudes, He admonished them, He encouraged them, and above all He involved them. They got to watch Him to see how He responded and reacted, what He said, when He was kind and gentle, when He was tough as nails, when He protested, when He was silent.

They got to model themselves on Jesus by being involved in His ministry. Now here’s and idea, do you think what if instead of soaking it all up without thinking, what if instead of assimilating selfishness and loneliness and all that stuff from our culture, what if we deliberately followed Jesus around for a while and watched Him and listened to Him and let Him guild us, involve us, teach us, disciple us. Hey, that’d be cool!

Well my friend that is exactly what we’re going to be doing on the program over these next few weeks. See often we’ll take on little things that Jesus said and did and we’ll study it and we’ll learn from it and we’ll move on, but what if we took a look at His life and soaked it in on the basis there is simply no better role model on any planet in any galaxy in any universe than Jesus. What if we looked at some of the really familiar stories perhaps from a different angle, from a slightly different perspective as a student looking to his or her mentor? That’d be cool.

And you know the amazing thing that happens when we do that? Is that all of a sudden Jesus starts involving us in His work. He starts discipling us, He starts teaching us and speaking to us thought what’s going on in our lives. Because this Jesus isn’t dead He’s alive and anyone, anyone who would believe in Him, would follow after Him, to that person He sends His holy spirit to be our counsellor our advocate, our guide, our personal life coach.

Want to know how to live an extraordinary life? Well lets take a look at Jesus.

A Rocky Start In Life Now there are plenty of people in this world who want to blame the past for where they are today. You may want to say that sounds a bit harsh. You may have had a hard start in life yourself. Perhaps you were born into a very humble household, or you had a difficult family environment, or maybe like my parents you had to select through a war or two. Perhaps you lost your parents when you were really young.

Someone who is listening today may have been abused. Another person may suffer from depression, yet another has gone through divorce. None of those things are pleasant. None of those things are things we’d wish on ourselves or on our worst enemy for that matter.

What is it in your life, what circumstance, what relationship, what start in life did some damage to you along the way, huh? You know in an instant that thing that I’m talking about. So let me ask you this, to what extent are you still using that as an excuse today not to be living an extraordinary life?

We Australian tend to be fairly blunt and direct, so I’m asking you a blunt and direct question … not to ruffle your feathers so much but to force each one of us to face facts. And the fact is, that the majority of people walking around on planet earth today has something in their past that’s ruining their present and robbing them of their future.

Now, lets turn back to Jesus. If you and I could model our lives on Him, if you and I could adopt Him as our life coach and mentor, if we could learn to live a life that looks a whole like Jesus, well man-o-man imagine what a life would that be?

So what are we doing talking about our past, and then about Jesus? Because this whole thing about the past ruining our lives is one of the greatest scourges and epidemics of our society today. I mean, billions of people are being ruined because people let their past rob them of their present and there future.

What do we learn through Jesus on that? What was His past? What was His start in life? What did that look like and how did He handle it?

Well I guess that most people know the story, Jesus had a rather rocky start in this world. Mary fell pregnant out of wedlock … according to her the Holy spirit did it. Well, yeah right, who would believe that?! Then they had a long painful journey in her last weeks of pregnancy from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea, then to top it off the travel agent lost their hotel booking and they had to bunk outside in a shed with the sheep and the goats and the cows. Where the very first breath of air that the little baby Jesus took was filled with a stench of cow dung and sheep urine.

But there was something else in His past. Something much worst than that that could have left a horrible mental scar and marred him and hamstrung him for life. Have a listen to this Mathew chapter 2, starting at verse 13:

Now after they’d left an angel of the Lord appear to Joseph in a dream and said ‘Get up, take the child and his Mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.’ So Joseph got up and took the child and his Mother by night and went to Egypt and remained there until death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken about through the Lord through the profit, out of Egypt I have called my son.

When Herod saw he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated! He sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under according to the time that he had learnt from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the profit Jeremiah that a voice was heard in Ramah. Wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because they are no more.

So there you have it. Infant genocide. Ethnic cleansing. All on account of Jesus. You don’t think he knew about that when He was growing up? You don’t’ think people blamed him? You don’t think this played on His mind and tore at His heart? You don’t think that this one thing could have totally derailed Him from living his extraordinary life?

See we don’t often think about this, but this was in Jesus’ past. This was on Jesus heart. This could have completely robbed him of His extraordinary life! But instead He declared, let us go onto the neighbouring towns so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came to do. Jesus was totally focused on His mission, on what God had sent Him to do.

Now, I’m no physiologist, but I have friends who are. From them I know how complex and difficult it can be to let go of things in your past, things that are holding you back. Hey, and not just from the physiologist, I know from my own experience how difficult it can be to let go of the past. So here are my three essentials for letting go. For stopping the past from ruining your present and robbing you from a future.

First, decide to change. When I went through a major loss in my life, there was a time a mourning and grief, hey, that’s natural that’s normal. But there comes a point when you just have to decide that the status quo isn’t an option. It is time to move on. It is time to lay a hold of the extraordinary life that God has planned for you. Some people today need to hear that and they need to take that decision today.

The second essential is, believing what God says and He says that if anyone is in Chris they are a completely new creation, all of the old things have past away. Look, everything, and I mean everything is new. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17. In other words, your faith in Jesus according to God is meant to set you completely free from the past. Now that’s worth believing.

And thirdly, for those people who have hurt me, for those people who have caused the loss in the first place … can I tell you that was the single most important thing for me. I’ve prayed constantly and I still do, that the Lord will bless them and they too would find Jesus. Praying for your enemies, blessing those who curse you, is what Jesus taught us to do. And now, I’m starting to live out that extraordinary life that God planed for me. So how about you? Jesus didn’t let the past hold him back, and neither should we. Its time for you to live that extraordinary life that He planned for you.

A Life Of Submission Well what’s the next thing that we discover by looking at Jesus about living an extraordinary life, well you may not like it but here it is. Jesus submitted to authority. Ah, yuck really!? You see, we Australians in particular are known around the world for our lack of respect for authority, its kind of in the DNA of our culture to flaunt it, to rebel against it, to poke fun at it.

A good friend of mine, in fact he is my mentor Graeme, he was an officer in the Australian Army during the Vietnam War and the lads the Aussies that were over there, they decided that tonight was going to be party night. No particular reason, they just decided they wanted to let their hair down and have a good night. So the Australian’s being Australians the soldiers decided to declare that day would be a celebration of Ho Chi Mien’s birthday.

It’s not that politically correct, but if you’re an Australian you’ll smile, you’ll get it. It taps right into this innate desire we have as we would say to ‘take the Mickey’ out of things. Ho Chi Mien was of course the head of the North Vietnamese independence movement who our lads and the Americans and the South Vietnamese were fighting against.

So they drove around to the different units, declaring that today was Ho Chi Mien’s birthday, but (and Graeme loves telling this story) when they arrived at the American’s unit and rather loudly and boisterously as we Australian’s do, announced Ho Chi Mien’s birthday party was happening tonight back at the Australian compound, well, there was a blank look on the America’s face, they just didn’t get the humour. What planet are these Australians on?

Why was there such a disconnect? Because by and large, American’s are a patriotic bunch. They believe in truth and justice and the American way sorry to borrow that from Superman. And they respect their leaders, even though they disagree with them which they can do and do do in their democracy but they tend to respect authority in a way that Australian’s don’t.

But whichever culture we come from, however much we do naturally respect authority deep down I mean really deep down most of us struggle with authority from time to time. You see authority is always fine until to disagree with a person in authority. I mean its fine having a boss at work, until you want to go in this direction when she wants to go in that direction and so we have our little silent protest. We resist, we pout, we undermine, we backstab and sometimes it breaks out into open warfare. Does that sound vaguely familiar?

Because our base position is "I’m right and she’s wrong". I mean I’m always right, it’s my way or the highway. Now we have a problem. We struggle, we complain, we become de-motivated, so what can Jesus’ life teach us about the importance authority in living out an extraordinary life? Well here’s a little vignette, a short segment of Jesus life on this Earth and it speaks into this very thing. Have a listen. Mathew chapter 3, beginning at verse 13:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptised by him. John would have prevented him by saying, ‘Hang on I need to be baptised by you, and you’re coming to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so for now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ So John consented.

Now these days, we kind of understand what baptism is. It’s an outward sign of that we’ve died to self and that we’ve risen to Christ. It’s a public expression or our faith in Jesus. But back then the only people who were baptised where proselytes. These were people who weren’t born as Israelites – God’s chosen nation – but who subsequently put their faith in the God of Israel. It was a sign that even though they weren’t Jewish by birth, they had become one of God’s people through faith in Him and that they would, wait for this, they would obey the Law of Moses. That was the key. And the reason that John the Baptist had been out in the wilderness baptising Jews was a sign of repentance of turning away from their sins and going back to God, submitting to back under the Law of God. Get it?

So John was right to protest. "Hang on Jesus, what are you doing? You’re the Messiah, You’re Him! What am I doing baptising you for crying out loud? If anything, it should be the other way around." And Jesus answered, "Let it be so for now. For it is proper in this way to fulfil all righteousness." And Jesus had come to die for us, the perfect sacrifice, so that you and I could become the perfect righteousness of God. So that you and I when we put our faith in Jesus, have a complete perfect and forever right standing before God.

Why did Jesus submit to John’s baptism, the baptism of repentance, even though as the one man who had never ever, ever sinned He had nothing to repent from? This is why. Because this was the single most public, most visible thing that He could do to declare His submission to God through the Law of Moses. He wanted the world to know that He, although He was the son of God, although He had never once sinned, fully submitted, fully placed himself under the authority of the Word of God. It was the very first step He took in His public ministry. So how did His Dad in Heaven react? What was God’s response? Mathew chapter 3, beginning at verse 16:

And when Jesus had been baptised, just as He came up from the water, suddenly the Heavens were opened up to Him and He saw the spirit of God descending down upon him like a Dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’

What an endorsement. I mean, imagine for a minute that you and I were to live for that? For God’s endorsement. To please Him, to delight him by putting our lives under His mighty hand. By heading His voice. By loving Him. By obeying him. Imagine if that’s the first thing that we did, the very first thing before stepping out into what God has planned for us?

Just imagine the impact our lives would have? Its not such a bad start to have an extraordinary life.

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The reason that so many people who believe in Jesus are struggling is, quite frankly, because they’re not men and women of God’s Word. They don’t take God’s Word seriously. Well, today, that’s something we need to deal with, because there is such an incredible blessing waiting for you, in God’s Word!

God's Work Takes Time Waiting for something that you really want, waiting and waiting and waiting, is incredibly hard. Particularly if, during that waiting, you’re enduring some kind of hardship. Some sort of suffering. Something that you’ve been asking God for, again and again, for Him to deal with. To bring a resolution to the problem, and end your suffering.

You’ve no doubt been in places where sometimes, it doesn’t seem as though a resolution, an end, is even possible. How long do I have to wait?

Some people find it surprising that the Bible actually deals with that very question. It contains the heart cries of people who are exactly in that position. Like this particular guy, Psalm 119, verses 84 to 88:

How long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me? The insolent have dug pitfalls for me; they do not live according to your law. All your commandments are sure; they persecute me with falsehood; help me! They have almost made an end of me on the earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts. In your steadfast love give me life, that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth.

Hmm, it seems like this man is in fear of life itself. We never find out who "they" are, but they are certainly his enemies and they are certainly after his life. It doesn’t get any worse than that. And in that place, it’s easy to shake your fist at God, to be bitter and resentful of God, because he’s not showing up.

Yet notice how this man asks the question: How long must your servant endure? The psalmist remains God’s servant, even when his life is being threatened. This isn’t some fairy-tale. It’s a real man, praying to a real God about the injustice and the danger that he’s facing. And despite those things, he remains faithful to God. He continues to trust God – all your commandments are sure – and he’s not swayed or drawn down to the level of the evil that’s pursuing him.

Even though ‘they’ have almost made an end of him on this earth, he has not forsaken God’s precepts. And he pleads his life into God’s hands, so that when this stuff ends, when his suffering ends, he can continue to do good on this earth. That’s powerful stuff!

If you’re suffering right now, I don’t know when or how your suffering will end. I don’t know how long you still have to endure.

But I know this: In the middle of your suffering, in the middle of even the most dangerous and life-threatening of circumstances, you can choose to remain God’s servant, to do good, to stay in God’s Word and to plead your case, even your life, into God’s hands. In fact that’s the very thing that He wants you to do. Because His love for you reaches to the heavens. His faithfulness to the skies.

When a storm blows in on your life, you need to know the truth about God. You need to know, not just in your head, but in your heart and in your experience. As you look back on your life, what are some of the amazing things that God has already done for you.

I remember, even before I knew God, when I was a three packet a day smoker, He took me to a place, where I watched someone die of lung cancer. I haven’t smoked a single cigarette since and that was over thirty-four years ago. I was set free from a serious addiction in that instant.

God’s hand is on our lives even when we have absolutely no idea. And when we know His love and His faithfulness like that, in our hearts and in our experience, we can, like the psalmist, proclaim:

Forever, O LORD, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast. By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. (Psalm 119 verses 89 to 92)

When the whole earth shakes and trembles the Word of God is still firmly fixed in the heavens. God’s Word is unshakeable and immovable. When generations pass, as they do, His faithfulness endures. That’s what I call a rock-solid foundation. And it’s that sort of foundation that you and I need in our lives to withstand all the challenges and the storms and the wilderness experiences.

The reason I open my Bible most mornings is because that’s where I choose for my foundations to be. I, like you, have things that come along to rock me and to shake me. Things that could easily blow me over.

I so get it when the psalmist says there, if God’s law, God’s Word, hadn’t been his delight, he would have perished in his affliction.

Let me make it plain and clear. Unmistakable. In God’s Word is your refuge, in God’s Word is your strength. When you sit and listen to Him speaking into your heart, something happens to change you in the most incredible way. I know … I know that many people struggle hugely to get into God’s Word, either because they think that they don’t have time, or they imagine that it’s too difficult.

But take just that one Scripture, Psalm 119, verses 89 to 92, just spend some time in those three verses in the middle of your affliction and I guarantee you that the Holy Spirit will show up. I guarantee you that God will take that Word of His and breathe courage into your heart and life into your weary bones. Because that’s what He does and that’s what He wants to do.

A Powerful Word I remember back in the days when I worked as a consultant in the corporate world, the brutality of office politics would never cease to amaze me.

And even if you’re not travelling through a patch at the moment, where you don’t seem to have any human enemies, you can be absolutely certain that your enemy the devil is on your case. Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12:

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

And your enemy the devil is a pretty crafty individual. He’s seen it all before. He’s been around the block quite a few times more than you and me, and he knows how to strike you at your weakest point. He knows how to push your buttons. He knows how to lead you astray. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8:

Be sober-minded and watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Sensational! Now, I’m not the sort of person that goes looking for a demon under every sofa and bed, but there is a spiritual dimension and there is a physical dimension. We live and exist in both places and we have enemies, seen and unseen, in both dimensions.

So, would you like to be wiser than your enemies? Here’s what God has to say – Psalm 119 verses 97 to 101 – have a listen:

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word.

So there you have the psalmist praying, talking to God. And he’s saying how much he loves God’s Word, what today we call the Bible. Of course back then, he only had the first five books of the Bible, the law as it's called, because the rest of it hadn’t been written yet.

But why does he love God’s Word? Because God’s commandments make him wiser than all his enemies. They give him more understanding and insight into complex and difficult issues, even more so than his teachers – because he thinks about what God has to say.

Hey, God wants that for you too. He wants to impart His wisdom to you too. He wants to make sure that you are smarter, that you have more insight than your enemies, by speaking His wisdom into your heart. And it’s all right there, in the Bible, ready and waiting!

And it’s never too late. You’re never too old to receive the wisdom of God into your heart.

I want to tell you about a friend of mine, Neil. He’s well into his eighties and he’s lived, shall we say, a pretty colourful life. After a recent operation his body is a bit frail now, but his mind and his wit are as sharp as ever.

Recently, he decided it was time he had a Bible. Here’s how it happened. He’s been coming along to church for years. You know how it is, his wife had been dragging him along. At first he kicked and screamed and he didn’t want to come. But after a few years, it became a bit of a habit.

So, he rushes up to me after a service a few months back and says, “Berni I need your help. I’ve decided you’re right. I need to start reading the Bible. Can you help me buy one?”

Wow, that got me a bit excited, so I did. I ordered a study Bible for him online a few months ago in a contemporary English translation. At which point I promptly forgot about it.

Just the other Sunday, before the service, Neil grabs my hand and says, “It’s changed me you know, that book I’ve been reading.”

Me, I’ve completely forgotten, so I stupidly asked him, “Which book?”

A little surprised he answers, “Well, the Bible of course.” Ding, I remembered.

But there was a light in his eyes. A spark in his voice. He was excited about it, because he realised that through the Bible, God had been speaking to him in a deep, personal, intimate way. God was digging around inside this old man’s heart and unearthing things that had been binding him up and holding him back for decades.

As I watched Neil and listened to the genuine enthusiasm in his voice, it brought such an incredible sense of joy to my heart. Here was a man who had discovered the power of God’s Word. And it reminded me of this beautiful Scripture – Psalm 119 verse 103:

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

We’re genetically programmed to like sugar, because it’s a ready source of energy. Of course these days sugar is in everything and it’s killing us. But back when that Psalm was written, sugar was a rarity. Either you had to be next to a fruit tree in season, or you had to fight the bees for their honey, which was always going to be mildly problematic.

So you can imagine the psalmist talking here about this rare, exquisite, sweet thing called honey. And he’s saying: “God your Word is like honey, only sweeter, only better. I love your Word more than honey.”

Could I ask you plainly: Is that a discovery that, like the psalmist, like Neil, you’ve made in your heart? Because it’s a discovery that’s ready and waiting for you right now. A discovery that’s going to light up your world in a way that’s difficult to imagine.

Darkness is a fact of life. Every night the sun goes down, every morning it comes up again. Light, darkness, light, darkness. It’s an inexorable cycle. And the whole point about darkness is that you can’t see.

I mean, sight is arguably one of the most important of our five senses. If you don’t believe me, blindfold yourself for 24 hours and just see how you get on. So when darkness creeps in on our lives, as it does from time to time, the problem we have is that we can’t see through it.

Think back to the last dark patch that you went through in your life. You were sad, you were broken, you were hurt, you were alone, whatever it was. I’m sure you remember it as though it was yesterday. Hey, it could even be that today is a dark day for you.

So let me ask you, how well did you make decisions in those dark times? Should I go this way, should I go that way? Should I choose this, or let it pass? Should I choose that, or keep away from it because it’s going to hurt me, or because it’s not God’s best for me? It’s not easy is it?

Even when things don’t seem all that dark, the truth is that we’re always making decisions with incomplete information. You and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. You and I don’t know what other people are thinking and how they’re going to react. You and I don’t know what God’s thinking and what His plans are.

But He does want to tell us. He does want to shed light on the situation for us. He does want to guide our steps. And He does that through His Word. Psalm 119 verses 104 and 105:

Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

In other words, when you read the Bible you get God’s understanding of what’s going on and you don’t want to make the wrong decision. God’s Word lights up your heart. It becomes, in a very real sense, a lamp for your feet, to help you take the next step and the next one after that. And a light to your path, to help you look up and see ahead.

It’s with that light that God wants to light up your heart. It’s that light that God wants to throw out at your feet now, to help you take that next step. It’s that light that God wants to shine on the path ahead, to give you some sense of where it’s going.

No, He probably won’t give you the whole picture, but enough to get you heading in the right direction. He wants to do that for you, right now.

Let’s Get Things Straight Here Okay, today it’s time to call a spade a spade.

Fact: Most of the people who say that they believe in Jesus, don’t read the Bible on a regular basis.

Fact: Most of the people who say they believe in Jesus, when push comes to shove, will go with instinct over and above what God’s Word says in making a decision – be it a big one, or a small one.

Fact: Most of the people who say they believe in Jesus are suffering through the consequences of sin that could have been avoided, if only they’d given God’s Word sway in their hearts.

I wonder, are you like ‘most Christians’, who don’t take God’s Word seriously enough to allow it to be the guiding light in your life? I’m not here to give you a guilt trip. I am here, simply to help you make up your mind. Psalm 119, verse 113:

I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.

There you have the person who wrote that Psalm, saying to God, “I am so sick of the double-minded. I’ve made up my mind God. I love your Word. I love what you have to say. I love the way that I can be rock solid in my faith, no matter what this world throws at me because I am a man of your Word”. That’s the effect of what he’s saying to God.

Are you in a position to be able to say that to God? Or, to be blunt, are you swinging this way and that?

Well, you know God, I’d love to be like that but reading the Bible, every day, I’m a bit busy you know and I have a lot of pressures you know and … then, I hear a message at church and I realise I should read my Bible, but then life takes over again ... well God, you know how it is.

You see, double-mindedness doesn’t work. James chapter 1, verses 5 to 8:

If any of you lacks in wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

It’s time to make up your mind. Are you going to be a man or a woman of God’s Word, or not? Do you want to live a powerful, victorious life in Jesus, or not? Do you want to have God’s Wisdom, God’s guidance, or not? Do you want to have the joy and the peace that Jesus died and rose again to give you, or not? Because let me tell you, the "or not" quite simply is not God’s will for your life. It’s just not.

Because when push comes to shove, when the going gets tough, God wants you to know where to flee. God wants to be your refuge place. God wants the best for you in those dark times. But unless we’re ready, unless we have His Word in our hearts, that simply isn’t going to happen.

When disaster strikes, where do you turn? When people are nasty to you, where do you turn? When you just don’t know which way to turn, where do you turn?

Well, where do you turn? The Bible is full of verses about God being the place where we can and should turn. Psalm 119, verse 114:

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.

When the chips are down, we can hope in God’s Word. In what God says. We can believe in His Word above the world’s words. We can believe in His faithfulness above the world’s seductive promises.

The problem is that so many of the people who say that they’re Christians, who say that they believe in Jesus, who say that they trust God simply can’t live out what they say, because they don’t have the Word of God in them. Psalm 91, verses 1 and 2:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

Great, but let me tell you, you simply can’t cry out to God, “God you are my refuge and my fortress, in you I trust”, with any real conviction from the middle of your storm unless first, the Holy Spirit has written that Word on your heart. And He won’t have written it on your heart, unless you were in God’s Word beforehand.

Hey, we all have storms. We all go through dark times. I do and you do. But the man who is a man of God’s Word, and the woman who is a woman of God’s Word, they sail through those storms in victory. Even though their emotions are all over the place, even though they’re struggling and in pain, they know in their heart of hearts that their King reigns. That’s the confidence that you get from being in God’s Word every day.

I have a friend who calls himself a Christian and I know him well enough to know that he is. He believes in Jesus with all his heart. But he refuses to get into God’s Word. He doesn’t like to read, so hey, the Bible is just an optional extra.

No thank you sir. That’s just not true, because when the storms of life hit, I want to be grounded in the Word of God. I want the confidence of God alive and well in my heart.

I have a Word for you today from the Lord. Listen carefully to what He says, and my prayer is that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you will receive it into your heart. John chapter 8, verse 31:

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, then you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

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Sometimes it’s hard to remember that God is good, when life simply isn’t. In fact, sometimes it’s downright impossible. That’s why God is revealing His goodness every moment of every day, through His Word.

God is Good So life is going along ok I guess, with its ups and downs, but something doesn’t quite feel right. You’re not completely happy with the way things are going, and that has a way of grinding away at you. The burdens become heavier, the longer you carry them. The spark you once had deep inside seems to have disappeared, and when you’re in the middle of all that, your perception of who God is, how He acts, is incredibly important because it’ll shape your expectation of His involvement in your life at that moment. Is God someone who’s going to graciously step in to comfort you or is He distant, uninvolved? What are you expecting of God?

Sadly too many people don’t have a right expectation, a good expectation, because instead of spending some precious time in God’s Word every day, they’re too busy, it would seem. What we need in those difficult times is a way back into the comforting arms of God. Would you agree? So, what is that way back? How do we experience the comfort of God?

I don’t know quite where you’re at in life at the moment, but we all need God’s comfort (God’s presence) from time to time, so let’s take a look at what God has to say about the way back. Psalm 119:49-52:

Remember Your Word to Your servant, in which You have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that Your promise gives me life. The insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from Your Law. When I think of Your rules from old, I take comfort, o LORD.

Now all that seems a bit strange. I take comfort when I think of Your rules from old. Really? Do you? Rules. What’s the Psalmist actually saying to God, and more importantly, what’s God saying to you and me here today?

Well, back then, they didn’t have the whole Bible. They only had the first five books – the books of the Law, as they were known; the rules, if you will: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, although they’re much more than just rules. They’re the story of what God’s done in creation, in leading His people out of slavery, and taking them to the promised land. They’re the story of God’s love, and His faithfulness to those whom He loves.

This is my comfort in my affliction, that Your promise gives me life, writes the Psalmist. Where does he get his comfort from? From meditating on God’s Word; from reading God’s promises; from remembering the mighty things that God’s already done; from seeing who God is through what He says and more importantly, what He does for His people when they’re afflicted. You see, that’s the way back to God’s comfort.

When we’re caught up in the doom and gloom that sometimes envelops our lives, the last thing we expect of God is that He’d be gracious, full of grace that He is ready to pour out onto us. Oh, maybe you know the theory, "My grace is sufficient for you." Right? but knowing that in your heart, expecting that of God, experiencing that, that’s a whole another thing.

But today I believe with all my heart (in fact, I know with all my heart) that God wants you to become someone who experiences His grace every moment of every day, for the rest of your life. Is that something that you’d like to receive? Well, I can’t give it to you, but God can, through His Spirit and His Word. Psalm 119:55-58:

I remember Your name in the night, o LORD, and keep Your Law. This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept Your precepts. The LORD is my portion; I promise to keep Your Word. I entreat Your favour with all my heart; be gracious to me, according to Your promise.

You see, the question is, what is it that would give you confidence (the complete and absolute confidence) in the graciousness of God towards you? How can the light of His grace shine in your heart when there’s darkness all around? And make no mistake about it; the Psalmist is writing those words there, going through some terribly dark times:

I remember Your name in the night, o LORD.

Isn’t night-time always the worst time? Things churn around in your mind, and the fear sets in; the cold sweats ... I’ve been there and I’m sure you have too. It’s in those dark hours that we need to remember the name of the LORD; to experience His blessings falling on us; to know that no matter what we may lose in this world, the LORD is our portion.

From where does the Psalmist draw his confidence? From knowing God’s precepts and keeping them. You have to know God’s Word to live God’s Word, and you know what it’s like. When you’ve been through a difficult situation but you’ve handled it in a Godly way – a loving way, a humble way, a way that honours God, it may have been hard. It may have hurt a lot, but doing good in the midst of bad puts a quiet confidence in your heart. Not an arrogant self-righteousness; that’s not what the Psalmist is talking about:

This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept Your precepts.

In the darkest of a night, knowing that you’ve lived through those difficulties and challenges in a way that honours God is a huge blessing, and that gives you the confidence to entreat God in those dark hours that He would be gracious to you, according to His promises. It’s an incredibly powerful truth that our behaviour affects our thinking, and our thinking affects our behaviour. The two are inexorably linked. Without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest (I mean the single-biggest) change-agent for good in my life over the last twenty-one-and-a-half years, since I gave my life to Jesus, has been reading God’s Word almost every day of my life: Not every day, but most days, and not just reading His Word, but reflecting on it; receiving it, and then responding to it.

Think about it. We all want a better life. Right? Self-improvement is a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide. There are business gurus; success gurus; life gurus; health gurus, all sprouting their stuff, all claiming to have the answers. If only we’ll buy their book; attend their conference; sign up for their programme online. People are lapping this stuff up, and paying through the nose for it.

Peter Drucker, the man who years ago invented the term the knowledge worker ... He once said the reason people use the word guru is that charlatan is often too long for the headlines. See, these are false prophets. It’s not that some of them don’t have some clever things to say, but they don’t have the answers for life. They don’t have the truth. They don’t have the wisdom of God. God on the other hand is ready, willing and able to speak His truth and His wisdom in abundance into your life, but are we listening? Psalm 119:59-60:

When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to Your testimonies; I hasten and I do not delay to keep Your commandments.

The man writing this Psalm is praying to God, and what he’s saying is, "You know, LORD, I’ve been thinking about this. I spend a lot of time in Your Word. I think about my ways: How I think; how I speak; how I behave, and when I bring those two things together, Your Word and my ways, I can’t help it. I turn my feet to walk in Your testimonies; in Your Word; in Your ways. I hasten; I don’t delay. As surely as night follows day, I end up keeping Your commandments."

What’s happening there is that this man is reading God’s Word; reflecting on it; thinking about it; receiving it, and then responding to it with his life. That is how powerful Godly change happens in our lives: Read, reflect, receive, respond. Let me say that again. Read God’s Word, reflect on it; think about what God’s saying to you and compare it to how you’re living life at the moment, receive that Spirit-breathed Word into your heart, and respond to it with your life. No one else can do that for you. No one else can bring that sort of powerful change to your life.

God has a Plan for Your Life Let me be perfectly honest with you. I hate pain: Physical pain, emotional pain ... I mean, I just hate it. I’m sure you do too. It’s simply our natural response to pain, because pain is an indication that something’s wrong. If you start getting chest pains, you’d better call an ambulance quick. If you’re out running and all of a sudden, a sharp pain shoots through your hamstring, you’d better stop, quick. We’re programmed to avoid pain because pain says there’s something wrong. Right? But sometimes, pain happens. Hey, there’s a great bumper sticker for your car. Pain happens and sometimes that pain, that trial, that difficult relationship, that knife in your back, that rejection, is part of God’s plan to bless you. ‘What? Are you crazy?’ No, that’s just what my Bible tells me. Have a listen. Psalm 119:69-71:

The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart, I keep Your precepts. Their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in Your Law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes.

What’s the matter with this guy? It is good for me that I was afflicted? Really? But how many times have you heard people say, "I only really grow as a person when I go through difficult times?" It’s one of those truisms that gets tossed around by people who aren’t at the moment travelling through difficult times, but what about when you’re in the middle of something? Like, as in this case, the insolent smearing you with lies. It’s not funny; it’s so unfair, and what we want to do is whatever we can to stop the pain now! "I’ll smear them with lies; that’ll do it. I’ll show him. I’ll sort him out. I’ll fix him." You know the sort of thing. Don’t get angry; get even. Right? But that’s not God’s way. Jesus said crazy things like turn the other cheek; go the extra mile, and when it came to people trumping up charges against Him, He stood there quietly (not defending Himself) and ended up being crucified as a result.

Sometimes God uses those terrible things to change our hearts; to teach us in the difficult times, so that we might learn His ways in our experience. Think of it as on-the-job training. It’s the best sort. It’s not a theory lesson that happens in a classroom, but a practical that happens out in the real world. Hebrews 5:8:

Although he was a son, Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered.

Hebrews 12:6, 11:

God disciplines those whom He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

None of us like being told what to do. We all have that, ‘I did it my way’ streak in us. I think the second word that most children learn after mum, mum, mum is no, no, no. Anyone who’s had kids will remember the terrible twos, not to mention those challenging teenage years; that streak of rebellion; that desire to do it my way starts early-on. It’s almost as though we’re programmed that way. King David said it like this, when he was talking to God in repentance for having committed adultery and murder. Psalm 51:5:

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Theologians call it the doctrine of original sin, this idea that we’re born with a stain of sin on our very DNA. And so, no matter what stage we’re at in life, there’s this rebellious streak that raises its ugly head from time to time, in all of us. How many times have you looked back on something that you did your way, only to realise the world of pain that it ended up dumping on your head?

So often we do things out of a wrong heart; for the wrong reasons; with the wrong motivations, and there are always, always consequences to that. When we were teenagers, we used to do stupid things because we were teenagers, and we acted out of our immaturity. Well, fair enough, but at some point, we’re meant to grow up. At some point, we’re meant to enter that journey of maturity. That’s the place the Psalmist was at when he wrote these words. Psalm 119:72, 127:

The Law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. Therefore, I love Your commandments above gold, above fine gold.

So let me ask you: Are God’s ways the right ways? Is God’s wisdom the right wisdom? Well, obviously, so what do you desire more; God’s way, or your way? The good fruit that God’s ways bring, or the painful consequences that your own ways bring crashing down on your life? That’s why God disciplines us when we go wandering off on our own way. That’s why He lets us suffer the consequences of our sin when we turn our backs on Him; because He loves us.

As a father, when my children were young, one of the things that I was always keen to do was to let them suffer the consequences of their own mistake. "Oh, Dad, I’m running late for school. Can you drive me?" "No." "But I’ll get in trouble!" "Good." They’ve learnt responsibility pretty quickly that way.

The point that the Psalmist is making here is that God’s ways are so good because when we live them, they yield blessing rather than pain. His commandments are so much better than silver or gold; so much better.

As you look back on your life, no doubt, you can see a string of missed opportunities. I certainly can. Times when we have the opportunity to do right; to honour God; to bless other people, and we just fail to grab those opportunities with both hands. Instead, sadly all too often, we’re prone to insolence. That’s a strong word, but when you realise who God is, when you have a right fear of God in your heart, you realise that it’s the right word. Insolence. A flagrant disregard for God’s will and God’s ways; a disrespect so deep of a God who loves us so much that He sent Jesus to die for us.

I shake my head at some of the bad decisions that I’ve made in the past, and you know something? With all my heart, I don’t want to go there again. That insolence brings shame to our hearts. It brings regret to our hearts. It robs us of joy and peace, of the abundant life that Jesus came to give us. With all my heart, I want to make good decisions – the best decisions; decisions today, the next day, the day after that, that honour God and bring glory to Him. But I know (and I suspect you know this about yourself too) that left to my own devices, I’m more likely than not to botch it up again. Psalm 119:78-80:

Let the insolent be put to shame, because they have wronged me with falsehood; as for me, I will meditate on Your precepts. Let those who fear You turn to me, that they may know Your testimonies. May my heart be blameless in Your statutes, that I may not be put to shame.

I’ve watched my behaviour carefully over the years. On the days when I’ve spent unhurried, precious time with God in the morning, with the door closed and the book open, it’s been so much easier to honour Him. Whilst on those days when I didn’t make that time, I was far more prone to making bad decisions. How about you? Have you noticed that about yourself too?

We have a choice, you and I: A choice between living a blameless life honouring God, or a life of shame as we live out the consequences of our sin. It’s a simple, clear choice, but to choose the right way, we need wisdom and we need power. Am I right? And that wisdom, that power, come over and over again in bucket-loads, in abundance, from God’s Word.

God doesn’t want you to be insolent and filled with shame. He wants you to know the joy and the peace that come from living the blameless life that He has planned for you.

Praying Through the Clouds Sunshine is something that we naturally equate with blessing. When the sun’s shining, it casts a different light on our circumstances. I happen to live in the beautiful harbour city of Sydney in Australia, and when the sun’s shining, you’d have to say Sydney Harbour with the bridge and the opera house is absolutely stunning. Truly, one of the great sights anywhere in the world, but I always feel so sorry for tourists who travel halfway round the world to see it, only to arrive on a dull, wet, windy day. It’s just not the same when it isn’t bathed in that bright sunlight.

The same holds true in our lives. We want blessing to shine on us all the time, but just as with sunny weather, it seems to come and go without any great rhyme or reason. One moment the blessing is shining down upon us; the next minute, the clouds blow in and on those dull, overcast, gloomy days, life simply isn’t the same. So on those days, how do you lay hold of God’s blessing? Psalm 119:132-135:

Turn to me and be gracious to me, as is Your way with those who love Your name. Keep steady my steps according to Your promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me. Redeem me from man’s oppression, that I may keep Your precepts. Make Your face to shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes.

This man knows God. He doesn’t just know about God; he knows God, because he’s praying into the very nature of God, relying on who God is:

Turn to me and be gracious to me, as is Your way with those who love Your name.

He’s praying through the clouds and into the sunshine; into the very nature of God. Don’t you love that? Keep me steady, God. Keep me relying on Your promises. Don’t let sin get the better of me. Redeem me; save me from human oppression. Why? So that I can lie on the beach and bathe in the sun? No! So that I may keep Your precepts; so that I can live life according to Your Word; so that I can get on and be about Your business for Your glory.

Here is a man who is a man of God’s Word. That much is plain the moment you start reading Psalm 119, and let me tell you, it’s well worth a read in its entirety. And as he prays through the clouds, from the gloomy side to the bright side, he finishes by asking this of God: Make Your face to shine upon me, and teach me Your statutes. You see, the two are linked: God’s blessing, and God’s Word. In fact, they’re inseparable. Listen to me. God wants to bless you, and that blessing is ready and waiting in His Word.

Well, in the few moments that we have left together today, I just want to pray God’s blessing into your life. Are you ready?

Father God, You know all the things that we’re struggling with right at the moment. Thank You so much that You’re involved in our lives. Thank You so much that You care and thank You, thank You that You’ve given us Your Word, the Bible, breathed through Your Holy Spirit; preserved with incredible accuracy down through the ages, so that You can continue to speak to us here and now. LORD, some people today are just struggling to get into Your Word; to open their Bibles every day, and just receive what You have for them.

Well, LORD, I pray right now that You would pour Your Holy Spirit on each one of us. LORD, light a fire in our hearts; a burning desire to be close to You, I pray; a ravenous appetite to hear from You. Stretch us; unsettle us; make us hungry; make us thirsty for Your Word, and then fill us, LORD, to overflowing with Your Spirit and Your Word. Father, teach us Your precepts; Your ways; Your wisdom; Your goodness, and LORD, make Your face to shine upon us. This we pray up through the clouds, LORD, believing in Your faithfulness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Friend, my prayer for you is that your life will be completely turned upside-down as you receive God’s Word into your heart.

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If only the going was always easy. But life’s not like that. Sometimes we have to travel through difficult times. Times that test our patience, our endurance and our faith. And it’s right in the middle of those times that God’s Word holds the answers that we need to make it through.

Life Wasn't Meant to be Easy These days, it’s a bit unpopular for someone like me to be talking about obedience to God’s Word. It’s not something most of us want to hear. Aw, come on Berni, teach me about grace, tell me about God’s blessings, I want to know more about God’s love.

That’s the stuff people want to hear about and sure, they’re all really good things. I mean, really good things. But what about these particular verses of Scripture, John chapter 14, verse 15:

If you love me, you will obey my commandments.

1 John chapter 5, verse 3:

For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.

No, obedience to God’s Word is not a particularly popular concept these days. But the whole point of obeying God, is that the only things He tells us not to do, are the things that are going to bring harm to us and the people around us. So paradoxically, obedience brings freedom. Obedience sets us free from the consequences of our sin ... and sin ... sin always has consequences, right?

Okay that’s great. But what about when the going gets tough? What about when other people are doing the wrong thing, and we’re hurting? What about obedience to God’s Word in that place when the degree of difficulty gets ratcheted up to about a 9.9? Psalm 119, verses 20 to 24:

My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times. You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones, who wander from your commandments; take away from me their scorn and their contempt, for I have kept your decrees. Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. Your decrees are my delight, they are my counsellors.

That’s amazing, because the man writing this Psalm, the man speaking to God here, is under a lot of pressure. But he’s taken a stand. He’s made a decision that he will long for God’s will, God’s Word, God’s ways, when? Just in the good times? No! At all times! Even when evil people are heaping scorn and contempt on him, even when princes are plotting against him. That’s a tough decision, but it’s the right one.

Many centuries later, the Apostle Paul put it this way. Galatians chapter 6, verse 9:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.

The time when God’s Word is most important, when God’s wisdom is most important, when God’s ways are most important, is when the going gets tough. Right in that moment when we want to give up honouring God by living His way, right in that instant, that’s when obedience to God’s Word is most important.

Because in that moment, the enemy wants to snatch your inheritance away from you. But don’t give up, because there’s a harvest coming. When? Well, at harvest time of course!

The trick, I guess, the piece of wisdom, the powerful Word that God wants us to hear today though, is don’t give up in doing what is right. Don’t give up honouring and obeying God. But that’s not always going to be easy is it?

One of the things I love about the Hebrew culture in which the Psalms of the Old Testament were written, is the powerful use of picture language to express deep emotions. The Jewish tradition is full of rich, evocative picture language, like Psalm 119, verses 25 and 26:

My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word. When I told of my ways, you answered me; teach me your statutes.

Just drink that picture in for a moment: my soul clings to the dust. It speaks of complete and utter desolation. It speaks of burdens so heavy, a body so weary, that it’s lying in the dust, barely able to move. Not even able to lift its head to look up at God.

When you’re in that place, it feels hopeless. It feels lonely. It feels as though you’re the only one who’s ever been there, and nobody else understands.

My soul clings to the dust. It’s a picture that we all get. It’s a picture that speaks into the desolation that we’ve all felt. Perhaps you’re in that place right now, where your soul is sucking in the dust, with nothing else to cling to. It’s the place where we want to give up, because we don’t have a single ounce of energy left in us. Yeah, we’ve all been there.

So, what do you do? What does the Psalmist do? What does he have to say to God?

God, revive me according to your word. When I told of my ways, you answered me; teach me your statutes.

The first part of that makes a lot of sense – God revive me. The obvious thing to do, the obvious place to turn, the obvious cry for help … although how often do we miss the obvious?

The question is, how does God bring that revival to an exhausted and completely depleted soul? Well, the psalmist knows!

Revive me according to your word. When I told you of my ways, you answered me; teach me your statutes.

You see, when we’re in that desolate, dusty place, we need a way back. A real, tangible way back. And that way is through the Word of God. It’s through God speaking to us. God’s Word is food for the starving soul. God’s Word is living water for a parched soul. But how often do we miss the obvious?

I’ve seen Christians from time to time praying for revival. But revival begins at home. There will be no revival unless and until the living water, the Spirit of God, overflows from His people. You and I need revival in our hearts. You and I need to be filled to overflowing with the revelation of God through His Word, the joy of God, the healing of God, the Spirit of God.

Revival begins at home! Lord revive me, according to your word.

God’s Word is a powerful thing, because not only does it bring revival to our hearts, not only does God breathe His Sprit into us through His Word, not only does God deliver His new life for us through His Word, but His Word also brings understanding. And understanding is wisdom.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you don’t understand what’s going on – either around you, or in you, or both? Sure you have, so have I. I mean, sometimes we don’t even understand ourselves, let alone our circumstances, or the way other people behave and think.

And the absence of that understanding, that wisdom if you will, makes life a difficult thing to live. Understanding as it turns out, is the key to living life. Psalm 119, verses 27 to 32:

Lord, make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works. My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. Put false ways far from me; and graciously teach me your law. I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I set your ordinances before me. I cling to your decrees, O Lord; let me not be put to shame. I run the way of your commandments, for you enlarge my understanding.

Understanding is mentioned twice in that passage, once at the beginning and once at the end. Again we see that the Psalmist is going through difficult times – my soul melts away for sorrow – and yet the thing that he asks for is understanding.

That in itself is surprising enough. We spend our time asking God to take away the pain when our souls are melting away through sorrow, but the Psalmist is asking instead, for understanding. But understanding of what? Of the ways of God’s precepts. In other words:

Okay God, Your Word, Your precepts, they’re all fine, that’s a given. But now, God, I want to understand the ways of your precepts. I want to understand how the rubber hits the road. I want to understand how I can live them out, because I want your strength, I want to put false hope far from me, so teach me. I’ll cling to your Word, because I know that as I live it out, You are going to enlarge my understanding.

What a powerful prayer. It’s a prayer for on-the-job training. You imagine asking God for that, over and over again … imagine the understanding, the wisdom, the power that God is going to unleash in your life. Just imagine!

Here’s the thing: God wants to do powerful things in you and through you, He just does. And He’s put His Word there, the Bible, through which to give you, all the understanding you need.

Make me understand the ways of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works. Wow!

A Heart for God's Word If I were to ask you today, what is the one thing that you’re focussing on at the moment, what would that be? What’s the biggest thing going on in your heart at the moment?

The truth is, that from time to time the things of this earth grab our attention. Some of those things are good things. Some of those things are bad things.

In a few months’ time my daughter is going to be getting married. Well, you can imagine, that’s pretty much the focus of things in our household at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, unless and until the things of this world bubble to the top of our priority list, above God Himself.

When that happens, our lives have a way of going pear-shaped. All of a sudden, when we get our priorities the wrong way around, we start to live out the consequences of that. So let me come back to that question: what is your heart focussed on at the moment? What’s at the top of your list, hmm? Psalm 119 verses 35 and 36:

Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain.

This Psalm is written by a man who is speaking to God. So, when he says: lead me in the path of your commandments and turn my heart to your decrees, He’s asking God to do those two things for Him.

Psalm 119 blows me away. It’s the longest chapter in the Bible – 176 verses all-in-all. And the majority of it is a prayer, asking God essentially to help this man who is writing it, to get his life straight, by getting God’s Word into his heart. That’s the bottom line of the whole Psalm. God I can’t do it on my own, I need your help.

That’s a great admission, because it happens to be true. And here in verses 35 and 36, the Psalmist is asking God to turn his heart to God’s decrees rather than to his own selfish gain.

That’s the pivot point in our hearts isn’t it? Our whole lives swing on this hinge between honouring God and selfish gain. Between right and wrong. And that’s why I keep asking you: what’s the focus of your heart right at the moment? Where is your heart? Focussed on honouring God or on selfish gain? The answer matters. It matters a lot.

There is such power in the Word of God to set you free from your selfishness. Why is it that people leave their Bibles on a shelf somewhere gathering dust? God has the power to set you free. Free from the consequences of sin. All you need to do is to ask Him for His help and He will step in.

And here’s the thing about God’s help. It’s intensely practical. Intensely real. In our lives on this earth, you and I, we’re prone to trusting things that we can see. It’s only natural. We live in a physical world, so we trust in physical things.

We know, for instance, that tonight the sun will set, and in the morning it will rise again. We trust in relationships. We trust in our circumstances, good or bad. We trust in our pay packets and our bank balances. And to a point that’s as it should be … to a point. Up until the point where we trust in those things above and beyond who God is and what He says He will do. At that point, you’ve started trusting your life into things that are not worthy of that level of trust.

If you have a share-portfolio that’s worth a certain amount of money, hey, the market could plummet tomorrow. The same is true of every other physical thing on this earth – they can give way ... in an instant. And so often, we’re caught out, because we’ve place our trust in the wrong things.

That’s why we need God’s help, His intensely practical help, to get our hearts focussed on the right things. Psalm 119, verses 37 to 40:

Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways. Confirm to your servant your promise, which is for those who fear you. Turn away the disgrace that I dread, for your ordinances are good. See, I have longed for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life.

So here the Psalmist is asking God to turn his eyes away from all those vanities, all those false idols in which we place our trust. What idols as you trusting in at the moment? In what vanities have you placed your trust? Hmm?

Father God turn my eyes from looking at those vanities and give me life in your ways, literally, give me living energy to pursue the way marked out by You O God.

That’s it! That’s what I need, that’s what you need. Living energy. Holy Spirit energy, to head God’s way, to trust God to lead us forward, rather than placing our hope in false idols.

Friend, God’s promises are true. Those false idols, ultimately are going to lead you to disgrace. But God’s promises will never fail.

God I’ve seen that your ways are good. I long for your ways. Lead me in them. Give me life.

What a great prayer. What a powerful way to change your heart. Try as we might, we cannot change our own hearts for ourselves. But God’s living energy, the power of His Word, the power of His Spirit – that’s where we get a change of heart. That’s where we get a change of focus.

God doesn’t want you to continue trusting in idols, dreading the disgrace that they will ultimately bring. He wants to shift your focus, transform your heart, with His living energy. Because when we walk in God’s ways, then all of a sudden we discover what freedom really is.

It pains me to tell you this, but for the first thirty-six years of my life, I thought I was free. Free to live my life the way I wanted. But now, looking back on that time before I accepted Jesus into my heart, I realise that I was nothing but a captive.

The best way to describe it, is that I looked successful and happy on the outside, but on the inside, I was plagued by fear and doubt. On the inside, I was a complete mess. That’s because I was a captive rather than living as a free man. That’s because the expectations of this world dominated my heart. Again, the Psalmist puts it like this, Psalm 119 verses 41 to 46:

Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise. Then I shall have an answer for those who taunt me, for I trust in your word. Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances. I will keep your law continually, forever and ever. I shall walk in liberty, for I have sought your precepts. I will also speak of your decrees before kings, and shall not be put to shame.

I really get that bit about having an answer for those who taunt me. The criticism, the mockery of others, used to be like arrows into my heart.

Let me ask you, to what extent are you marching to the beat of the world’s drum? To what extent are you dancing to the tunes of the expectations of others? And when you can’t meet those expectations, people criticise you, people reject you, they throw you out like a worthless piece of trash.

We spend way too much time and energy striving, sacrificing, performing in order receive the approval of others, only to fail, only to miss the mark, only to discover that it’s a pursuit that’s hollow and empty and simply not worth the effort.

But the more we get into God’s Word, the more we discover the steadfast love that God has for us, the more we get to know God’s Word and trust God’s Word, the less those things matter. And the less those things matter, the more we discover the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ.

I shall walk in liberty for I have sought your precepts! Yes! Hallelujah! Absolutely! Freedom. God’s freedom. There is such freedom when we get it into our hearts that we’re meant to live our lives for an audience of One. That’s what God has ready and waiting for you. True freedom in His ways, in His precepts, in His Word. Jesus said:

If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Jesus is the Way It’s rather an odd thing, but one of the names that Jesus is given in the Bible, is that He is the "Word of God".

Now we normally use that term ‘the Word of God’ for the Bible itself, because, after all, it’s through the Bible that God speaks His words into our lives. Fair enough. But have you ever thought how powerfully God speaks to us through Jesus Himself, the very Son of God ... God in the flesh? This is how the Apostle John puts it. John chapter 1, verses 1 to 5:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

We all travel through dark times, we just do. And in those dark times, what we need is light. Jesus came to be that light. This is what He said of Himself – John chapter 8, verse 12:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

Jesus is God speaking to us in a language that we can understand. And that’s why in my own personal reading of the Bible, I always make sure that from time to time, I cycle through one of the Gospels. Right now I’m just about to finish the book of Psalms and head into Matthew’s Gospel.

Why? Because Jesus is God revealing Himself to us – to you, to me. And I don’t know about you, but I need that Light in my life. I need Jesus speaking directly into my life. I need a deep, personal, intimate relationship with Jesus, as I walk with Him and for Him, day by day.

Without Jesus, we don’t know God, indeed, we cannot know God. Without Jesus we can’t find the way to God, because Jesus is the Way.

Might I ask you today, what darkness do you have going on in your life? What fears, what uncertainties, what worries are at the forefront of your thinking right at this moment? What situations are confusing you and confounding you and proving completely impossible for you to overcome?

Jesus is the answer. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things that were created, were created through Him and by Him. He has knowledge and wisdom and power beyond anything we can imagine.

And He is the light for all people. That includes you. And when that light, His light, the Light of the world shines in your life, the darkness simply cannot overcome it. Jesus is the answer.

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Sometimes the blindingly, glimpsingly obvious isn’t all that obvious, but here it is anyway: Men and women of God’s Word, men and women who actually read their Bibles, end up living a much more powerful, much more victorious, much more fulfilling life than those who don’t. It’s obvious, you’d think.

The Way to God’s Blessing I know you’ve heard it all before. You should read your Bible more; we get that, but for many people, it’s a chore. When you hear the word "Bible", come on ... In your heart of hearts, how do you respond? I know I used to cringe at the idea that anybody can be so narrow, so religiously geeky if that makes sense, as to actually read the Bible. But after I’d been a Christian for a while, you know what? It became a chore. It’s like when I was a kid learning the piano and my parents insisted on me practising at least half an hour every day. Really? A whole half an hour? And that ... That’s how so many Christians approach the idea of reading their Bibles. They’re being told so many times, "Read your Bible", that every time they hear it, it conjures up a sense of duty; a sense of responsibility and labour, and (let’s be honest here) guilt in their minds.

How about you? How do you feel about the Bible that’s gathering dust somewhere in your house? Oh and by the way, if you happen to be someone who does open their Bibles most days (and the research confirms this), you’re one of the very few people in God’s kingdom who does. So for many people, either the Bible has a bad rap as some dreary, boring, fundamentalist thing that narrows your mind and fuels your life with a list of dos and don’ts, or it’s a source of guilt. That’s the majority view – sensational! But what if I told you it’s not meant to be either of those? Have a go at this. Psalm 119:1-3:

Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the Law of the LORD. Happy are those who keep His decrees, who seek Him with all their heart; who also do no wrong, but walk in His ways.

Happy, eh? The original Hebrew word there means either to be happy or to be blessed. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Who doesn’t want to be blessed? So who is it who is happy and blessed? Well, those whose way is blameless; those who walk in the Law of the LORD; those who keep His decrees; those those who seek Him with all their hearts; those who do no wrong, but walk in God’s ways. God’s Law; His decrees; His ways, and that’s what the Bible is all about.

I know what you’re thinking. "Who needs a whole bunch more rules in their lives?" I get that, but the happiness and the blessedness actually come to those who are blameless; those who do right; those who have a clear conscience. God’s Law; God’s decrees; God’s ways ... That’s how you get to that place.

Perhaps that’s why God takes His Word so seriously: Because there’s so much good in there for you and me. It strikes me as incredibly sad that so many people who say that they believe in Jesus actually look at God’s Word (the Bible) as an optional extra; as an add-on if you will. The number of times people Email me with this mess in their life or that challenge, this problem or that temptation, this and that, and sure; I can give them answers from God’s Word that’ll speak right into that situation to bring healing or power or wisdom; whatever’s needed, and I do that because God’s Word is packed full of more healing and more power and more wisdom than you or I will ever need in a lifetime, but I often ask these same people, "So, how often do you read your Bible?" On the rare occasion that I get a response, it goes something like this: "Oh, I don’t have time." That’s the most common one. "Oh, it’s hard to understand." That’s the second-most common one. "Oh, I don’t think it’s that relevant." Yeah, that’s the third-most common response.

Let me be blunt here. We behave as though listening to God speak isn’t all that important but then, when people have a problem they can’t solve, they turn to a preacher like me to help them solve the problem from God’s Word. Doesn’t that strike you as just a little crazy? A lot, maybe?

So what does God have to say? Let’s listen to Him. Psalm 119:4-6:

You have commanded Your precepts to be kept diligently. O, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping Your statutes! Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all Your commandments.

See, keeping God’s precepts isn’t an optional extra; it’s God’s command. There are eight different words used in Psalm 119 for the Word of God, the Bible. One of them is precepts, and the sense of this is that God made us. God knows us. He knows how we should live, so that we’re not put to shame. Shame interrupts our intimacy – our fellowship with God. It takes away the blessings, the happiness, the joy, of living in a relationship with Him the way we were meant to. He doesn’t want that for you. Shame was what drove the first wedge between God and humanity, when Adam and Eve ate of that one tree that they were told not to eat from. Shame is what’s ruining our lives, and much better than asking someone for help in the middle of a problem that’s confounding you is avoiding the problem in the first place. Wouldn’t you agree? God wants the very best for you, because He loves you, and the place to find His very best (honestly) is the Bible.

If shame is something that ruins our lives, then the opposite of that is a good heart; a sound heart; a clear conscience. You know what it’s like. When you do something that you know is wrong, your conscience eats away at you; it just does. God put it there for a reason. It’s that part of us, made as we are in the image of God, that helps us turn our ways back to Him. When our conscience is troubled, it robs us of peace; it robs us of joy, and more often than not, it robs us of sleep, and that’s why living our lives God’s way is the best way. Really.

Most people think (and honestly, this is how I used to think too) that if you become a Christian, you have to live life by a set of rigid rules, and that’s going to narrow your life somehow. It’s going to rob you of being able to do all the things you want to do, but actually, the exact opposite is true. Psalm 119:7-8:

I will praise You with an upright heart when I learn Your righteous ordinances. I will observe Your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.

When we discover the right way to live – good, wholesome, pure, gentle, kind, loving, generous, sacrificial, loyal, honest – all the qualities we admire in other people, all of a sudden, we’re living with a clear conscience and that clear conscience is where we discover the freedom that Jesus came to bring us. God describes Himself as our Father. In fact, Jesus used the word Abba, which means daddy, and He’s a good Father – the best. All He wants is the best for you and me, and what I’ve discovered is that there are actually very few things about which He says to us, ‘Don’t do them.’

Go back to Adam and Eve. There were doubtless thousands of fruit-bearing trees n the garden. There was only one of which God said, ‘Don’t eat from this one,’ because He knew it would be bad for them. They would discover the difference between good and evil. Why? How? Because their conscience would convict them of their wrongdoing.

You and I, we know when we’ve done something wrong, and that sense of guilt ruins everything. Every thing. What God wants for you is to be free to worship Him; to live in freedom with an upright heart; with a clear conscience. I will praise You with an upright heart. When? When I learn His right ordinances; when I learn to live in goodness and light, rather than in evil and darkness, and the place where we discover how to do that – the place where we get the knowledge and the wisdom and the power to live for Him – is in the Bible. The amazing love-letter that He’s preserved right down through the ages.

Make Your Heart a Healthy Heart If you’re a parent, you’ll know what it’s like to experience conflict with your children. If I had a penny or a rupee or a cent for every time I’ve said to my kids, "All I want is the best for you", I’d be a very wealthy man. Here’s how the conflict happens. They do something that you know is wrong, something that you know is going to hurt them, so you step in. As their parent, you have wisdom; you have insight; you have experience to guide them in the right direction, but they resent that because as the saying goes, you can’t put an old head on young shoulders. Children tend to view the discipline of their parents as something negative. It’s not until they grow up that they can look back and see how the wisdom and the discipline of their parents has made them who they are today.

And you know, the same is true in our relationship with God. We so often resent the fact that there’s a handful of things which He says to us, "Don’t do them." Why? Because He has the wisdom that we don’t, and just as we did when we were teenagers, we want to rebel against the wisdom of our Father. Am I right?

So what’s the answer to that? I think it’s a change of heart on our part. It’s coming to the mature position of recognising that God’s ways are the best ways, and if I keep myself to His ways, then I’m going to have a better life. I’ll be more of a blessing; I’ll have fewer hassles, and even when I’m travelling through the odd wilderness experience here and there, as we all do, I’ll be better able to deal with that.

Take for instance the wisdom of a parent to a child who’s moving from teenage into adult years: Wisdom about sexual propriety. These days, kids all want to sleep around, but any parent filled with just a bit of Godly wisdom knows how dangerous, how painful, and how harmful that can be to their child. Psalm 119:9:

How can young people keep their way pure? By guarding it according to Your Word.

Sexual desire is a very strong desire. We all have very strong desires, young or old, but not all of those desires are good ones. Not all of our apparently natural desires are beneficial. Some of them can be downright harmful and destructive: Selfishness; envy; immorality ... There’s quite a list of things that we know are bad for us, but how do we keep our ways pure? By guarding them according to God’s Word; by being in the Bible day after day and gleaning the wisdom and frankly, also the incredible Holy Spirit’s power to steer clear of those destructive ways.

The problem with our apparently natural desires and the destructive ways to which they lead is ... well ... frankly, they’re so seductive. Have you noticed that? Temptation is always seductive, and of course that’s by design. Satan knows that if he can make a terrible thing like (let’s say) adultery appear attractive, then he is going to destroy many-a marriage.

It seems to me that each one of us has some Achilles heel, some sin that’s our weak point – the chink in our armour if you will, that the devil consistently exploits in order to make us stumble over and over again, until finally we fall. Have you noticed that too? So what we find is that our heart is torn in this direction to fall into temptation, and in that direction to honour God, and with a divided heart, we find ourselves flip-flopping all over the place: Some days honouring God, and other days ... well ... not so much. Right?

How do we get over that? How do we powerfully deal with the sin in our lives, so that we can live a life that truly honours God – a life that truly reflects God’s glory which, after all, is probably the desire of your heart anyway? Well, as always, God has the answer. Psalm 119:10-11:

With my whole heart I seek You; do not let me stray from Your commandments. I treasure Your Word in my heart, so that I may not sin against You.

I love this, because it’s the Psalmist talking to God, and what he’s saying is that he’s taken a heart-decision: A decision of the heart to seek God and based on that decision, he’s asking God to stop him from straying from His commandments. Don’t you love that? The man, aware of his own inability to honour God, is inviting God Himself into the equation: The all-powerful God who ultimately sent Jesus to this earth to defeat Satan in our lives.

Heart-decisions are always the most powerful decisions. We can decide things in our minds; sure, but when we make a deep decision of the heart and ask God to step into that decision, wow! You’re in for some serious power to change, and notice too how the Psalmist writes:

I treasure Your Word in my heart, so that I may not sin.

Something happens when we treasure the Word of God in our hearts. God’s ways become more important to us than our ways. God’s words become more important to us than what other people say.

Listen up. God wants to bring some powerful change to your life: Today, tomorrow, the next day ... For the rest of your days here on this earth. Serious, powerful change, but what He’s looking for is a deep decision of the heart to seek Him and to treasure His Word.

Get a Revelation You know, it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to ignore the things that we’re taught. I remember during my tertiary studies plenty of times sitting in class, hearing the lecturer speaking and yet allowing my mind to wander. I still have notes from lectures where my handwriting falls off the page, where I fell asleep during the lecture. A good friend of mine tells of a teacher who said to him once, "Son, you sit and think, but mostly you just sit."

Often our undoing isn’t as a result of a lack of knowledge, but our failure to learn and apply what we’re being taught. I’ve watched people at church as the preacher preaches a really good sermon. Their minds have kind of wandered off somewhere else, or they’re more interested in that woman over there who just walked in late or whatever’s going on. Now imagine that morning, when you were sitting in that church, hearing the preacher but not really listening, imagine that God was wanting to speak to you, through His Word. God had a special message, something powerful to say to you that would change your life, but you weren’t paying attention. Sad to say, that happens a lot more often than we’d like to think.

So let’s take a look at the complete opposite of that: A heart that’s open; that’s ready; that’s listening and hanging on God’s every word. Psalm 119:12-16:

Blessed are You, o LORD; teach me Your statutes! With my lips, I declare all the ordinances of Your mouth. I delight in the way of Your decrees as much as in all riches. I will meditate on Your precepts and fix my eyes on Your ways. I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your Word.

That right there is a man speaking to God about his heart to learn from what God has to say. There is a man with a teachable heart: Not only ready to listen to what God has to say, but to live by what God has to say.

So I’m thinking, what if everyone who believes in Jesus, what if everyone who calls themselves a Christian, had a heart like that? What would the church look like then? What would this world look like then? How much more love, more peace, more sacrifice, more service, more healing, more reconciliation would be happening in this world if we all, you and I, lived with that sort of a heart towards God?

Teach me Your statutes, o God. I will declare Your Word with my lips. I will delight in Your ways as much as in all riches! I will meditate on Your Word and fix my eyes on Your ways. I’ll delight in Your Word, and I won’t forget it. Wow!

But there’s something else that we need to get that sort of insight, that sort of impact in our lives from God’s Word. The essential ingredient of having a teachable heart, the essential prerequisite if you will, is having a humble heart: A heart that is aware of the deep spiritual poverty that lies within. Often the reason we don’t take God’s instruction (God’s wisdom) to heart is because there’s this translucent veil of self, as A. W. Tozer calls it, draped over our hearts. ‘I know everything! If only my wife or my husband or that person over there would listen to what the preacher’s preaching today! Well, this world would be a better place! If only they would get it!’ That’s often how we think. Right? It never crosses our minds that what God is saying today through His Word is meant for us; that He’s trying to deal with that poverty within us, that’s robbing us of the abundant life that Jesus came to give us.

Come on, we all have blind spots. We all have things about ourselves that we can’t see. Well, that’s the whole point of it being a blind spot, right? We just can’t see it. Jesus said (Matthew 5:3):

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, those who recognise their deep poverty, those who admit it, they’re the ones who’ll be blessed because the kingdom of heaven is for them. What blind spots do you have? The answer is, you don’t know because they’re blind spots. The same’s true of me. I have my blind spots too. The question is, what do you do about them? So try this on for size. Psalm 119:17-19:

Deal bountifully with Your servant, so that I may live and observe Your Word. Open my eyes, so that I may behold the wondrous things of Your Law. I live as an alien in the land; do not hide Your commandments from me.

What do we do about our blind spots? We ask God to open our eyes, so that we can see the point of what He’s trying to say to us; so that when we open the Bible and read His Word, the Holy Spirit will lift that one particular verse or that one particular story that He has for us today right off the page and plonk it into our hearts; so that in an instant, we’ll get what He’s trying to say to us, in a way that completely and utterly and radically changes us; in a way that deals with some of the deep spiritual poverty in our hearts.

When was the last time that you went to God and asked Him to deal bountifully with you, to open your eyes so that you could behold the wonders of His Word? When was the last time you said to God, "LORD, I’m an alien in this world. This life down here is tough today. I need Your Word, so don’t hide Your commandments from me?" In James 1:5, God says that:

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you.

Sometimes we wrestle with problems and we just can’t find the solution. The solution, though, is in asking God to help; asking God to open our eyes; asking God to give us the wisdom that we don’t have.

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The thing I love about God is that He doesn’t just send Jesus to save us and then leave us dangling to deal with all the things we have to deal with. He gives us His Spirit and his Word, to pour His wisdom, godly wisdom, powerful wisdom, wisdom that works – into our hearts.

WISDOM AMIDST CONFLICT One of the reasons that we have conflict in our lives – not the only reason by any means – but one of the main ones, is because we brought it on ourselves.

Let’s do a quick stocktake of your relationships – the ones that aren’t going so well at the moment. The one’s where the harmony of the relationship has been disrupted by conflict, by a misunderstanding, by a harsh word. And the longer it goes on, the more entrenched our positions become, right?

Okay, so thinking about those relationships, honestly, how much of it is your fault? And even if up front, it didn’t start out as your fault, what opportunities have you allowed to slip buy without stepping out and resolving the conflict?

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. (Psalm 34:14)

Short and sweet but actually, it’s a verse that is jam–packed with wisdom. The first bit, actually, is pretty obvious. Depart from evil, but all too often, we use it as a bit of an excuse when it comes to conflict.

Well, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t start it. It’s up to THEM to say sorry!

But God doesn’t give us that luxury. Depart from evil AND do good. Doing good is a proactive step. Doing good is grabbing a hold of a situation and resolving it, even if in your mind, you weren’t the one who started it.

Doing good is about seeking peace and seeking involves getting up off your behind, figuring out a way through and making it happen. Peace, I mean real peace, only happens when both parties are happy with the outcome. But whilst seeking peace is about being proactive, God takes it even one step further. He doesn’t just want us to seek it out, He wants us to pursue it. The original Hebrew word there for 'pursue' carries this sense of chasing it down, to harass in a sense to get it, to aim to secure it, to be ardent and persistent about it.

I wonder when you consider just this one short verse and what it really means, the different light that it casts on your relationships and their conflicts. I love this. Just eleven words in that verse and yet powerful wisdom that can last you for a lifetime. Jesus said:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9)

So being the one who brings peace into a relationship, even though it requires humility and sacrifice and not getting your own way all the time, is a powerful witness of the love and the reconciliation that is available in Jesus Christ.

Peacemakers, through their peacemaking, speak the love of Christ into the hearts of their enemies. And that, after all, is exactly what you and I are on this earth to do. But beyond being the proactive peacemaker, there’s another way in which you and I can apply God’s wisdom to our relationships.

Sometimes the things that we do – albeit that they’re innocent, albeit that they’re not wrong, per se, bring conflict and strife to a situation. Have you been there? And when the other person gets upset with you, you’re left wondering, “Hang on, what did I do wrong?”

Yah! We’ve all had that experience. And believe it or not that very situation is something that God’s Word has some wisdom on. I love this. I love it how God has thought all these things through and poured out His wisdom through His Word.

Back when Christianity was being birthed out of Judaism in the first century, there was some conjecture and dispute over what people could eat and not eat. Was pork in or out. Were shellfish in our out. We take that for granted today, but back then, it was a big deal.

Those who understood the grace and freedom they now had in Christ, understood that they were free to eat anything, but were prone to criticise those who still thought the old way. But the Apostle Paul turns around and says to them:

Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. (Romans 14:13)

So, don’t use your freedom, to be a stumbling block to others. He goes on to say that if what we do is going to be a stumbling block to others in their faith, we should curb our freedoms for their sake.

In a world that’s so focussed these days on individual freedoms, what a powerful message that is! When you think of it, much of the conflict in our lives arises out of our assertion of our individual rights. But I’m entitled … is what we so often think. And yet, according to God’s wisdom, there is something more important to the things that we think that we’re entitled to. And that thing, is preserving peace in our relationships. Because, after all, when you boil it all down:

… the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17)

How many times have you and I disrupted the peace, when, all along, we could not only have kept the peace, but built up and encouraged those around us.

Let us therefore pursue what makes for peace and for mutual building up. (Romans 14:19)

So beyond just peace, you and I have the opportunity, through the things we choose to day and do, and, importantly through the things we choose not to say and do, to build others up. To encourage them. To strengthen them. To serve them by helping them to grow. What a privilege to be put in a position where we can sacrifice our entitlements, to serve others like that.

Wisdom for Today I don’t know how it is for you, but for me, wherever I happen to be, every morning starts of pretty much the same way. I wake up, shave, clean my teeth, shower, get dressed, have breakfast … and then it’s off to work or if it’s a weekend, mostly, it’s time for a rest.

As at today, I have lived 21,163 days on this earth and, other than the fact that I didn’t have to shave when I was young, and I went to school rather than to work, each day has started, pretty much the same way.

It’s a bit scary when you think of it like that isn’t it? But for each and every day that you and I have left on this earth God has some powerful wisdom ready and waiting. The first piece of that, that I’d like to share with you is this:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

That was written at a time of complete devastation. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed, and God’s people had either been killed or taken into captivity to Babylon. Sometimes our lives feel like that too. Complete devastation. Either because something bad has happened to us, or because we, through our own stupidity, through our own sin, have brought it on ourselves. But each and every morning, no matter how bad things were yesterday, no matter how dark it was during the night for you, the sun comes up, right? Nothing stops the sun from coming up.

And it’s exactly the same with God’s steadfast love for you. It never ceases. When you open your eyes each morning you can be certain of two things. Either the sun has or soon will come up, and the steadfast love of the Lord for you hasn’t failed. In fact just as the sun does its thing each and every day for you, so the mercies of the Lord are new for you, each and every morning.

But … but … I don’t deserve it. Nope. Neither do I. But that’s the whole point. Mercy is only mercy when it’s undeserved. And the completely undeserved favour of God, the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, the steadfast love of God is new for you, each and every morning.

That means that you can roll out of bed, put your feet on the ground, open your eyes and rejoice. You can live each moment of today … the good, the bad and the ugly … filled with the joy of the Lord.

Because the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. And that’s why, before the day begins, I want to tap into those mercies.

After my morning ritual of shave, teeth, shower and make a cup of coffee … the very next thing that happens for me, is that I wander into my study, I close the door and I spend a half an hour or so with God.

But the big temptation is to get distracted. What’s come in on the email overnight? How many likes did I get on Facebook? What’s in the news? These days, technology being what it is, the whole world is ready and waiting for you in the palm of your hand. And I think it’s because of that, that we’ve forgotten how to settle down, quietly, and spend some time with God. To, in essence, wait on God.

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:25-26)

The concept of waiting for anything these days is almost, like … Hang on, wait? Why do I want to wait for something? We live in an instant world. Hey, most of get touchy when the internet’s running a bit too slow, or if there are two people ahead of us in the ATM queue. Wait? Wait? But … just let these words sink into your heart.

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, the soul that seeks him.

How do you kick your mornings off? Is there any time there for waiting on the Lord?

Just yesterday, I was having a conversation with a man about exercise. And he said, “Well, I don’t really have time.” So, I asked him, “Do you have time to get sick? Do you have time to be tired and drowsy? Because they’re some of the consequences of not getting enough exercise. So if perhaps you find yourself “too busy” to wait on God, let me ask you, “Do you have time to miss out on the goodness of God?” Because that’s the full effect of this Scripture here. God is good to those who wait for Him.

And that word “wait” means to look for eagerly, to hope, expect, anticipate … to linger in that place. I think in this world of 24/7 connectivity and instant gratification, so many people are missing out on the goodness of God in their day, because we’ve forgotten how to wait on Him.

So here’s the challenge that I believe God is setting before you today. Build in just a bit of time, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of quiet time alone with Him … and spend some of it just waiting on God. Reading His Word, yes. Praying, yes. But also waiting, quietly. Hoping, expecting, anticipating the goodness of God. Because He is good to those who wait for Him. And that goodness is something that never, ever leaves you, the whole day long.

Sometimes you read a story in the Bible and you kind of gloss over it without realising how powerful and profound it is. Here’s a great example.

The Israelites have just escaped from slavery in Egypt and Pharaoh and his army – the greatest army on the earth at the time – are about to chase them and destroy them. Scary times.

But here’s something interesting that we’re told about how God behaved in this situation:

The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people. (Exodus 13:21-22)

Well, that’s not quite true, because in the next chapter, we read that God positioned this pillar behind the Israelites, between them and the pursuing Egyptian army to protect them. That being said, for the next 40 years, that pillar of cloud and fire never left them in the wilderness.

Well, okay, I guess most of us have heard that story a hundred times. Yeah sure … pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night. I get it. But do you? Really?

You see what’s so powerful about this is that back in that day – and in fact, still today – all the other gods that other nations worshipped, lived in temples that had been built on hilltops. The gods didn’t come to the people, indeed they couldn’t, so the people had to go to their temples to worship them. But the God of Israel went on the journey with His people. Back then, that was a mind-blowingly radical concept. In fact if you travel to countries where there is a lot of idol worship, it’s still a mind-blowingly radical concept.

This idea that God is on the journey with you, to protect you from your enemies, to give you shelter from the harsh sun by day, to give you warmth and light by night. But that’s exactly what’s going on in your life right now. If you believe in Jesus, the Presence of God never leaves you. God is on your journey with you to guide, protect, shelter and love you every step of the way just as He was with Israel.

Only now, now He’s put His Spirit in you … and He will never leave you or forsake you. So … the upshot of all that is that every step you take, you can take in the confidence that your God, your mighty, loving, powerful, wonderful God, is on your journey with you.

You can actually live your life as though it’s true. Because it is.

Wisdom for the future If the truth be known, our past is completely out of our control. Of all the things in our lives that are out of our control, the past is the biggest one. Because no matter what you do, you can’t change the past. And so what many people do, is they turn their attention to the future. What’s going to happen? What’s next? Will it be something good or something bad? I mean, we’re always hoping for good things.

Our default position is that life should be a bed of roses 100% of the time. But, you know, there are little things that niggle away at us. A dark cloud emerging over there. An ill wind blowing here. And before you know it, you’re worrying about your future.

In fact if you took stocktake of your thoughts over just the next twenty–four hours, you might well be surprised just how much of your time, you spend worrying about your future. So if you perhaps have those negative thoughts swilling around in your head and in your heart, here’s a Word from God, to set you free – because that’s what God’s Word does. It sets us free in a way that nothing else, in a way that no one else can do.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? (Matthew 6:25-26)

Good question there Jesus. Who by worrying can add a single hour to their life? In other words – worrying doesn’t produce a single positive outcome. Not a one. In fact, these days, doctors will tell you that worry causes stress and stress can actually cut your life short.

Do you believe that God loves you or not? Well if you do, then you can get on and live your life as though that’s true, because it is. He does love you. According to Jesus – not me you understand – according to Jesus, He will provide your every need. And that means that you no longer need to worry about anything.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:34)

There’s absolutely no point in worrying about tomorrow. There are no surprises there for God. There’s nothing there that He can’t handle. Keep your eyes on today … and be the best you that you can be, today. Because your ultimate tomorrow, your ultimate destiny is a heavenly prize that is beyond anything that you or I could imagine.

When we think about the future, mostly we just think about our future here on this earth. That’s what appears so important at the moment. What’s going to happen to my health? My finances? My marriage? My children? Where am I going to live if things don’t go the way I’d planned?

We have plans you see and anything that looks like it’s going to disrupt those plans – even if, actually, God has something much better for us than we’d planned – we get all touchy and we worry about it. But let’s lift our eyes for a moment, and look at the eternal destiny that God has for you and me. Because eternity, compared to our days here on this earth, is an incredibly long time. Right?

Yes, we suffer on this earth. Yes, there are tears, there’s pain, there are things in your life right now that you wouldn’t have wished upon yourself. But they’re there and that’s it. And in the middle of that reality, in the middle of your reality, God has this to say to you today:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18)

There’s just no comparison between then and now. Because one day, one day in the not too distant future,

… the home of God will be among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things [will] have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)

That’s where your life is headed if you believe in Jesus. That’s the ultimate destiny. That’s the certain hope, the rock-solid, certain hope that God is giving you today and I believe that He wants you and me to accept that certain hope into our hearts right now. Whatever suffering you are travelling through right now, you have a future that is beyond anything that you can ever imagine, ready and waiting for you.

And Jesus has gone ahead to get things ready:

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. (John 14:2-3)

So, my friend, take courage today. Your life is headed towards an eternity in the Presence of God. An eternity where you will worship Him, enjoy Him, be with Him … without end.

And the sufferings o this time are not worth comparing with that glory that will be revealed to you. Soon.

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Life doesn’t always go the way we want it to. We wish it did, but it just doesn’t. Things happen that aren’t fair. Stresses and strains come along that we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves and so what we need in those times is powerful godly wisdom. Wisdom that works.

Wisdom for Your Life We know, you and I, that our days on this earth are numbered. We know that one day, we’re going to breathe our last breath. We know that one day, our heart will stop beating and that will be it, for our time here.

We know that, but mostly, we behave as though we’re going to live for ever. Somehow we put the idea that we’re going to die, out of our mind and we live mostly, for today.

The things of today, tomorrow and perhaps next week are what occupy our minds. As a former soldier, I like the expression “down in the weeds” – it’s this sense that you can’t see the big picture, because you’re, well, down in the weeds.

Having navigated through many a swamp in my days in the military, it’s something I really relate to. Because when you’re down there, you can’t easily stick your head up and look around.

So, the cares and the pressures of this world take over, and it feels as though all that matters is what’s going on right now. The problems, the hurts, the conflicts, the joys, the pleasures that we have going on, right now.

But I believe God wants us to stick our heads up and get a sense of the big picture. Because when you take a look at the big picture of your life, it puts today into context. Maybe the things that we have going on right now aren’t all there is. Maybe, they’re a lot smaller, a lot less significant, in the bigger scheme of things.

Psalm 90:9,10: The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.

That’s the truth of the matter. That’s what’s going to happen. SO what God wants you to do today is to stand back and look at the things that are happening in your life today, in context:

Psalm 90:12: So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.

Hmm, what’s He trying to say here? Quite simply this: count your days, they’re limited. If I live to the average age for a male which is 82, I have just 25 birthdays left. That’s around 9,125 days – under 10,000.

In one way, that’s not all that many. From another perspective, it’s rather a lot. What I am I going to do with the days that I have left? What are you going to do with the days you have left? Will they count? Will the lives of the people around you be better for having known you?

You start asking those sorts of questions, and you’re lifting your head out of the weeds. You start asking those sort of questions, you’ll develop some serious wisdom of the heart.

A funny thing happens when you lift up your eyes from the day to day. I have a beautiful park near my place, where I often go walking. I realised one day, that I constantly had my eyes looking down at the path ahead. Day after day.

So I decided instead, that I would look around. And you know, it opened up a whole new world of beauty and joy.

We tend to walk through life like that, looking down at our circumstances. Looking down and seeing the problems. Focussing on the here and now, don’t we.

At a time when Israel had spent seventy years as slaves, in captivity in Babylon, at a time when all God’s people could see was a lifetime of toil, God said this to them:

Isaiah 40:26: Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

God wanted them to lift there eyes up out of their misery, out of their sense of lostness and of slavery, to focus on Him, on His power, on what He can do for them. He goes on …

Isaiah 40:27–13: Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

I wonder if perhaps today, you feel faint and weary and powerless. I wonder if perhaps today you feel exhausted. If you do, then lift up your eyes and see this God who put all the stars, the trillions upon trillions of stars in their place. The God who created the whole universe. The God who wants to renew your strength so that you too will mount up with wings like eagles, so that you to can run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.

Lift up your eyes today and wait expectantly on God – that’s what the original Hebrew word there means – to wait expectantly, hoping in Him, trusting in Him … then you will be laying hold of the might and the power, the love and the compassion of God for you, in your circumstances. In your life.

Isn’t it amazing the wisdom that God has ready and waiting for us, if only we’ll look, if only we’ll listen, hmm?! But wait, there’s more!

The reality for all of us, is that we lose sight of God amidst the busyness of life, just the day–to–day living life – who He is, His love for us, His incredible power for. Yep, we all lose sight of heavenly things, the spiritual dimension.

A dear friend and former business partner of mine, used to say that in understanding any difficult issue, any problem in life, context is everything – almost. He was right.

If you take a scripture verse out of context, you can turn it into a lie – that’s exactly what the devil did in tempting Jesus (Luke Chapter 4). And he’s still doing it today.

If you don’t take the time to understand the reasons behind a person’s actions, chances are, you’ll completely misunderstand them. And, you know, if we don’t get a grip on the heavenly context, the eternal context, the spiritual context of our lives, we're going to make so many mistakes.

Wisdom is about exercising good judgement. Wisdom is about taking our knowledge and experience, and making good decisions. But when you leave something out, if you miss part of the picture, you can’t be wise. You can’t make good decisions. And that’s what happens when we forget the heavenly context of our lives.

Colossians 3:1–4: So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

How much time do you spend seeking the things that are above, the heavenly things? Setting your mind on the things that are above, not always on the things that are on this earth.

Here’s the big picture. Jesus died for you and if you believe in Him then your very life is tucked away in God with Christ. And one day, that life will be revealed in glory with Him.

Imagine just for a moment, if that became the overriding reality of your life. The context for all that you see and do, for everything that happens to you. Imagine how different the world would look. Imagine the strength and the power that you would lay hold of in dealing with your trials and temptations. Imagine, just imagine, the joy and the peace that would guard your heart, as each day, you set your heart and mind on the things that are above.

Well, stop imagining and start doing. Because the Lord your God has a whole new dimension of wisdom for your life, as you set your focus, on the things that are above.

Wisdom Amidst Turmoil How much of each day do you spend, investing in tomorrow. Just as with money, there are two things that we can do with our time. We can spend it or we can invest it.

There’s good spending, and then there’s wasting. It’s the same with our time. We can spend our time on good things – on relationships, on work, on rest – or we can fritter it away on this and that, answer emails that don’t need answering, endlessly scrolling through Facebook or whatever form of social media you happen to be addicted to at the moment.

So, how much time to you invest in your future? Because there are things that you can do today, that will protect you tomorrow.

Proverbs 1:20–22: Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?”

In other words, God’s wisdom is crying out to you, here and now. His Word is choc–a–block full of His wisdom that He wants to give freely and generously to each of us. But all too often, we’re too busy to receive it – frittering our time away as we so often do.

There was a huge research project done by the Center of Bible Engagement in the US, asking Christians why they didn’t read their Bibles. The number one reason, it won’t surprise you, is that they didn’t have the time.

Really? Too busy … but time to watch the fifth rerun of their favourite sitcom on TV! Come on!

There’s a reason that God wants to give you His wisdom:

Proverbs 1:24–28: Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel … I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you, when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.

You see when disaster strikes, it’s too late. The time to get God’s wisdom into your heart is now while the going is good, before the turmoil strikes. It’s about investing in the future. Or … are you too busy?

God loves you more than words can say. And like any good father, He wants to impart His powerful wisdom into your life. He knows what’s coming. He knows what you need. And He has given you His Word, and His Holy Spirit to pour out His wisdom in abundance.

And here is one of the pieces of wisdom that I believe that God wants to tuck away in your heart, for when calamity strikes.

Often when we’re going through difficult times, God intervenes in ways that we simply don’t expect. We expect a conventional intervention. He on the other hand, steps in, in an unconventional way. We expect a natural intervention, but He has something supernatural in mind.

And that can be so unsettling, so fearful. God wants you to be ready for the unexpected.

Israel had been in captivity in Babylon for seventy years and it was time for God to set them free and return them to the promised land. Sure, that’s what they all wanted, but when God stepped in, it wasn’t what they expected.

Instead of just changing the King of Babylon’s heart – which would have been so much more convenient – He raised up Cyrus, the King of Persia to take on the Babylonians in war and ultimately it was Cyrus as the victor in that war, who allowed God’s people to return to the promised land.

Now, we can sit back in the comfort of our armchairs and think to ourselves “Well, that’s fine. At least they made it home again.” But put yourself in their shoes. They were slaves. Completely powerless. And a war is raging around them. That’s pretty scary.

But before the battle begins, God speaks to His people through the prophet Isaiah. You see, God always wants to give us His wisdom before the battle begins. Before the calamity strikes.

Isaiah 41:2 Who has roused a victor from the east, summoned him to his service? He delivers up nations to him, and tramples kings under foot; he makes them like dust with his sword, like driven stubble with his bow.

In other words, I’m behind this calamity. I have the power to raise up kings and cast them down.

Isaiah 41:8–13: But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

So don’t be afraid, God is saying, because I am on your side? Do you see how important it is to get this sort of wisdom into your heart before calamity strikes, before God intervenes in a situation in a way that you don’t expect?

Often, when God is up to something really good, things get worse before they get better. And without the Word of God, without the wisdom of God in your heart, you’ll have no idea.

God is on your side so don’t be surprised, don’t be alarmed, when He acts in a way that you didn’t expect.

Now, whilst sometimes God intervenes in our turmoil to bring peace, other times, He has something different in mind.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation of uncertainty, of turmoil or conflict or fear … and no matter how much you prayer, God hasn’t stepped in to change your situation? It’s unsettling isn’t it, because we’re left wondering “Well, is God ever going to show up? Does God even care?”

But you see whilst sometimes God calms the storm, other times He allows it to rage on so that He can calm your heart instead. Because having victory in the midst of turmoil is a beautiful gift that He wants you to have.

Philippians 4:4–7: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Now that’s a nice theory I guess, but it becomes so much more than a theory, when you realise that the Apostle Paul wrote those words, chained to a Roman guard, in a dungeon awaiting execution. Now all of a sudden it becomes a shining light, a beacon if you will, in your dungeon and mine, when we're going through tumultuous times.

Joy in the face of suffering is victory. Peace which surpasses all understanding, in the face of a death sentence, is victory.

It’s the same peace that Jesus had in the Garden of Gethsemane after He prayed. And it’s the very same peace that God wants you to have, in the midst of your turmoil and trials.

In many cases, we will never know or understand, at least not in this life, why God allows us to suffer and another person to be delivered. Or why last time He delivered us quickly whilst this time it seems to be going on and on.

When Job asked God those questions from the midst of his suffering, God replied pretty firmly by saying “Well, actually Job, it’s none of your business.” God is, after all, God.

But I can tell you this: that God wants you to have victory in the midst of your turmoil. That’s a piece of wisdom that the Holy Spirit will tuck away in your heart, and pull out the next time you need it.

So that instead of worrying and fretting, you go to Him with thanksgiving in your heart, right in the middle of the turmoil, pour out your heart to Him and receive the promise of a peace beyond all understanding, a peace that in natural terms doesn’t make sense, a supernatural peace that will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

What a gift. And by the Spirit, it’s a gift that has been written on your heart today.

The Big Picture It’s so easy when we’re going through turmoil to lose sight of the big picture. To lose sight of the eternal picture. And that eternal picture if we can just grasp it in our hearts, can change the way we feel about today, the way we handle turmoil and stress, and indeed the whole way that we live our lives.

Because God has such an amazing future planned for you and for me. It’s a future that Jesus died to purchase for us on that cross. It’s a future that He rose again to give us, so that we could have the gift of eternal life.

1 Corinthians 15:54–58: When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

You see, the eternal future that’s coming your way is meant to make a powerful difference to the way that you live your life.

Therefore, be steadfast and immovable. Therefore, because of the eternity that’s coming your way, excel in the work of the Lord because you know that it’s not in vain.

Death will be swallowed up. The sting of death will be gone because of the victory that you have through your faith in Jesus Christ. It’s free. It’s available here and now and it’s a victory that will impact your life from this day forward.

It’s so incredibly sad that so many people worry about their futures, when in fact, in Christ, their future is absolutely secure. So many people believe in Jesus, they believe that they’re saved, yet they don’t let that faith impact the certainty with which they live their life. The hope with which they live. The power with which they live. The joy with which they live.

Friend if you believe in Jesus, you have such a future … a future ready wand waiting for you, today. Live your life with that future in mind. Live your life with the certainty of that future filling your heart. Because when you shed this earthly body of sickness and sin, you will put on eternal, imperishability and spend that eternity in the Presence of the Living God for ever and ever and ever Amen! Hallelujah!

And God, through that future wants to radically transform your life today. So that you can life your life in victory. That’s the big picture.

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Sure, everybody wants wisdom. Do you want to be wise? Yep, me too. But receiving wisdom and living it out – well it’s not always that easy. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it costs. Hmm. Do you still want to be wise?

Dealing with Hardness of Heart Heart disease is rather a big deal these days. A diet high in refined carbohydrates, combined with a lack of exercise is taking its toll.

The problem seems to be hardening of the arteries. But it’s not a condition that affects many young people, because it takes time for arteries to harden. Decades in fact, of dietary abuse. And the reason that arteries harden is as a defence against the effects of the stuff that we’re putting in our mouths. Eventually, they rupture and there you have it – a heart attack or a stroke.

The Bible talks about the hardening of our hearts, heart disease if you will, too. Several times.

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse – who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. (Jeremiah 17:9)

I mean when that’s what’s going on in your heart, when that's the way you’re abusing yourself, your heart is going to get diseased. It’s going to harden. Here’s how it goes. Here’s the vicious circle.

Pride and hardness of heart go hand in hand. Pride is the enemy of humility. And pride … pride stops us from laying hold of God’s wisdom, which causes us pain and in turn, hardens our hearts, like scar tissue. It’s a vicious, vicious circle.

And when that’s what’s going on inside us, we’re not prepared to take advice from anyone. We’re hunkered down, defending ourselves, just trying to survive … and the wisdom of God is something that we just don’t want to accept.

Have you ever found yourself in that sort of a situation? That place where you’re so damaged, that you can’t receive the good advice of others or the wisdom of God that’s actually going to make things better?

It’s often the way things go. In protection mode, our heart hardens and we become unteachable. Unaccepting of the wisdom that will set us free.

Is your heart desperately sick? Be honest. How teachable is your spirit? How open are you, right at this moment, to accept the powerful wisdom of God that will set you free from the maladies that are plaguing your life?

Has sin so wracked you with pain and suffering that your heart feels as hard as stone? If you’re in that desperate situation, then I have a Word from the Lord for you today. It’s a prayer that can set you free from this dark and difficult place.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:10)

I remember a time in my life when I was completely unteachable. A time when I was so proud, and yet so damaged, that my heart was as hard as stone.

There’s nothing worse than a hard, unteachable heart. It stops you from receiving the healing wisdom that God has for you. That’s why God wants to give us a clean heart. That’s why God wants to put His Holy Spirit in us.

To heal us from the inside out. To do some radical heart surgery, to remove the diseased tissue, and replace it with healthy tissue.

I remember the very first heart transplant, by a surgeon Dr Christian Barnard on the 3rd of December, 1967. The heart recipient only survived for 18 days, such was the state of the technology and medical knowledge back then.

These days, whilst not quite a routine operation, heart transplants almost always succeed, adding years of healthy life.

And that’s the key. It’s not just life, but healthy life, vibrant life, abundant life that we’re looking for here. And that’s the sort of life that God wants you to lead. But you can’t have it with a diseased heart. And just as King David, after committing murder and adultery, prayed for a clean heart, a right spirit, an infilling of the Holy Spirit – what we discover elsewhere in God’s Word is that that’s exactly what God wants to do for us.

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

In other words God wants to give you a new heart – taking the heart of stone, the diseased heart out, and replacing it with a healthy heart of flesh. And not just a new heart. When we have a new heart, when our heart is soft and healthy again, it will be open to receive a new Spirit, the Holy Spirit – so that we can receive the wisdom of God. So that we can receive the wisdom of God.

How’s your heart? Hardened by years of abuse? Hardened by pain and unforgiveness? Scarred by the hurts that you’ve suffered in the past? Damaged to the point that it’s difficult, almost impossible, to receive the healing wisdom of God?

Well, today I have some good news for you. God wants to give you a new heart and a new Spirit. All you need to do is to believe His Word and ask Him for it.

He is ready, willing and able to heal your life, to replace your heart, to fill you with His Spirit and to open you up to receive His wisdom into your heart.

When you think about it, the heart is where we live. It’s the seat, the centre, of our emotions.

Of course, the heart is a physical organ vital to life. That’s why we use it as a metaphor for the centre of who we are. Everything flows out of our metaphorical heart. If the heart is diseased, our lives are diseased. If the heart is healthy, our lives are healthy.

If our heart is filled with evil intentions, then our lives will live out that evil. That’s why Jesus said that murder begins in the heart. Out of the overflow the heart speaks. What happens in our hearts first, is later acted out in our lives. Our hearts, and our hands are connected.

As I look back on my life there have been times when my heart has been completely closed to the things of God; the wisdom of God. And the only way that I’ve discovered to deal with that is to draw near to God.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:8)

You and I can work and work and work at improving ourselves, but have you noticed, it just doesn’t work, no matter how hard you work at it.

So, when you feel as though God is a million miles away (He isn’t of course, it just feels that way) then it’s time to tackle a step towards Him. It’s time to set a bit of time aside each day to pray. It’s time to open His Word and read it, reflect on it, receive it.

It’s not easy at first. It’s like a young infant taking her first faltering steps towards her dad. But, just think of what that does in the Father’s heart. When we take a few, faltering, unsteady steps towards Him, He takes some mighty, God-sized steps towards us.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

That’s His promise to you today, in case you’re feeling as though He’s a million miles away. Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you. And in that place, He will purify your heart, He will cleanse your hands, He will remove the double-mindedness and doubt from you in a way that you could never do for yourself.

What’s the matter with us that we think we have to clean up our act before we go to God? Sure our hearts might be filthy dirty, diseased, hard as stone. Sure our hands might be covered in filth as well.

It’s for sinners like you and me that Jesus died.

What you and I need is wisdom that penetrates the heart. And that’s exactly what Jesus has ready and waiting for you.

Wisdom from Above Most of my life, I’ve believed that wisdom comes with age. And to some extent that’s true.

Normally someone who’s been around the block a few times, will have made enough mistakes, and seen enough things to be able to impart some real wisdom.

But just because you’re a bit older, doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily any wiser. Sometimes a person’s blind spots, you know their weaknesses, their failures, stop them from, I guess laying hold of real wisdom.

And sometimes, something that holds itself out to be real wisdom, is tainted by self-interest or other motives that may not be in your best interests.

Let me ask you, is it wise for a woman to have an abortion or not? Well, that depends – at least out there in the marketplace of ideas – on where you’re coming from; on your perspective; on your interests.

So how do you know what real wisdom looks like? How can you tell real wisdom from false wisdom, when you see it? Being able to discern that, being able to tell the difference between these two types of wisdom, as things turn out, is incredibly important.

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. (James 3:13)

So it seems that, according to God at least – probably not such a bad place to go for wisdom when you think about it – the first marque of wisdom is a good life full of works born out of gentleness.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not naturally a gentle person. I’m more your get things done kind of person. So a huge part of my journey has been to learn gentleness. Now, gentleness doesn’t mean weakness. It doesn’t mean being airy-fairy and indecisive. It doesn’t mean being ill-disciplined.

But what it does mean is getting things done in love. What it does mean is that as much as getting things done is important, people, these people who annoy us and who frustrate us … who, to be honest drive us crazy sometimes … these people who are made in God’s image and loved by Him every bit as much as you are loved by Him … yes, those, people matter more than getting things done.

So when someone holds themselves out to be wise, ask yourself What does their life tell me? Is it a life full of good works done with gentleness? Because that will tell you the nature of their wisdom – real, or fake.

And, come on, let’s look in the mirror too. Let’s take a look at our own lives. What’s the rest of the world seeing in how we live out our lives? Good works born out of gentleness … or, not.

Because let me tell you, false wisdom is ugly. Really, really ugly.

Some people pretend to be wise, but then, when you scratch below the surface, you find that they’re anything but. What makes this so dangerous is that often those same people are … so confident; often they’re incredibly successful and so we fall for that.

Those sorts of people lead many astray into ways of thinking, into ways of behaving, into ways of living, that end up ruining your life. That’s why you and I need to be so incredibly discerning when it comes to deciding who we are going to allow, to influence our lives.

It won’t come as a surprise that some people are wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing. You’ll find them at work, sadly sometimes at home and yes, you’ll find them in your church too. And here’s what their brand of wisdom looks like:

But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. (James 3:14-16)

Envy and selfish ambition – those two things go hand in hand. Some people are only in it for what they can get out of it for themselves. And sometimes, they’re in the most unexpected of places. I remember having something to do with the head of a large, well-known, global ministry who was far more interested in his reputation and self-promotion than he was in seeing people’s lives changed by the love of Jesus.

When others in his organisation succeeded, instead of celebrating and praising God, he became envious. It poisoned his heart, it damaged the ministry and it ended his career.

Sure there are people out there who are flashy, successful, articulate, capable of leading a crowd. But the questions to ask ourselves is: Why are they doing it? What is the motivation of their heart?

Because let me tell you, their words, their actions, their facial expressions and body language, their decisions will ultimately betray what’s going on in their hearts. They can’t help it. So be wise yourself. Take the time to watch and listen, before being seduced by what is, ultimately, worldly, self-interest that holds itself out to be 'wisdom'.

You will know a tree by its fruit, right? And while we’re at it, what does your fruit say about your heart? What motivates you? If it’s selfish ambition, if you find yourself becoming envious of other people who succeed, then it’s time to look for a different sort of wisdom.

In our world. We’re taught that success is the most important thing. But envy and selfish ambition have nothing whatsoever to do with wisdom.

So, let me ask you, what does real wisdom look like? If you ran into some powerful, godly wisdom, how would you recognise it.

People who roll over the top of others, who succeed at the expense of those around them, well, no, that’s not wisdom is it?

People who are in it for themselves, full of selfish ambition, people who get jealous whenever anyone around them succeeds … no that’s not wisdom either, no matter how successful those people might be.

I want to share with you today, the best, the most powerful, the most reliable definition of wisdom that I have ever come across:

… the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. (James 3:17-18)

Real wisdom comes from above; from God. It’s pure, completely untainted by partiality, self-interest or envy. Purity is fantastic isn’t it. It king of rings out – simple, beautiful, unmistakable. It’s just the sort of wisdom you know is from God because it’s peaceable.

You and I are called to be peacemakers. To navigate in love through conflict and strife. The most powerful and influential leaders I know are peaceable and gentle. Gentleness is such an underrated quality these days.

I wonder what opportunities lie ahead for you, today, to be gentle with people? Hmm? Great wisdom is willing to yield. When someone else has a better idea, when someone else is heading in a direction that you know in your heart of hearts to be right – real wisdom, godly wisdom, is willing to yield.

Full of mercy for others – because all those annoying people out there are going to make mistakes. They’re going to rub you the wrong way. And when they’re behaving badly, mercy forgives. After all, mercy is only mercy, if it’s undeserved.

Godly wisdom is full of good fruit, without a single trace of partiality and hypocrisy. Real wisdom yields a harvest of peace.

Wow! Just stop and take those two verses – James 3:17-18 – and imagine how your world would change, if you lived your life like that. Because that’s the very sort of wisdom that God wants for you. That’s the very sort of wisdom that He has ready and waiting for you.

Why is it that we think that selfishness and partiality is the way to get ahead? Why is it that we imagine that we always have to put our best foot forward, so that everyone will think well of us?

Let me ask you, do you think well of those sorts of people?

There is a different sort of wisdom waiting for you. Live that wisdom and may your life yield a harvest of righteousness and peace.

God’s Wisdom Never Fails You know it never ceases to amaze me, how when I open the Bible, God has right there, in the next chapter, ready and waiting, exactly the wisdom I need for today.

Just yesterday, I opened God’s Word at Psalm 91. I’ve had a pretty rough travel schedule over the past few weeks. I’ve had a pinched nerve in my neck. I was tired and sore and you know it as well as I do, when you’re physically down. You can be emotionally down too.

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:1-2)

Just the wisdom, the encouragement, the comfort, the heavenly perspective that I needed.

Do you yearn for the wisdom of God? There are so many things that He sets before us, that are way beyond our ability to figure out. Problems that come along, challenges, things that you wish you could figure but you just can’t.

So when you pray, when you read God’s Word for yourself, day after day God will give you His wisdom. Because He knows you’re seeking it. He can see you longing to see His kingdom come, His will be done on this earth as it is in heaven.

The Bible says that we walk by faith, not by sight. You know, when we yearn for God’s wisdom, when we long to hear Him speak, when we go to Him as Solomon did and ask for wisdom and discernment, it brings joy to His heart and He pours it out on us, just like we asked. It’s who He is. It’s how it works.

God’s Wisdom is ready and waiting for you.

Are you sick to death of being tossed to and fro by the winds and the waves of my circumstances? It’s a terrible thing when you’re going through a tough time and you don’t have something rock-solid to stand on.

Well, let me tell you, God’s Word, God’s wisdom, God’s promises – never fail. If God says that He’s going to do something, He does it. Full stop. End of story.

You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. (Psalm 91:5-6)

You need never be afraid of our circumstances. You never have to worry about how you’re going to handle something complex, something difficult, something that you really don’t want to deal with, something that’s so complex that it’s beyond your ability to cope with.

Because His promise is that, if in a time of testing and trial, if in a time of suffering or persecution, you ask Him for His wisdom, He’ll just give it to you.

I really want to encourage you today to take the promises of God seriously. I know it’s hard. And the more difficult life gets, the harder it is to believe. But the only solution I’ve ever discovered to fear, to pain, to that sense of lostness, to loneliness – and I’ve been in all of those places over the last 20 years – is to draw close to Jesus. To take Him at His Word.

The Word of God, the Bible, isn’t just another book. It's not just a bunch of words on a page or a screen. It’s the living Word of the living God. And when you read something like

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:1-2)

You are entitled to take God at His Word. To believe what He says, to trust in Him, to rest in Him and to receive from him what He promises. That my friend is why they call this the Good News. That’s the Wisdom of God. The powerful wisdom of God for you today. May you receive it in your heart and experience it in your life.

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Wisdom. There’s real wisdom, godly wisdom. And then there’s the false wisdom that many in this world hold out to be true wisdom. God yearns for you to be filled with real wisdom. Wisdom from above.

A Different Kind of Wisdom Let’s be honest. Sometimes we do the dumbest things. We don’t mean to, we just do. And there comes a point where you think to yourself: “Why am I making this same mistake over and over again?” I’m guessing you’ve been there.

For some people, it’s constant worry. Sure you’ve heard the bit where Jesus says “Who, by worrying, can add a single hour to their lives?” (Matt 6:27). Maybe you’ve heard it a hundred times before, but you still can’t stop worrying.

Perhaps you’re someone who carries anger and bitterness around in your heart. Sure, you know that the Bible says - “don’t let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph 4:26) … but that anger keeps bubbling away.

Or maybe your someone who is constantly trying to impress other people. You know it’s a pride thing. You know that pride comes before the fall (Prov 16:18) but, well, you know …

There are so many things that hold us back in this life. There are so many things that we hang on to for dear life, that are in fact ruining our lives. We all have our Achilles heel. We all have blind spots. We all have circumstances in our lives where “doing it my way” – as much as that may be the way we’ve always done it – just doesn’t work.

If I asked you, in those circumstances, “Do you want to be wise?” I’m sure your answer would be, “Absolutely!”. But then, if I asked you, “So, are you prepared to make the changes you need to make to get that wisdom; to live out that wisdom?”

Well, most of us, at that point, would hesitate; equivocate. “Change? Really? Change? Well, I’m not so sure about that.”

If we’re going to talk about wisdom then, we have to start at the beginning.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)

Now maybe that’s a verse that you’ve heard many times before. But let’s just get a grip on it for a minute. The fear of the Lord means an awe, a respect; a realisation of the terrible outcomes of the judgements of God.

My father loved be and I loved him. But let me tell you, when I was a lad, I knew that if I did something wrong, there was going to be a reckoning with my dad. And if it was bad enough, I knew that it would involve punishment.

We just toddle along through life as though anything goes. If it feels good do it. I wonder though, if we thought a bit more about the terrible judgement of God, if we questioned our thoughts, our motives, our actions, if we asked ourselves “What would God think about this, really?” … I wonder if that wouldn’t open our hearts to God’s wisdom.

A few years ago, I recorded a radio program about the fear of God. Now, I remember thinking to myself “No one wants to hear about the fear of God these days.” But I just felt God nudging me towards that message.

So, I did it. I wrote it, I recorded it. And a few months later, I received an email from a man in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is what he wrote:

I was at a peace conference in Goma and in my hotel room I turned on the radio. I heard a program about the fear of God. And I realised that with no fear of God in the hearts of people there will be no peace! No peace at all! I don’t know if this was a revelation from God … but my heart was beating, coming far away, God was speaking to me. I have been on the battle field for 13 years now and I don’t know how many people have died because of my gun, but what I know is that I decided to lay down my arms in that hotel room.

I’ve never forgotten that email. He gave his life to Christ and ended up fleeing to another country in fear of his life. The bit of his email that keeps ringing out for me is where he says, “without the fear of God there can be no peace, no peace at all!”

You know what, he’s absolutely right. When we just carry on as if anything goes, when we live our lives for ourselves without any respect, without any awe, without a right sense of the fear of God in our hearts, we are going to make a hash of it. A complete mess of our lives and a complete mess of the lives of the people around us. The people we hurt through what we say and do. Through the expression of anger and disapproval on our face. Through our failure to love them, the way they need to be loved.

And the crazy thing about this 'fear of God' thing, is that once we yield our lives to God, once we say “Lord I’m sick of making mistakes. My way doesn’t work. I want your way. I want your wisdom. I want your help. Once we do that, all the fear in fact goes away.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. (1 John 4:18)

Yes there is a terrible judgement that awaits those who rebel against God. A terrible But when we come to a turning point, as Safari Murinzi came to a turning point in that hotel room, the fear goes away.

When we choose to live in God’s love, that perfect love casts out all fear.

God wants to impart to you, His wisdom. The wisdom of the ages. My dad had a lot of wisdom. He wasn’t perfect of course, but he took the time and made the effort to impart much of that wisdom into my life.

And to a great extent that wisdom has made me the man I am today.

Imagine though, God who is perfect, God who knows all things for all time, God who loves you beyond measure, wanting to impart His wisdom into your life. Surely, we have to stand back from that, you and I, and think to ourselves, “WOW! That’s amazing!!” And it is. Totally amazing.

Just think for a moment of the things that you have going on in your life right at this moment that are causing you grief. The things that are complicated, that you just can’t sort out and fix. Imagine now, that God is prepared to speak His word of wisdom into that one situation that’s driving you to despair.

Would you want to hear that wisdom? Would you want to receive that wisdom? Probably out of frustration, out of a desire just to get that thing sorted, the answer is a big, fat “Yes!”

But then let’s say you open your Bible and you read this verse:

The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. (Proverbs 8:13)

And you realise that actually it’s your pride and your arrogance, the way you’ve been talking to other people, that’s the biggest factor in this dilemma in which you find yourself.

Now let me ask you again. Do you want to receive that wisdom? It’s not easy is it.

There’s this thing inside each one of us that wants to blame everyone and everything else for our problems, except our selves. And yet so often, the getting of wisdom involves owning up. It involves being honest with ourselves. It involves making the changes that we need to make in order to bring peace.

And that’s where the fear of the Lord comes in. It’s this heart attitude that says, “You know God is right. The alternative here is continuing in this mess. The alternative here is facing God’s judgement for this one day.”

Receiving the wisdom of God into our lives isn’t always easy. In fact a lot of the time, it’s incredibly tough. It’s something that we don’t want to do, because we want to wallow in our immaturity, in our pride, in our … let me call it for what it is … sin.

But your Father in Heaven has, sitting ready and waiting for you, the wisdom of the ages. A wisdom that will utterly transform your life. A wisdom that, day by day, will set you free to be all He made you to be.

Yearning for Wisdom Wisdom is something that I think, we all desire. I mean, I don’t know anyone on this planet, who, if asked, wouldn’t want to be wise. But I wonder just how high it is up our priority list of wants and desires.

We long after different things in our lives. Sometimes we yearn for love, acceptance and companionship. Other times it might by something more basic – like enough food to eat. There are plenty of people on this earth who simply don’t have the basics – food, clean water, shelter.

But in affluent places, we yearn, frankly, for silly things. A new pet dog – nice, but not essential. The latest hair style, the latest fashion accessory, a new dress in this season’s colours, a new car – shiny and bright, just like the one on the TV add.

Right now, given what’s going on in your life, what do you yearn for? What’s the object of longing that’s dominating your heart and mind right at this moment. Does godly wisdom even feature in, say, your top three desires? If you’re like most people, the answer is: probably not.

When Solomon, the son of King David, was still a young man, he became the king of Israel. What a huge responsibility. Ruling a country, that young, that immature, with so little experience. He knew it was way beyond him, just like many of the things that you and I confront in life are beyond us.

One night he had a dream. And in that dream, God said to him:

Ask what I should give you. (1 Kings 3:5)

I wonder … I wonder if God appeared to you and me in a dream one night and said that to us, what we would ask for. Well, here’s what Solomon asked for:

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people? (1 Kings 3:9)

And then, we’re told in the very next verse that:

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honour all your life; no other king shall compare with you. (1 Kings 3:10-13)

So asking for wisdom, it seems, asking unselfishly for the right thing, is an act that pleases God and releases great blessing into our lives.

Just imagine what your life would look like if you yearned for the wisdom of God. Imagine what your life would look like if, like King Solomon, you petitioned God for the wisdom to do the things that He has set before you, the things that in your heart of hearts, you know are way before you.

It would please the Lord no end. It would bring you rewards that go way beyond anything you could ever have imagined.

When we ask God for wisdom, we’re asking Him for something that’s not so much about us, as it is about serving Him and other people.

Think about the things that you need wisdom for in your life right at the moment. What are the things that are going on in your relationships that are beyond you? What decisions do you need to make that are going to have an impact on your life and perhaps the lives of others, that you’re just not sure about?

The young and inexperienced King Solomon wanted wisdom to govern God’s people. So when he asked God for an understanding and discerning mind, instead of wealth and honour as king, the longing in his heart was for his people, not for himself. He could have asked for great riches and honour, but instead He asked for wisdom.

You know what I think. I think that all too often we ask God for things that are about us. Our needs, our Now, just as Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” there’s nothing wrong with asking God to meet our needs.

But if that’s all we ask of Him, then it’s a pretty selfish little prayer life that we’re having isn’t it? It’s a pretty narrow life that we end up leading.

Imagine if you could see your problems through God’s eyes. Imagine if you could see your circumstances, the decisions that you need to make, through God’s eyes. Imagine if you could stand on heaven’s balcony and see the view from there.

I think that’s what wisdom is. God’s wisdom gives us a completely different perspective. God’s wisdom helps us see the bigger picture, rather than our own little narrow circumstances.

A thousand or so years after Solomon, the Apostle Paul found himself in a Roman dungeon, chained to a guard, on death row. Imagine how easy it would have been for him to have a narrow view of his circumstances. But instead, he was able to write:

I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)

There’s a man filled with the wisdom of God. There’s a man who can see his dire circumstances from the vantage point of heaven’s balcony.

Back to you. Back to your life. Your dilemmas. Your decisions. The things that are before you that you know are way beyond you. The struggles, the hurts, the situation that’s confusing you and confounding you at the moment.

Your God wants to show you the big picture. Your God wants to put His arm around you and show you the view from heaven’s balcony. Now sure, He may not show you the whole picture, but if you’ll just ask Him for His wisdom, it will please His Father’s heart and He will show you just enough to get you through.

The Getting of Wisdom It’s a humbling thing to come to the realisation that you don’t have the wisdom, the where-with-all, the IQ, the emotional intelligence – call it whatever you want – to deal with a problem.

Pride keeps a lot of people from asking for help. Pride whispers to us “If you ask for help, you’ll be showing other people how dumb you are.” And so, many people make bad decisions because they don’t seek help from others, when they need it.

Without counsel, plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed. (Proverbs 15:13)

The truth is that none of us has all the answers. When I was a young man, working as a pretty high priced IT consultant, I used to think that I had to show my clients that I had all the answers for everything. That there were no limits to my expertise. After all, look at what I was charging them.

How stupid I must have looked, and, let me tell you, that attitude caused me a lot of grief in the end.

No, we will need help. We all need the different perspectives that others can bring. We all need counsel from good advisers. And THE best adviser of all, without any shadow of a doubt, is God Himself. Especially, let me say, when we’re in the middle of a crisis.

Crises happen, often, without warning. They’re like earthquakes. People are going about their ordinary, day to day business. Or perhaps they’re asleep in bed and without any warning, the earthquake hits, shacking the very foundations of their lives. Reeking devastation. Throwing people into fear and panic.

We tend not to make very good decisions under those circumstances. Suffering has a way of completely distorting our perspective.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom … (James 1:2-5)

Now I want to stop it just there, because that last bit is the bit I want to focus on.

If any of you is lacking in wisdom … how easy is it to pretend you have all the answers? How easy is it to go on and make decisions when you’re facing trials, when your faith is being tested, when things are hurting – as though you know it all?

With all that you have going on in your life at the moment, is there a place where you haven’t admitted to yourself, that you don’t have all the answers?

Because, listen to me here, admitting to yourself that you actually need help, is the essential first step, into God’s wisdom.

And once we come to that point, once we admit that to ourselves, well the flood gates open. God steps in, in power. In a way that we could scarcely have imagined.

I wonder whether, when you go through difficult trials, through times of testing, whether you’ve ever felt as though God has deserted you.

You pray and you pray and you pray, but it feels as though your prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling. You ask God for guidance, for wisdom, for advice – but it seems as though He’s left you hear, alone in the wilderness, to your own devices.

You realise that you don’t have the power or the wisdom to deal with whatever it is, but God is silent, mute it seems … and so know despondency sets in.

Ever been there? Sure you have. Perhaps you’re even there now. There’s some huge problem in your life and you know you need help, but there doesn’t appear to be any help on the horizon.

Would you like to know what’s going on? Here it is. God has taken a step back to test your faith.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

He does that, because your faith is precious. God knows that by testing your faith, He will grow it stronger. Is it fun, no. But perhaps He’s brought us together today, just to remind you of what’s going on here in your suffering, in your time of testing.

And now … now I want to share a powerful promise with you into the middle of that despondency. Are you ready?!

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; , for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. (James 1:5-8)

WOW! So you’ve come to the conclusion that you need help. You’ve realised that you don’t have the wisdom that you need. That’s a good thing. That’s what He wants, the realisation that: “I am lacking in wisdom.” A great step of humility. A step that God will honour.

And look again at his Word, His promise is that He will give you His wisdom – generously and ungrudgingly. So stop doubting, stop being tossed to and fro, ditch the doubt, the double-mindedness, and just believe in what God says.

If you need His help, if you need His wisdom in the middle of your suffering and the testing of your faith, ask, believe and His wisdom WILL be given to you – generously, and ungrudgingly.

Hallelujah!

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It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that our freedom is dictated by our circumstances. But like the Apostle Paul, you can be locked up in a dungeon on death row, yet still experience the freedom that you have in Jesus Christ. That’s the incredible power … of the freedom that God has ready and waiting for you.

Your Freedom is Secure This probably isn’t going to be any shock to you, but your enemy the devil does not want you to be experiencing the freedom that Jesus came to bring you. Now, let’s not get confused about this. He’s happy for you to know about that freedom, in a vague sort of way, he’s even happy for you to see other people living in God’s freedom. That’s not a bad thing from his perspective. But he definitely ... definitely does not want you experiencing God’s freedom.

Because, you see, here’s the thing: if freedom, God’s freedom, is something out there, something that’s a great theory, something that preachers preach about, something that a handful of super–Christians out there can maybe have, but something that is quite simply, completely and utterly unattainable for you, then he knows, he has you.

And let me tell you, there are a lot of so–called Christians in that very boat. They know about freedom, they’ve seen others apparently living in freedom … but it just doesn’t seem as though it’s ever going to happen in their lives. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8:

Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.

It’s a powerful picture isn’t it – and deliberately so. In the book of Job we're told in Job chapter 1, verse 7:

The Lord said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’

So there he is, prowling around, walking up and down, just waiting to attack someone who is weak in their faith. Someone who doubts the promises of God. Someone who has come to the conclusion that the freedom they’ve heard about, probably isn’t for them. It’s just never going to happen.

Just like the lions in the wild, he’ll pick on the weakest victim and take them down to devour them. But ... and this is a big but ... this is what God says about that, 1 John chapter 3, verse 8:

The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

So when you feel powerless, when you feel weak, when you feel as though the devil is on your case … man have I got some good news for you today! This Jesus in whom you believe is right there, next to you, in fact in you, to destroy the works of the devil on your behalf.

In your weakness, in your doubt, in your failings, all you need to do is to turn to Him, to ask Him, to look at Him and He will, He will send the devil packing. He will breathe His freedom into your heart by His Spirit. He will stand for you, He will protect you. It’s just what Jesus does.

I have some good news for you today. You need never, ever, ever be afraid of the devil. To be sure, there is a battle going on in the spiritual realm for your soul. Jesus came to save you, and the devil wants to snatch that gift of eternal life, that gift of grace, that gift of freedom right out of your hands. That is absolutely true. There is a battle going on! This is how Jesus puts it, John chapter 10, verse 10. He says:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.

Someone asked me once: What does it mean to have an abundant life? Well, let me first say, that the word Jesus used there, literally means ‘super-abundant’, it’s just that we don’t have an English equivalent for that. Suffice to say, it’s a really strong word, it’s a word that’s really over the top.

So the question should be: What does it mean to have a super-abundant life? It’s a life of freedom. If you read the rest of the parable in that chapter, Jesus talks about His sheep being able to come in and go out, in safety, in protection, in freedom. John chapter 10, verse 9:

I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

That’s a great picture, it’s a picture of that abundant life. It’s a picture of freedom and safety, to come in and to go out and to find pasture.

But this battle Jesus is talking about here between the thief and the true shepherd, it isn’t a battle of two equal and opposite forces – one of evil and one of good. Don’t for one moment imagine that. Jesus goes on to make the point – He’s not some hired hand who runs away at the first sign of trouble – no. John chapter 10, verse 11. He says:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

And so He did – He died and rose again to set you free. We go looking for freedom in all sorts of different places. Sometimes we let the devil lead us by the nose, being tempted into this or that. Sin always tarts itself up to look good. Otherwise it wouldn’t be tempting.

But Jesus … Jesus is the true shepherd and His sheep know His voice. I’m certain you can hear Him speak as I share His Words with you today. And because He is the good shepherd, because He laid down His life for you, because He was raised again to give you a new life … you need never, ever fear the devil. Your freedom is secure. That’s the good news.

Maybe that’s still a bit difficult for you to believe. Well, let’s think about it this way: Let’s imagine that God loves you every bit as much as He tells you. After all, the evidence for that is pretty strong. John chapter 3, verse 16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

If that’s true, do you think He’d allow the devil to rob you of the freedom that Jesus purchased for you on that cross? Do you imagine for one moment, that God would allow that incredible act of sacrificial love to go to waste? There are people who believe in Jesus with all their hearts and yet, they’re afraid that something they’ve done or something they might do one day … will rob them of their freedom.

Come on – you haven’t found yourself wondering at some point, I wonder "… if, I’m in ... or not. You know, I wonder if God’s really forgiven me. I wonder if, when I finally stand before Him, I’ll pass the judgement."And can I tell you, the devil loves that. Because if he can get a toe-hold in your mind, he’ll work a way to undermine your faith. And truly, that’s why I believe God has brought us together today. Because He is not going to allow that to happen. Jesus said that if you continue in my word, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So let’s do a bit of continuing, a bit of knowing, to set you free from any doubt. Romans chapter 8, verses 31 to 39:

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not even withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is going to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor anything present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Hey, that is powerful stuff isn’t it? Nothing whatsoever can separate you from the love of God in Christ. That means your freedom, your salvation, are absolutely secure.

Freedom in Practice It’s amazing, just over my lifetime, how many changes have taken place, as oppressive regimes have fallen. The Berlin wall came down in 1989. The Soviet Union came apart in 1991. Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994.

Of course there are still plenty of oppressive regimes around the world, there are still more than enough conflicts and wars, but there has been a lot of change, even in my short lifetime. And hopefully we’ll see a lot more. The good change happens, when countries move from oppression towards freedom. When, instead of looking after a privileged few through oppressive power structures, governments and leaders start to look after their people.

The bottom line is that you and I were created to be free. To be equal. To be able to live out who we’ve been made to be – of course, within the rule of law – but then without that, there can be no real freedom. And yet, as individuals, we all too often squander that freedom. We all too often throw it away, through our own tyranny, our own selfishness, our own tendency to want to look after ourselves, at the cost of everyone else.

The Apostle Paul makes an interesting, almost blindingly, glimpsingly obvious point, about freedom. Galatians chapter 5, verse 1. He says:

For freedom Christ has set you free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

In other words, wake up, get a revelation! This isn’t just talk this thing about freedom, there’s a point – God actually wants you to be free! Jesus put it slightly differently in John chapter 8, verse 36. He said:

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

I love that – free indeed. Really, truly, free from the slavery of sin. This is every bit as amazing as the Berlin Wall coming down, as the Soviet Union and communism coming to an end, as apartheid coming to an end – even more so because this freedom is available to every last human being on planet Earth.

You can be a prisoner in a dungeon on death row, as in fact the Apostle Paul was when he wrote many of the books of the New Testament, and still be free indeed. You can be in the middle of the worst imaginable circumstances of your life and yet, in Christ, still ... be free indeed. This is not just a theory lesson. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. He means for you to be free. Free indeed. Free from the sin that has ravaged your life. Free from the shackles of bondage. And given the price He was prepared to pay for your freedom, with all my heart, I believe that He doesn’t want you to settle for anything less in your life than being … free indeed. But exactly what does that look like?

The freedom that Jesus purchased for you and me on that Cross is something that we can never earn for ourselves. Now, many Christians know that in their heads, but only a few live out that truth out in their hearts. I want to come back for a moment to one of my favourite verses about freedom in the Bible. Galatians chapter 5, verse 6:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.

In other words, none of the rules in the old rule book (in this case the rule if circumcision) count for anything. The only thing that counts in the Kingdom of God, is your faith working through love. Now there’s a powerful truth here about actually living out the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ. There is an incredibly powerful truth here about how to lay hold of this freedom, how to experience this freedom firsthand in our lives.

The first part is faith. I’m a simple guy ... and you know what, God’s Word says that Jesus died for me and because of that I am set free from my sin, and because of that I have the gift of eternal life. I am going to believe in Jesus for my salvation. I am going to believe in Jesus for my freedom. And I am going to believe, just as the Bible tells me to, that these are the free gifts from God, through the sacrifice of Jesus. Full stop, end of story. I believe. How about you? But then ... then God wants us to put that faith to work ... in love. And the sort of love He’s talking about here, is sacrificial, unconditional love – the very sort of love that Jesus showed towards you and me on that Cross. Agape love.

Look, without work and exercise, your muscles are going to waste away. If you sit there on the couch you’ll just become weaker and weaker. And without works, faith is dead. Unless we take our faith out for a walk, unless we exercise our faith in sacrificial, unconditional love, it becomes empty, hollow … dead. I think you know what I’m talking about here.

What does freedom look like? How do we lay hold of God’s freedom? By having faith in what God says, and by living out that faith, day by day, by showing the same unconditional, sacrificial love that Jesus showed towards us on that cross.

It’s by living that sort of a life that you experience freedom. A sense of freedom that we’re all so desperately looking for, comes when we surrender our lives to God, believing in Him, trusting in Him, and working out that faith by loving others in Him. Rules? Nah. The only thing that counts is faith working through love. And when we live like that, other people’s failings and weaknesses will no longer rob us of our freedom.

All too often we set out at the beginning of a day, with all good intentions of living in God’s joy and God’s peace. Living in the freedom that Jesus came to give us. After all, as the Apostle Paul writes, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. That’s why God sent Jesus – to give us that freedom.

But then, it’s almost as though the devil deliberately wants to rob you of your sense of freedom. Someone comes along and argues with you, to fight with you, to be angry with you, to stab you in the back, to … right? And it’s like, in an instant, your sense of freedom, your peace, your joy, they just disappear. In an instant you go from living in victory, to being a victim. Freedom – great! What happened to that?

But God has an answer to that. He has a solution for that. Because He doesn’t want anyone or anything robbing you of your freedom. Again, the Apostle Paul, Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 and 9:

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. … So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.

Did you catch that? Instead of adopting a victim mentality, instead of going on the back-foot, get out there on the front-foot by exercising your faith through unconditional love. Look, when they came to arrest Jesus, when they tried Him, beat Him, spat on Him, when they nailed Him to a Cross, not at any point in that process did He adopt a victim mentality. He knew what He was about. He knew what He was called to – to save us through sacrificial, unconditional love. In fact, at one point He even said, in John chapter 10, verse 18:

No one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

There is freedom of choice. There is faith working through sacrificial love. So, when people come against you, don’t throw in the towel, don’t become the victim. Don’t grow weary in doing what is right, don’t let them rob you of your victory, your peace, your joy and your freedom. Don’t grow weary of doing what is right. Love them, correct them, admonish them, sure. But do it in love. Whenever you have the opportunity, show unconditional, sacrificial love.

Will it hurt some days? Absolutely. Going to the cross always hurts. But you will reap that harvest … at harvest time. That’s freedom.

Freedom is Not an Excuse for Sin Whenever you hear some guy like me talking about the freedom that you have in Jesus Christ, it’s very easy to get the wrong idea. Yes, through Jesus we have been set free from the obligation to follow a bunch of rules, the way God’s people had to in Old Testament times. The check list of six hundred and thirteen do’s and don’ts in the Old Testament law doesn’t apply to you or me anymore. That’s great news, because neither you nor I are all that good at keeping a bunch of rules anyway.

But at the same time, the freedom that we have in Jesus, isn’t our excuse to go and live the life of Reilly. It’s not our excuse to say, well you know, I can do anything I want. You start using your newfound freedom in Christ that way, and any sense that you may have had of freedom evaporates just about as quickly as the steam coming off a hot cup of coffee. It’s there one minute and gone the next. That’s what happens to the joy we get from our sense of freedom, if we start using it for the wrong things. Galatians chapter 5, verses 13 to 15:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by each other.

It’s a good point. Freedom doesn’t really become freedom, until you and I use it to love others. Can I tell you, one of the greatest revelations that I had when I became a Christian twenty something years ago, is that serving other people, using your gifts and abilities to bless others in love – that’s where the freedom is. That’s where the contentment is. That’s where the joy, that you’ve always been looking for, is.

I always thought it came from getting the things I wanted … no wonder, in that old life, I never found what I was looking for. Do yourself a favour. Don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do the wrong thing. That attitude: Oh, it’s okay, God’s going to forgive me anyway, that’s is going to rob you of your freedom quicker than I can say Jack Robinson. So:

As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. (1 Peter 2:16)

It’s amazing how we allow the little foxes to come in and spoil the vine. We justify them to ourselves and to others … but one day you’ll wake up, and not only has the vine stopped bearing fruit, it’s dying. Don’t squander your freedom.

Instead, live in it with great joy, with a complete surrender of your life to Jesus, to go out and to serve others, with the incredible gifts, the abilities that God has given you. You are so special. You have abilities and insights that are completely unique. You’re one of a kind. And the joy, the satisfaction that comes from spending your gifts and your abilities, your time and your resources, on other people, on pouring God’s love and grace and mercy out on those other people is absolutely incredible!

Maybe you already know that … but isn’t it so easy to lose sight of what God put you on this earth for, when the mundane things of life, the basic busyness of making it through each day, takes over? It is, isn’t it? I just feel that God wants to give you a nudge today, a reminder today. If the joy of living your freedom in Christ has kind of, well ... evaporated, it’s time for a reality check.

What little foxes have crept in and started spoiling your vine? Hmm? What sin do you need to deal with and repent of? And what opportunities has God set before you to use your gifts, your abilities, to pour His love out to a lost and hurting world? What people has God placed around you, who desperately need to experience His love … through you, hmm?

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It’s pretty obvious, but let me say it anyway. You and I were not made to be slaves. You and I were made to be free. So why is it then that so many people are intent on living their lives as slaves these days? Hmm?

From Slaves to Heirs in Christ Official figures tell us that there are around twenty-one million slaves on the earth today. That’s a shock, isn’t it? "Isn’t slavery a thing of the past? Surely!" Well, actually, no it’s not, and unofficial figures put it much higher at more like one hundred million slaves on the earth today. It’s shocking to think of it, but it’s true. There are that many people in slavery. You might be thinking, "Surely not!" but the facts speak for themselves.

But let me bring this even closer to home. I wonder whether you would consider yourself as someone who, to some extent at least, is a person in slavery: A Person in bondage. Have a listen to this interesting exchange between Jesus and some Jews, God’s own people, men and women who considered themselves to be free. John 8:31-36:

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My Word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

They answered Him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do You mean by saying, you will be made free?’

Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there for ever, so if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.’

Perhaps you’ve heard part of that quoted before: That Jesus came to set you free, but it’s interesting how the Jews of the day (in a sense) took offence at what Jesus said. "We’re not slaves!" They responded indignantly. "Sure you are," said Jesus. "You are slaves to sin and that ... That’s what I’ve come to set you free from."

Jesus came to set us – you, me, everyone else who puts their trust in Him, free from the slavery to sin that robs us not just of our lives here on this earth, but of a permanent place in the household of God. I wonder what sin is robbing you, enslaving you, keeping you from being all that you can be: All that God made you to be. Come on, what sin has put you in the shackles of slavery? Because it’s that very sin, that very slavery, that Jesus came to set you free from.

Is it really worth it – the anger that’s swirling around in your heart; the resentment; the dishonesty; the sexual sin; whatever it is in your life; whatever your Achilles heel happens to be? Whatever sin you’re hanging onto, is it really, really worth it? Would you like to be set free? Because let me tell you, if Jesus sets you free, you’ll be free indeed.

A few years after that, Paul the apostle continued on with this whole metaphor, this whole discussion about slavery. So here’s a question: Would you rather be a slave in your master’s household or one of his children? I mean, come on. Wind the clock back to the first century when the apostle Paul posed that question to his friends in Galatia. Galatians 4:1-7:

My point is this. Heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property, but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So it is with us.

While we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law in order to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a child; and if a child, then also an heir through God.

Ok. What’s Paul’s point? There was a time when we were acting as minors. You know how kids are. They don’t want to listen to their parents; they think they know better. When they become teenagers, they roll their eyes in the back of their head when Mum or Dad tells them to do something. You’ve been there? Me too, and at that point, children are no better than slaves. They remain under guardianship, under a bunch of rules and regulations, almost like slaves in a sense. They’re not free.

When you’re a child, whether at home or at school, you’re told to do something and you have to do it, and that’s what religion is all about. It’s about following a bunch of rules that, quite simply, is not freedom, but then God sent Jesus to redeem us from those rules. The idea of redeeming a slave was to pay the price to his or her master to set them free: To buy them out of their slavery. In a very real sense, that’s exactly what Jesus did. That’s why He’s able to say, "If I set you free, you will be free indeed."

So many people today believe in Jesus, but they aren’t living in the freedom that He purchased for them. I wonder: Are you one of those? Are you still trying to follow a bunch of rules, kicking and bucking against them, wondering why you constantly fall short. Or do you wake up each morning, open your eyes, and remember in your heart that you are a child of the living God because Jesus set you free? Because that’s exactly what He did. He set you free from the rules and from your inability to keep those rules.

Look, this isn’t some theory lesson; this is real. It’s about the sort of life that you’re living. It’s about how you feel each morning when you wake up. It’s about whether you look forward to the next day with a sense of anticipation, or a sense of foreboding. You were made to live in freedom, and Jesus came to set you free.

The Reality of Freedom A good friend will always tell you the truth. In fact, I love the saying that a friend always stabs you in the front. There are plenty of people out there who will tell you nice things to your face, and then go behind your back and whisper things about you. Right? You have those people in your life; I have those people in my life, but a true friend is someone who stabs you in the front – someone who tells you how things really are. We don’t always like it. None of us likes criticism, but as you read in Proverbs 27:17:

Just as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

I have just a handful of people who do that for me in my life. I trust them. I know they have a good heart. I know they have my interests at heart, and so when they come to me and they have something difficult to say, as much as I’m like the next person, as much as I don’t really like criticism all that much either, I sit down, I listen, I evaluate, and I take to heart what they have to say to me. That’s the sort of relationship that the apostle Paul had with the church in Galatia, back there in the first century AD. Friend, he loved those guys.

He’d been there at the beginning. He’d been the one who told them about the amazing grace of God through Jesus Christ, but it wasn’t long until some Jewish Christians came along (while Paul was away elsewhere) to convince the Galatians that this whole idea of grace was a nonsense. After all, all these freedoms that Paul had taught them about lead to loose living.

No, no. Go back to the old Jewish Law; to circumcision; to tithing; to all the things you have to do to appease God. After all, in many respects, you look around at all the other religions in the world and they’re all about appeasing one or more gods, so Paul writes this to them. Galatians 4:8-11:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now however that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.

Let me hit you right between the eyes. Is that what you’re doing? Having heard about the grace you have in Jesus Christ, have you returned back to the old ways of following a bunch of rules? Because if you have, the work of Jesus Christ on that cross for you is being wasted. Completely wasted.

When you think about it, what the apostle Paul is trying to do is to get his friends in Galatia to wake up to the truth. There is such power in the truth, and today I want to share something incredibly important with you about the truth – the truth. You see, in this world, people don’t often want to hear the truth. The truth often is incredibly inconvenient. It cuts across vested interests. We all struggle with the truth. We all want to sweep things under the carpet. The problem is that that doesn’t solve anything. In fact, often, it just makes things worse.

When you think about it, Jesus was in the business of telling the truth. He told the religious leaders about their hypocrisy in no uncertain terms, and to common, ordinary folk, he spoke about a truth that is all about setting us free. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? Have a listen to the way Jesus puts it. John 8:31-32:

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My Word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

A number of times, Jesus makes the point that He came to set us free, and the place where you find that freedom is in the truth; in hearing His Word, knowing His Word, and taking it into our hearts as the truth. Here’s the thing. You and I, we’re masters of self-delusion. We’re all too ready to criticise others. Come on, we are, but we want to cut ourselves plenty of slack. We want to make excuses for ourselves when deep-down, we know that what we’re thinking or saying or doing is wrong.

And when we get into that guilt trap, then all of a sudden, we find ourselves caught up in that whole cycle again of feeling unworthy, so we pedal harder to do better, and there you have it. There you have it. You’re living a life trying to appease God by following a bunch of rules. Jesus died a gruesome death on a cross so that you and I wouldn’t have to do that. Jesus paid the price of all our sins and mistakes. Colossians 1:13-14:

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

I receive so many Emails from people around the world who watch or listen to the programmes that we produce here at ChristianityWorks and one of the most common things I hear, over and over again, is that people don’t feel that they’re forgiven. They’re not experiencing God’s forgiveness, and so they can’t forgive themselves for the things that they’ve done wrong. What an incredible burden to carry around all your life, and it’s that burden that Jesus came to set you free from. That’s the truth.

But the question is, how do we actually lay hold of that freedom? Well, as well as the Word of God, there’s the Spirit of God. Freedom is such a precious thing. I talk about it a lot because so many people are caught up in the yoke of slavery: Slavery to their old ways; slavery to their sins; slavery to the things of this world; slavery to the expectations of success; slavery to that sense that, "I’m just not good enough, and what’s more, I never will be"; slavery to ... Well, to just about anything, and yes, the truth is important. That’s why Jesus said that if we continue in His Word (if we believe what He says) that we will know the truth, and that truth will set us free.

There you have it. Freedom. Great, but have you ever read those words in the Bible and thought to yourself, "Well, I see the words on the page; I can read them; I can even repeat them over and over again, but somehow, they’re not real for me. They’re not penetrating my heart. I want to be free; I want to believe, but it’s just not happening." Have you ever felt that? Well, you wouldn’t be alone. The apostle Paul was writing to his friends in Corinth this one time about this very thing. People (he said) were getting caught up in the letter of the Law, but they weren’t experiencing what God was doing for them. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

Where do you find freedom? In the Spirit of God. In the Holy Spirit, who is given to each person who believes in Jesus. Listen up. If you believe in Jesus, then the Holy Spirit dwells in you and where the Spirit of the Lord is there, right there in you, is freedom.

Father God, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would bring that freedom to life in each one of us. Lord, we know the theory, but we long, we hunger, we yearn to experience Your freedom. Dear Holy Spirit, make that sense of freedom real in our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

I’m believing with all my heart that God is about to do a mighty work in you: A work of freedom; a work of revealing to you, deep in your heart of hearts, the freedom that you have in Christ. Freedom isn’t a concept; it’s not a theory; it’s a reality. Jesus died to purchase that freedom for you. He rose again so that you can live out that freedom in your new life, in Him.

Living the Life Ok, so Jesus came to set the captives free. That’s what He said of Himself. Luke 4:18-19:

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour.

Hey, that sounds a lot like freedom to me. That’s the promise that Jesus holds out to you and to me. That’s great, but a lot of people who believe in Him don’t experience that kind of freedom. So, either He was lying when He said that (I’d give that option a fairly low probability), or those people are doing something wrong (a much higher probability, you’d have to say).

There’s a battle going on inside each one of us between living for Jesus and living for ourselves. You and I are essentially pretty selfish individuals and, if you’re anything like me, we have a propensity to go wandering off, living our lives for ourselves rather than for Jesus. It’s almost as though we’ve been given freedom, but we decide to head straight back into a prison again. So compelling is this desire of ours to botch up our lives that we need some help. Fortunately, that’s no surprise to God, and it’s something that He’s already given us in the form of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:16-17:

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you want.

There’s the battle: Between what the Holy Spirit would do in our lives, and what we would do of our own accord, and here’s what I’ve discovered: The things that I want to do end up robbing me of the freedom that Jesus wants to give me – the freedom in fact that He’s already given me, and let’s face it. Those things, by and large, are not good things. Galatians 5:19-21:

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I’m warning you, as I warned you before: Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Not a very salubrious list, is it? I mean, really, come on. God only tells us not to do the things that are going to hurt us; the things that are going to rob us of the freedom that Christ came to bring us. Listen to the Holy Spirit, and He’ll keep you away from those things. He just will.

Do you know what I’ve noticed? The more I make a point of spending some quiet time with Jesus each and every day, the easier it is to avoid sin. Most days, first thing in the morning (I’m a morning person, you see; I always have been), I just spend a quiet half an hour or so with the door of my study closed and my Bible open; sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Now often, there are things on my mind: Stresses, pressures, this isn’t going quite the way I’d like, there’s a struggle in a relationship over there ... Whatever.

It can get you down, can’t it? The burden; the load; the pressure, and when you’re carrying that sort of stuff around, you start behaving badly. You do. You get cranky; agitated; resentful; there’s bitterness in your heart perhaps, and man, on those days, the devil is going to have an absolute field day with you. But somehow, in that quiet time with Jesus, He stills my heart. Invariably, I end up walking away and starting my day with an incredible peace; with this joy in my heart, and it’s much, much harder for the devil to attack me and to tempt me. Have you experienced that too?

You see, I think that what’s going on there is that the Holy Spirit is doing His work in us; lifting God’s Word off the page; etching it into our hearts so that it becomes part of who we are, and that ... That bears fruit in your life, as opposed to the rubbish that you and I are prone to carry on with. Paul goes on in Galatians 5:22-25. He says:

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

That fruit of God’s goodness just naturally grows out of those times with the Lord each day. I think ... I think that’s what it is to walk in the Spirit. Look, I’ve tried doing it the other way; just racing off and doing it all by myself, but each and every time, the devil trips me up. Each and every time, he robs me of my peace and my joy. Each and every time, I end up bound up in my old sinful ways again, instead of living out the freedom that Jesus died and rose again to give me. Jesus didn’t just do the whole cross and empty tomb thing for us two thousand years ago. He also sent His Spirit to live in us to make those things real; to make the freedom real.

The question you have to ask yourself is, why do we imagine that we can go it alone? Why do we rush into our day and try to do things in our own strength when we know, I mean we know one hundred percent, that we’re going to fall flat on our faces; that the devil is going to attack us from every direction, because he knows that our flesh is weak? Why do we do that? I don’t know, but we do. People do it over and over again, and then they wonder why they’re not experiencing the freedom that Jesus promised.

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All too many people start off believing in the free favour of God through Jesus Christ, but ... you know, as time goes on, we end up falling back into our old ways. We end up right back in that old idea that you have to work your way into God’s favour. And what a terrible mistake that is.

A New Way to Freedom Have you ever tried to work yourself into God’s favour? You try and you try to do the right thing, but still, you just mess it up. Well, if you’ve been there, you’re not alone.

There’s a fine line between responding to God’s grace, and falling into the trap of trying to work your way into His favour. Here’s how it happens:

At some point, you realise what an amazing thing God did for you, by sending Jesus to die for you on that cross. Amazing! And so you turn your life over to Him – lock, stock and barrel. There’s a joy, a euphoria almost.

But then life gets back to normal. You go back to your day-to-day business and you slip back into your old habits. The sin that’s been robbing you of joy and peace for most of your life creeps back … and guilt sets in.

So, you say to yourself, "Self, you have to do something about this. There are standards here. There are rules. I shouldn’t be doing this … I shouldn’t be doing that." You start to work at it, harder and harder and harder, and before you know it, you’re pedalling so hard that it’s just about killing you. Yet still that old sin just keeps on tripping you up. My hunch is, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Jesus promised you freedom, but this doesn’t feel like freedom. That’s because it’s not. Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul writes about trying to follow a set of rules. Galatians chapter 2, verses 15 and 16:

We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.

I am my father’s son not because I followed a bunch of rules, and worked my way into that position. No, I am my father’s son because he’s my dad and I’m his son. And as I grew up in that relationship, my behaviour matured and improved as a response to his love. Not because I was good at following rules – which by the way, I wasn’t.

The moment that you and I put our faith in Jesus, God becomes our Father. And the more we grow in that relationship, the closer we get to Him, the more we experience His love, and the more our behaviour changes.

It’s not about following a bunch of rules. It’s about trusting Jesus, and as we experience His love first-hand, allowing His love, His grace, His mercy to change us, to set us free in a way that following a bunch of rules never, ever will. It turns out that living in freedom has everything to do with Jesus. A Scripture that’s really familiar to many people is this one:

It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

But as familiar as that may be to many, I wonder whether we truly realise what it means. Freedom is such an elusive concept for us. We want it, we chase it, but very few ever really experience it. And I mean that especially for people who believe in Jesus.

Because deep down inside, most of us have this nagging sense that we’re simply not good enough. In fact, the more you grow in your relationship with Jesus, the more you see your own weaknesses and failings. That’s just how it happens.n The closer you draw in a rich, dynamic relationship with Jesus, the more aware you become, the more sensitive your spirit becomes to the things that break that fellowship. And sin … sin always disrupts the closeness, the intimacy between you and God, right? I believe that God wants to deal with this in your life today. Galatians chapter 2, verses 19 to 21:

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

So, what’s God saying to us today through His Word? Quite simply this: The moment you accepted Jesus into your life, the old you has died. The old you was nailed to a cross – that’s the effect of making Jesus your Saviour and the Lord of your life.

The whole point of Jesus suffering there for you on that Cross was and is to set you free from the old you - and give you a new life. A radically, completely, abundantly new life. So in God’s eyes, it’s no longer the old you who lives but Christ who lives in you.

If you believe in Jesus, you have a complete and perfect right standing with God not because of what you’ve done, but because of what Jesus has done for you, despite what you’ve done. In fact, because of what you’ve done – that’s why Jesus died for you.

That’s the whole point. That’s why they call this the good news. You and I, in and of ourselves, will never, ever be good enough to stand before God. If we were, who’d need Jesus? If we were, then Jesus died for nothing. But as it is, we’re not. And what’s more we never will be. But that’s completely irrelevant. Because it’s no longer you or I who live – that old person is dead and gone – but Christ who lives in us.

So let me challenge you today about some of the old habits that may be robbing you of that freedom that Christ came to give you. The older I get, the more I realise what a creature of habit I am. We all have routines, little rituals that play themselves out day after day.

In the morning when I get up, I always shave before I clean my teeth. It’s never the other way around. I never clean my teeth first and then shave. I couldn’t imagine doing it that way. Why? Its habit, it’s routine.n I’m sure that you have silly little rituals as well. We all do. And one of the habits we want to fall back into, is believing that the only way we can be in God’s favour is to work hard at it.

Now if you’ve believed in Jesus for any length of time, you’ll have heard sermon after sermon after sermon about God’s grace. What’s grace? The free, unmerited favour of God. I’m guessing you've heard that definition on more than one occasion. And grace is such a great concept. The theory of it is so … elegant, so simple. In fact, deep down, we suspect it’s just too good to be true.

I was staying with a man recently, a real man of God, who shared something with me of his past. Something he regretted. Something he was ashamed of and I could tell, in his heart of hearts, he still wasn’t over it. He still hadn’t really forgiven himself for it … and I’m guessing that in his heart of hearts, he believed that it was still an issue for God too.n You get that right? Well, check this out. This is the Apostle Paul’s reaction, his response to that old habit. Galatians chapter 3, verses 1 to 5:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing — if really it was for nothing? Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by doing the works of the law, or by believing what you’ve heard?

See? They had the same problem as you and me. They were always wanting to fall back to the old ways of working their way into God’s favour through what they did, rather than knowing for sure, deep in their hearts that they were already in God’s favour because of what they believed. Knowing absolutely one hundred percent that God had completely forgiven them absolutely!

Listen to me. If you believe in Jesus, then you are drenched in the grace of God. In the free, unmerited favour of God. Today ... and for all eternity.

The Conflict Between Law and Grace If I were to ask you, "Are you living under a curse?" what would your answer be? I guess perhaps if you’re going through some tough times you might be tempted to say ‘yes’. But just for a moment, set your circumstances aside, forget what’s going on around you.

In your relationship with God, are you living under a curse? Now that may seem like rather an odd question. But actually, a good many people who say they believe in Jesus, are doing exactly that. They’re living under a curse. A curse that God wants to remove from your life, today. Galatians chapter 3, verses 10 and 13:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law’ … [but] Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’.

That word ... ‘curse’ ... is a very strong word. If someone says to you, "I curse you" that’s pretty offensive. You’d take that pretty seriously. There’s a venom, a sense of evil, a sense of fear and foreboding in that word ‘curse’.

Well, now listen to this very carefully: God is saying to you today, that if you’re living your life under the lie that you can only be in His favour, if you perform, if you deliver the goods, if you follow the rules – if that’s how you’re living your life, God is saying to you today that you are living under a curse. That’s very strong. And the reason I’m being so blunt, so direct with you on this, is that God is making a powerful point to you and me today.

But with the bad news, comes the good news. They call it ‘the good news’ but frankly, I think it’s stunningly good news. It’s fantastic news. It’s sensational news. Jesus took that curse on His shoulders when He died for you. He became a curse for you as He hung on that cross, so that you could be set free.

Listen to me. Stop living under the curse of trying to follow the rules and start enjoying the freedom that you have in Christ. Start enjoying the fact that God has put His Holy Spirit in you. Start enjoying the fact that you’re forgiven, that God has a plan for your life, a good plan. Back in the Old Testament it says that ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength’. Have you heard the Good News today? Then enter into that joy. Experience that joy. Live in that joy. The curse has been removed. You are forgiven. You are free. That’s fantastic news. And yet, we still struggle with this whole grace thing, don’t we?

Grace, God’s grace, is such a difficult concept to wrap your heart around. Even if you can wrap your mind around it, wrapping your heart around it, believing in the grace of God is so hard, because we don’t live in a world of grace. We live in a world that measures you on your performance. A world that says if you’re wealthy, if you have a good job, if you live in a big house, if you drive a nice car – then you’re successful. Then you have value. Then you have worth.

And the flip side of that coin is true too. If you don’t measure up, if you don’t deliver, if you don’t fit into the world’s mould of success, if you’re not good looking and well dressed, then you don’t have much worth at all. In fact, all too often, if you can’t do something for people, they just discard you, pass you by, throw you on the trash heap. So we have a performance mindset. We’ve been taught to equate performance, measured by the world’s scale, with value. That’s the basic lie we live with.

And can I say, even as Christians, we kind of have this belief that what comes first in the Bible is the law of the Old Testament, the rule book if you will. And it was only later that this idea of God’s grace, made active in our lives through faith, came about. Law first … then grace. But actually that’s not true. That’s putting the cart before the horse. Have a listen. The Apostle Paul – Galatians chapter 3, verses 6 to 8:

Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’ For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

Now, the point that Paul makes a few verses later in that chapter is that this whole ‘Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’ thing happened a full four hundred and thirty years before the Old Testament law was given to God’s people through Moses.

So let’s get the horse before the cart. Grace through faith in what God says always came first. Always. Grace. The free, unmerited favour of God. It’s just who God is. It’s born out of the incredible love He has for you and me. The world wants you to perform, to deliver, to be measured by its ruler of ‘success’. And frankly, religion is about performing and delivering too. But what God has for you today is His grace. And grace always, always comes first.

So, let me ask you: If God is the God of grace – and when you see what Jesus did for us on the cross, there can be no doubt about that – then why did He introduce the Old Testament law? Why did God even entertain a bunch of rules that, at the end of the day, His people would simply be incapable of keeping? It’s an important question to know the answer to, because it’s all too easy to slip back into that old way of thinking that following Jesus is all about adhering to a set of rules. So, here’s God’s answer, through the Apostle Paul. Galatians chapter 3, verses 19 and 23 to 26:

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring would come to whom the promise had been made … Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

So the Old Testament Law was only ever put there as a temporary measure, until God was ready to reveal His grace through faith, in the coming of Jesus Christ. It was put there to keep people in line, I guess, until God was ready to reveal Jesus. And when you look back at the history of Israel throughout the Old Testament, from beginning to end, the thing that stands out, is that God’s people couldn’t seem to keep the law for very long at all.

In fact, the very name Israel, means ‘to struggle with God’. The whole story of the Old Testament is about Israel struggling to keep the law, struggling in their relationship with God. God sent them prophet after prophet to call them back to Himself. He punished them over and over again, to bring them to their senses. And, for a little while that would work, until they wandered off again. If you asked me, "What’s the central theme, the central point of the Old Testament?" My answer would simply be this, "That try as they might, God’s people couldn’t stick to the rules."

We can’t follow the law. We will never be able to put ourselves into a right relationship with God, simply by following the rules. The whole of the Old Testament screams out at us, "This isn’t working! There has to be another way!" And there is ... that’s why God sent Jesus. That was always the plan. The whole point of that Old Testament struggle, for you and me today, is to teach us beyond any shadow of a doubt, that following the rules simply doesn’t work. What’s more, it never will. And that’s why we need Jesus.

A Word of Encouragement I just want to finish up today with a word of encouragement. Because the world … well, the world wants to cut you down to size all too often. But as we’ve seen on the program today, God is in the grace business. I remember when I entered the Army as a young man, those first six weeks of basic training were incredibly tough. I mean, they were brutal. Quite a few guys fell by the wayside in those first few weeks.

Looking back on it, you could see what they were trying to do. These young men had come from all different walks of life. Some from wealthy and privileged families, born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Others from much poorer circumstances. Basic training was about cutting everyone down to the same size. Yep, those first six weeks were a great leveller. But where the military wanted to cut us down to size, God wants to do the complete opposite.

When we come into the kingdom of God you and I, when we accept Jesus as our Saviour and make Him the Lord of our lives, what God wants to do is … well, to lift us up to size, if that makes sense. Here’s what I’m talking about – Galatians chapter 3, verses 27 to 29:

As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

There are some sharp distinctions there. The Jews looked down on the Greeks – in fact, they were referred to as dogs. Of course, there was a huge gap between a free person and a slave. And in that patriarchal society, women were pretty much chattels. They couldn’t earn an income or own property. Without a man, they were poor and destitute.

But what God is saying here to you and me, is that our heritage, our circumstances, our past, our socio-economic standing, our ethnicity … none of those matter. They’re completely irrelevant. Because when we put our trust in Christ, we all become one. We all become heirs – in fact elsewhere, he writes that we become co-heirs, joint heirs, with Christ.

Maybe you look at who you are, where you’ve come from, what you have, what society thinks of you, what other people say about you … and you think to yourself, “What can I ever be in the kingdom of God? Who am I to imagine that God would ever think all that much of me?"

Hmm. Well today, let me tell you who you really are. You are one of His beloved children. An heir of God’s promises, a joint–heir with Christ, of the riches of His inheritance. That’s who you really are and He wants you to live in that truth, today … and for the rest of your days on this earth. So be encouraged. Yeah, it’s a tough, brutal world out there. It’s a world of knocks and bruises. It’s a world where people want to pull you down, and cut you down to size. And if perhaps you’re not feeling the love so much at the moment, then … well, let me pray for you right now.

Father God, I pray for anyone who needs to experience your grace today. That’s pretty much all of us, but really Lord for anyone who needs a special touch of your grace and your love today. I pray that through your Word, that we’ve heard from you today, you will touch that person’s heart deep inside with a revelation of the grace, the mercy, the extreme love that you have for them in Jesus Christ. I pray that through your Holy Spirit, you would fill them with a joy unspeakable at the knowledge of the love that you have for them – a love through which you will make them all that you created them to be. In Jesus’ mighty name we pray. Amen.

Amen, amen. May the Lord truly bless you today.

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What does the Word freedom mean to you? Well – think about it. Is it being able to do whatever you want … or is it more about being free from the things that are holding you back? Hmmm.

A Revelation of Freedom Most of us, I guess, would define freedom as being able to do whatever we want whenever we want, and that definition right there is what brings a whole world of pain crashing down on our lives. I don’t think there’s a single person on this planet who doesn’t want to be free. Do you want to be free? Well, of course you do; me too, but if freedom is that important to us, you have to ask yourself exactly what is it. Sure, there’s political freedom; freedom of speech; freedom of association; the freedom to gather; to protest; to live where you want to live; to marry who you want to marry; to choose to have children or not.

In this day and age, we live in a world that’s more and more fixated on our individual freedoms, our rights as individuals. After all, I’m entitled to enjoy my life. Right? So it doesn’t take too long to start imagining that freedom is being able to do whatever we want whenever we want. Anything that cuts across that is a restriction of our inalienable right to be free, and yet if you travel to any kind of place where that freedom is practised, what you discover is lawlessness and anarchy. There’s no safety; there’s no protection; there’s no security because that anything, anytime kind of freedom is a terrible thing. That’s what the rule of law is all about: To keep us safe and secure.

So when you think about it, what we actually need is a different definition of freedom: One that really works. Try this one on for size. Galatians 1:3-4:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to set us free from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

It seems that God takes our freedom so seriously that He sent Jesus to suffer and die to set us free. From what? Well, from our sin, and from this evil age. So according to God real freedom, the sort of freedom that Jesus purchased for you on that cross, is about setting you free from the devastating consequences of your sin, and the evil that pervades every nook and cranny of this age, so that you can live in grace and peace. Not such a bad definition when you think about it.

So here’s a question for you: What sin, what evil, is robbing you of the freedom that Jesus came to give you? Because that sin, that evil, is what God is calling you to hand over to Him today. His will for you is to be free to live in the grace and the peace of Jesus Christ, but that’s not always an easy thing to do. One of the things you discover when you set your heart on following Jesus is that the rest of the world is not going to be standing by and cheering you on. In fact, far from it.

Not long after I became a Christian, a few decades ago now, the IT consulting firm at which I was a partner had the opportunity to bid for a rather large government project in the developing world, but the simple reality was that unless you paid the bribes to the various officials, you were completely wasting your time in bidding. As you can imagine, as a brand-new Christian, I was faced with a real dilemma. And can I tell you, I came under quite some pressure to compromise?

It happens in every corner of our lives because when you decide to believe in Jesus, when you decide to follow Jesus, when you decide to live your life for Him, let me tell you, the world is not going to be all that happy with you. They’ll criticise you; laugh at you; persecute you, whatever fits best at the time. You see, those people want you to believe that their way is the way of freedom; of success; of enjoyment. The world wants you to believe that following Jesus somehow is going to rob you of your freedom.

What do you believe? Who are you trying to please; Jesus, or those naysayers around you? Paul the apostle made a very clear decision on that question in his life. Galatians 1:10:

Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

People are so fickle. Have you noticed? Jesus did. That’s why we’re told in John 2:23-25 that:

When He was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in His name – because they saw the signs that He was doing, but Jesus on His part would not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone, for He Himself knew what was in everyone.

At some point, in every corner of our lives, every thought, every decision, every action, each one of us has to decide who we’re trying to please; people, or God. And the way it tends to work is that it’s not so much the big decisions that we make upfront that matter; it’s the little decisions that we make a hundred times a day, that together tell us who we’re really trying to please.

Come on. Who are you trying to please with your life? Because if you’re still seeking human approval, if you’re still trying to please people, you wouldn’t be a servant of Christ. Look. To experience freedom, real freedom, we need to stop focusing on the world. What we need is a spiritual revelation. The fact is that the freedom that only Jesus Christ can bring is a fantastic thing, but whilst the facts are incredibly important, you don’t find freedom in facts.

The apostle Paul was an interesting character. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling religious body in Jerusalem, and there’s a reason that he made it to the top of the pile. Philippians 3:4-6:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. As to the Law, a Pharisee. As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the Law, blameless.

So Paul’s heritage, his breeding, his upbringing, ticked all the right boxes. He studied the Old Testament Law; he knew it from back to front; he worked hard at it. You know the sort of person. He had all the head-knowledge that you could ask for, all the discipline that you could ever expect of anybody. On-top of that, he was a Pharisee. Now, this sect took the idea of following the Law to incredible lengths. The very word Pharisee means to be a religious separatist. He was absolutely full-on, and yet the one thing he didn’t have was freedom, until one day on the road to Damascus, Jesus appeared to Him, and that encounter with Jesus was the turning-point of his life. This is what he writes years later, looking back on it. Galatians 1:11-12:

For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin. For I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

So it wasn’t something that he’d learned through years of study; it was a revelation. The original Greek word used there for revelation is the word 'apocalypsis'. In other words, it was an apocalyptic revelation. Dramatic! Powerful! Completely life-changing, and it wasn’t a revelation about Jesus; it wasn’t words from a book. Come on, Paul knew all those words in the Old Testament books; he’d studied them for years; he’d made it to the top of the religious pile that way, but that’s not what changed his life. It wasn’t a revelation about Jesus; it was a revelation of Jesus, through a personal encounter with Him.

Have you had an apocalyptic revelation of the person of Jesus Christ? Have you had a dramatic, powerful, life-changing encounter with Jesus? No? Then get a revelation. Jesus is waiting for you, now. He wants to turn your life upside-down, now. All the head-knowledge in the world won’t do that for you. Only Jesus.

Freedom is a Tricky Thing Freedom is a tricky thing. So often, we’re our own worst enemies: Our perspective; our thoughts; our behaviour ... They all rob us of this elusive thing called freedom. Try as we might, we just can’t grasp it. You’ve had that experience. Right? You know what it’s like. There’s something in your makeup, an Achilles heel if you will, that’s constantly your undoing. For each one of us, it’s something different, but at the end of the day, it trips you up again and again and again. Mine is perfectionism, which has a tendency to fuel anger. Yours?

Well, you probably know what it is. Maybe it’s insecurity; gossiping; a lack of compassion; selfishness ... Hey, the list runs as long as my arm, and then some. God has a simple name for it: He calls it sin. The devil loves to rub your nose in it, and just when you’re feeling weak or tired, emotionally spent, he pushes your button and there you go again.

For the apostle Paul, it was an obsessive hatred of the church. He, of course, was a Pharisee in the Jewish religion. Then Jesus came along and turned everything he’d ever believed in, everything he’d ever worked so hard for, completely upside-down. No wonder he hated Christians, but then ... Then he met Jesus and something changed in him. People were talking about it. Galatians 1:23:

They heard it said, ‘The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy’, and they glorified God because of me.

And he had been, too. He was a terrible persecutor of the church, until that day he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. You can read about it in the book of Acts, chapter 9.

Ok. So he met Jesus, but what happened to turn him from a man breathing threats against the early church to the guy who ultimately wrote almost half the books of the New Testament? That’s quite a turnaround, you’d have to admit. I’ll tell you what happened: Jesus changed his heart. You know and I know that when we have a change of heart, our thoughts and our actions flow out of that, just as God promised in the days of old through Ezekiel. Ezekiel 11:19-20:

I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh so that they may follow My statutes and keep My ordinances and obey them.

When you encounter Jesus on your road, when you draw close to Him, when His Spirit fills you to overflowing, He does what you were powerless to do. He changes your heart which, as it turns out, changes everything.

Sometimes though, it feels as though nothing’s happening. Nothing! So what; has God forgotten me now? Has He left me on the shelf? We all want to feel as though God has some great plan for our lives. So in those months (even years) when nothing much seems to be happening, it can be terribly disheartening.

Jesus: "I came to set the captives free".

You: "Yeah, right. It feels like you’ve forgotten me!"

Other people, they seem to be powering on. You, on the other hand, feel as though there’s nothing really exciting ahead.

Saul is on the road to Damascus, off to persecute some more Christians; he meets Jesus along the way. That’s pretty exciting! But then, he loses his sight and for three days, he’s completely blind. Now that doesn’t sound like such a long time, unless you’ve been struck blind; in which case, it probably feels like an eternity. Adversity has a way of doing that, which is why when you feel as though you’ve been left on the shelf, it does seem like an eternity. Am I right? "Freedom – what’s that?" you ask yourself, in this prison of inactivity. When we get to that point, there’s something we need to be reminded of. It’s what Paul says himself in his letter to the church in Galatia. Galatians 1:15-17:

But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me so that I might proclaim Him among the Gentiles, I didn’t confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me. But I went away at once to Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

In other words, God already had a plan for Paul, even before he was born. Along the way, people tried to kill the guy; they rioted against him; he was imprisoned; beaten; shipwrecked; bitten by a viper of all things, and eventually, he rotted out the remainder of his days in a Roman dungeon on death row. But that powerful encounter with Jesus, that incredible revelation of Christ Himself when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, that changed everything. Because no matter how dire his circumstances became, he knew that God had a plan. So in the middle of those difficult circumstances, Paul had the freedom that Jesus promised.

You know, God still has a plan: A plan for today; for tomorrow; next month; next year, and indeed, for the rest of your time on this earth. God hasn’t forgotten you. He hasn’t lost the plot. God has a plan and that fact gives you freedom, even if you’ve been locked away in a dungeon or forgotten on a shelf, and that’s a promise that God wants you to take into your heart today. The only sort of hope the Bible talks about is certain hope, so may the Holy Spirit write that hope on your heart.

Overcoming the Old Ways Ok, the subject for today is circumcision. I know it’s not exactly something you want to be thinking about, but stick with me. There’s an important point to be made, and what we’re really chatting about is freedom: Your freedom here, now, today. But first, let’s head back to first-century Jerusalem. You see, there’s a rocky transition underway for those who believe in Jesus from Judaism (the religion of their forefathers) to Christianity; from the life lived under a complex set of religious rules to a life of freedom in Christ. A lot of the things that seem pretty obvious to us today had to be nutted out back then; it wasn’t easy. One of them was male circumcision, which to this point had been part of God’s Law for His people. Let’s take a look at how the apostle Paul puts it in Galatians 2:3-5:

But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us. We did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.

You see, there’s a tussle here between the old traditionalists who didn’t believe in this whole nonsense about grace through Jesus, and Paul to whom the gospel of grace (the fantastic news of God’s unmerited favour towards us) had been revealed by Jesus Himself. Circumcision was just the flashpoint. The real debate was between the slavery of living under the set of rules, and the freedom that we have through our faith in Christ, and it’s a struggle that continues to this day in the heart of many-a believer because grace is so radical; so counter-intuitive.

We live in a 'dog-eat-dog' world, and there seems to be plenty of dog to go around, yet along comes Jesus and says in effect, "Look, it’s not about following a bunch of rules. It’s about experiencing My love and so that you can, I’m going to pay the price on a cross for all the things that you’ve done wrong in your life."

The reason Paul takes this so seriously is that it strikes at the very heart of the gospel of grace; the truth. Besides, have you noticed? It’s pretty much impossible to follow the rules anyway. We all fall short. That’s why we need Jesus, so if you’ve been struggling under a bunch of rules, do yourself a favour. Ditch them. Go to Jesus instead. Start having a rich, dynamic relationship with Him, and your unbounded freedom will flow out of that relationship. Don’t let rules enslave you.

And you and I, we aren’t the only ones that suffer from this problem. Take Peter, the apostle. We think of Peter as one of the New Testament’s 'A'-list, yet he made quite a few mistakes along the way, not the least of which was political correctness. This age of rampant political correctness isn’t something new in the twenty-first century. It turns out that there’s nothing new under the sun.

Now look. It’s absolutely a good idea that we shouldn’t deliberately go out there to say or do things that’ll hurt others, but it’s a very bad idea to take that to the ridiculous Nth degree to the point where we curtail our freedoms in order to appease those with an agenda, and that’s exactly what was going on in the first century as Christianity was being birthed out of Judaism. There was a tussle between the two. There were difficult issues to work through.

For instance, most Jews believed that the God of the Old Testament was for them and them alone. Many of the apostles stayed in Jerusalem for that very reason, but Paul was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, to take the good news of salvation in Jesus to people whom the Jews referred to as dogs, so Peter is happy to dine with the Gentiles until some other legalistic old-school Jews show up, at which point he does the politically correct thing – retreating, only to eat with Jews again. Well, at this point, Paul pretty much has a pink fit. Galatians 2:11-13:

But when Cephas” (that’s Peter’s other name) “came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood self-condemned. For until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction, and the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy

To the extent that you believe in Jesus, you are free in Christ to live out your faith. Sure; in this age of political correctness, in this age of pluralism, you will be derided for it; you’ll be laughed at for it; you’ll even be persecuted for it, but let Peter’s mistake be a lesson to us all. Let’s not be hypocrites. Let’s not compromise our freedom in Christ to appease the sinners of this world. Sure; the issues today are different, but the principle remains the same. People will disagree with you because you believe in Jesus. They just will. There’s nothing new in any of that ... Live out your faith in Jesus anyhow. Don’t let the fear of what others will think or say or do rob you of the freedom that you have in Christ. Don’t let your life compromise the truth of the gospel of grace.

Isn’t it funny how our old ways keep coming back to haunt us? Peter spent three-and-a-half years with Jesus! He saw the miracles; he heard the sermons; he experienced the radically different way that the Son of God approached things. Jesus wasn’t afraid of upsetting religious leaders. Jesus wasn’t afraid of offending people, yet still Peter falls back into his old ways. No wonder Paul took him on! It’s a good thing and as I said, it’s a sobering lesson to you and me about the power of the old ways to rob us of the freedoms that Jesus came to give us. Jesus said that if He sets us free, then we are free indeed. Don’t throw that freedom away so easily.

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There’s a description of God’s people that pops up several timed in the Bible. It’s the adjective “stiff–necked”. An interesting way to describe the stubbornness of God’s people. I’m guessing that it points to their unwillingness to bow down their lives in worship to God. I wonder … I wonder if you know anyone like that!!

FULL ON SURRENDER We live in a world where we’re taught to be proud of who we are. You can be who you want to be, you can do whatever you want to do, if you work hard you can achieve whatever you want to achieve – and when you do, be proud of what you’ve achieved. The problem is though that pride so often comes before the fall.

I remember when I was a young lad, learning to ice skate. Now, physical coordination isn’t one of my strengths. So my bottom spent a lot of time making contact with the ice. And every time I thought, here you go Berni, you’ve got it, you’re doing well and I’d look over at my mum and dad to show them how clever I was – whoompa! Down on my backside on the ice.

Pride is actually quite a terrible thing – it’s something that God always, always, always opposes.

James 4:6 God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

But pride takes all sorts of different forms. As we chatted yesterday on the program/ last week on the program, sometimes pride stops us from admitting that we’re wrong.

The more you invest in a course of action, or in a way of life, the harder it is to admit that it was the wrong way to go about things. I mean, you’ve invested a lot in your approach – people have watched you, some have even admired you. To turn back from that, to turn away from that, to admit that you were wrong – well, you lose face.

Losing face is only a problem if you care what other people think about you. And I used to care a lot what other people thought about me. I wanted them to think well of me. I wanted to impress people. I wanted them to speak well of me behind my back. When you think about it, that’s why some people by the most expensive car they can afford – to make a statement.

That’s why some people by grand houses in grand suburbs – with so much space and so many rooms that they don’t need, and swimming pools that they don’t swim in. To make a statement that says “Look at me. I AM someone. I’ve made it.” Not everyone, but a lot of people are like that.

Never mind that they’re desperately unhappy in their flashy cars and grand mansions. And even if you’re not rich, you can find yourself clamouring after a successful career or a bigger pay cheque or a promotion … whatever it is … to build up the image that other people have of you.

And when you do that, let me tell you from experience (because all the things I’ve just described … I’ve been there, done that you understand) … when you do that, you start believing your own propaganda. You get a puffed up image of who you are and what you’re worth, as you look down your nose at the mere mortals who surround you.

Moses is up on the mountain with God, receiving the ten commandments. Have a listen to this:

Ex 32:1–9: When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mould, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well- being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt! ’” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff- necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.

Isn’t that what we do? We say that we believe in God, but left to our own devices, we become stiff–necked. Prideful. We make idols of the things of this world and the more we chase after them, the less inclined we are to bow down our lives to God. And when that happens, God’s anger burns against us. Let’s get a revelation about that today. Yes God loves you … but when you’re more inclined to chase after the things of this world, than to bow down your life to worship Him, in His eyes you’ve become stiff–necked and His anger burns.

We’re in the middle of a series of messages called “Overboard with Jesus” – about living our lives full on for Christ. But so often in our pride we delude ourselves into thinking that we can put God on a leash and have Him follow us around to do our beck and call. But if you want to live your life full on for Christ, that’s not the way to live.

Who or what is your golden calf? Who or what in your life, in your possessions, in your priorities are you putting before God? Hmm? You see the alternative is to have a heart like the psalmist who wrote:

Psalm 95:6,7: O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

There’s a man with his life bowed down to God. Can’t call him stiff–necked.

FULL ON SACRIFICE Come on, let’s be honest, none of us likes to give up the things that we like. I remember, when our children were young, Saturdays were a day of racing around doing this, doing that. Taking them to sport and all the other things they had going on. I mean, I’m someone who works hard, so come the weekend, I would love to be able to put my feet up.

But there was the running around of the kids, the lawn had to be mowed, the car had to be washed. All I wanted to do was rest, but … that’s what it is right?!

And you mothers, you know that being a mum is simply a life of sacrifice. Children demand so much attention and effort and time and emotional energy and sheer hard work. You pour yourself into them. It’s a life of sacrifice.

In fact pretty much anything worthwhile in life, requires sacrifice. Studying, getting a degree, learning a trade, bringing up children, saving money, building a career … they all involve sacrifice. So … what exactly is sacrifice? Have you ever thought about the? Well, my friendly online dictionary comes up with a variety of definitions, but the most appropriate one is to give up something you value for the sake of other considerations.

You work hard to grow your business at the expense of your social life for instance. Sacrifice always involves giving something up, something that you want NOW, in order to have something better later.

And it seems that you and I are prepared to make all sorts of sacrifices to get the things in this world that we want. The question though is, whether you and I are prepared to make the sacrifices that are required, to get God what He wants in this world. Well, are we? Yesterday on the program/ before the break, we had a look at that powerful, pivotal passage in Romans Chapter 12.

Let’s go back there, because it’s quite illuminating – but this time we’ll read a bit more of that Chapter:

Romans 12:1–4: I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Now I remember one of my lecturers back in Bible college telling me that whenever you find a “therefore” in Scripture, you have to ask yourself, What’s the therefore there for?! Could question, because here Paul who is writing this letter to the church in Rome, begins his appeal for us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice – a strong appeal when you think about it –with a therefore. What’s the therefore there for?

Well he’s pointing back to the first 11 chapters of this letter, which are all about the amazing sacrifice that Jesus made for us so that we could be saved from the wrath of God because of our sin. For example:

Romans 5:6–8: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Do, in view of the mercies of God, therefore, present your bodies as a living sacrifice – which is your spiritual worship. Now at this point I need to point out that when people back in the first century AD heard the word sacrifice, they couldn’t help but think of the other meaning of the word sacrifice that I find in my dictionary, which is this:

… an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to a deity.

Specifically, they’re thinking about the relatively recent sacrifice of Jesus on that Roman Cross back in Jerusalem – something that had happened around 50 to 60 years earlier by all accounts. They’re thinking about the many stories that they’ve heard about Jesus, innocent of any sin or crime, being nailed to a cross to save them from the wrath of God.

A pretty picture it ain’t in their minds, as they read the words of the Apostle Paul – who was there at the time of the crucifixion – sitting, as they are in the relative comfort and wealth of imperial Rome. What they’re hearing as Paul’s letter is read out, is that God is calling them to a life of incredible sacrifice, something that is already becoming obvious to them, through the rising persecution and martyrdom of Christians in the Roman Empire. If you’ve ever been to Rome, you may have seen the catacombs the huge underground tunnels where the Christians hid.

I hear people talk about living their lives for Jesus, but they want to do it from the comfort of their armchair. In many places today, in many societies, in many churches, there is so much comfort and wealth, that the notion of sacrifice is a foreign one.

But what of the woman who wrote to me recently: My husband has been extremely cruel to me since Mother’s Day. What does she do? Does she up and leave him? No, she goes to God and asks Him to protect her; asks Him to change her husband; asks Him to heal their marriage.

In this world, in this day and age, the obvious solution is separation and divorce, but this woman has taken a different route, she’s made a different choice. She takes seriously the scripture that says:

Romans 5:1–5: Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Conventional wisdom, the world’s wisdom says … run away from suffering. You’re entitled. You deserve it. You’re worth it. And yet the Bible is filled with some hard truths about suffering. Back to this woman’s lot:

1 Peter 3:1–6: Wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands, so that, even if some of them do not obey the word, they may be won over without a word by their wives’ conduct, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair, and by wearing gold ornaments or fine clothing; rather, let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight. It was in this way long ago that the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by accepting the authority of their husbands. Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord. You have become her daughters as long as you do what is good and never let fears alarm you.

We want to throw those bits of the Bible out. They’re politically incorrect. They’re unfair. They’re irrelevant in this day and age. And yet God’s truth remains God’s truth. Even though the more comfortable and affluent our world becomes, we’ve had lies dropped on our heads that tell us it’s all about us, Jesus … the same Jesus who suffered and died for you on that Cross, Jesus is calling you to a life that involves sacrifice … and that sacrifice, the sort that the Romans heard about in Paul’s letter to them, involves suffering a lot of the time.

And when you get that truth into your heart, you see your suffering in a different light. God is doing some great stuff there fore you in the middle of your suffering. Suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope – and it’s a certain hope, a hope that never disappoints, as the love of God through the Holy Spirit is poured into our hearts.

I’ve taken up a form of fitness training that I really enjoy. It’s called High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT for short. It involves hopping on an exercise bike and doing 8 x 30 second sprints on high resistance over a period of about 14 minutes – pushing myself to the absolute limit in each burst. And speaking of bursts, by the end of 30 seconds, it feels like my lungs are going to burst, like my heart is going to pop out of my chest, and like my leg muscles are going to catch on fire. Point is, that the science tells us that it’s really, really good for you. Really good.

In other words, the sacrifice is worth it. It’s made me so incredibly fit. I race up stairs now where I used to catch the lift. I’m never short of breath day to day. I sleep better. It’s worth it.

That’s what God is calling us to – that sort of life. A life that involves sacrifice so that emulates Christ’s sacrifice for us.

1 John 3:16: We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

You want to live your life for Jesus – expect it to involve sacrifice. Because when the decision comes to flee from sacrifice and suffering … or embrace it for Christ’s sake – you’ll be prepared to make the right choice.

FULL ON WORSHIP Okay – so how do you worship God? More recently I guess as many, if not most, churches have moved to contemporary worship, the songs have become more upbeat, many churches use lighting and wall banners and logos and contemporary furnishings, not to mention extremely professional music teams to help their people to worship.

It’s easy to be critical of all that … but there’s nothing new in any of that. Go and visit any old cathedral – and there are plenty of them scattered across Europe – and you realise that we’ve been going to huge lengths to express our awe and wonder of God.

But to tell you the truth – and maybe it’s just me – a lot of those external trappings leave me pretty cold. It’s not that I don’t appreciate great ecclesiastical architecture, or Handel’s Messiah, or some of the great hymns and contemporary worship songs that have been written of recent years. But I’ve been in places that have all that and more, and yet, the best way to describe them is … dead. It’s as though God isn’t in that place. It’s as though sometimes, we try to conjure up God’s Presence, by designing, by building, by performing.

I remember, just before I graduated from Bible College, we had a Graduands Retreat Day. About 40 of us who were graduating, together with a few or our lecturers, headed off to a church building in a leafy suburb, away from distractions, to spend a day fellowshipping, praying and … well, worshipping.

The guy who led worship had a scratchy voice. His guitar was slightly out of tune and yet, it remains, to this day, the most awesome time of song worship that I have ever experienced.

We’re heading towards the end of a series of messages today – a series that I’ve called Overboard with Jesus. It sort of began around that great passage of Scripture where Peter gets out of the boat and walks towards Jesus on the stormy sea of Tiberius. Let’s go back and have a quick read:

Matt 14:22–33: Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

So there’s good old Pete stuck in a boat with his mates on the Sea of Tiberius. They’re a long way from land, the boat is battered by the waves and the wind is against them. Remembering that this was Jesus’ decision for His Disciples.

When Jesus finally comes to the rescue, the Disciples are petrified until He identifies Himself. And within a split second, Peter who, remember, is a fisherman. He knows these waters, he’s sailed them many a time. He knows the danger of this storm. But despite that, within a split second, he says to Jesus – Lord if it’s you command me to come to you on the water.

Here’s what I believe – what was going on in Peter’s heart in that instant, is worship. Because in that moment, Peter is prepared to connect his faith in Jesus, with his actions, with his life, with what he’s about to do. Peter is prepared to step out onto that stormy sea, to follow Jesus.

There are two different words used for “worship” in the new testament. One is proskunio – from which we get the English word to prostrate oneself. It’s the sort of worship we do when we sing songs on a Sunday morning in church. It’s bowing down and declaring with our heart and with our mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. That’s awesome stuff – although as I said, you can sing songs without worshipping God. I’ve seen people checking their watches, looking around to see who’s coming in late, scrolling through social media on their smartphone during worship. In that case worship is a complete misnomer. It’s just singing.

But if your heart is engaged, then yes, what’s going on there, is proskunio worship – bowing down before the throne of God. Awesome stuff – whether it’s a guy with a scratchy voice and out of tune guitar leading, or whether it’s a full on rock concert. The trappings are pretty much irrelevant.

The other word, and we looked at this one yesterday on the program / before the break, is latreo – from which we get the word lateral. In other words, outward, lateral worship, through what we do, how we live, how we behave, how we spend our money. Many times, this word is translated as service rather than worship. There’s one verse in the New Testament where both of these words are used. It’s Jesus replying to the devil in the second temptation in the wilderness. He says, and I quote:

Luke 4:8: It is written, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him”.

So here’s the question for you today. As you live out your life, are you living it all for Jesus? Are you worshipping Him with everything you think and say and do? Because truthfully, stepping out of that boat on that stormy ocean is worship. It’s living out the proskunio worship that’s in our hearst, as latreo worship in our lives.

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As politically incorrect, unpopular and old–fashioned things go, the subject of repentance would have to be right up there near the top of the list. Repentance – what the blazes does it mean anyhow? Who even talks that way anymore these days? Give me a break!!

FULL ON REPENTANCE When I come across a subject like “repentance” – and I’ll explain what I think that word means in a moment – I tend to think about how I viewed religious jargon before I became a Christian. I remember some nutter standing on a milk crate in the local mall waving a Bible in one hand, shouting Repent, Repent and thinking to myself … yeah, right, now there’s a message the world wants to hear. Idiot!!

I was driving a pretty expensive car back in those days, living in a luxury house, pursuing a business career and life was, on the surface at least, pretty darned good. So, who needs repentance?! Ever felt yourself thinking along those lines?

The problem is, that left to our own devices, we have a tendency of making a hash out of our lives. Now, the average born again atheist would take issue with that. The average born again atheist out there is thinking to themselves – here they go again these religious nutters, telling us that we’re no good. Telling us that we can’t make it on our own.

And to be completely honest with you – that’s how I used to think. I thought of myself as smart and successful and I was driven to work hard and to achieve.

So the message of “repent” … which I guess most people associate with turning away from sin (boy there’s another incredibly unpopular concept these days) … that message was not something I was ready to hear. How about you?

We’re smack bang in the middle of a series of messages at the moment called “Overboard with Jesus”. It’s kind of based around that pretty well known story of Peter getting out of the boat on the Sea of Tiberius in the middle of a storm:

Matthew 14:22–33: Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Pretty remarkable story – and I love Peter’s heart. So intent was He on following Jesus that He was prepared to follow Him out of the boat, onto the water, in the middle of a deadly, raging storm. And with all my heart I believe that that’s the sort of follower that Jesus is looking for today. Not a lukewarm, mamby–pamby, pew–warming, middle of the road, my life doesn’t count for much type of Christian. But someone who’s prepared to get out of the boat, in the storm, even though they may sink – to follow Jesus wherever He may lead.

Someone who’s prepared to be all in, full on for Jesus. And today and for the rest of this week / and this week and next on the program, I want to chat about a few practical, real ways that we can do that – be all in, be full on for Christ. The first way is in this area of repentance.

Jesus had a way, He still does in fact, of cutting through all the nonsense and self–delusion, and getting right to the heart of an issue. In His famous Sermon on the Mount, He said this:

Matthew 5:3: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, blessed are those who recognise their spiritual poverty. Blessed are those who stop deluding themselves thinking that life is all good, that they’re successful and comfortable and they don’t need anything else. That’s what pride does, it stops us from recognising what’s really going on in our lives. It stops us from admitting to ourselves, let alone to others, the spiritual poverty that lies deep within.

The spiritual poverty that leads us off in the wrong direction, until the emptiness of life, the burdens of life, the consequences of a life chasing after the mirage, the illusion of comfort and success and material things … so deeply afflicts us that words can’t describe what it is that we feel.

I see it all the time – can I say, I see it in people who don’t have any faith at all, and, tragically, I see it in people who profess a faith in Jesus, who warm the pews of a church each Sunday, who sing the songs, pray the prayers, go through the motions.

Listen to me: whether religious or not, whether professing a faith in Jesus or not, we can be beset and afflicted by a deep spiritual poverty that we just won’t admit to ourselves, because we’ve invested so much time and energy chasing the things we’ve been chasing, getting to this desperate place in life – that we're just to proud to admit that we got it wrong.

And that has consequences. So, how do you turn that around? Well, interestingly, that’s exactly what the word “repentance” means – to turn things around. To admit that you got it wrong. But there’s an important element that’s required to taking that drastic measure. Have a listen to this:

2 Chron 7:13,14: When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

That element is humility. It’s being prepared to get real with ourselves and go back to God and admit to Him, and ourselves, that our ways, our rebellion, our stupidity – because frankly that’s what it’s been – hasn’t worked. And God’s promise to us, and you read it over and over again in the Bible is that when we turn around, away from our wicked ways, when we seek His face – He’ll listen and He’ll forgive and He’ll heal and He’ll bless. Plain and simple …

1 John 1:19: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The alternative is the status quo. And over 20 years ago now, I came to the realisation that the status quo simply wasn’t an option. How about you? How’s your life going? Are you perhaps one of those people who kind of believes in Jesus, but, well … somehow, it’s not going so well for you?

Then there’s every chance that the reason for that is that you’re holding something back from Him. Some sin, some rebellion, some thing in your life that you haven’t given over to Him. Remember, blessed are the poor in spirit, the ones who admit their sin and their poverty to God, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It’s time to get overboard with Jesus in the storm, like Peter did. It’s time to stop pussy–footing around with our faith and get real and live a life that’s all out for Jesus. And that starts with being honest, with admitting, with turning away from that sin that’s been plundering our lives, and turning back to Jesus.

Acts 3:19,20: Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

So … how about it?

FULL ON FORGIVENESS To be honest, forgiveness never used to be a thing for me. Why forgive? My motto in life, used to be: don’t get angry, get even. If you did something to hurt me, or betray me, or undermine me, or ignore me … I would find a way of getting even. Vengeance is sweet they say … although from experience I can tell you, it does leave a bitter aftertaste in your mouth.

It wasn’t until age 36 – that forgiveness became a thing for me. This is how it happened. Jesus met me in a dark time in my life. My Saviour came for me, and reached down into the dark pit where I was, and lifted me out.

Those aren’t just words – that’s what happened. And today, I look back and still find myself asking – why me? I am … I am speechless at the idea that Jesus came for me. There were so many people who were nicer than me – I was a shicker I have to tell you. I was tough, hardnosed, brutal in my pursuit of success.

And then … then one day, I read this story that Jesus told.

Matt 21:18–35: Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy- seven times.

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. ’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe. ’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you. ’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you? ’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

The end of that is just a bit brutal isn’t it? I mean, really? Is forgiveness that big a deal? Well, apparently, it is to God. I was perplexed by this story, this parable that Jesus used to teach Peter and the other Disciples about Jesus. So it got me thinking.

God makes us, humanity, kicking it off with Adam and Eve. He gives us a free will full knowing that we would rebel. Full knowing that we would fall short of His perfect standard. Full knowing that one day, the demands of justice – God’s justice, after all we’d expect God to be just, right – would have to be met. I mean if I break the law and end up in front of a judge, as I did once as a young man, by crashing my car, you’d expect the judge to be just. He gave me a sentence, rather light sentence as it turned out at the time – a fine or, if I didn’t pay the fine, a couple of nights at Her Majesty’s pleasure in prison.

That’s what you’d expect. But imagine, just imagine, if that judge had been my father. My dad who brought me into this world and loves me beyond measure. Now in that instance the judge would have a fundamental conflict of interests. On the one hand, he’s the judge and by the very nature of his role, his job is to meet out justice. On the other hand, he’s my dad and he loves me and he doesn’t want to have to do that.

Well, that’s precisely the dilemma that God finds himself in. Only for Him it’s much, much worse, because as we read in Romans 6:23 – the wages of our sin is death. You and I through our sin, our rebellion against God, are under a death sentence, make no mistake about it. And eternal existence of judgement and suffering.

John 5:28,29: Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

There it is, a resurrection of eternal condemnation. That’s what’s at stake here – so God sends Jesus … His one and only Son, the one through whom the whole of creation was created – He sends Jesus to suffer and die for you and for me. Do you get it? This is why forgiveness is such a big deal for God. This is why Jesus told this powerful parable about forgiveness.

Matt 27:45–51: From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.

Do you get it? That’s what Jesus did for me and for you, so that we could be completely set free from condemnation. For God so loved the world, so loved you, so loved me that He gave His only begotten Son so that when we believe in Him, we won’t perish under that burden of eternal condemnation, but instead we’ll have eternal life.

So He looks at you and me, and He says – well, if that’s what I did to forgive you, how is it possible that you wouldn’t forgive those who have sinned against you? Well – how is that possible?

That’s the question that God is asking us today? How is that possible?! So … let me ask you, whom haven’t you forgiven in your life. For whom do you still harbour the darkness of unforgiveness in your heart? Hmm?

This series of messages is called Overboard with Jesus. It’s about taking our lives out of the mediocre comfort zone where we’ve perhaps been living, and going all out, living our lives full on for Jesus. There are so many people who want to do that, but they just don’t know how. Well, get a revelation today, you cannot, you simply cannot live your life full on for Jesus if you are carrying unforgiveness around in your heart. Ya just can’t!

Is it hard to forgive? Sure it is – I have a couple of people in my life who betrayed me so deeply – over 20 years ago now, it can still be a struggle to live out that forgiveness. That’s why I pray for them so often, still now. Because as I pray for them – the way Jesus taught me to, He said pray for your enemies, right?! As I do that, He heals the unforgiveness. He takes it away. He does what I cannot do – He replaces my heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

Man, Jesus came to set the captives free. That was His promise. That’s the first thing He said at the beginning of His public ministry, there in the synagogue in Nazareth. I’ve come to set the captives free. Well, if you’re captive to unforgiveness today, if you’re struggling to let go of that darkness, that destructive force of unforgiveness in your heart today – hear this.

Jesus came to set you free. Yes. You. Let it go. Put it into His hands. Pray for your enemy – get out there, go overboard with Jesus. Trust Him … and He will show up. He will grab your hand when you start sinking. Because that … that’s just what Jesus does.

MAKING IT HAPPEN I am a firm believer that we are, you am, I am, we each are, masters of self–delusion. Why? Because we all have blind spots in our makeup. You know what it’s like, when you’re driving a car, if your rear vision mirror and your two side mirrors aren’t perfectly lined up there are blind spots in your rear vision.

Often those blind spots are big enough to hide a motor cycle, or even a car. Change lanes without looking back over your shoulder, and you’re likely to have an accident. A few years ago, I attended a defensive driving course. Now, I thought every car had blind spots like that, but it turns out that the mirrors are designed so that if you know how to line them up – and they taught us that on the course – you’ll have seamless rear vision, from your right peripheral vision, right around behind you, through to your left peripheral vision. Quite amazing really.

Now, whenever I hop into a car other than my own, like a hire car, I always line up the mirrors to that there are no blind spots.

It’s a bit like that with us in life – we have these blind spots and the definition of a blind spot is a place where you can’t see. I didn’t realise for instance, that my anger was an issue before I became a Christian. But actually it wasn’t becoming a Christian that made the difference. It was hearing what God had to say.

I began to read my Bible not out of a sense of duty, but because the pastor of the first little church that I attended – Pastor Phil – inspired me with God’s Word.

Proverbs 12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.

So, I went to the source of wisdom – God Himself. And as I started reading, time and time I was convicted that something in my life wasn’t quite right. So God would work on that with me. Then it was the next thing and the next thing and … well, would you believe a few decades later, we’re still going.

The power of God’s Word to bring me to repentance by showing me my blind spots has been truly miraculous, in fact, it still is. And the power of God’s Word to help me to learn to forgive … the same thing. I discovered a while into the process that this is exactly what’s meant to happen. Jesus said:

John 16:8 And when the Holy Spirit comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.

That’s what the Holy Spirit does as we open our hearts to God’s Word – He helps us discern right from wrong, He convicts us as it were, in such an incredibly powerful way, a way that brings change.

So, perhaps you’re struggling with some sin in your life right at the moment, or some unforgiveness in your heart and you just can’t seem to let go. Well, right now, I want to pray for you, because I believe that Holy Spirit power, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, is going to fill you today in the most amazing way.

Father God, we come to you to confess that we are completely helpless to deal with our sin, with our unforgiveness. Lord we’re even powerless to know much of the time the things inside us, the things going on in our hearts, the things that are manifesting in our lives, that are displeasing to you. So we ask today dear Holy Spirit that you would convict us of sin and righteousnesss, that you would shine your light into the darkest recesses of our soul … and that you would give us a passion, a real passion for your Word, to hear you speak your grace and mercy and power into our lives. Bring repentance dear God where there is sin, bring forgiveness dear God, where there is unforgiveness in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen!!

Amen, Amen – and I want to encourage you to become a man or a woman of God’s Word, feeding daily on the Word of God, hearing daily God speak His wisdom into your life – receiving daily from Him the power to change … so that each day, you look more and more like Jesus. Because that’s what He wants to do in your life – and it’s the most wondrous thing to experience.

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I remember someone once saying to me “oh, you’re not one of those ‘born again’ Christians are you?” The tone in her voice said it all. I was driving a car at the time, so I couldn’t turn to look her in the eye. I just smiled and replied “Well, actually, that’s the only sort of Christian there is!”

WHEN THE STORM BLOWS IN As societies around the world become more and more secular, they’re inventing more and more stereotypes to marginalise Christians. You see, and I can tell you this first hand, if you don’t believe in Jesus, the message of Christianity makes you feel incredibly uncomfortable. Why? Because whether you realise it or not – and at the time I didn’t realise it – deep down, there’s something in your makeup that knows that these Christians are right.

Man you Christians used to offend me. And annoy me. And make me squirm. So I did what any self respecting atheist would do, I lashed out at you. I persecuted you. It’s why today, I so relate to the Apostle Paul, who as a Pharisee, did exactly the same.

With the same sneer in their voice, people these days use terms like “evangelical Christians”, “conservative Christians”, “hardliners”, “fundamentalists” to paint a picture of what Jesus said, what I with all my heart believe, as being wholly undesirable and unreasonable and irrelevant and downright dangerous.

Never mind that any half decent legal system, any half decent system of justice around the world, is modelled on the Word of God. There are some countries where it’s not, and those countries are inevitably brutal and unjust. Not the sorts of places you and I would want to live in. Nevertheless, as people in democracies exercise their freedom of speech, many do so, to marginalise the very faith and belief system that gave them this freedom in the first place.

So what happens, is that many Christians withdraw back into their shells. They stop living out their faith because they feel marginalised. Persecution can do that, especially if you love the comfortable lifestyle. Why don’t I just blend in with the rest – perhaps then no one will notice me.

Then the storm hits – it blows, the boat you’re in is pitching and you think to yourself – how will I ever survive this?! Do you see how many good reasons there are to just sit there, and pretend that you’re not really a Jesus follower?! Whether it’s the subtle marginalisation of an increasingly secular society that stops you from living out and speaking out your faith, or whether it’s the excuse of some great and mighty storm that seems to be sweeping through your life, there is an endless array of excuses not to live your life full on for Jesus.

I guess by now, with me talking about a storm, you might have a sense of which passage of scripture I’m heading towards … so let’s take a look already:

Matt 14:22–33: Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

There are three things that really hit met between the eyes about this amazing story. Right now, I just want to take a look at the first one of those. You see, when the storms strike in our lives, we find ourselves wondering – that the blazes is going on here? Have I failed God? Have I made a mistake? Have I somehow stepped outside His will and His favour? Has God given up on me? And with all of those questions swirling around inside us, the self–pity wells up and we find ourselves with more than ample justification for not stepping out of the boat.

But when you read the account of this event again, you have to come to the somewhat confronting realisation, that putting those disciples in that boat, on that stormy ocean, is something that Jesus did quite deliberately. They’d just had a powerful time of ministry – fed 5000 with 2 fish and 5 loaves. And immediately, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side … while he dismissed the crowds and then went off alone to pray.

Putting the disciples in harms way, putting them on the stormy ocean, putting them in a place where they would perish if God didn’t intervene, was – wait for this – the sovereign choice of a sovereign God. Of course a storm is nothing to Him, but to a bunch of immature disciples, it was horrendous. They were cowering, their lives were threatened.

This series is called “Overboard With Jesus” – and we’re doing to take a look at the rest of this story tomorrow on the program/after a short break. But right now, I want to focus this situation of the disciples in the boat, back onto your life. Onto the tiny boat on the big ocean that you’re sailing on.

When was the last time that a storm hit? When was the last time that your little boat was battered by waves, far from the land, with the wind against you? Do you remember that time? Perhaps you’re going through one of those times right now. Perhaps your situation, your circumstances, your relationships … seem completely impossible.

Well, I want you to know something. Where you’re at right now is not accident. It’s no mistake. In fact, it is the sovereign choice of God for you. Now just process that for a minute – what things does it change for you?

OVERBOARD IN THE STORM I mentioned earlier on in this series that I began my walk with Jesus in the middle of a boat on an incredibly stormy ocean – not literally speaking you understand. But my first two years with Him were the worst two years of my life. I’ve never been lower, it’s never been darker and scarier and lonelier and more painful … and I never, ever, ever want to be back in that place again.

Of course, whether or not we end up in the middle of a storm isn’t always up to us. Sometimes it’s our fault. God always lets us live through the consequences of our sin, and so sometimes the pain that we’re going through is just that. It’s the only way we learn our lessons in life isn’t it.

Like that old Yiddish proverb – every generation has to learn for itself that the stove is hot.

But sometimes a storm blows in that simply isn’t our fault. It just happens and as we saw yesterday on the program / before the break those storms aren’t just some accident, but the sovereign will of God.

It’s hard to imagine that God would let that happen – but you see, He is so much more interested in our character than our comfort. A verse that I go back to again and again when I’m suffering is

James 1:2–4: My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

And we’ve seen already that God uses storms in that very way. Let’s revisit that storm story in Matthew 14 again, because there are a couple of more things that God has to say to us through what Jesus and the Disciples did on that day:

Matt 14:22–33: Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Okay so putting the disciples in harm’s way was a deliberate choice that Jesus made. Storm, wind … even the seasoned fishermen among them were getting downright scared. And then just to top it off, Jesus comes walking across the water towards them. They thought they were seeing a ghost.

It’s often the way when Jesus steps supernaturally into our storms in life. As much as we don’t like the storm, we can kind of understand the things we can see and touch and feel. But when the hand of God starts moving supernaturally, that is completely unsettling and scary – when Jesus first steps into our storm, it can be scary, until we hear His voice. Until we know that it’s Him.

I remember in my big storm, man when He led me to a church, when He led me to a Bible college – completely crazy given who I was and where I was at – it was scary. But then He speaks … He speaks words of assurance and comfort – Don’t be afraid … it’s me.

People ask me, how do you hear that? How do you hear Him speak? Most often, I’ve heard Him speak through the Bible. Sounds corny, but it’s true. This morning as I read the next Psalm that I was due to read, He just spoke so directly into what I was going through. But He speaks through sermons, sometimes He touches me deeply when I’m watching a movie, through things that happen … when you read your Bible, you’ll see He speaks in all sorts of different ways.

And that speaking brings courage to your heart. When the ministry of Christianityworks a few years ago looked like it was going to crash and burn for a lack of funds, man I spent a lot of time on my knees and I can tell you, it was Jesus speaking to me that gave me the courage and resolve to keep going.

And then, right there, the next, the single most bizarre part of this story unfolds. Peter gets out of the boat.

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.

Just stop and think about that. Not only did the words of Jesus inspire enough courage in Peter’s heart to get out of the boat and walk on water, but He did it while the storm was still raging. And you know something, that’s often how Jesus does things. He calls us out of the boat in the middle of the storm.

Now at the peak of the storm, we have the maximum number of excuses to stay back in the boat. Truly we do. Now’s not the right time. We’re a long way from land. The boat is being battered and overcome by waves. The wind is against us. Now is simply not a good time Jesus. Let’s wait for the storm to stop. But now, the Holy Spirit inspires Peter to say “Lord, if it really is you, command me to come to you on the water”.

That right there speaks of a heart ready to follow Jesus. Peter knew that he was better out on the water with Jesus in the middle of the storm, than back in the boat with his mates who were paralysed by fear. This is what it means to go Overboard With Jesus. To follow Him wherever He may call – to ask Him to call us on, to serve Him, to trust in Him, to do the impossible … in Him. And one day, Jesus is going to call you out of the boat in the middle of your storms.

Trust me. If you’re listening, if your heart is open, if you yearn for Him, He will call you and when you step out of the boat in His power, rather than your strength, you won’t be perfect at it any more than Peter was. Peter took his eyes off Jesus and focussed on the storm, which is when he started to sink. But Jesus was there, Jesus is always there, to catch us when we fail, when our faith wanes.

Overboard With Jesus means putting it all on the line. Some people rock along to church give their 10% tithe, like tipping God almost, and think to themselves, yep, I’m a good Christian. I go to church, I sing the songs, I give a tithe of my income, tick, tick, tick. Nothing wrong with any of those things.

But one day … one day, right in the middle of a storm, He will call you out of your boat, to step out onto the water in the middle of the storm. There’s only one thing that keeps you afloat in that place … your faith in Jesus. And it’s not until you’ve experienced that, it’s not until you’ve seen Jesus calm the storm, that you can truly say from the bottom of your heart, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Storms come into our lives as a sovereign act of God. They completely overwhelm us. And in the middle of them, if we’re looking, listening, waiting … Jesus will call us out of the boat onto the water to experience His miracle working power and faithfulness.

Question is … are you ready? Are you looking and waiting? Will you go?

THAT SINKING FEELING I’m not sure whether you’ve ever thought about this, but in the three and a half years of Jesus’ public ministry back there in the first century AD, Jesus Himself faced rather a lot of resistance. The beginning of that ministry was marked by His baptism in the Jordan river. Immediately after that, we’re told, the Holy Spirit threw Him out in the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil for forty days and nights, while He starved almost to the point of death.

When that didn’t work the devil withdrew to wait for a more opportune time. Straight off the back of that, He goes back to His hometown of Nazareth to preach, and they try to throw Him off a cliff. The Pharisees and Sadducees were pretty soon on His case plotting to kill Him – something they eventually succeeded at – but not before people left Him in droves (John 6:66) because they didn’t like what He was saying.

And when it did come to His crucifixion, every last one of His friends and family deserted Him. Yeah, following Jesus is going to mean resistance. A lot of it. Jesus Himself said:

Matt 7:13,14 Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it

I think sometimes we imagine that when we set our lives on a course to follow Jesus, when we step out of the boat in the middle of the storm as Peter did on the Sea of Tiberias, it’s going to be easy. God is going to smooth a path out for us and it should all be predictable, safe and easy.

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, that’s simply not what Jesus promised, ever.

John 15:20,21 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master. ’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me

And so you can want to follow Jesus, you can want to honour Him with all that you are, but when you’re swimming against the tide, you get tired. It’s hard … and people lose heart. And on top of that, when those storms hit, you focus on the opposition, take your eyes off Jesus and then … then you get that sinking feeling. Remember the story that we’ve been looking at so far of the storm, Jesus walking on the water and then Peter getting out of the boat:

Matt 14:28–30 Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me.

It is so disheartening to fail Jesus. It really is. I can tell you that firsthand. And if you’re someone who wants to live your life for Him, you know it too. It is soooo disheartening, particularly, when like Peter, you can feel yourself sinking and losing and failing and …

But while you and I will fail, while you and I will be unfaithful, listen to me, Jesus will never, ever fail you. He will never, ever let you down. He will never, ever let you sink.

Matt 14:28–33 Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

And that’s why you and I need never be afraid to step out of the boat onto the stormy sea, if it’s Jesus calling us out to do it. You can’t do it in your own strength. Peter knew that – that’s why He said Lord if it’s you then you command me to come out onto the water. He wasn’t stupid, right! It had to be Jesus calling Him.

But when Jesus does call you, He is faithful. He provides all your needs. He gives you all the power you need. That’s an absolute given from His standpoint. That’s why He says to peter – You of little faith, why did you doubt? There was absolutely no reason to doubt. It’s me you’re talking about here. Do you get it?!

I know, I know, we so often want to play it safe. But here’s the thing, you don’t get to experience the miracle working power of God in your safety zone. It’s out on the stormy sea that we discover who this Jesus really is. You don’t discover His faithfulness or His power stuck back in your comfort zone. In fact Jesus Himself said:

Luke 14:27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

So, let’s talk about you for a moment. Are you in with all that you are? Are you prepared to lay everything – everything – on the line for Jesus? Or are you holding something back? Let’s go back to that picture of Peter stepping out of the boat. He was prepared to put his life on the line to live a life of faith in Jesus.

And as we know, He failed a few times along the way, but that doesn't seem to bother Jesus that much in the scheme of things. Too many people die wondering … what if I’d stepped out when Jesus called me? What if I’d gone Overboard With Jesus? What if … what if … what if …

Well, I’ll tell you what if. Anyone who has heard Jesus’ call overboard will know what Peter knew in his own experience. Jesus is always faithful. He just is.

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Have you ever had a lukewarm cup of tea? There’s simply nothing worse, so imagine … I mean, just imagine … what a lukewarm Christian feels like to the God who sent His Son to suffer and die for you and me. Just imagine.

DON’T BE A LUKEWARM CHRISTIAN One of the things that hits me between the eyes over and over again is how honest and direct God is. That may sound a little odd. I mean, you’d kind of expect God to be honest and you’d expect Him to be direct, I guess, but one of the habits I established over a couple of decades ago now is to spend some time in God’s Word (the Bible) pretty much each and every morning. Sometimes when I’m travelling or I’m under severe time-pressures it doesn’t quite work out, and on those days the things that I remember from His Word … well, those things sustain me. But to live a life of joy, a life that’s full and fulfilling, let me tell you there is simply no substitute for listening to God speak; seriously, and that’s what reading the Bible is all about: Listening to God speaking to us.

Just this morning, around 3:15 am it was, before I sat down at my desk to prepare this message, I was in God’s Word. Psalm 32 is where I was up to, and the sheer power of what God had to say just blew me away. We’re going to chat about that particular Psalm later on in this series of messages, but right now, I want to head off to the other end of the Bible – the book of Revelation, where Jesus is talking to a church, and He’s talking to them about being lukewarm. Have a listen. Revelation 3:14-22:

“And to the angel of the church of Laodicea, write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation: I know your works; you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were either hot or cold, so because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

For you say, “I am rich; I have prospered and I need nothing.” You don’t realise that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white robes to clothe you and keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love; be earnest, therefore, and repent.

Listen, I am standing at the door knocking. If you hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with Me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with Me on My throne, just as I Myself conquered and sat down with My Father on His throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve been to many churches like the one in Laodicea. I’ve met many people who call themselves Christians, who would have fitted comfortably into a pew in that church. That lukewarm cup of tea I mentioned earlier … You know what that’s like. You take one sip and you just want to spit it out. Right? Hot, sure; that’s nice. Cold – well, you know, ice tea is a very refreshing drink. But lukewarm? Puke! Right? What a vivid picture, and to the lukewarm Christian, that’s exactly what Jesus is saying here.

Like I said, God is really honest and direct on the things that count. Sometimes you hear preachers trying to … I don’t know … soften the blow; put a better spin on the message; try to make sure that people don’t feel too uncomfortable with what Jesus is saying. I mean, what spin merchant these days would let Jesus get out there and say, “If you want to be My disciple, take up your cross every day and follow Me because if you want to save your life, you’re going to lose it, but if you’re prepared to lose it all for Me, you’ll find it?”

It’s not a particularly popular message, but then Jesus … well, Jesus is a straight shooter. He knows that on the really important things in life, and this whole hot-cold-lukewarm thing is actually really important … He knows He has to cut straight to the quick, and so as we launch into this series today (it’s called ‘Overboard with Jesus’), please don’t expect me to mince my words. There are people listening to this broadcast today who are living out a lukewarm brand of Christianity: A form of Christianity where they say they believe in Jesus, but they don’t live as though they do.

You see, what you say only tells the rest of us who you want to be; it’s what you do that tells the rest of us who you really are. And for so many people, ‘I believe in Jesus’ comes out of one side of their mouth, but in their hearts, they say to themselves, “Well, I’m rich, I’ve prospered, I really don’t need anything.” As author Michael Green once put it, my job here is to strip you naked and to show you that the clothes in which you once boasted are after all nothing but insubstantial rags. The things we have, the things we’ve achieved, one day will mean absolutely nothing.

Over the last few months, I’ve buried two friends. I’ve been to their funerals and sat in the pews, and listened to what people said about them. They were both amazing people; one a man, one a woman. The man was generous and loving and kind, and he poured himself out for people, but he didn’t believe in Jesus. The woman? Well, the same in her own way; generous and selfless and kind, but she did believe in Jesus. Today, neither of them exist on this earth anymore; their bodies have returned to dust. What really matters now, at this end of the equation, is their relationship with Jesus.

The man sadly will spend eternity separated from God; the woman, right now, is in the presence of Jesus worshipping Him. Let me ask you: When you get to the end of your life, how do you want things to turn out? It’s sobering, but then this isn’t my message; this is Jesus talking. This is Jesus, right here right now, speaking to you. I’m just His servant. I’m just His mouthpiece and today, He’s calling out to you.

Today, He’s asking you to look in the mirror and ask yourself, “am I living my life like I’m full-on for Jesus? Am I living my life as though He is the single-most important thing in my life, or am I just kidding myself? Am I just going through the motions and living out a comfortable Christianity?” And if it’s the latter, this is what He’s going to say to you! Right here and right now:

Therefore I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white robes to clothe you to keep your shame of nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love; be earnest, therefore, and repent.

In other words, ‘Come to Me’, Jesus is saying, and get things that truly matter: Forgiveness, holiness, wisdom and insight, so that you can live your life the way He always planned; so that you can have all the things that He wants to give you, here and now, and for the rest of eternity.

Jesus speaks to us very directly. He speaks very plainly for one reason: Because He loves us. He reproves and disciplines those whom He loves, and I believe … In fact I know that there are some comfortable Christians who’ve been warming pews down at their local church for way too long, whom Jesus wants to drag out of their comfort-zones today, and it’s my privilege today to call you back to Him; to share His words with you. So if you’re feeling just a tad uncomfortable, if you feel like you’re squirming a little in your seat today, if the words of Jesus are just a little too close to home, then I’m pretty sure this message is for you.

Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Get real with yourself, and turn back to Jesus. Admit it if you’ve been lukewarm. Turn your life back over to Him. That’s what He’s calling you to do today; Plainly, directly, lovingly because your life, your life, depends on it.

ESCAPING THE LUKEWARM FAITH It’s a real dilemma, isn’t it? If you believe in Jesus, on the one hand, sure, you want to live your life for Him, you definitely do, but on the other hand, there is so much going on; so many pressures. The day-to-day is hard work, right? My children are all grown-up now. We just recently had number two son (he’s thirty-four years old) staying with us for ten days before moving overseas for a while. I remember what hard-going it was when he was a teenager.

I mean, he was a great kid, but teenaged boys … Well, they’re a handful, aren’t they? But now, as a thirty-four-year-old, it was such a pleasure to have him around; easy to get on with; none of that teenaged tension, just a sheer pleasure. And just quietly, really satisfying to see him grow up into such a remarkable young man.

But often, when Jacqui and I are out, we see parents struggling with their kids. It’s hard-going. It takes so much time and energy, and it’s draining. On-top of that, there’s work; keeping the household running … You get the point, right?

It’s great to have a plan to live your life for Jesus, but actually doing that … Where do you fit in the time to pray? Where do you fit in the time to read your Bible? How can you show the grace and the mercy and the love and the sacrifice that you’re meant to show, that you want to show, when all the pressures of the world seem to be caving in on-top of you? So what happens is that passion, the enthusiasm that you once had for Jesus, starts to wane. Right?

This wonder, this sense of awe at having a personal relationship with the God who created the universe, of walking daily with Jesus, it goes from being full-on to … well … taking a backseat; from being hot to being lukewarm. And it’s not living that lukewarm life that we’re chatting about in this series called ‘Overboard with Jesus’. Let’s have another listen to the powerful words of Jesus, spoken to the church in Laodicea, and indeed to every one of us as we find ourselves sometimes in that place I’ve just described. Revelation 3:14-22. Jesus says:

I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot, so because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich; I have prospered; I need nothing.’ You don’t realise that you’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love; be earnest, therefore, and repent.

Listen, I am standing at the door knocking. If you hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with Me. To the one who conquers, I will give a place with Me on My throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with My Father on His throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

So Jesus is calling us out of our comfort and complacency; out of that place where our faith in Him’s taken a backseat to all the cares and indeed the comforts of this world – to get real with ourselves, to focus back on what’s really important, to be earnest, and to repent.

Great. If you just listen to that half of the message, man, it feels an awful like condemnation. It feels an awful like Jesus waving His big bony finger at you, and shaking His head. There’s such a fine line sometimes between being condemned and being convicted of right and wrong, but today I have some really good news for you – some great news. Romans 8:1:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The devil condemns; God convicts. There’s a big difference. Condemnation is meant to draw us away from God, as we become mired in guilt. That’s what the devil wants; to draw you away from God, but God has a different approach to dealing with sin. It’s a redemptive approach. It’s an approach of reconciliation. Here’s Jesus talking about what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. John 16:8:

And when He comes, He will convict the world of its sin and of God’s righteousness and of the coming judgment.

I remember when I was a young man, I was a smoker. Three packets a day. Absolutely hooked. I tried to give up, but it was a struggle and I always ended up back on the dreaded weed until one day, I was in a hospital-room and I watched a woman die of lung cancer. I actually watched her take her last breath. That thing they talk about – the death threat, or the body not wanting to give up … That’s exactly what happened, and I remember walking out of that room, taking a half-full packet of cigarettes, and throwing it in the bin in a brightly-lit, antiseptically-cleaned corridor. That was over thirty-five years ago now, and I haven’t had a single cigarette since.

You see, that’s what happens when we’re deeply convicted of something. It changes our behaviour, and that’s what God wants to do. He didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, but to save the world, and what today’s message is about isn’t condemnation; it’s conviction. Jesus quite clearly is putting His finger on this whole lukewarm-Christianity thing; absolutely. He doesn’t mince His words because He’s going for impact – the very same impact that the death of that woman before my very eyes had on me.

I said a moment ago that conviction is redemptive. That’s a bit jargony, isn’t it? What does that mean? Well, I think Jesus says it best:

I am standing at the door knocking. If you hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with Me. To the one who conquers, I will give a place with Me on My throne, just as I Myself conquered and sat down with My Father on His throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

I love His choice of words there. ‘I’m knocking. If you hear My voice today, if you open the door to your heart to Me today, I’ll come in and sit down, and we’ll share a meal together.’ Back in those days when that was written, as I guess is also true today, the idea of sitting down and eating together was a sign of friendship and fellowship.

Jesus is saying, “I get where you’re at. I’m holding up a mirror to your face here, so that you’ll realise exactly how lukewarm your relationship with Me has become. But once you hear that, once you get that, I’ll draw close to you and we’ll have a dynamic real intimate relationship, and you will become a conqueror – not because you had the strength, but because of the victory that I won for you on that cross and through that empty tomb. My victory will become your victory.”

Wow! You see, that’s Jesus speaking to you and me today. Do you get it? Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to them today. He wants you back; you. He loves you. His Word today is meant to convict you, deep in your heart, of the poverty of your situation, and Jesus is calling you back. He’s knocking today on the door of your heart. Do you hear Him? Will you get real and repent? Will you let Him in today?

Because Jesus, this Jesus who died for you and rose again for you, He has a whole new life ready and waiting for you – a life so rich, so vibrant, that you can’t begin to imagine! The life that He brings, yes, it will have its challenges; it will have its trials, and it will have its suffering, but He’ll also bring the sort of contentment and satisfaction that a lukewarm faith, a lukewarm relationship with Jesus, can never bring. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to them today.

COMFORT AND COMPLACENCY Comfort and complacency are, to a great extent, the incubator of lukewarm Christianity. Next week we’ll be seeing how Jesus calls us out of the boat in the middle of the storm, just as He did Peter; out of our safety and comfort and complacency. You can read about it in Matthew 14:22-33.

Now, I have to tell you, I have been on that boat in a stormy ocean many-a time. In fact, I started my walk with Jesus in that boat far from the land, with waves crashing over the bow and the wind against me. Fully the first three years of my faith-walk with Jesus were spent in that wretched little boat. Seriously, some days I could not imagine how I was going to make it through to the next day; no idea. Maybe it’s hard for you to believe that of the guy with a smooth voice on the radio, who seems to have his life together … Get revelation today.

No one is immune from the stormy-boat time as I call it; not you, not me, not even Jesus. Go and visit Him in Gethsemane. Go, visit Him in Golgotha. No, not even Jesus is immune. Those very same people who want to marginalise your Christian faith, want to shout down the faith that Jesus put in your heart, they’re the people who’ll tell you what success looks like, what beauty looks like. And the average Christian has become so intoxicated with success and beauty and wealth and comfort, with the allure of what the world offers, that we’ve lost sight of the reality of suffering in the Christian walk; of uncertainty; of losing everything, which is actually what Jesus calls us to. We’ve lost all of that and we’ve replaced His truth with the lies of this world, as though it’s all about success. Give me a break! How many successful people have been so miserable that they’ve taken their own lives or overdosed on drugs or worked themselves into an early grave?

If you remember one thing from our time together today, remember this: Suffering is a normal part of walking with Jesus, and your stormy-boat experiences … They’re no accident. Nor should they be a surprise, because in the middle of your storms, your God is up to something good; something amazing, getting you ready for the next thing, and that’s exactly what He was doing for me in those three years.

I remember when the day for me to answer His call out of the boat came. It was the day I resigned from the consulting firm I was working for. I used to own the company, but I’d sold it, and the new owners were only too happy to keep me on. Our finances weren’t all that crash-hot,; it was a huge leap of faith.

Back in the IT consulting game, things were safe; life was good, the money was regular, and I have to say, the money was pretty good too. I went through months of struggling this way and that. This was Jesus calling me out of the boat. It seemed safe back in the boat; it seemed scary out there on the ocean with Him. It always does, let me tell you. For me, it never gets easier because the steps of faith He asks me to take just seem to get bigger and harder and scarier. I don’t think it was ever meant to be easy. It’s like the first time I jumped off a high tower into the water below, on an obstacle course in the army. Scary as! And the next thing they asked me to do was to rappel out of a helicopter from a few hundred feet above the ground, and on and on it went from there.

It’s been well over a decade since that step of faith from the IT consulting career into the struggling, ailing little ministry of ChristianityWorks, as it was back then, and I’m no longer wondering what-if. I’m so glad I took that step! As tough as it’s been along the way (there have been many setbacks and many disappointments), and as many as the challenges are that lie ahead, I know that when I’m sinking, Jesus will reach out and grab me, as He always does. I know because He does it over and over again. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one place to be: Overboard with Jesus, because He is faithful beyond measure. That’s why it’s worth opening the door; worth sitting down and talking to Him; worth following His call on your life. He is faithful beyond measure.

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One of the hardest things in life is to bring a difficult issue to a head in a relationship that really matters to us. So how do you speak the truth in love?

Giving the Hard Advice I’d like to share a story with you as we open the program today. A few years ago I was working as a consultant in the Information Technology Industry and I was called into an organisation to do a review of how they were doing their whole IT function. And I had to go to the Chief Executive Officer of this fairly high profile organisation and give him some bad news.

To say, “look, you’re performance in this area is really poor. Your organisation is at very significant risk, and by the way, I think you actually need to remove this particular senior manager from the job that they’re doing in Information Technology.” It involves substantial reforms, affecting the livelihood of a good many people to improve the whole IT function in this particular organisation, and it was a review that I conducted that was born out of conflicting views in the organisation, so my job was to give them the hard advice.

It was difficult; it was painful for the organisation to accept and I guess, over the twenty or so years that I’ve been involved in that sort of work, eighty percent of what I did was to give hard advice. Sometimes organisations didn’t listen, I remember one organisation that didn’t listen to the advice that I gave and it ended up costing them over eighteen million to fix it.

Sometimes they’re not just ready to receive the advice and sometimes, not very often though, they’re eager to accept the hard advice because things are so bad they need to change. I’m convinced that in a professional role like that, giving the hard advice is absolutely the right thing to do because sometimes issues have to be confronted in order for them to be resolved. Let me say that again, sometimes issues have to be confronted in order for them to be resolved.

I guess I’m a peace loving sort of individual and really I’d rather sweep things under the carpet - I’d rather not have to confront issues but sometimes we do and it’s the same in personal relationships, in our personal lives. We people have the most amazing ability to hurt one another, don’t we? You just look at the news at night on television or look in our personal lives. People hurt people. How do we deal with that? How do we function in situations that are deeply hurtful? Do we just maintain the peace? Do we confront the person? When do we confront them? How do we deal with the issue with them? Why do we confront them?

This program is the last in the series of four messages called, 'Dealing with Difficult People'. Three weeks ago we began with a parable that Jesus told about the speck in your eye and the plank in my eye. And we looked at the fact that so often we’re a bit hypocritical in our motives. We go to other people and say, "you’ve got this wrong with you.” When there’s something much bigger wrong with us that we need to deal with first and ultimately, because I am with me 24/7 and you are with you 24/7, I’m the most difficult person I’ll ever meet and you are the most difficult person that you’ll ever meet. That was the first program.

The second one we looked at what do we do when we are 'Under Fire from the Enemy'. When we’re suffering for doing what’s right. We looked at First Peter chapter 3 verses 8 to 18 and we saw that it is better to suffer for doing good (if suffering is God’s will) than for doing evil. That’s a tough message. That’s not easy for us to come to grips with, but it’s important for us to understand that sometimes it is God’s will that we should suffer for doing what’s right and when we come to grips with that - when Jesus is in that place with us and we know it, gee, it’s so much easier to deal with.

And then last week we saw that ‘We can Pick our Friends but we can’t Pick our Relatives’. And we looked at First Peter chapter 3 verses 1 to 7, about how husbands and wives and families sometimes have difficult situations to deal with and rather than brow-beating one another, God’s looking for the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in His sight. So today, we’re going to look at the whole balance - to finish this series off, to round it out - of asserting ourselves on the one hand and suffering on the other because life needs to be a balance between those two things.

Boundaries are important, sometimes we do need to assert ourselves and if we go the world’s way; if we just say, “look, I have rights, buddy and I‘m going to insist on my rights.” If we say that, then ultimately that reduces us down to a state where abortion is ok; where we can just kill a child; where we can kill other people; where we can hurt other people, because we just insist on our own rights but it’s not like that.

Life is a balance between asserting ourselves on the one hand and humbling ourselves - sometimes suffering in that humility - on the other side. And when you look through God’s Word; through the Bible, there are precious few Scriptures that tell us how to assert ourselves. Most of what God says through His Word is about humbling ourselves; about dying to ourselves; about taking up our cross and following Him. It’s not much at all about asserting ourselves; in fact there are only two real Scriptures that I know of that talk about asserting ourselves. Matthew chapter 18 and Ephesians chapter 4 and we are going to look at both of those today in this message.

It’s something that I’ve struggled with over the years because from my business environment; from just the things that I did for all of those years before I came to Christ, I know that boundaries are important; I know that asserting myself is important but I was really surprised to find that there was precious little Biblical teaching on it - or so it seems, when you look at what Jesus talked about; when you look at what Paul talked about. So that’s the context of this message - we are going to look at the subject of asserting ourselves in those difficult situations - of speaking the truth in love. How do you do that? When do you do that? Why do you do that? Not from the world’s perspective, but from God’s perspective; from a Biblical perspective. Let me read to you Matthew chapter 18 verse 15. It says this:

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone and if the member listens to you, you have regained that one, but if you are not listened too, take one or two others along with you so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church and if the offender refuses even to listen to the church, let such a one to you be like a gentile or a tax collector. Truly, I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there amongst them.

This passage is about asserting ourselves - it is in the context of another member of the church doing something wrong to us but there are some broader principles in this passage that I think we can look at and that’s what we are going to do next.

Motives Matter Well, Jesus does talk about it in Matthew chapter 18 - asserting ourselves when another member of the church sins against us. And you listen to that and you say, “right, I go to that person and I talk to them on their own, if that doesn’t work, I take a couple of other witnesses with me, if that doesn’t work I take it to the church and if that doesn’t work, you little beauty, we boot them out!” Um, but let’s have a look at what else Jesus said, just around that same passage, in Matthew chapter 18 because it provides some context beforehand.

If you look at chapter 18 verses 1 to 5. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it and we’ll have a look together. It says this:

At this time, the disciples came to Jesus and said: “Look, who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?” and He called a little child and He put the child amongst them and said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you’ll never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven and whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me.”

And again just flick down there to verse 10 - He talks about the lost sheep “Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones for I tell you, in heaven, their angels continually see the face of my Father. What do you think if a shepherd has one hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, doesn’t he leave the ninety nine and go into the mountains and search for that one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than the ninety nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

Well, that kind of jars with our worldly view. You know, that sets the scene for this discussion on dealing with someone who sins against us. It seems to be in contrast, doesn’t it? On the one hand, Jesus is saying, "humble yourself, be like a little child and if one person goes astray, go after them and love them and bring them back into the Kingdom of God". And then He flows right on and talks about ... well, if someone sins against you, escalate the issue, deal with them first and then go on. But if someone sins against you, go and see them, take some friends, take it to the church and if that doesn’t work, boot them out.

Let me ask you - how easy is it for you and me to get hard advice about something we have done wrong? It’s not is it, particularly if it’s a stranger or if it’s someone whom we don’t trust or don’t respect. Will we take hard advice from someone like that?

Probably not, but someone whom we respect; whom we trust, someone whom we see be a wonderful leader, yet humble themselves - when they speak in our interests, they have a right; they have built a bridge of trust into our lives; a bridge of influence and that bridge of influence - that whole concept of developing relationships and having a bridge; having a right to speak into someone’s life - I think is underrated in our society and indeed, in our church. Who will be the greatest among us? Jesus said, “the one who is the servant of us all.”

When I was doing this consulting work as an independent consultant, I had two options. I could either give advice that was in the client’s interest or I could give advice that was in my interest; you know - string the job along, get more money. And fairly early on in the piece, I figured out, you know, I just give advice that’s always in the client’s interest, ultimately they figure that out. If I don’t give self-interested advice but I give advice that’s in their interest, they will keep inviting me back which is exactly what happened over a couple of decades.

In those first fourteen verses of Matthew chapter 18, I think Jesus is drawing a picture of someone with the right motives. Someone who can be trusted, isn’t He? Be like little children, humble yourselves, go after that one lost sheep, bring them back. Jesus is talking about having a right heart and that sets the scene for the discussion on what to do when someone sins against us.Look at chapter 18 verse 15 again, of Matthew’s Gospel:

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.

If he or she listens ... what? You get justice, you get rights, you get everything you deserve? No! If they listen you’ve regained that person for the Kingdom of God. If someone sins against you, go and see them on their own and try and bring them back. Try and reconcile; try and love, work in their interest, not in your interest. The Greek language that sits under that word ‘sins against you’ is strong. It means literally, if someone sins into you - into your life; when there’s anger and when there’s hurt - how do you react? Come out punching; punish them; get your rights? That’s not what Jesus is saying.

Jesus is saying; go there in humility and strength - go there with the guileless, candor of childhood, with a heart for that one lost sheep, with an attitude that says, "ee all make mistakes; my role is to serve you by loving you back into the Kingdom of God - by loving you Christ-ward.” With that attitude, draw them quietly aside at the right moment and tell them the truth, with an attitude and a motive to reconcile.

What happens when you or I make a mistake and someone goes and runs around and talks behind our back? Does that build trust; does that build relationship? It hurts doesn’t it? We all make mistakes and when someone else goes and puts them up on a neon sign and flashes them up in front of other people’s eyes, we hate that. Well so do other people.

Why is it sometimes, when someone hurts us - they make a mistake - we feel we have to race around and berate them to other people? Look at the sequence Jesus has - if another member of the church sins against you, what should you do? Pick up the phone; ring all your friends; tell them all about this horrible person? No! Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. That’s the first step; with a right motive and a right heart - go and do it; just pull them quietly aside at the right time.

You know, sometimes when you’re trying hard and you’re working your guts out in the church for other people, inadvertently someone hurts you. Their weaknesses rub up against you and then people pick that one fault and gossip behind your back. It doesn’t feel real wonderful. How positive is that in rectifying the situation? It violates our trust. First go there with the right heart and pull them quietly aside. But when should we do that? Exactly when should we do that? We’ll look at that question next.

When Can I Say It? Well, so when do we confront people? Obviously when they’ve wronged us. If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If that doesn’t work, bring a couple of friends, if that doesn’t work, raise it with the church, if that doesn’t work - done! If confronted with the issue, we’ll kick them out of church, you little beauty! Well, let’s read on. Verse 21:

Then Peter came to Him and said: “Well, Lord, how does this work? If another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive them, seven times? And Jesus said: “No, not seven times but I tell you, seventy seven times.” Isn’t it amazing, when someone hurts us, when they do it once, we can kind of get over it. They do it twice; we go - hang on a minute. They do it a third time and we think - that’s it, I’ve had enough.

See, Peter was thinking - well, seven times was a lot of times to forgive and Jesus went - no, no, let me explain to you, let me go right over the top - seventy seven times. Imagine forgiving someone seventy seven times for the same thing? That’s such a difficult call. I mean that would require so much prayer and careful judgement but you know something, I believe that Jesus is saying this - when should we confront someone? When we’ve forgiven them!

Because, you know what, if we confront someone before we forgive them, what we primarily want is justice, we want revenge; we want our right. But if we confront them after we’ve forgiven them, you know, we’re not interested in justice anymore because we’ve forgiven them. We can then focus on that person’s needs and that’s after all, the purpose of confronting them. If another member of the church sins against you, go point out the fault when the two of you are alone, if the member listens to you, you have regained that one.

If I confront them before I forgive them, I’m acting out of anger and pain. If I confront them after I’ve forgiven them, I’m acting out of love and that’s exactly what we are called to do.Flick over, if you have a Bible, to Ephesians chapter 4 verse 15. It says simply this:

Speak the truth in love.

And then look at chapter 4 of Ephesians verses 25 and 26:

Put away all falsehood. Let us speak the truth to our neighbours because we are members of one another. Sure, be angry but don’t sin, don’t let the sun go down on your anger and don’t make room for the devil. Thieves, give up stealing and stuff, let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is useful for building up as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

Ties together, doesn’t it? “Put away from you all the bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, be kind to one another - tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore, be imitators of God, beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us - a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Do you know when someone sins against us; when someone hurts us, and we just want to rip their heads off, Jesus is saying here, be humble like a child. Be interested in that person who has done wrong; who has strayed away from God. Forgive them first and then go to them, quietly. Just at the right time - pray about it, wait for my timing and try and bring them back into the Kingdom of God - point out their mistake and you know something, I believe that when we forgive someone, we are less likely to confront them. We watch and we listen and we love and we pray and we observe and we build bridges of trust and influence with our behaviour and then, if we feel the Holy Spirit saying: “Go and talk to this person,” then we can go and talk to them in love, in truth, having forgiven them.

Which of us, who as parents, would apply Jesus teaching, beginning at Matthew chapter 18 verse 15, legalistically to our own children? Ok, if a child does the wrong thing, I’ll go and talk to them on their own - go in their bedroom, sit them down and say, “you’ve done wrong,” If he does it again, well, mum and dad will both go and talk to them. And if he does it again, well, the third time, we’ll just kick him out of the house.”

Of course, we just wouldn’t do that. We cut our children an enormous amount of slack, just the way our parents cut us an enormous amount of slack. I deserved to be kicked out of home so many times and they just kept loving me because that’s what we’re called to do. We’re called to deal with the issue and forgive, to forgive, to forgive and to deal with them in their interests.

This is a very familiar pattern to us and yet when we grow up and we’re dealing with other people who hurt us, we just want to react; we want to get revenge; we want them to have to do the right thing, but Jesus is calling us to speak the truth in love. That’s the key! And Jesus’ grace said, “not seven times, no, seventy seven times.”

In other words, lots of times. Can I encourage you, where people are sinning against you and hurting you, that there is a time to assert yourself but that time comes when we have the right heart attitude and we can only have the right heart attitude when we forgive; when we are humble like little children. When our desire is for this person who has hurt us, to be brought back to God - that’s the time that we should assert ourselves; when we have forgiven them.

You know something, forgiving is not an easy thing to do. I have a lot of difficulty sometimes in forgiving because when people hurt, it hurts, you know, and there is something inside us, it’s the way we are wired, where we want justice, we want recompense, we want them to acknowledge their mistakes. But Jesus died for us while we were still sinners, He was proactive; He was pre-emptive in His forgiveness, and that’s what He’s calling us to be here. What world would we live in if we first forgave and then discussed?

If we first humbled ourselves and then quietly, without blabbing to everyone what this person has done wrong - just quietly pulled them aside and loved them and encouraged them and spoke the truth in love, in a way that they knew that we were acting in their interests not our own. Trying to bless them rather than get revenge.

You know, when I was a consultant in the IT industry, I had no position of authority. I couldn’t tell anybody to do anything in the organisations where I went to work. It appears to be a position of weakness, yet I would walk into board-rooms and CEO’s offices and give the hard advice and literally, speak the truth in love, in that advice and half the time I’d get a bad reaction. I remember one project I worked on for almost ten years.

It was in New Zealand with a government department and sometimes I had to go in and tell the CEO of this department some really tough things and when he retired I went to his retirement bash and people told stories about him and how he used to wave his finger at people and I said to him afterwards, “you used to wave your arms at me,” and he said, “you know, sometimes, Berni, you really annoyed me with your advice, but I knew - I knew - you were giving me the hard advice in my interest.”

What sort of a world would we live in, if you and I, when other people hurt us, at the end of the day, forgave them and just spoke the truth in love?

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No doubt you’ve heard the saying – you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives. So – what do you do, when the people you’re closest to turn out to be amongst the most difficult to deal with?

We’re All Different The first thing we notice when we look around at other people is that we are all different, aren‘t we? In a room of just ten people, even if two people are identical twins, we look around and we are all different. Even identical twins grow up emotionally quite different and they have different finger prints. So those differences are wonderful. That means you can do things that I can’t do and I can do things that you can’t do.

But sometimes those differences can really grate on us. You know, Jacqui, my wife, and I are really quite different. We can be lying in bed at night and I’ve got the ceiling fan on and she’s got her electric blanket on. And when we get close to people, those differences, well, you know, they can grate a little bit if we allow them to.

My strengths have a flip side to the coin, they have weaknesses underneath, and your strengths - the things that you are particularly good at, well, there’s a flip side to those. The under side of those can sometimes rub other people the wrong way. We all are a bundle (as I like to say) of strengths and weaknesses. Our own blubbering mass, if you like, of really good things we can do and the things where we aren’t so strong, where maybe we fall short. And in the daily grind, in the pressures and the conflict, those different personality types are hard to deal with.

The psychologists say there are kind of four personality types - the sanguine, the bubbly, fun loving type - the choleric, the organised, decision maker - the melancholic, the temperamental, creative - and the phlegmatic, the peace loving, kind of ‘hippy’ - and you and I, we’re all kind of a blend of one or two of those, I guess.

That’s ok, because people that are at a distance, that’s not so hard to deal with, but let’s look across our families at the moment - our immediate families and our extended families and what we know is, those differences in a family situation - in our homes, in the places we go to rest and relax and recuperate and be recharged - in those places, those differences can be painful and annoying. You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives.|

Even husband and wife, as they get to know each other - I mean, of course, we can pick our husbands and wives but once we get to know each others weaknesses, once the relationship develops and the marriage goes on for a few years, it’s easy to get to the point and say, “oh, why did I pick her, or why did I pick him?” Is anyone compatible really? We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We all know we’ve got mistakes, we all know we’ve got rough under-bellies that, you know, don’t quite measure up.

We are in the middle of a series called, ‘Dealing with Difficult People’ and today we are going to look at dealing with the difficult people in our families - the people who are closest to us.

The Bible says we should love people, the question is: How? How do we love people? It’s not enough to know that we should love difficult people in our families but it’s important to know how to love those difficult people, because how we love them will make a huge difference to our lives and in fact, the lives of all of those people who are close to us. And I guess I talk not only about our family, but people whom we work closely with. The ones that are really close to us are the ones - well, we can hurt them the most and they can hurt us the most. The more important that person is to us, the more they can hurt us because we open ourselves up; we expose ourselves.

So I like to start reading in First Peter, which is right towards the end of the New Testament - First Peter chapter 2 beginning at verse 18, right through to chapter 3.

You, who are servants, be good servants to your masters, not just to good masters, but bad ones too. What counts, is that you put up with it for God’s sake when you are treated badly for no good reason. You know, there’s no particular virtue in accepting punishment that you well deserve but if you are treated badly for good behaviour and continue in spite of it to be a good servant, that’s what counts with God. This is the kind of life you’ve been invited to. The kind of life Jesus lived.

He suffered everything that came His way so that you would know that it could be done and also how to do it, step by step. He never did one thing wrong, not one thing did He say that was amiss. They called Him every name in the book and He said nothing back. He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right. He used His servant body to carry our sins to the cross so that we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way. His wounds became your healing. You were lost sheep - you had no idea who you were or where you were, now you are named and kept for good by the Shepherd of your souls.

The same goes for you wives, be wives to your husbands - good wives - responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to the words of God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty; by your inner beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance - not the styling of your hair or the jewellery you wear or the cut of your clothes but your inner beauty.

Cultivate that inner beauty, that gentle gracious kind that delights God. The holy women of old were beautiful before God because they were good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for instance, taking care of Abraham, would address him as my dear husband. You’ll be true daughters of Sarah if you do the same - un-anxious and unintimidated.

The same goes for you husbands. Be good husbands to your wives. Honour them, delight in them. As women, they might lack some of your advantages, but in the new life of God’s grace, you’re equals. Treat your wives then as equals so that your prayers don’t run aground.

Isn’t that a fabulous passage that talks about the suffering of a slave, the suffering of Jesus and how we can read that into our own family lives? In the same way, Jesus suffered for us; we should sacrifice for the people around us. He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right. Our natural tendency is to tell people exactly what’s wrong with them. You know, we spit anger out of our mouths. Jesus suffered silently. Does it help when we spit anger out of our mouths? Well, all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. I might have a right to say what I say, but I could be just making things worse.

Jesus suffered - by His wounds we have been healed. What a perverse plan from God? Suffering brings salvation! “Now”, writes Peter, “Now wives in the same way, using that same example of Jesus, be a good wife to your unbelieving husband.” Does nagging help? Does telling him he’s lousy help? Does being a one-woman home improvement committee help? Let’s come and have a look at that next.

Practical Sacrifice Well, let me ask you wives, does it help when you nag your husbands? Or is it better to trust God - is it better to suffer quietly? Because God will do stuff and your husband will eventually notice because your husband delights in your inner beauty. Look at the words of Peter again in chapter 3 beginning at verse 1:

The same goes for you wives. Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who mightn’t believe in God but they will be captivated by your life of holy beauty; your inner disposition. Cultivate that inner beauty, that gentle gracious kind in which God delights.

I’ll tell you, I’m a husband and I can really relate to that. I’ve a wonderful wife, in Jacqui, and it’s that inner beauty that really brings joy to my life. We need to get a revelation, wives, please get a revelation! You cannot change your husband. You or I cannot change any person. The only person who can change them is God and in fact, the closer we are to someone the harder it is to say things that will get them to change because we can say it to them over and over and over again, because we’re close, it becomes nagging and people shut off, especially, let me say, men shut off from that.

Let me ask you, how big is your God, wives? Will you be content to let Him set things right in your marriage, if there are things not quite right? And in the meantime cultivate an inner beauty - the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in God’s sight. This is about doing something or letting God do something inside of you when life is maybe not that easy - when the relationship between husband and wife is maybe not that good. Same as Jesus; back in the verses just before, towards the end of First Peter chapter 2 - He was the Son of God yet He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right. Are we content to let God set things right?

I know a couple, neither of them believes in Jesus. They have a boat and a pool and a four wheel drive and an expensive car and there’s gambling and alcohol involved and they are miserable - let me say this very specifically - they are miserable as all hell. It’s not those external things that bring joy, it’s the things that happen on the inside. Other people or things are not what bring us joy, it’s the inner peace and the relationship with God and a wonderful time to cultivate that is right in the middle of when things are just a little bit difficult.

It’s a big shift in thinking because when things aren’t going well, when things are unfair, when we want to blame people, it’s hard, we want to grumble, we want to get what’s due to us. But, the passage that we read a little bit before in the program, look how it starts. Firstly it starts with a slave, actually, and slavery is a tough thing and Peter writes:

Be good slaves to your masters, not just when your masters are good but to the bad ones. There’s no virtue to accepting punishment that you deserve but if you are treated badly for good behaviour and continue in spite of it to be a good servant, that is what counts with God.

Boy, that turns everything on its ear, doesn’t it? Turns everything upside down and he says: “Look it’s not only true of servants, it’s true of Jesus.” This is what Jesus did! Was it fair that He got nailed to a cross for you and me? Of course it wasn’t but He suffered silently and sacrificed anyway. He said:

For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one, no one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own will. I have the power to lay it down; I have the power to take it up. I have received this command from my Father.

Jesus did it willingly and sometimes when life’s not fair, when the people closest to us are hurting us, when it’s a just a little bit ugly and we want to scream and buck, God’s calling us to just draw close to Him, just to say, “Father, it’s not fair at the moment, but I can’t change it. What I can change is, I can draw close to you,” and let Him cultivate that inner beauty which is so precious to Him.

But look at the next bit, “and the same goes for you husbands.” So he’s pointing back to the slaves, he’s pointing back to Jesus, he pointing back to the wife. He says, “the same goes for you blokes. Be good husbands to your wives, honour them, delight in them.” Boy, how many wives would just die if their husbands would delight in them?

Would just look at them and say, “you know, you are the most beautiful woman in the world,” and behave as though they delight in their wives instead of just watching television at night when they come home. I know wives who would give their right hands for that sort of attention from their husbands.

And Peter goes on to say, “look,” in fact, literally, he says, “ok, you may be weaker vessels, women, than the men,” and some feminist might say, “well, there you go, you know, the Bible’s being sexist again,” but I don’t see it that way and we’ll talk about it a little bit later. I see my wife as a precious, delicate vessel and men and women are different.

Men tend to be more emotionally kind of rough and robust and everything and women are delicate and wonderful and warm and kind and gentle in a way that sometimes we men aren’t. And so he says, “look, you know, you blokes do the same; honour your wives, delight in them.”

Let’s look at some practical examples. How can we do that? A wife who has PMT - you know, her hormones are playing up, every month, regular as clockwork - husbands, that’s not easy is it? I mean, you get to that time and your think, “oh, no, she’s scratchy again, she’s all over the place, she’s …” Husbands, listen to me. Jesus suffered silently, it wasn’t fair and it may not be fair that sometimes your wife has this happen to her, but it’s not fair to her either.

The same goes for you husbands, be like Jesus. Be good husbands; love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Be close to Jesus. Bear her weaknesses; feel her pain in your flesh and you know something, what happens to us? We develop that gentle and quiet spirit too; we develop that quiet assurance and confidence.

And what about a wife who is going through menopause? I mean, this is an emotional roller-coaster ride that goes on for months or years even. Where she’s just not stable sometimes, it’s very hard. Husbands be content to trust in God to set things right. Will we be there - will we be there and honour them and delight in them - just the same as if they were feeling wonderful?

Come on! This is real life, this is what happens and we want to withdraw; we want to pull back; we want to criticise; we want to say, “come on, you need to behave better.” Husbands love your wives as Jesus loved you and died for you. We are going to look as a couple of other examples from the other side of the fence.

God is in Control Well, we are looking at practical examples of how we can deal with difficult people in our family environment. Well, wives sometimes your husbands might be reclusive and quiet and they don’t talk and you want to hear what happened today. You know, you want to say, “darling, what happened? Tell me everything that happened in your day,” and he doesn‘t want to do that. He wants to come home and spend half an hour watching the News and it feels like he doesn’t love you and it hurts - right?

How do you handle that? Do you nag him, do you give him that cynical look on your face, do you roll your eyes from the back of your head, do you close off, do you feel threatened? I mean, you are entitled, you should be, you’re justified. Sure it’s lawful, but it’s not helpful.

What do you do with what Peter’s writing about here? Do you say, “I’m going to draw close to God, really close and I am going to entrust my husband into God’s hand in prayer and be content to get my joy from Jesus and serve and honour my husband and encourage him.” You know something; nothing will open your husband up like encouragement and unconditional acceptance.

When he’s had his little time of rest and whatever, if instead of nagging and badgering him, you just quietly encourage him, this man’s going to open up. Psychologists will tell you that. Your beauty is a gentle and quiet spirit, firm and solid support. That is what’s going to impact your husband. There are husbands who don’t believe in God but they will be captivated by your life of holy beauty.

Husbands you realise you haven’t treated her as well as you might have; you haven’t treated her as an equal. Yeah, sure you’re the head of the house, but no, you haven’t been cherishing her. As I said before in the program, I think of my wife as just a beautiful, wonderful vessel, as Peter calls them here. You know, he talks about the male being the stronger vessel and the woman being the weaker vessel but in a sense of being more delicate, being more fragile, being more beautiful and I read that and I think, “yeah, a beautiful, beautiful vase on the mantle-piece, compared to some old bucket, which I am.”

Nothing opens her up more to her husband like letting her know, in everything that he does and everything that he says, that he cherishes her, that he values her, that he adores her, that he see her like that beautiful vase on the mantle-piece. That’s why the old wedding vow says, “love, honour and cherish’ from the husband’s side. She needs her husband to cherish her. Be good husbands to your wives - honour them and delight it them - cherish them.

And what about the child, maybe, that’s driving you nuts. A slow surly teenager, not delivering, good for nothing, lazy, disrespectful, sleeping in on the weekends, not keeping their room clean – I’m sure a few people know a few teenagers like that. I’m not having a go at teenagers by any stretch of the imagination, I was a teenager once and I remember what I was like. It’s a part of growing up and we sometimes look on the outside of teenagers - you know we look on them and we go, “You’re not delivering and you’re not behaving and life gets very adversarial and tense and parents and teenagers don’t talk. What do we do, how do we deal with that?

There’s a beautiful story in the Book of First Samuel, in the Old Testament, chapter 16, where the prophet Samuel comes looking to appoint a new king of Israel and he comes to the man Jesse, who has quite a few sons and Jesse brings all the sons and parades them in front of the prophet and the prophet looks at each one and some of them are tall and good looking and strong and Samuel says, “you know, I’ve looked at all your sons and I don’t see this king in the sons you’ve paraded. Have you got any more?” and dad, Jesse, says, “well, yeah, I do, umm. There’s the runt; there’s the little one but he’s out tending the sheep.”

God doesn’t look on the outside, God looks on the inside. God is not impressed with looks and stature and God says of the oldest son, “I’ve already eliminated him.” God judges people differently from the way we people do. Men and women look at the face, God looks into the heart and sometimes, with our teenagers, we look at their behaviour instead of looking into their hearts. So they go and get this young runt, this kid who’s out tending the sheep and that’s the one where God says, through His prophet Samuel, “this is King David; this is the one that will be King.” And Samuel anoints him as King.

Come on! God does things differently to the way we do them. God looks at the heart; God looks at the potential. Dad had preconceptions; he pre-judged his teenage kid. “Nah, he’ll never do, he’s just the little one!” How easy is it for you and for me, if we have kids, to pre-judge them? To look on what they deliver; to judge them by adult standards rather than kid’s standards or teenage standards. Come on - teenagers are teenagers. It’s a process of leaving childhood behind and taking on responsibility. It’s hard! Growing up physically, growing up emotionally, trying to become an adult, trying to sort all that out. Being a teenager is tough sometimes.

Why don’t we look at their hearts, why don’t we look at their potential? Why don’t we encourage them? Just five examples - a wife with PMT, a wife with menopause, a reclusive husband who shuts down his emotions, a husband who realises he hasn’t been treating his wife properly, a difficult teenager. I bet you can think of lots more examples, but the pattern is the same. When we are suffering at the hands of a difficult person who is close to us, we want to be the victim.

We want to tell them what’s wrong; we want them to behave the way we want them to behave. We want to insist on our rights. Come on, it’s not fair! But that’s not what Peter says; and that’s not what Jesus says. It’s not what Jesus did. Jesus went to that cross for you and me. What a fabulous model; what an amazing model; what a challenging model?

The Son of God went to the cross for you and me, they spat on Him, they beat Him, they reviled Him, they crucified Him. It was completely unfair, yet He bore my sin, my failures; He bore your sin, your failures in His flesh on the cross - the Son of God, that’s the model. That’s how we deal with difficult people, in love. And you know something, it hurts sometimes. It hurts a lot sometimes.

It’s not fair sometimes, but as we do that; as we draw close to Jesus, as we honour Him and honour those who are close to us, He’ll change us and as we commit these difficult people into God’s hands, He’ll change them too. He’s a good God. He’s a faithful God. He’s a God who wants blessing in your life and my life. Isn’t that awesome?

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We all have some difficult people in our lives. You do. I do. So how do you deal with them – especially when you’re under fire from the enemy?

It’s Easy to Fight Wars I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but dealing with people, sometimes difficult people, is a big part of life, at home, at work, socially. And conflict can take its toll. Sometimes we feel as though we’re under pressure - as though we’re under fire, maybe through circumstances, maybe through what other people are doing - and right in the middle of that difficult space, we still have to deal with those difficult people, under fire. And in one of those perverse twists of life, in a sense there’s meaning in conflict; in a sense there’s meaning and dignity when we sacrifice in the midst of a conflict.

Most nations, my own, Australia and in fact, New Zealand, celebrate the sacrifice of their soldiers during war. In Australia it’s called ANZAC Day - the Australia New Zealand Army Corp and increasingly, that celebration is growing.

About twenty or thirty years ago people said, “oh it’s all war mongering and it’s all about this and that and it’s going to die and we can’t possibly continue celebrating war. And it’s funny, but we celebrate a day, in ANZAC Day, which is a day of great defeat. It remembers - maybe celebrates is the wrong word - it remembers that eighteen and a half thousand Australian soldiers were wounded or missing and seven and a half thousand were killed. Five thousand New Zealanders wounded and missing, two and a half thousand killed in this Gallipoli campaign in World War One which was such an enormous disaster.

And social commentators are saying, “look, the reason that these celebrations, right around the world, the reason that these sorts of days are being remembered, right around the world, where we are looking at our soldiers who were lost in battle, is that - well it’s not about war any more, it used to be about the glorification of war - but today it’s about sacrifice and hope. It’s all about the triumph of the spirit not about the victory in the battle.

These sorts of days, where we remember fallen soldiers, say with a voice that grows louder each year that we expect to find something good to happen, that we are still capable of becoming the kind of society that would justify the sacrifice of those who thought we were worth fighting for. In other words, people today are looking back on the sacrifice of the soldiers of their countries and saying, “You know, there’s meaning in that sacrifice, you know there’s humility, there’s giving, there’s something spiritual when these men under fire, were prepared to sacrifice their lives for me.”

There’s a large shopping centre near where I live, quite a new one - very ritzy, glitzy, you know - enormous, expensive clothes. And you see people milling around in that shopping centre, day after day, week after week, and that whole shopping centre - mall, shopping thing - is like an icon of our time. Yet as ritzy and glitzy as it is, it doesn’t have meaning and people are looking for meaning and it seems that in celebrations, like ANZAC Day, they’re finding that spiritual flame - that cenotaph, that bugle, that cool morning air, that shrine, that spiritual experience - people are finding meaning in sacrifice.

Now you might ask, “why don’t they find that in Jesus? Why don’t they find that in church?" And you look at the public media image of the church, with this denomination fighting that denomination and the systematic cover-up of child abuse and Christians who don’t look any different, actually, from the rest of the world. The salt, at least in its public image, has lost its flavour. The light has stopped shinning when people look at what Christianity is through the media. And let’s face it, we construct much of our reality about life through what we see in the media - it may not be fair, but that’s the perception. So I can’t imagine why they’re not knocking down the doors of our churches searching for the truth, can you?

A man whom I admire enormously, Michael Frost, once said to me - he said, “Holy living is mission.” In other words, the way that we live our lives as Christ followers, needs to be missional. We need to be salt and light, loving one another and as the shoppers are swilling around these shopping centers, what are they looking for? They’re looking for spiritual authenticity. They’re looking for sacrifice and love and community and acceptance, as they find on ANZAC Day. But you just don’t find that in shopping centers and as much as the ANZAC Day style of celebration around the world is a spiritual experience, it can never replace Jesus.

Why are we talking about conflict and battle? - because life is sometimes conflict and battle and when people look at the church, when people look at you and me as Christ followers, and they say, “Is this person for real? Is this faith authentic? Is there an authentic, spiritual experience to be had in this Christianity thing?" What they’re looking for is what Jesus talked about in loving our enemy. I often talk about Tony Campolo, wonderful man who loves to ask university students, “Can you remember just one thing that Jesus said?” and they almost always say to him, “well, I remember that Jesus said, “love your enemy.”

That’s the sort of love that happens under fire. That’s the sort of love when we are dealing with difficult people and all these other people who know that we might be Christ followers, look at us and they think, "well, ok, if this person going to be authentic, if this Christianity thing is authentic, I want to know how they behave under fire."

God’s Word says that we should be transformed, challenged. “I appeal to you,” writes Paul in Roman chapter 12 verses 1 and 2:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your Spiritual worship. Don’t be conformed to this world - don’t be like the rest of the world - but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may know what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Don’t be like the world, be a living sacrifice. When you and I are under fire, that’s the time when we live out the living sacrifice thing and living out a sacrifice is not easy. It’s a tough gig. How do we do that? Exactly how do you and I become living sacrifices? We are going to take a look at that question next.

Make Love not War Well, how do we become living sacrifices? If authenticity of our faith is measured by Jesus’ words - love your enemy, be salt, be light, be my love in this world - if that’s what is the mark of authenticity, how can we be that, ‘cause it’s not easy - it’s not easy being a living sacrifice?

If you have a Bible, open it - right towards the end of the New Testament, to the first letter of Peter, First Peter chapter 3, we are going to look at verses 8 to 13. This is what Peter writes - he says:

Finally, all of you have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart and a humble mind. Don’t repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse but on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called, that you might inherit a blessing for those who desire life and desire to see good days, let them keep their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking their seed.

Let them turn away from evil and do good. Let them seek peace and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are open to their prayer but the face of the Lord is turned against those who do evil. Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?

The catch-cry of the nineteen sixties, when I was growing up was 'make love not war’ and of course the cold war has been replaced by a different war. I mean there are a lot of wars going on, on the planet - between forty and fifty - but the one that is foremost in our mind is the war against terrorism. And we see the terrorists on one hand, of all different persuasions, trying to fight against and harm other people and it’s kind of an amazing logic.

It works like this - terrorists blow up a bus or they blow up a this or they blow up a that, and then the forces of good, supposedly, go and bomb this village or go and bomb that village, or go and blow up this and so the terrorists blow something else up and so the good guys blow something else up and on and on this goes.

I just can’t see the logic - violence begets violence. Jesus says, “murder begins in the heart,” and hate carries the same punishment from God as murder. We can’t decry terrorism and at the same time continue to hate others in our hearts. Look what Peter writes in verse 8 of chapter 3 again:

Finally all of you have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart and humble mind.

Unity, sympathy and love are about unconditional acceptance of people. A tender heart and a humble mind is about being low; it’s about saying, “You know something, I’m not as important as the other person. What’s really important is that I love them, that I care for them, that I ‘do’ for them.” That’s the key to freedom, this message of Jesus that turned a whole world upside down.

I mean you and I have enemies in our lives. We have terrorists in our lives, we have people who upset our lives and I can dig my trench and my enemies can dig their trench and I’ll throw a grenade and they’ll throw a grenade then I’ll throw a bigger grenade and they’ll throw a bigger grenade … This whole cycle of violence - now we mightn’t be shooting each other but emotional violence - you know what I mean, conflict, anger, aggression - just doesn’t fit with what Peter’s talking about here - sympathy, love, a tender heart and humility.

Are you a Christ follower - are you a Jesus follower? Then in these conflicts; in these battles with difficult people in our lives, we need to be the leaders and to be the leader we are the servant. How will peace break out in this war against terror? Exactly how will that do? Well, one side will stop bombing and shooting.

One side will lay their guns and their munitions and their explosives down and refuse to take them up again. And when the other side keeps shooting and killing, they’ll still refuse to pick up their guns. What would happen? Probably world opinion would turn against the aggressor and ultimately the shooting and the killing would stop. Look at what Peter writes in verse 9:

Do not repay evil with evil, but on the contrary, repay with a blessing.

Who are the difficult people in your life? Who are the ones that are making your life a misery? Who are the ones who are putting you under fire; you under pressure? Don’t repay their evil with your evil. Ooh! Gets personal now doesn’t?

Don’t repay their evil with your evil but on the contrary, repay them with a blessing.” That’s how you get peace.

Verse 11:

Let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it.

Is there anybody today who doesn’t desire peace with the people in their lives? Why don’t you lay down your arms; why don’t you bless them? Why don’t you speak well of them?

Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3, it says:

God has blessed us in Christ with every Spiritual blessing.

The Greek word is ‘eulogia’ from which we get ‘eulogy', which means ‘to speak well of’. God has spoken well of us in Christ with every Spiritual blessing in heavenly places. So when God speaks, He says:

Let there be light", there’s light.

God has spoken every blessing over your life and my life if we are in Christ. What if we started to do the same? What if we spoke well of our enemy? What if we sought to understand their hurts and cover their backs and compensate for their weaknesses and leave their behaviour to God in prayer? Come on, what if?

Some people won’t like it - some people just won’t like it, if they’re enemies, they won’t like it. But look what Peter writes in chapter 4 verse 8:

Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining and like good stewards of the grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.

Well, when we decide to lay down our arms and stop fighting, some people won’t like it but on the other hand, peace will probably break out and God is on our side. Now, who will harm you if you are eager to do what’s good? But, even if peace doesn’t break out, look at verse 14 of chapter 3:

Even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed.

Well, what happens if peace doesn’t break out?

A Radical Prayer for Peace Well, we are looking at what to do when we are in conflict - dealing with difficult people. And here in the third chapter of the first letter of Peter: First Peter chapter 3 - what we’ve seen is that we are called to stop repaying evil for evil and abuse for abuse but on the contrary repay it with a blessing.

And then Peter goes on to say, in verse 13 of chapter 3:

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what’s good, but even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear and do not be intimidated but in your hearts, sanctify Christ as Lord; for it is better ...

Verse 17:

For it is better to suffer for doing good if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.

What if the other side - the other person that we are in conflict with - this person who is putting us under pressure and putting us under fire, what if that person won’t stop? What if we decide to stop and lay down our arms and say, “I’m not going … I’m not going to do this any more. I’m just going to bless you; I’m just going to be good to you; I’m just going to be nice to you; I’m going to speak well of you." And the other side keeps shooting? Well, we shouldn’t be surprised because sometimes people do that, but even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. It’s a promise from God. Don’t be afraid of what they are afraid of and don’t be intimidated. In other words, we don’t have to be afraid any more because we have Christ. When I lay down my right to fight back against you, if you and I have been fighting, when I lay that down, I say: “I’m not going to do that any more.” I may still suffer for a time, but God says: “You are blessed, because you are doing what I have ask you to do, and you don’t have to be afraid of what they’re afraid of because you have Jesus.”

And when it hurts, run to Jesus, get close, get intimate with God but don’t be surprised because sometimes we do suffer for good and it’s not fair. I mean, I think verse 17 of chapter 3 is kind of counter intuitive. Look at it:

For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.

Now, we have it the other way around. We say, “well, you know, if I’ve done something wrong I kind of expect to suffer but if I’m doing the right thing, I shouldn’t be suffering.” You know, we’re out rebuking the devil, well, sometimes we do. And God says, “it’s better that you suffer for doing right.” Even though it’s unfair; even though it shouldn’t happen, it’s much better that we suffer for doing right than doing something wrong.

This is radical stuff! This is turning our human understanding completely on its ear. Why? Because it’s a missional outcome; because holy living is mission. Because being Christ, sharing in His suffering, shows an authenticity; a Spiritual authenticity that actually people are looking for. That’s why they flock to War Memorials once a year - they’re looking for some authenticity in suffering and when they see us not fighting back, then all of a sudden they say, “you know, that joker’s different to me. That person has got something that I want.”

This whole letter from Peter is about hope amidst persecution and to live that hope, to experience that peace, he’s saying, “you do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse, but on the contrary, repay with a blessing.” Lay down your arms. Are you fighting a battle with someone? Are you under pressure; are you under fire from the enemy? And your blood boils and you just want to kill this person.

Lay down your arms! Let them shoot - let them shoot as much as they like: let them criticize as much as they like; let them stab you in the back and go behind your back as much as they like. Lay down your arms. Bless them; speak well of them; bless them with your abilities and your talents and your gift - with whatever you have - look as good stewards of the grace of God. Chapter 4 verse 10:

Serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.

This isn’t just about stopping the battle; it’s about repaying evil with good. It’s being proactive. It’s not walking away, it’s not de-taunt, its saying, “you know, the only thing that’s going to change the darkness, is if I shine God’s light into this place.” That’s why it’s so radical. Jesus going to the cross was radical. God nailed to a piece of wood!

It looked like God was losing - it was the greatest of victory in all history because Jesus bought your life and my life for all eternity. And when you and I take up our cross; when you and I become a living sacrifice; when you and I say, “you know something, if I’m going to be a real Christ follower, I’ve got to look like Jesus; I’ve got to be like Jesus and some days that means I have to suffer like Jesus.”

All of a sudden people see something different in us and when it hurts; when it’s unfair; when we just can’t take it any more, then we go to Him and we pray for our enemy. We pray: “Father, this person … this person who’s hurting me, this person who’s going behind my back, this person who’s putting me under fire, Father I pray that you would bless them. I pray your grace upon them. I pray your prosperity upon them. I pray your love and your mercy over their lives.” Is that radical? It’s just as radical as Jesus hanging on the cross, looking down at the people who nailed Him there - who were dividing up His clothes - saying, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

This is where our faith hits the road and the chances are peace will probably break out but even if it doesn’t, God will bless us and that’s worth so much more than anything else. Flick over to First Peter chapter 4 verse 19. Peter writes this - he says:

Therefore let those who are suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful creator while still continuing to do good.

And chapter 5 verse 6:

Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God so that He may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety and cares on Him because He cares for you.

We are allowed to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. If we are doing His will, if we are living out like Jesus, we can go to God and say, “Lord, this hurts, this is hard, I’m not doing it easy, I’m doing it tough, but I’m doing it for you and I will love this person and I will pray your blessing on this person and I will bless them with everything that I am and everything that I have.”

And with these Scriptures ringing in our hearts, we can close our eyes and picture our greatest enemy and say, “Father God, in the name of Jesus Christ, I pray that you would bless this person. I pray Lord, that you would not just bless them a little bit, I pray that you would bless this person so abundantly that they can’t imagine how wonderful you are.”

That’s what Jesus calls us to. That’s what it means to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That’s what it means not to be conformed to the ways of this world - that’s what it means to become a living sacrifice. Come on! This is where our faith hits the road - when we are under fire; when we are dealing with difficult people; when it’s not fair; when it hurts; when it’s tough - then the world looks at us and says, “does this person look like Jesus?” Or is this person just like me - just like one of us?

I really encourage you to take God’s Word, take First Peter; it’s only a few pages long - read it from beginning to end. It’ll take twenty minutes - and see what God says about suffering when it’s just not fair. That’s what Christ did for me, that’s what Christ did for you and if we are to be Christ to a lost world and a fallen world, that is what God calls us to when we are under fire from the enemy.

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So I wonder – who’s the most difficult person in your life right now? Chances are you can picture their face. Well I’d like to spend some time with you chatting about the number one most difficult person in your life.

When People Look at Us Let me ask you a question: when the world looks at the church, what does it see? When people look at the church of Jesus Christ, what is it they see in the media image? Sexual abuse on the news, division amongst denominations, people who mean well demonstrating against this, that and the other! It sees a bunch of people who say one thing and do another. On the one thing we profess God‘s love, on the other, well, the church seems to be saying, in it’s media image, “do this, don’t do that, but by the way, don’t mind the fact that we have systematically covered up sexual abuse of children for decades."

There’s a name for that and it’s called ‘hypocrisy’ and the world hates hypocrisy. You and I hate hypocrisy. What do people expect to see when they look at God’s people? What do people expect to see? Tony Campolo is a wonderful man out of the U.S., you may have heard of him. He just a wonderful minister of God’s Word and he often asks young people, when he meets them in universities: “What’s the one thing that you know that Jesus said?” and mostly people say this - mostly people remember that Jesus said: “Love your enemy!” And too often it seems that we as God’s people; as Christians, are kind of telling people how far they have strayed from God. You know, we talk about this social issue, or that social issue, instead of reaching out to people and telling them how close God really is in Jesus Christ.

Well that’s the big picture; that’s the macro. What about the micro? What about you and me? When they look at us, what do they see? Do they see, ‘love your enemy’? First John chapter 4 verse 7 says this:

Let us love one another for love comes from God ...

And when you look at Jesus, when you look at how He dealt with people and what He taught and what He spoke about, the biggest thing for Him was that love-walk; the biggest thing for Him was valuing people and loving them into the Kingdom of God. We got a new revelation of who God is when Jesus arrived and then when you look at the rest of the New Testament, the Epistles that come after the Gospels, the letters that were written amongst the New Testament church when Jesus had risen again, more and more you see that revelation expounded as ‘walk in love’. Love God and love other people.

John Grey, the author of that famous book, 'Men Are From Mars and Women are From Venus', makes a very interesting point in that book. He says that very few people ever grow in love. Why is that? Because loving is difficult. The people we love can be difficult sometimes. Forty five percent of marriages - almost half - fail. I wonder of those that are left, how many of them are lousy marriages? We want to love; it’s not enough to want to love, we actually need to know how to love, I really believe that. Let me just say that again. It’s not enough for us to know that we ought to walk in love; we actually need to know how to do that. And so on Christianityworks this week we are starting a series of four messages called Dealing With Difficult People. Because difficult people are all around us, difficult relationships are all around us and our ability to look like Jesus and be like Jesus and love like Jesus, depends on our ability to deal with the difficult people in our lives - those that Jesus referred to as our enemies.

Let me ask you, who’s the most difficult person you’ll ever meet? Just close your eyes for a minute and visualise the most difficult person you ever met. I’m sure you can see their face and it stirs up emotions in you. Now open your eyes. If I had a mirror I’d be standing in front of you holding up the mirror and saying, “Here, look at the most difficult person that you will ever meet.”

Take a good look, because we look at ourselves for five, maybe ten minutes in the mirror in the morning and then we spend the rest of the day looking at other people. Day after day after day, we look at other people and sometimes the better we know them, the better we know their faults and weaknesses and their blind spots and we experience the things that they do to hurt us, or the things that they don’t do to hurt us and we go from recognising their strengths and weaknesses to judging those.

Now, it’s right to look at someone and say, "this person is good at this and not good at that" and to assess them. But we can step over a line, where that good assessment of someone turns into judgement and that line is called, ‘anger and resentment’. When all of a sudden, what other people do to us or say to us or omit to do to us - when those things get us angry and resentful and vengeful - we have stepped over a very important line and all the time we forget that in order for us to have a difficult person in our lives we have to have a relationship with them. It’s not so much that they are difficult people; it’s that we are having a difficult relationship. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.

And sometime as we get to know these people better and their weaknesses hurt us and their failures grate up against our personalities, we can start to judge them. Instead of looking at them through God’s eyes, we end up looking at them through the devil’s eyes. Jesus said: “You’ve heard it said, 'Don’t murder' and anyone who murders will be subject to judgement, but I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother, is subject to judgement.” Well, what is that judgement? What does that look like? Why do we go there?

The Anatomy of Judgement So what is it, what happens when we run into a difficult person and we step over that line, we step over the line from a sober assessment of who they are into that realm of judgement and resentment? Well, Jesus talked about that because it was an important issue - was two thousand years ago, it still is today. This is what He said, if you have a Bible, grab it, you can open it at Matthew’s Gospel; first Book in the New Testament, chapter 6 verse 22, Matthew 6:22, this is what he said. He said:

The eye is the lamp of the body so if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. And when the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?

The eye, when you think about it, is our major organ of perception. We see the world through our eyes and Jesus was using it here as a metaphor. It’s true in the physical sense but it’s also true in an emotional and spiritual sense. How we see things, often becomes the problem when we are having a relationship that is difficult. Now if the eye is healthy then we’ll see light; we’ll see things the way that they are but Jesus says:

If the eye is unhealthy then you will be full of darkness and how dark is that darkness?

When we get a wrong perspective, it kind of creeps up on you. I suffer from Glaucoma which is a disease of the eye where the pressure in your eye ultimately damages the optic nerve that carries the images back to your brain, and it happens very gradually. You lose your peripheral vision and all of a sudden you can barely see and by then it’s too late. Now fortunately, for me, they caught it early and I’ve got treatment and I can see just fine. But when our eye is diseased; when our perception is diseased, we often don’t notice that it’s going on.

Have a listen to this wonderful story, it was written by Frank Koche, in the magazine 'Proceedings' which is the magazine of the U.S. Naval Institute. This is what he writes. He says:

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been sent on manoeuvres in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and I was on watch on the bridge when night fell. The visibility was poor, with patchy fog so the Captain remained on the bridge to keep an eye on all activities.

Shortly after dark, the look-out on the wing of the bridge reported: “Light bearing on the starboard bow.” “Is it steady or moving astern?” the Captain called out.

The look-out replied: “Steady, Captain,” which meant that we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship. The Captain then called to the signalman. He said: “Signal that ship. We are on a collision course, advise that you change course twenty degrees.”

Back came a signal: “Advise for you to change course twenty degrees.” And the Captain said: “Send - “I am a Captain, change course twenty degrees.” “I’m a seaman second class” came back the reply, “You’d better change course twenty degrees.” By that time the Captain was furious and he spat out: “Send - I’m a battleship, change course twenty degrees.” Back came the flashing light: “I’m a lighthouse.” We changed course twenty degrees.”

The Captain was caught in a fog. Now there were two battleships out there on exercise and he thought that that other light was a battleship but he had fog; he couldn’t see properly. He was trying to keep an eye on things but he’s vision was clouded. The picture in his head was of two ships and he relied on the picture in his head and the picture was wrong, yet he got angry even though it was because he had the wrong picture in his head and that is exactly what we do.

We have a map in our head of other people and why they do what they do and how they do it and what they’re doing to us. We have this map in our head of other people and sometimes it gets distorted. Sometimes we don’t have the right end of the stick. Sometimes our vision is clouded and we just get it plain wrong.

Maybe if we’re insecure, we want other people to walk on egg-shells because of our insecurity. Maybe if we are arrogant we want other people to be perfect, made in our image. You know, perfection is always: they’re exactly like me. Maybe if we’ve got selfish ambition we want people to get out of our road so that we can go and do what we want to do. The list goes on.

Not so long ago, I visited a city; a large city that I used to live in, and I had an old street directory and I was trying to travel from point A to point B in the centre of the city in my car. And I got to a point and I discovered all of a sudden, they had put a pedestrian mall in the middle of one of the main streets, I had the wrong map. And when we do that in our relationships with other people, it can be a painful thing.

Our past hurts or our own weaknesses or our own sin, all of those things - the devil uses those to destroy our relationships. We see things through the lens of our experiences. I wear glasses, maybe you wear glasses, maybe you don’t, but we see things through the lens of who we are, our strengths and weaknesses, of our experiences, of our past, of our insecurities. If we looked at some of the people in our lives who are so difficult, the ones who hurt us and disappoints us, the ones who we’ve made our enemies - if we knew the hurts and disappointments in their lives, that make them do what they do, it would be enough to stop us from any feelings of hostility or anger or anything like that.

‘The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness and if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.’

In other words if you think you are seeing light and clearly, but actually it is distorted, boy, that is a really, really bad place to be. Come on, isn’t it sometimes the problems in our relationships are not so much what other people are doing but how we see the world? What are the things in my life; what are the things in your life that distort our view of exactly what’s going on? How is it that we can see clearly?

Don’t Judge We are talking about judgement. We are talking about dealing with difficult people and how it is sometimes that we get all hurt by what other people do. When so often it’s got to do with our own failures and our own weaknesses and the way we see the world based on who we are. Again Jesus talked about this, open a Bible, if you’ve got one, at Matthew chapter 7 verse 1, this is what He said. He said:

Do not judge so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement that you make, you will be judged and the measure you give will be the measure that you get.” Now under what circumstances, according to Jesus, is it ok to judge other people? Never! “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.

Wow! Because judgement is about anger and retribution, when I judge you, I want my pound of flesh; I want to tear you apart. Yea, that’s what we are like as people and Jesus is saying: “It’s not your job. Don’t judge other people.” Boy that’s hard! Have a look at Romans chapter 12 verse 19, just flick there for a moment. This is what the Apostle Paul writes:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God because it’s written: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Now if your enemies are hungry, feed them, if they’re thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

If I judge what, God is going to judge me? God will judge me by the same rules that I apply to judging other people. Look at it - back to Matthew chapter 7, where Jesus was talking. He said:

Why is it that you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye but you don’t notice the log in your own eye. Or how can you say to your neighbour; “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while there’s a log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye and then you’ll see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

The log in my eye, the log in your eye, that’s our failures and our weaknesses and our downsides and our sin - that’s what causes our perception to be distorted. Come on, if I’m an insecure person, am I going to expect everybody to walk on egg-shells for me? If I’m an arrogant person, am I going to expect them all to kow-tow to me? Or am I going to humble myself and take the log out of my eye. If I’m on a mission; I’ve got a goal in life that’s not from God and I want to roll over the top of people, will I lay it down?

This stuff’s not easy because, the log in our own eye, we don’t want to know it’s there. We don’t want to admit that we have a log in our own eye, but we sometimes do. It’s not easy to get rid of - that’s why we need the Holy Spirit; that’s why we need the Word of God. That’s why you and I are together right now. We can be such slackos but what if - what if we put determination and humility in our hearts?

What if we came to Jesus and said: “Lord, I’ve heard your Word and I confess this log. I confess my own poverty, I confess my complete inability to do anything about it, except to lay it at your feet - to lay it at the foot of the cross - and say: “Lord I need your help.” Because you know something - anything less is hypocrisy. The word ‘hypocrisy’ that Jesus uses there, means an actor who is two faced. The world hates hypocrites - you and I hate hypocrites. How can we be hypocrites? How can we walk around with a log in our eye and say to a neighbour: “You’ve got a speck in yours.” Come on!

Now does that mean that we can never deal with someone else’s problem? No! That’s not what Jesus said. Have a look at chapter 7 verse 5 of Matthew again. He said:

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

Because when we take out the log; when we take out our failures out of the equation, when we take off the devil’s glasses and put on God’s glasses and we see the world clearly through His eyes, through God’s Word, through who He is, all of a sudden the judgement goes away, a desire for anger and revenge goes away. You and I, we can’t genuinely help anybody when we are angry with them. Can I say that again? We can’t genuinely help anybody to take the speck out of their eye when we are angry with them. All we can give them is cynical, self-serving and self-seeking hypocrisy and judgement.

First we need take the log out of our own eyes, first we need to admit that maybe our own insecurities are ruining this relationship. Maybe our own selfishness is ruining this relationship. Maybe some unrealistic expectations are ruining this relationship. Jesus said: “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees. You hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and plate but inside they’re full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup so that the outside may also become clean.”

How do I deal with difficult people? For me, the first step is saying, ‘I’m the most difficult person I will ever meet. I am with me 24/7, I am with me every minute of every day of every week of every month of every year for the rest of my life on this earth and Jesus is saying to me, Jesus is saying to you:

Examine your own motives in the light of God’s Word and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Have a look again at the Book of Romans, if you will, with me - chapter 5 verses 6 to 8. Paul writes this. He says:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps, for a good person, someone might actually dare to die, but God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

When you and I were still sinners; when we were in enmity to God, God proved His love for us, by looking beyond our sin. He didn’t let the hurt that He felt at our sin, immobilise Him or deter Him from the cross.

We all know John 3:16 - that’s the good news, because:

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him won’t perish but have eternal life.

But what about First John 3:16 - that letter toward the end of the New Testament - what does that say? Gotta remember this one too, it says this: “We know love by this - that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for each other. In other words be imitators of God.” We are made to be like God - not to be God - but to be like God. We’re made in His image and the one thing that stops us from that is our sin, our weaknesses and our failures and Jesus is saying:

Take the log out of your eye.

Because as long as you carry it round, you are the most difficult person you will ever meet and when you can see clearly - when you can see through my eyes - when you can see your enemies as the people who God created and God loves, as people made in His image, all of a sudden life becomes a lot better. All of a sudden it becomes so much easier to deal with those difficult people, when we acknowledge that we are part of the difficulty in that relationship. It takes courage to identify the log in your eye. You know, it takes determination to cast it out. It takes humility to love your enemy.

So how about it? Don’t underestimate it - this is a huge thing. It’s being prepared to change our perspective; to lay our pride down, to struggle through this over and over again, to die to ourselves for the glory of Jesus Christ. When they look at you, when they look at me, will they see someone and say: “Now there’s someone that’s like Jesus, there is someone who heard Jesus say: 'Love your enemy.'” Come on, will they?

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With Easter done and dusted for another year, it’s kind of easy to forget about the Cross, Christ’s suffering, the resurrection and the empty tomb … and just get on with life. What do all those things have to do with what I have going on in my life now? But that sort of attitude can get us into a lot of trouble.

THE RIGHTEOUS MAN DESTROYED It’s funny how we build rituals into our lives that we repeat year after year. There’s Christmas, then New Year’s. For those in the southern hemisphere, that normally means some sort of summer break. Then all too quickly, Easter rolls around, but that happens so quickly that if you blink, you miss it. Although for those in the northern hemisphere, Easter is a sure sign that their summer break is just weeks away. That’ll always give you a bit of a sense of anticipation.

Yeah, Easter is a bit of a marker in the calendar, but for many, that’s all it is. It happens and just as quickly as it came. It disappears again. And I think if that’s how we treat Easter, then we do so at our own peril because there are some lessons in Easter, there are some vitally important truths in the Easter story that can sustain us and bless us all year round, particularly if that year is not looking like it’s going to be a particularly good one.

I was having coffee with a young man the other day. He’s kind of in his mid-thirties, which may seem young from where I sit somewhere on the other side of fifty, and this young man has it all. He has a successful career as a speaker and an author and a business coach. He earns lots and lots of money, a lot more than me, certainly; and he’s a good-looking guy. Emotionally he has it together; he has everything to live for: A beautiful wife, a happy marriage, the ability to travel all round the world to all sorts of fantastic places, and his wife gets to come with him sometimes. We’re also friends on Facebook, and forever I’m seeing photos of him white-water rafting in Thailand, and popping up in London and New York, and he doesn’t fly at the back of a plane either, I have to tell you.

My point is this: If ever there was a guy that you and I would point to and say, ‘Wow! God’s blessed that person’, it would have to be this guy, without a shadow of a doubt. And yet there’s one hurt in his life. He and his wife haven’t been able to have a child yet. They’ve thrown money at the problem; in vitro fertilisation; they’ve prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and still, nothing.

You see, it doesn’t matter who we are; where we live; what our circumstances are. It doesn’t matter how incredibly blessed someone is; there is always something in our lives that isn’t to our liking. There is always something in our lives that we want to be able to change. There is always something in our lives that causes us pain.

You and I, we would look at this guy’s life, then look up at God and say, ‘Yes, please, Lord. I’ll have one like that, thanks.’ We keep thinking that if only I could earn a bit more money; if only my husband, or my wife as the case may be, would love me just that little bit more; if only I could find the right job; if only my children would grow out of this difficult stage that they’re in at the moment; if only I could lose a few extra pounds; if only I could afford that little bit of cosmetic surgery; if only, if only, if only … then I would finally be happy. That’s a lie that most people tell themselves most of the time.

Of course, if you had a quick look back at the cross for a moment, and saw this Jesus who’d never done a single thing wrong in His life hanging there, nailed to His cross, hands and feet, gasping for air, slowly dying that excruciating death, we’d realise that bad things happen to good people all the time. Suffering happens. God didn’t even spare His own Son from that.

And while sometimes we suffer as a result of our own mistakes and stupidity, more often than not, the suffering that hits our lives is completely unfair; no rhyme or reasons. It just happens, and while we’re asking ourselves why, while we’re asking God why and when will it end, it’s in the middle of that place that we need to know beyond any shadow of a doubt. It’s right in that dark place that you and I need to be able to declare, ‘My Redeemer lives’.

Sure; that’s the title of a great worship-song – “My Redeemer Lives”; quite a happy-clappy song as I recall, a great one to sing, but for me, it’s way, way more important to be able to mutter through gritted teeth as I’m dealing with pain and uncertainty and fear in my life – ‘My Redeemer lives!’ And that’s what we’re going to be talking about on the programme today and through the course of this week.

Those words were first uttered by a man called Job in the Old Testament. Now Job was a wealthy, successful man, just like the one I described earlier. He’d never set a foot wrong in his life, always honoured God, and then one day, whammo! Have a listen to this.

One day, the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’

Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down upon it.’

And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house, and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

The LORD said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (Job 1:6-12)

What a rotten thing to happen to this guy, Job. What a rotten thing for the devil to do. Hey, what a rotten thing for God to do! Right? Everything’s going along swimmingly well and then, throughout the book of Job, we discover how he loses everything: Everything – his property, his children, his health, everything – from rooster to feather duster in one fowl swoop.

So let me ask you: When you hit a patch like that in your life, as we all inevitably do, when you have that one bit of suffering in your life, how do you react? What does it do to your sense of self-worth, to your sense of wellbeing, to what you think of God?

Let’s see what else happened to Job, starting in the very next verse:

One day, when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell upon them and carried them off and killed the servants with the edge of the sword. I alone have escaped to tell you.’

While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them. I alone have escaped to tell you.’

While he was speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword. I alone have escaped to tell you.’

While he was still speaking, another came and said: ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you.’ (Job 1:13-19)

That’s the sort of suffering that strikes from time to time, and it’s rarely just one thing. More often than not, it comes in groups of three or four, so when that happens, how do you respond?

I’ll leave that question hanging there for you to consider. We’ll come back to that again after the break, because it’s right in the middle of a situation like that, that you and I need answers. Suffering happens, wow. Someone should turn that into a bumper sticker, right? Suffering happens. It happens, and when it does, God has answers – some real answers that make a real difference.

THE DEVIL’S TRICKERY When your life hits a patch of suffering, as every life on this planet does from time to tome, how do you react? How do you respond? Mostly we go to God and we ask Him why and when is it going to end, right? We desperately want to know why this is happening to us, and we desperately want it to end. Those are the two compelling forces that drive us forward in suffering.

It was certainly like that for Job: A good man, a righteous man (whom we meet in the Old Testament), until the devil comes after him with a pickaxe. Let’s have a listen.

One day, the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’

Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down upon it.’

And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house, and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. (Job 1:6-12)

Now this is a fascinating passage of Scripture because it goes to the issue of over-spiritualisation and under-spiritualisation that I mentioned a bit earlier.

See, all too often, something bad happens to us and we look at the physical circumstances – the people; the issues; the troubles we’re dealing with, and we completely forget about the spiritual realm.

The apostle Paul, many years later, put it this way. Ephesians 6:10-11:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His power. But put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against rulers, against authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Make no mistake about it. There is a spiritual battle going on in the heavenly places for your soul. If we miss that, we end up completely missing what’s going on when it comes to suffering that we’re going through. But there’s something incredibly odd that happens here in that passage about Job where the devil goes to God. Did you pick it? Here it is again. The devil says:

But stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

So the Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

Did you notice that the devil has to go to God to ask Him permission to ruin Job’s life? Because according to the devil, God has put a fence around him and his house and all that he has on every side.

That Hebrew word for fence literally means a deep thick hedge of protection, like the ones that shepherds used to grow out in the pastures. At night, they would put their sheep in it and they would sleep across the entrance to protect their flock from wild animals and thieves: A thick, dense, impenetrable hedge; a hedge so thick that Satan can’t break through it. And with God standing at the entrance, the devil can only enter with God’s permission.

Listen up. If you love Jesus, then you belong to God, and as with Job, He has put a hedge of protection around you. When the devil attacks you, he can only do it with God’s permission.

Have you ever felt spiritually attacked? Sure you have; so have I. What do you imagine God’s doing when the devil comes after you with a pickaxe? Has God fallen asleep? Has He wandered off somewhere? Has the devil overwhelmed Him? No! None of those things. God has given the devil permission to attack you. Now that may sound crazy to some. ‘What? Why would God do that?’

That’s something that Job asks God over and over again. He runs the line with God. ‘Hang on, Lord. Aren’t I a good guy? Haven’t I obeyed You in every part of my life? So why are you punishing me like this? Why are you doing this?’

And God’s answer to Job is, in effect: ‘Job, it’s none of your business.’ Years later, James put it this way in his New Testament letter.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but pure joy because you know that the testing in your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

God always has a purpose for allowing the devil to attack us, and to bring suffering: Always. It’s not something that He does lightly, and the devil (far from having overwhelmed God) is simply a tool in God’s hands to knock off the rough edges and smooth the surfaces, like a piece of sandpaper. And when God’s done with him, He’ll throw him into the lake of fire.

That’s the important thing for you and me to know when we’re suffering, especially when we have that sense that we’re being spiritually attacked. God is in control! My Redeemer lives! That’s something that Job knew deep inside in his being because when he lost everything, this is what he did. Job 1:20-22:

Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.”

So let me ask you again, how would you react? How do you react? Because how we react say everything about what we believe, and who we are, and our relationship with God.

It feels somewhat unnatural to worship God in the midst of suffering. In fact, not somewhat unnatural – completely unnatural because when we’re suffering, our hearts and our minds start to turn away from God. We question Him; we put Him on trial; we demand answers, like a prosecuting attorney. And when He doesn’t give us any, we give up on Him and focus on our suffering. Fear creeps in; uncertainty and worry creep in, and at that point … Listen to me. At that point, the devil is winning.

God opened the gate for the devil to enter to see what we would do; how we would react. God’s plan is to test our faith. God’s plan is to allow the ravages of the devil to give us the opportunity to exercise our faith. What He’s looking for in you and me, through gritted teeth, is to utter those words that Job uttered, ‘My Redeemer lives’.

What God’s looking for is for us to worship Him; to completely trust our lives into His hands, despite what circumstances are screaming at us. Just like Job, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’.

We don’t really know that our Redeemer lives until we’ve come to know that in the place of suffering. That’s when the unjust suffering of Jesus starts to make sense in our own experience. That’s when the empty tomb has its most powerful effect in our lives. That’s when our faith, all of a sudden, becomes real. And when we come out the other end of it all, having exercised the muscle of faith, all of a sudden we discover that our faith is much, much stronger for having been through it.

So, when suffering comes your way, how will you respond?

BEFORE THE STORM HITS I want you to imagine that you’re the captain of a ship that’s about to set sail. The weather forecast is for storms out there on the sea. You look out at all the shipping containers stacked high on your vessel, and you think to yourself: ‘Hmmm. I’d better make sure that the crew secures them all’, so here’s my question: Would you make the crew secure them before you left port, or would you wait until the storm hits to send them out there to latch down your precious cargo? The answer’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? So why is it in life that we wait until the storm hits before we go running to God to ask for help? Why aren’t we prepared, just as any good ship’s captain would be? We don’t want to wait until the storm hits to get close to God. We need the wisdom of God in us before the storm hits. We need to know the truth, because it’s not the truth alone that sets us free according to Jesus; it’s knowing the truth. John 8:31:

If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

You have to know the truth, and you need to know it before the storm hits. The book of Proverbs chapter 1: God teaches us very clearly that we need to be ready for the storm. We need to be in God’s Word and filled with His wisdom, and prepared for the onslaught when it comes. Solomon writes this. He says (Proverbs 1:24-29):

Wisdom is calling out to us on the street. She stands on the street corners, calling, wanting to make her words known to us. ‘But because I have called and you have refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when panic strikes you; when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD.’

Friend, listen to me. God is your strength. He is your counsel, and if you’re a man or a woman of God’s Word, someone who allows the Word of Christ to dwell richly in you, then when the storm comes as it most certainly will, you in the face of calamity and criticism will be able to declare through the tears and the gritted teeth of pain: ‘My Redeemer lives!’

Back when God’s judgment fell on Jerusalem because His people had sinned against Him yet again, when He allowed the city and the temple to be destroyed by the Babylonians, when God’s people were taken into captivity as slaves, the writer of the book of Lamentations was standing in the midst of this devastation, surveying the complete destruction of the great Jerusalem and the temple of the living God. After lamenting the destruction and the loss, this is what he said (Lamentations 3:20-26):

The thought of my affliction, my homelessness, is wormwood and gall; my soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my Portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him. The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, the soul that seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

With all the devastation and destruction that we sometimes see in our lives, you and I can know that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. In fact, they are new every morning, and that’s what we would know in the midst of devastation if as men and women of God, we took the time to get ready for it. And as your soul seeks Him and waits quietly for His salvation, know this: He is doing a mighty work in you. He is doing things in you that you cannot begin to imagine. The greatest transformations of your life will almost always happen on those dark nights of the soul, and it is good for you to wait quietly for His salvation.

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I guess when we think of Easter we think of it way, way, way in the past and I guess of its consequences way, way, way in the future. The past act of Jesus dying for you and me and the future blessing of a resurrection for us to live eternity with Him. In the past and in the future but what if I told you that Jesus wants to give you a ‘here and now‘ kind of resurrection today, would you believe me?

HERE AND NOW RESURRECTION As we chatted last week on the program – Easter is a time for hope. Not a wishy–washy, uncertain hope like: I hope I lose some weight on this diet or I hope the weather fines up tomorrow. No, not that. When the Bible talks about hope, it means a certain hope.

The sort of hope that throws a ray of sunshine into your day, because you realise that you have something amazing to look forward to. The hope of the resurrection of the dead. That when you and I die, we will go to be with Jesus in paradise, based only on our faith in Him, not on what we do or don’t do.

That’s exactly what Jesus said to the criminal that was strung up on that Cross next to Him on that very first Easter, although of course, it wasn’t called Easter back then. It was the Passover celebration. Have a listen:

Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with Jesus. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, then save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him that read, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals who was hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other one rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said to Jesus, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ (Luke 23:32-43)

Now although that was obviously a terrible, terrible circumstance in which to receive the promise of eternal life with Jesus, I think you’ll agree, there was a sense of immediacy to that promise. That criminal knew that he was about to die – he could feel it, the agonising, the excruciating, long–suffering death by suffocation, which is how you die when you’re nailed to a cross.

By the way this was the very first man recorded in Scripture to receive the gift of eternal life based on faith in Jesus. And it happened on the same day within just a few hours of the promise that Jesus made to him.

Most of us don’t know how long we have left on this earth. Some who’ve had maybe a bad medical prognosis might have some idea, but most of us don’t. I could live another fifty years, or I could be gone tomorrow. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. But what we do know, what we do see, is the long path ahead. The trials that we’re going through and the trials, which are so much a part of life, that lie ahead.

But this resurrection, this new life, doesn’t just begin when we die and go to heaven. It’s meant to begin the very moment we believe in Jesus. In fact, it has begun the very moment you believed in Jesus. It’s as though we’ve died and risen again here and now.

Have a listen to this amazing scripture that says exactly that. Romans chapter 6, verses 1 to 4:

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Did you get that? The point that Paul’s making – the point that God is making through the Apostle Paul who wrote that letter to the Roman Church, is that the moment we put our faith in Jesus we are dead to sin and alive to Christ. We are freed from the sin that’s held us back and held us down and ruined things for us thus far, and just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so have we been that we may walk in the newness of life. A new life, born again, a here and now resurrection.

Why do so many people who believe in Jesus not get this? Why do so many people who believe in Jesus struggle with who they are and what they’ve done and the mistakes they’ve made? Hello!!!

Those things are dead and gone and buried and now, through the resurrection of Jesus, anyone who believes in Him can walk in newness of life by His power. Here’s Paul saying it again, in a different way to the Ephesian church. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 17 to 23:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and all authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Paul wanted us to know the hope and the riches and the incredible power of God that we now already have – the same power that brought Jesus back to life. Resurrection power. New life power, available to you so that you may walk in newness of life. Hallelujah!

And it’s that power, seeing that power at work in your life day by day, setting you free from the shackles of sin, one shackle at a time, that gives us the hope to know that one day that resurrection will be consummated before God.

It’s like a down payment, this resurrection power, evidence of God’s intention – this here and now resurrection power speaks of the resurrection that we will experience on that day when our lives here on earth come to an end.

In fact, that’s again what Paul says, just a few verses earlier about the Holy Spirit, verses 13 and 14 of Ephesians Chapter 1:

In him, in Christ, you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

The Holy Spirit power, the resurrection power is a pledge, a down payment, a deposit to demonstrate to you the reality of your inheritance that is to come.

When you buy a house, you put down a 10% deposit, which is evidence to the vendor of your intention to pay the rest and complete the sale at the agreed time. That’s what this passage of Scripture means.

The resurrection power of the Holy Spirit that you see at work in your life is God’s deposit and pledge of the resurrection you will experience on that day.

That’s why we can have hope in the coming of Jesus. That’s why we know that there are riches coming beyond anything that we can imagine, because the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit in our lives is clear, unmistakable evidence of that.

Anyone who is listening today, who’s had this sad–sack, nothing’s changed in my life thing going on, for you, this is great news. Grab hold of it with both hands. Live every minute of every day in the certain knowledge that the Holy Spirit is at work in you and as a consequence you can have a real hope in your eternity with Jesus.

That’s what Jesus purchased for you!

DEATH AND RESURRECTION I used to wonder a lot about this whole ‘Jesus dying on the Cross’ thing. It just didn’t make sense to me. I mean, when someone does something wrong against me, I can choose either to forgive them, or to not forgive them, right?

And if I choose to forgive them, I don’t … I don’t know … self-mutilate or something to pay for the wrong that they did against me. I just forgive them and that’s it. Their slate is wiped clean. They don’t owe me anything. I choose to remove the desire for recompense or punishment for their wrongs and we all get on with life.

And since I am made in the image of God, surely God can be like that too. I mean, you or I haven’t murdered anyone or raped anyone or assaulted anyone. We are not guilty of grand larceny. We haven’t stolen anything from the local store even. Okay, we’ve made some mistakes. We’ve hurt people through our actions or our attitudes. But that’s all part of life and hopefully most of those people would forgive us and we can just get on with it, right?

As we think about Easter, as we think about that brutal, bloody cross and what Jesus did, unless we really understand the why of it all, then we’re completely missing the point of Christianity; the whole point of believing in Jesus.

And I strongly suspect that there are a good many people around today, who say they believe in Jesus, but they don’t have answers to this difficult questions: Why did God bother with this whole Jesus dying on a cross thing? Why didn’t He just forgive us?

The bottom line is this: God is a God of absolute love and absolute justice. Have a listen, 1 John chapter 4, verse 16:

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

So, God is love. Have a listen to this, Romans chapter 2, verses 9 to 11:

There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.

God is more loving than the most loving father who has ever lived. God IS love. But He is also more just than the most just judge who has ever lived. So how do you reconcile love and justice? I mean, love demands forgiveness. Justice demands punishment.

If a man was convicted of rape or murder – if he was tried and found guilty, yet the judge in his sentencing chose to show mercy and let him walk free, we would be totally outraged, wouldn’t we? We would demand justice.

And so God is faced with this dilemma. A huge dilemma. He is all love and He is all justice. What does He do? It’s the same as though that judge I just talked about was the father of the man convicted of rape or murder. Can you imagine the terrible position this judge and father would find himself in, in determining a sentence for his own child?

So God does the only thing open to Him. He sends Jesus to fulfil the requirements of absolute justice, by dying on that cross for you and me, so that the price of our sin is paid in full. The requirements of justice are met in full. The wrath of God that you and I deserve falls on Jesus, He takes the wrap, He dies the death.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

But the huge spin-off benefit of Jesus’ death on the Cross, is the fact that just three days later, He was raised from the dead. And that’s exactly what happens to you and me when we believe in Him and we die to our sin. We receive a new life. A resurrected life. A born again life. A fresh start with the slate wiped completely clean. Through the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

That empty tomb is as important in God’s plan for you and me, as was that bloody Cross. Jesus had to die to be resurrected. And you and I have to die to our old self, to our sinful self, in order to be resurrected into a newness of life, this new life that Jesus purchased on the Cross for you and me. The transaction of grace is a transaction both of death and resurrection. Romans chapter 6, verse 4:

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

That means that you and I believe in Jesus and we turn away from our sin, so that we can rise again to this new life that Jesus has for us. Come on, this is good news! The alternative is death. The alternative is a living death today as we live in sin, and an eternal separation from God when this life is over.

Jesus made this point, He said: You actually have to die before you can live.

Truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour. (John 12:24-26)

And see, this bit of dying to self, so that we can live and bear fruit is the bit that so many people miss. We think it’s just about believing in Jesus and everything will be okay. Well, yes and no. Unless you and I repent, unless you and I believe in Jesus AND turn away from our evil ways, then there is no life, because sin will continue to rob you of life.

It’s an unpopular idea I know – repentance sounds like something terribly old–fashioned. Jesus died and was then resurrected. You can’t be resurrected to a new life, until you’ve died to the old one.

It’s obvious isn’t it?! At least it should be. Death and resurrection are what Easter is all about. Death and resurrection are what your new life is all about.

If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)

The great news this Easter is that Jesus came to give you a new life. A life worth living. A life that, instead of being torn apart by arrogance or selfishness or whatever your particular Achilles heel is, a life that instead is being healed and restored by the power of God and the goodness of God. A life that will look completely different to your old life.

Because Jesus changed it for you. Because Jesus died so that the just requirements of the law, the punishment that you so richly deserve, could be removed from you. That’s mercy. Because Jesus died and rose again.

Maybe you’ve just heard about Jesus for the first time today and you want to accept Him as your Lord and Saviour. Well if that’s you, please pray this prayer with me:

Father God, today I have heard about Jesus and what He did for me on that Cross and through that empty tomb. And I realise that I need His mercy and His grace – it is exactly what I need. Please forgive me through Jesus and what He did for me. I’m so sorry for my sin and what I’ve done wrong. And give me this new life today. This resurrection life. I turn away from all my sin, but I know how weak I am, I know I don’t have the power to live the life you want me to live, so please, put your Holy Spirit in me so that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, will raise me into this new life that you’ve promised me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

If you prayed that prayer, my friend, you have just received the grace and the mercy and the power of God, through what Jesus did for you.

NEWNESS OF LIFE Have you ever felt as though your life just isn’t worth living? Have you ever come to the point like King Solomon, who wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes: Vanity oh vanity life is meaningless? It can feel sometimes that life is over, even though it goes on.

Back when a dear friend of His, Lazarus, had died, and just before He raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus said this to the man’s sister. John chapter 11, verse 25. He said:

I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

Now that’s something, that’s someone, worth placing your hope in, don’t you think? I am the resurrection; I am the life, said Jesus and everyone, everyone who believes in me will never die.

Do you believe this? Do you believe it for you? Colossians chapter 1, verse 5 says that you have a hope laid up in heaven for you. And a few verses down, verse 27, Paul goes on to talk about the mystery of God’s glory which is the hope in you.

Easter isn’t just about fluffy bunnies and chocolate eggs – weird combination though that may be. It’s about hope. A hope that is meant to be in you as God’s gift to you. In you. A hope that drives your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. A hope that gets you through the stuff you need to get through, today and tomorrow and the next day and for however many more days you have left on this earth.

The hope the Bible talks about isn’t some wishy–washy, maybe kind of hope. Whenever you see that word ‘hope’ in the Bible, it means an absolutely, certain, rock–solid hope of a life eternal with Jesus.

Hope matters. We’re all wired to hope in something. Better we hope in the one thing that delivers, instead of all those imposters out there, don’t you think? I know that there are people listening today, for whom there doesn’t appear to be a single bright spot on the horizon, no hope for the future. And for you, today, I have good news. The good news of Jesus.

No matter how bad your past has been, through Jesus the slate is wiped completely clean. And no matter how dark your future may appear, in Jesus, you have received the certain hope of an eternal inheritance with Him. Living for eternity in the Presence of Jesus who died for you. Hallelujah!

You wouldn’t believe the number of people who write to me, who were at the point of taking their own lives, because for them all hope had been lost. And yet, when they heard about the hope that they have in Jesus Christ – that pulled them back from the brink and changed everything.

Life without hope is no life at all. A life without hope for the future isn’t worth living. I know. I have been on that edge. And it was Jesus who pulled me back off that ledge. It was Jesus who gave me hope. It was Jesus who gave me life.

Those Disciples, they couldn’t see it until they saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes. And then, everything changed for them. Everything. They spent the rest of their lives, in fact they gave their lives, in order to tell the rest of the world about Jesus.

And this hope that you and I have in Jesus, is the only hope that turns a life around for good. Nothing else can deliver what the hope in Christ can deliver.

I leave you today with this exhortation from the Apostle Paul, Romans chapter 15, verse 13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and all peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

My prayer for you this Easter is that this powerful hope of the eternity that you have ahead of you, will rock you to the core and transform your life, completely and utterly. Because God has a plan for you that goes way beyond anything that you can ever hope for or dream or imagine. And that plan finds its genesis, and that plan has its alpha and omega, its beginning and its end …. in Jesus.

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By about this time of year any little bit of a break we might have had over Christmas and New Year is but a dim distant memory. We’re back in the grind and we’re looking forward to our next break – awesome! But surely there’s more to life than that.

HOPE MATTERS Hope is a beautiful word, four letters, just one syllable, there’s a clear, pure ring to it, isn’t there? HOPE. I don’t know how your year is going so far, what just three months in but for most of us there have been some ups, there have been some downs and underneath it all that constant incessant grind that we all call life, the daily ritual.

I know there are some people on the London Tube with their headphones on listening in to this message today. I know that there is a farmer on his harvester listening in on his local radio station in Australia, in the US and in other places. I know that there is a man in Chicago down at the local gym probably tuned in to the podcast as he is most days and I know that there are refugees in camps wondering what the next day will bring, gathered around their radio’s listening to today’s message all over the world, all different circumstances.

Some good, some not so good, some downright awful, I know that so here as we head into this Easter time, Berni drops the word ‘hope’, pure, clean, crystal clear hope, what does it mean to you right now given where you’re at, what’s going on in your life? Hope.

My year so far has been a bit of a mixed bag, isn’t that always the way? Some great things, a short holiday with my lovely wife in January, awesome and some tough issues to grapple with here too in the ministry called Christianityworks that I’m privileged to lead. But the most constant thing, it’s like a drum beat that never stops, is the daily rhythm of the grind.

Up early each morning working on radio programs, dealing with staffing issues and all that comes with running an organisation that produces radio and television programs around the world. And for me, as I participate in this daily grind, punctuated from time to time with some delightful days and some dreadful days.

Here’s what this beautiful clear word hope means to me. It means that just around the next corner, just over the next rise there’s something more, something better, something that is really worth looking forward to, much more than my next holiday or next trinket or bauble that this world may have to offer. A solid hope, a certain hope that one day the trials and tribulations of this world will be over and that I’ll get to spend eternity in the presence of Jesus.

It doesn’t matter who we are, what sort of life we’re leading, how rich or poor, north or south, east or west, our lives maybe, I believe that we’ve been hand crafted to hope for something in the future, I believe that there’s something innate inside each one of us that no matter how much we may delight in or despise this particular day, there is that something that reaches out to the future looking forward for, well what exactly?

Something better, something more, something beyond, something utterly delightful, you know it, don’t you? You often dream of the future, you hope for this and that. The young woman hoping for her prince charming to ride into her life. The middle-aged man hoping for release from the yoke of the mortgage that drives him to work these long hours under so much pressure. The hope of a frail, elderly, lonely woman whose joints are racked with arthritis hoping for deliverance from this world.

No matter what stage of life we’re in we’re always hoping for something. The sad thing is that we sometimes, often times, place our hope in things that simply can’t deliver what we’re looking for. I happen to enjoy technology, I like the way smartphones have revolutionised my life, sure. But I look at the hysteria, the overnight queues, the cheering and the waving that accompanies the release of certain brands of smartphones, it seems they always put it on the evening news these days as though somehow this idolatry is newsworthy and I shake my head. Surely life has to be about more than the next iPhone release, doesn’t it?

Might I ask you, what are you hoping for right now at this moment? What is the hope that is in you that keeps you going through the grind and through the dark days and through the fun days even?

Paul the Apostle was put on trial for his very life, his judge, the Roman governor, had the power of life and death over him. And in his defence this is what he says, Acts 24: 15 and 16.

I have a hope in God that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore I do my best always to have a clear conscience towards God and all people.

When it came to the point of life and death Paul was bold enough to tell the judge that his hope was in God, his hope was in the fact that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous and it is that hope that drives who he is, what he thinks, how he behaves.

I wonder how different the life of so many people would be if instead of hoping for the trinkets that this world has to offer, instead of placing their hope in things that can’t deliver and will in any case pass away – they placed their hope in the resurrection of Jesus which is a forerunner to their own resurrection one day.

If this life is all there is, then it ain’t all that much. If I live until I’m eighty years old then I have just under nine thousand days left to go. It’s not a lot when you think about it. If I placed my hope in the here and now, well the here and now is going to be done and dusted in just under nine thousand days, not much of a hope, is it?

But if the certain hope of the promised resurrection that Jesus ushered in on that very first Easter some two thousand years ago, if that’s what I place my hope in then that’s real, that’s forever, that’s a hope in the one thing that matters, a life eternal in His presence.

As the drum beat of the daily humdrum pounds away in your ears what hope brings joy to your heart? What hope drives you to feel and to think and to act? Is it the right hope? Is it delivering you what you’ve been looking for? Well, is it?

LIVING IN FEARFUL DAYS There have been days in my life, and I know you’ve had days like this too, where I’ve woken up after a fitful night’s sleep with a knot in the pit of my stomach; with a sense of fear and dread so deep, so unavoidable, that I felt paralysed; unable to function; unable to face the world; unable even to see the faintest glimmer of hope for the future. Can you remember the last time you experienced that feeling? It’s just awful, isn’t it? You wouldn’t wish it upon your worst enemy.

I don’t know how you celebrate Easter, but back in the days leading up to that very first Easter, there wasn’t all that much celebration going on. In fact, if you were one of those twelve disciples, celebration was the very last thing on your mind. What was dominating their thinking was fear: Gut-wrenching, that knot in the pit of your stomach, will-I-be-crucified-too kind of fear. Jesus had been warning them for some time now that He would be crucified. Matthew 16:21:

From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on that third day be raised again.

That seemed utterly bizarre to the disciples. I mean, they’ve seen Him do amazing miracles. They’ve seen those up-close. They’ve listened to sermon after powerful sermon, where He spoke not just His wisdom into life on earth, but with authority about the kingdom of heaven like nobody else. Jesus, this Jesus, captured? Crucified? Suffering? ‘No way!’ says Peter. In fact (Matthew 16:22-23):

Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying: ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!’

But Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan. You are a stumbling-block to Me, for you are setting your mind not on the divine things, but on human things.’”

I doubt very much that your reaction or mine would have been all that different in the face of the evidence that pointed to this Jesus being the real deal, the very Son of God, would it? And yet as the days drew closer to the time when Jesus would be betrayed and crucified you could feel the fear in the air, that the plot to assassinate Him was unmistakable.

It hung in the air and the disciples weren’t just confronted by the possibility of complete disillusionment of the idea of that Jesus, their Jesus, their miracle-working Jesus being crucified of all things. But in their minds, in their hearts gripped with fear they were wondering, well will I be next? Will they nail me to a cross too? Well it’s the sort of thing that the Romans do. What if I get caught up in this, what if I’m nailed hands and feet to a cross?

Then the chief priests and elders of the people gathered in the place of the high priest who was called Caiaphas and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. (Matthew chapter 26: 3)

All they could see and feel, these disciples, was the fear. It’s almost like they hadn’t heard the rest of the prediction from Jesus, they couldn’t hear it because they were afraid.

While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves and he said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death. Then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified and on the third day he will be raised up’. (Matthew 20: 17 – 18)

See, I see a lot of myself in those disciples. How about you? We’re driven by and large, you and I, by self-interest, and there is no greater motivator than self-preservation, is there; than saving your own skin, and on those days when we’re afraid, that’s all we can think about.

As we celebrate Easter this week, in a way that would have been so incredibly foreign to those fearful quivering disciples, I wonder how much your own self-interest obscures the powerful life-transforming message of hope that is Easter. I wonder.

The sad thing is that it’s especially in those dark places on those dark days that we need the peace and the hope that only Jesus can bring which is why He spoke these words to the disciples not long before the end came, John 14:27. Jesus said:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

The message of Easter is a double-sided message: Two sides of the one coin. It’s a message of freedom from the past, and hope for the future. It’s a message of forgiveness, and a message of a glorious future.

Some years after the terrible events of that Passover the Apostle Paul put it this way, part 1 – the message of forgiveness and grace. Paul wrote:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us. (Ephesians 1: 7)

That bloody spectacle on the cross was all about paying the shocking price of my rebellion against God and yours. Through the suffering of Jesus we receive mercy, through the suffering of Jesus on our behalf, the punishment that we so richly deserve has been lifted from us and just a few verses later Paul talks about part 2 – the message of a glorious inheritance, the message of hope that can dwell in you and me, should dwell in you and me if we believe in Jesus. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 11 to 14.

In Christ we’ve also obtained an inheritance having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will so that we who are the first to set our hope on Christ might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation and had believed in him were marked with a seal of the promised Holy Spirit. This is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1: 11–14)

And it’s that message, that certain hope that takes the fear away.

NON POMP AND CEREMONY Each year at Easter, on Good Friday and Easter Sunday the world’s evening news services beam images of the Churches Easter celebrations from around the globe right onto our television screens and invariably those images look something like this: they’re filmed in big lofty imposing cathedrals packed full of the faithful, there are processions of crimson clad clergy following a cross down the aisle. There are choirs covered in red and in white singing hymns and songs. There are Church leaders preaching a message to their flock.

Of course not all of us celebrate Easter like that but that’s the image we seem to project out into the world. But Easter is a time for both solemnity and celebration and that somehow what goes along with that is some considerable pomp and ceremony.

Now the abundant use of the colour red in the clothing of many clergy, harkens back to the shedding of Jesus blood, that’s what it’s meant to symbolise. But as I look at those images on my television screen year after year I wonder whether the impressions I get aren’t more about the apparent regal nature of the Church than the sacrifice of Jesus.

And frankly, I despair at many of the messages I hear preached by the religious elite. They talk about world peace or poverty or they apologise for the abuses of the Church which it seems, in recent years, are many. And I wonder sometimes whether as a whole as the body of Christ we somehow aren’t missing the point and the point of that first Easter during that fateful Passover celebration two thousand odd years ago had little, in fact no, it had nothing to do with the trappings of Easter that somehow we seemed to have heaped on the commemoration and the celebration.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the different traditions and the way they choose to commemorate and to celebrate, traditions are in many a respect are good things that is unless and until they displace the central meaning of the thing it is they represent.

That first Easter didn’t have any sense of pomp or ceremony about, in fact Jesus, well for Him it was a lonely time, an intensely painful time, a time when He suffered alone for you and for me. After He celebrated the Passover meal with His disciples and washed their feet and predicted that His betrayer was in their midst.

Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray’. He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am so deeply grieved even to death, stay here and stay awake with me’ and going a little further he threw himself onto the ground and prayed, ‘My Father if it’s possible let this cup pass from me yet not what I want but what you want’.

Then he came to the disciples and he found them sleeping and he said to Peter, ‘Could you not stay awake with me for one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into a time of trial.’ The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. Again Jesus went away for a second time and he prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink of it, your will be done’.

Again he came and he found them sleeping for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again he went away and prayed for the third time saying the same words. Then he came to the disciples and he said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and taking a rest? Look, the hour’s at hand, the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, get up, let’s be going, my betrayer is at hand.’ (Matthew 26: 36 – 46)

See, Jesus wanted His friends to be praying with Him in His hour of anguish and yet instead He wrestled with His fate alone in the dark. During His trials, there were several of them, none of His friends came and supported Him. No one stood up for Him or gave a good report about Him, NONE of them and at His arrest.

While He was still speaking, Judas one of the twelve arrived and with him was a crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign saying, ‘The one whom I kiss is the man, arrest him and lead him away under guard.’

So when he came he came up to him at once and said, ‘Rabbi’ and kissed him. Then they laid hands on Jesus and arrested him but one of those who stood near draw his sword and struck the slave of the high priest cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Have you come out with your swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the Temple teaching and you didn’t arrest me but let the Scriptures be fulfilled.’

All of them deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following him wearing nothing but a linen cloth, they caught hold of him, they let the linen cloth go and he ran off naked. (Mark 14: 43 – 52)

Jesus was alone and on the cross He hung alone, suffered alone, He died alone. Where was the pomp, where was the ceremony? There was none. Why am I sharing this with you? Because this Jesus understands suffering, He understands loneliness, He understands you and what you have to travel through because He’s been there and He’s been through much worse.

Formal Easter celebrations? Great, fantastic, awesome but if sometimes you’re left with that hollow feeling at Easter, as though what’s going on around you doesn’t really resonate with where you’re at then come with me and meet this lonely Jesus, this suffering Jesus, the Jesus who was rejected and spat upon, the nailed Jesus, the gasping Jesus and remember He did this for you, for you He did this to set you free from your bondage of sin.

And as you’ll see over the next couple of days, He did this to bring you a certain hope through His resurrection. Romans chapter 6, verse 23.

For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, if the pomp and the ceremony perhaps haven’t been connecting with you, forget about them, and rest for a while with Jesus: In the midst of the suffering; in the midst of the deepest inkiest blackness imaginable, you can claim this Scripture for your very own. 1 Corinthians 6:14:

“God raised the Lord, and will also raise us by His power.”

Isn’t that just so awesome? When none of the Easter pomp and ceremony connects with the deepest longings of your heart, Jesus does! The One who suffered and died for you, and the One whose dead body received life again in that lonely, empty tomb.

You see even the resurrection bit, even the bit where hope entered this world because death could no longer hold Him down, the death of my sins and yours that you and I so richly deserved, even in that most amazing moment in all of history where Jesus came back to life, it took place alone in the darkened tomb, away from the glare of the spotlights, away from the adulations of the crowds, away from the sight of any human eye.

The dead body of Jesus came to life, colour returned to His cheeks, His heart started to beat again, He started to breathe again and the resurrection body of Jesus was ready to show the world that He came to bring us hope.

I compare the two, the pomp and the ceremony of the traditional Easter celebrations of today and that amazing transaction of grace and hope that took place in the midst of extreme loneliness for Jesus. And I know which one I prefer, I know which one connects with me deep in my heart, I know which one brings hope into me – it’s Jesus.

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Suffering is not a lot of fun is it. Nobody looks forward to it, and yet, it’s pretty certain that storms will hit our lives. So, when they do, there’s a confidence that God wants you to have in your heart. A confidence, in Him.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THAT Suffering is bad enough, but if while you’re suffering, your so-called friends can’t even stand by you and encourage you and comfort you, well that is just the pits.

Worse still when loved ones – a wife or a husband, instead of encouraging you, they take the opportunity to say, ‘I told you so or You’ve only got yourself to blame … well, at that point, you just want to pack it in.

This isn’t a game hypotheticals, this is real life. This happens all the time. In fact it seems to be a favourite game that some people love to play. When he’s down, when she’s down, instead of giving them a hand up, let’s kick ‘em where it hurts.

I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty good handle on my faults. It turns out that every strength we have, is a double-edged sword. It’s both a strength, and, if we’re not careful, it’s a weakness as well.

Say you’re a strong leader type of personality, then you’re great to have around because you can help the rest of us crash through obstacles that we, without you, simply wouldn’t have been able to get through. But at the same time, as a leader, you can be a quite domineering and controlling person.

Or lets say you’re one of those great encouragers, who will hang in there with someone for as long as they need, then you’re a fantastic friend to have in a storm. But there’s every chance that you’re not very organised, not an on-time sort of a person – simply through the fact that you’ve been made to hang in there with people for as long as they need you.

Yep, every strength is a double-edged sword. It’s both a strength, and a potential weakness. So few people understand that. And as a result, when things aren’t going well for us, they’re quite adept, it would seem, at seeing our faults and pointing them out to us. ‘Well, maybe the reason you’re having this problem in your marriage is because you’re such a strong personality. It must be your fault’. Or … ‘Well, the reason you’re having this problem at work is that you’re just not good at time management. You have to get better at sorting out your priorities and hitting the deadlines you need to hit’.

You see how easy it is, to find the fault side of our strength, when people are looking for answers. They think they’re helping us, but they’re only making it worse. I have a friend like that who constantly needs to point out my faults to me, as though somehow he’s an impartial, expert psychotherapist. And when he gets into that mode, I sit there and I think of all his faults – faults that I don’t point out to him – because he’s my friend and he has a whole bunch of strengths as well.

I know what you’re thinking – been there, done that, got the t–shirt, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There is a time and a place for friends to point out each other’s faults and weaknesses and limitations in a constructive way. But that time and place is not when they’re suffering, it’s not when the devil is chasing them around the kitchen table with a pick-axe, it’s not when God is leading them through a wilderness experience. Right?

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been spending some time with Job, a righteous man, a good man, whom God chose to test, by letting the devil go after everything he had. His family, his possessions, his health, his reputation – one by one, God allows the devil to strip them away from Job, to see what lies beneath. To see whether Job truly is this great man of faith, or whether he only trusts God while his faith is propped up by all the blessings that God has heaped on his life.

And Job, as it turns out, had three friends, just like the ones we’ve been talking about. Their names were Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. While Job was crying out to God – asking Him why, and praying to God for relief, these three guys tried to tell Job, basically – it was all his fault. Listen to what Eliphaz says to Job:

Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. (Job 4:6-9)

In other words, Eliphaz is saying to Job, ‘Come on Job, it makes sense. God never punishes a good person or a righteous man. Obviously, you’ve must have done something wrong and that’s why your life is falling apart’.

Yeah, right! With friends like that, who needs enemies? And you see this chapter after chapter throughout the book of Job, these so-called friends – Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar – needling and criticising Job, rubbing salt in his wounds. I know you’ve been there and I know that one day, you and I are going to be in that place again.

Because our friends, and our loved ones they are not perfect, they are weak, fallible people just like you and me. They can’t always see what’s going on. They don’t always have the spiritual or the emotional maturity to perceive what God is doing in your life – or the faith they need.

Listen, friends and family are good. God blesses us with those people and that’s a wonderful thing. But when the chips are down, when God is putting your faith to the test, then it’s in that place that we need to get close to Him and hear His voice and trust in Him. Peter the Apostle puts it like this, 1 Peter 1: 6 – 9:

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Listen, friends and family are great, but there is no substitute in a storm for God Himself. That’s why God tests and strengthens your faith through trials and through suffering.

DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL Dark … nights … of the soul. I wonder what that means to you. I can tell you what it means to me. There have been those nights, over the years, when I’ve lain in bed, with fear racking my very being. Whether it was over a relationship issue, or my job, or finances … whatever it was … I could only sleep in fits and starts, because in the middle of those dark nights, things seemed so bad, so hopeless, that the despair consumed my whole being.

I remember one such night in a hotel when I was travelling for business back in February 1995, it was so bad, that I came this close to taking my own life the next morning. I remember it as though it were yesterday.

Fortunately, most of us tend not to have too many of those dark nights, but when you’re in the middle of a patch of suffering in your life, they become very real. And it’s no good saying to someone, ‘Well, you know, if you believed in God, everything would be fine. You wouldn’t feel like that.

Well, Jesus did. That night that He went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, we’re told that:

He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’ (Matthew 26:37-39)

Even Jesus was deeply grieved – even unto death. That right there, is a dark night of the soul. And, just as is always the case, when you’re having one of those, His friends were of no use to Him.

I remember back to those times in my life and God put some really, really good people around me. I thank God for them. But it seemed that nothing that they were able to do or to say, could touch my soul deeply enough to make a difference.

You look back on Easter – you hear the old, old story of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest and the trials and the beatings and the crucifixion and then the resurrection – and sometimes it’s easy to imagine that those things don’t have anything relevant to speak into our lives for the rest of the year. We go through Easter the ritual, but then we put it back in the cupboard and forget it for another year.

But for me, somehow, knowing that God understands my suffering, not just because He’s God and He knows everything, but because He’s actually been in my shoes. And He’s lived His own dark night of the soul, well that’s a huge comfort. It means I know that I know that I know that I’m talking to a God who totally gets it. Who doesn’t judge me in my pain, but whose heart aches for me. That’s a huge thing.

Now I wouldn’t wish a dark night like that on anyone. Not even on my worst enemy, yet they’re an absolute inevitability. I had the privilege and the pleasure to catch up with a man who is one of the giants in my life. He was the Pastor of the first church that I attended after I became a Christian. His name is Phil. And he showed me a photo of himself as a young man.

He was lying on a stretcher, after a car accident in which he’d been badly burned by an exploding fuel tank. After rolling in the dirt and the dust to put out the flames, he was unconscious, bandages all over him. He had not been a Christian all that long, and he was telling me what it was like to be there in the hospital, alone, doctors and nurses talking about whether he’d make it or not, and the septicaemia that was attacking his open wounds, the skin grafts that he would need.

Phil was a trained surveyor, and as he lay in that hospital bed in that dark, lonely place – a dark night of the soul if ever there was one – He spoke of God’s presence. He was thinking about the rest of his life, if he had much of it before him, and he came to the conclusion that God didn’t want him to be a surveyor for the rest of his life. It was in that place that he decided to become a pastor.

Now, many years on, at the retirement end of 40 plus years of pastoring, he can look back on a life in which he has touched so many people, so many lives with the love of Christ.

Those dark nights are often very important times in our lives, where God can connect with us in the most amazing way. Where our hearts, wounded and raw with pain, are open to receive something incredibly powerful from God.

We’ve been travelling a bit of a journey with Job, and it was a terrible time for him. Back in the Old Testament book of Job, we see how God gave the devil permission to strip everything away from the man. He was a good guy, a righteous man, who honoured God in everything he did.

Yet, God allowed his faith to be tested by letting the devil strip away one by one, each of the blessings that God had given him. His children, all his possessions, his wife, his friends, his reputation, even his health – he suffered in every sense of the word. He gets to a point finally where he says this to God, Job chapter 10: 1 to 4:

I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favour the schemes of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see?’

Pretty direct, don’t you think? He is telling God exactly what he thinks and feels. He’s laying his perspective right out there, in front of God. I think sometimes we think that we have to sanitise it for God, that somehow, before we go to God we need to put on our Sunday bests and put a smile on our face and go and tell God how rosy things are.

But in the midst of those dark nights, things aren’t rosy. They don’t look rosy, they don’t feel rosy and putting on a false face for God is just about the dumbest thing that anyone can do.

I want to encourage you in the middle of those places to pour out your heart and your soul to God. Tell Him exactly what you think; exactly what you feel. I want to encourage you today, that in the midst of your despair, your God is the one constant on whom you can rely. He is the one person who is faithful beyond all others.

MY REDEEMER LIVES A few years ago, Hillsong released an awesome worship song called ‘My Redeemer Lives’. It’s bouncy and happy and clappy and upbeat. It kicks off with these lyrics:

I know He rescued my soul, His blood has covered my sin I believe, I believe My shame is taken away, My pain is healed in His name I believe, I believe I’ll raise a banner, ‘Cause my Lord has conquered the graveMy Redeemer Lives, My Redeemer lives …

And the song goes on from there. It’s an awesome worship song. If you go to YouTube and search for it, you’ll find a whole bunch of young people with bright coloured t-shirts on, dancing and waving their hands and singing the song. I think it’s awesome.

But the very first time those words were uttered in the Bible, ‘My Redeemer lives’ was by a guy named Job, and that wasn’t the context. As we’ve seen all along in this series of messages, Job wasn’t all happy and clappy, Job was suffering terribly.

This good and godly man was tested by God as the Lord unleashed the devil into his life, and the devil took away each of Job’s blessings, one by one by one, even right down to his health, until he had nothing left.

Job was in huge pain, he struggled with God, and asked God what was he doing and why was this happening and when it would end? Just like you or I would have. Job was getting desperate, and as we’ve seen, even his friends, instead of encouraging him, were needling him and blaming him and rubbing salt in his wounds – undermining his confidence in God.

So, just in case you hear those words, My Redeemer Lives, and you’ve sung that great Hillsong chorus and you’re thinking happy clappy, let me share with you exactly what was going on for Job, in the verses leading up to this famous declaration that My Redeemer Lives. Just soak in these words and see the picture of devastation and destruction that he’s painting here for us. Job chapter 19, beginning at verse 8:

God has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. He has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree. He has kindled his wrath against me, and he counts me as his adversary. His troops come on together; they have thrown up siege works against me, and encamp around my tent. He has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

My relatives and my close friends have failed me; the guests in my house have forgotten me; my serving girls count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes. I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must myself plead with him. My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family. Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me. All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I have loved have turned against me.

My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?

O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. (Job 19: 8-25)

I mean, his life had completely been destroyed – everything is gone. The only thing that could be worse is that he could be dead, although, having said that, he muses elsewhere that, that might indeed have been a better outcome.

Now if you or I were crying out those terrible words, if you or I were summing up our terrible pain and our loss in those very words, what conclusion would we come to? How would we draw all that litany of disaster together and summarise it? I suspect that many a man and many a woman would come to the conclusion that there’s simply no hope left.

And yet at the end of all that he says, ‘Wow! I wish all this were written down for others to see and to know – because in the middle of all this disaster, I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES!’

What a conclusion to come to! What a man of God! How did he get to that place? How can he come to such a conclusion?

Well, here’s the answer. Job was a man who lived his life for God. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. His heart was set like flint toward honouring God with everything he was and everything he had. Right at the beginning of the book of Job chapter 1, verse 1 this is what we’re told:

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

That’s the thing. When we get our lives in order before the storm hits, then when the storm comes, while it still hurts, while we still have questions for God – why and how long being the two most common – whilst we will certainly have friends who misunderstand us and make it worse; deep, deep, deep in our hearts, we will be able to declare in the face of every demon that hell can muster and throw against us, we will still be able to declare with boldness and an uncommon courage, that MY REDEEMER LIVES.

And that’s what counts. When everything else fails, this one thing stands: My Redeemer Lives. And that counts for everything. That’s what matters. In fact it’s the only thing that matters.

Perhaps, you’re going through a tough patch at the moment and if not, we both know, don’t we, that the next tough patch is out there somewhere, just waiting for us to catch up with it.

So let me encourage you with this: when the suffering begins, worship God through every moment, thank Him, bless His name, draw close to Him. Because He is there to travel through every moment of it with you. And come what may, no matter how terrible it gets – may you stand up and declare, My Redeemer Lives.

So far, as I look back on the most difficult days of my life, all the dark nights of the soul, what I know is this: my record for surviving them so far is 100%. Hey, that’s not such a bad track record is it? And I’d hazard a guess that you too have a perfect score – a 100% track record for surviving your worst days.

The other obvious truth is that those days will always pass. They did for Job. Have a listen to how it all ended, Job chapter 42, verses 10 and 16:

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations. And Job died, old and full of days.

In other words, God gave Job double for his trouble, and allowed him to live to a ripe old age. So is God going to give you and me double for our trouble? I really don’t know. Sometimes He does, other times He doesn’t. But what I do know is this: God’s blessings are greater than anything that we can imagine, and He always finds ways to bring His blessings to pass in our lives.

Is God going to allow you and me to live to a ripe old age and full of days? Again, I don’t know what His plan is for you or for me. But this I do know – that as we persevere, as we get out of bed every morning and do our best to honour Him and to bless others – Jesus is away preparing a place for us, for you and for me, in our Father’s house. So that we can spend eternity in His Presence and behold His glory. Feast on His glory for ever and ever and ever amen.

That, you’d have to say, is not such a bad ending. In the meantime, I can tell you this, beyond any shadow of a doubt, ‘My Redeemer Lives’. How about yours?

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Way too many Christians are way too timid in their prayer lives. Now, I’m not saying be belligerent and demanding, but let me tell you, if your faith is in Jesus … you have a lot more power in your prayer than you realised.

OUR FAITH IN CHRIST Well, welcome to this last program in the four part series that I’ve called, “The Power of Prayer”. Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at this whole prayer thing – “Bridging the Communication Gap”. You know sometimes we’re so busy, we’re running around we’re running around doing things. We just don’t take the time to spend with God. Then we saw how Jesus taught us to pray, just a humble, simple communication. Not trying to impress God or trying to impress anyone else, just spending time humbly before Him.

And then last week we saw what it meant to pray with power. This is so important. Last week on the program we saw time and time again God’s Word teaches us to pray with boldness, not with arrogance, but with a confidence in who God is and who we are in Christ Jesus.

When we talk about prayer one of the questions that comes up is, “Well, what can I ask God for? I mean, can I go to God and ask Him for anything? What if I want a flash new car, can I ask Him for that? Or a pay rise, or healing? How come sometimes He answers some peoples prayers for things like that and not others?” We’re going to take a look at that on the program today, because you know something, it’s an important question.

On the one hand, absolutely, we should pray with boldness because that’s what God’s word tells us to do. But on the other, in our me-centric world, and we’re all a product of that somehow aren’t we, it’s easy to get things the wrong way around.

We put ‘me’ at the centre and then we expect God to dance around to our tune. On the other hand, didn’t Jesus say, “Ask for whatever you wish and it will be given to you. And you haven’t received yet because you haven’t asked. See the dilemma.

On the one hand God is God. He’s Sovereign, He’s almighty. His thoughts aren’t our thoughts, His ways aren’t our ways. And yet He teaches over and over again to pray with a faith and a boldness and a perseverance and belief, as Paul puts it in Ephesians Chapter 1, “In the Power that we have”, with a capital ‘P’. Now how do we resolve this dilemma? How do we get it right? What are we missing here in our understanding about this apparent conflict? For me it starts and ends with a deep faith in Jesus.

I was just reading this morning in my own devotion time the Gospel of Luke Chapter 6. Grab a Bible if you have one and open it up with me. Chapter 6 verse 17:

Jesus went down with the people and stood on a level place. There was a large crowd of His disciples and a great number of people from Judea, from Jerusalem and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon and they had come to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured and the people all tried to touch Him because power was coming from Him and healing them.”

See, power was coming from Him. The Greek word for power is ‘dunamis’ we get the word dynamite. We are talking serious power was coming from Jesus and people were getting healed. We have to look at what it says before then. You see it says that they had come to hear him and be healed from all their diseases. That’s verse 18 of chapter 6 of Luke’s gospel. And there’s the key. We need to be open to who Jesus is and what He has to say. Jesus said some outrageous things. Love your enemy for starters. Forgive people. Call God “Dad” which is very radical. He ushered in a power, radical love.

He hung around sinners and lepers and prostitutes and healed the lame, the blind on the Sabbath when he shouldn’t have. And criticised the religious establishment for its hypocrisy. This Jesus, this unconventional saviour, that you just can’t easily put it in a box somewhere. We need to be moved by Him. Influenced by Him.

These people were open to Him. Listen to it again:

A large of disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They came to hear Him and to be healed of all their diseases”. They were moved by Him, they were influenced by Him, they were open to Him and so they experienced His power.

Somehow, you know, this seems to happen the right way up. Instead of creating God in our image to suit ourselves, these people were experiencing God as He was and is and accepting Him and so His power manifested itself in that place. They experienced His power.

Just a bit beforehand, if you flick back a couple of pages to Luke Chapter 4 beginning at verse 19 and onwards, you read about how they rejected Him in His own home town of Nazareth. They drove Him out. He didn’t do any miracles there. There was not much power happening there. It turns out that we need to accept Him for who He is on His terms and not ours, and then the power of God flows.

The same is true in Prayer. This kind of “I’m-at-the-centre-of-the-universe” thing and “God-is-there-to-serve-me” attitude is not where it’s at. Sometimes teenagers can have that view. If you’re a parent you know it doesn’t always get them anywhere with you does it? If anything, that attitude causes the parent to withhold blessing rather than to pour it out. No, these people have come to hear Jesus and then they were healed of diseases.

Here was Jesus on a level place with a large crowd who had come to hear him. The question is, when we come in prayer do we come to hear Him? Do we give Him sway in our heart? When His word is hard to accept, painful even; when He tells us to forgive someone we don’t want to forgive; when he calls us to let go of our pride or to humble ourselves before arrogant people; when He calls us to sacrifice, do we put Him first?

Do we give Jesus true Lordship in our lives? Do we let His kingdom, His reign, His authority, His rule, His will override everything else? All of our selfish desires.

Do we come to Him in prayer? To hear Him? Have we got the creator/creature relationship the right way up? Or when He has something difficult to say are we like the people in His own home town. “Who the heck does He think He is?”

Jesus did some specific and powerful teaching on exactly this issue, when it comes to Him answering prayer. Right towards the end, just before He was crucified, we will look at this teaching next.

WHEN JESUS MOVES OUR HEART There’s power in prayer? Absolutely, there is! There’s power when we come to Jesus. The problem is so often, even without realising it, we come to Him on our own terms. We want Him to do it our way, not His. I was struggling with an issue recently. It was something in an organization, and you know something, I wanted a certain outcome. ‘I’ wanted! The question though, was for me, what did Jesus want? Well, what was His wisdom, what was His will? Was I prepared to go to Him and say, “Lord, this is how I see it, but actually, You know what I want more than anything else? I want Your will to be done.” Just like Jesus in Gethsemane, He prayed, “Father, if You can take this cup of suffering and make it pass from Me, do it, but not My will; let Your will be done.”

None of us likes to suffer, do we? Never fun – Jesus didn’t want to suffer, but sometimes that’s what we are called to. Sometimes we are called into situations where on the surface, we lose and we want our outcome but are we prepared to make Jesus Christ Lord and live with His outcome?

Have a listen to how Jesus taught His disciples on this issue – this paradox of prayer; this key that unlocks the power of prayer. If you’ve got a Bible, flick it open to John, chapter 5 – John’s Gospel, fourth Book in the New Testament – chapter 5, beginning at verse 5. “Jesus said:

“I’m the vine, you’re the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you’ll bear much fruit because apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone doesn’t remain in Me, they’re like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Branches like that are picked up and thrown into the fire and burned, but if you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you. This is to My Dad’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.”

Isn’t that a great picture – the grapevine and the branches? Well, it’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Unless the branch is in the stem of the vine it can’t produce fruit. Grapes produce wine and there are symbols throughout Scripture of God’s abundant blessing and the vine is the place where they get their life. And Jesus says:

“Apart from Me you can do nothing. If you don’t remain in Me, you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to wither and die.”

What does that mean – ‘remain in Me’? Well He goes on to explain that – look at verse 7. “If you remain in Me and My words remain in you” – see there’s a big ‘if’ here – ‘if’ you dwell in Me, ’if’ you abide in Me, ’if’ you stay close in a permanent relationship and bond with Me, I’ll give you life.

“And if My words remain in you” – there is it again; just what we were looking at earlier – “My words remain in you” – if you give Me sway in your heart, everything I’ve taught; everything I am; sacrifice; if those things have sway in your heart and you are close to Me, then, “ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you.”

Why this caveat? Well, it’s about the Lordship of Christ in our lives. If we put Him first; if we grow in Him; if His Word is ‘the’ thing that sways our hearts, no matter what the cost, then we have the relationship the right way up.

Then more that anything, we’ll want His will to be done. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.” The very first part of what Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer is getting the relationship with God the right way up. If that’s where we are, then we can ask whatever we wish and it will be given to us.

Why can Jesus make such a sweeping statement? Because it’s to those in whose hearts He has complete sway; it’s to those who call Him ‘Lord’ and truly mean it; it’s for those who have made Him Lord in their lives and will sacrifice their lives for Him. It’s for those who, more that anything, want His will to be done and those one’s He can trust with a promise like that.

I don’t know how it is for you but in my walk with Jesus, it’s a journey. It’s been progressively learning and growing and maturing and getting my actions in line with my heart. Putting this stuff into practise, takes practise and time.

And time after time He’s called me to lay things down along the way – to sacrifice things I wanted, so His will could be done. To leave my six-figure consulting salary and trade it in for a minister’s salary so that God’s Word could be proclaimed around the world. And you know each time I’ve done that, it’s turned out to be a great joy and a great blessing.

But you know, He tests our hearts – He give us an opportunity to live out what’s in our heart and now when I come to Him, I take great care in what I ask for. You know why? Because I want His will to be done first. I know I can ask for anything I wish, but above all, I want His will to be done and for Him to be glorified.

I know the reason for the promise is for His glory. See what He said at the end? He says, “This is for My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.” See, it’s all about Him – not about me – it’s not about you. And so I ask for things that will bring Him honour. Sometimes I have needs – real needs – and I bring those to Him. Sometimes I see needs out there in other people or ministries or whatever, and I go and pray for those.

I take this promise really seriously, because I know that it’s for me. So I honour Him with all my will and my wishes. When we lay our lives down, that’s where the power is in prayer – when Jesus moves our hearts; when He’s truly Lord of our lives, that’s where the power is in prayer.

THE POWER TO CHANGE Over these last four weeks we have been looking at prayer from God’s perspective and my prayer for you has been that you get a whole fresh perspective on what prayer is about. It’s not about you and me trying to weasel stuff out of a stingy God – it’s not that at all. God knows what we are going to ask for and what our needs are before we even open our mouths.

But you know, sometimes, old habits, old perceptions – they die hard. I believe God want’s us to do away with those right now – that He wants a people who know the power of prayer and have the power to change – the power to change their own lives and the power to change the world for the glory of Jesus Christ through prayer.

Before the break we talked about the Lordship of Christ. Have you ever done this – have you ever truly made Jesus Christ Lord – Lord of everything? Lord of every decision; the Lord at whose feet we lay down our pride and our anger and our un-forgiveness and our selfishness.

Not just believing in Jesus at a distance; not just some quick prayer when you need something – not that. The Lord of all in your life, of everything! Maybe you’ve laid your life down before Him, maybe once, a long tome ago, maybe never. Maybe it’s something you’d like to do again, now.

We are going to pray a prayer, if you want to make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life – if you just want to renew that in your life, why don’t you pray with me now.

“Father God, You know each one of us; You know our hearts; You know our strengths and our weaknesses; You know our failures; You know our insecurities; You know every hair on our heads. Father, as we have heard Your Word today; the beautiful words of Jesus, we feel Your Spirit calling us forward, to bow down our lives before You. Father, we just want to come right now and admit our own failure and our own sin and our own rejection of You. Lord, our pride, our arrogance; all the things that we just know aren’t from You. And Father, we just say please forgive us. We put our faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross and we just ask that You would forgive us those things. Father we just invite You to be the Lord of our life. Lord Jesus come and rule and reign in our lives. We bow our lives down to You today, for all eternity, no matter what the cost; no matter what the sacrifice; no matter what You call us to, we truly want You to be the Lord of our lives. Father we just thank You that as we pray this prayer, You don’t leave us on our own to live it out. We thank You that Your Holy Spirit brings resurrection life to our bodies. Holy Spirit come and fill us; fill us to overflowing with the live of Jesus. Lord, let us carry the death of Jesus around in our body, so that we can experience His life. We know there are going to be hard days. We know it’s not going to be always easy. We know, Lord, that we are going to make mistakes and stumble along the way but from this moment on, Jesus, we make You the Lord of our lives. We pray this in Your name. Amen.”

That prayer is about making Jesus Christ Lord and when we do that – simply, gently, yet radically, day by day, walk with Him – what we discover is power in our prayer. First Peter chapter 3, verse 12, says:

“The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Prayer is the power to change. Without prayer there is no power from God. Doing things in our own strength – our own strength is so puny and so inadequate, so flaky, so tiny, compared to the unimaginably great power of God.

You know, I recently, in the ministry, produced a Newsletter that goes out to all the supporters of Christianityworks and we have a great team of people here – people putting together stories and pictures just to share with our supporters the wonderful things God’s been doing – testimonies from around the world.

One of our board members owns an advertising agency and a wonderful Christian designer, a lady by the name of Mel, did the layout and design and when I saw it, I was so excited. It was so vibrant and beautiful and inspiring and I looked at it with delight at what God had produced through the team here and as I did, I felt the Holy Spirit say this to me, “Now pray that your Father in heaven will bless all of your supporters with the knowledge of what He as been doing through their gifts and prayers.”

And you know, I would almost have sent that Newsletter out without praying that prayer. But you know, the Holy Spirit was right, because without Him, we can do nothing. I wanted that Newsletter to bless the people that support this ministry – how did I possibly think that we would do that without inviting God; without saying, “Jesus, You are Lord, this is Your work. Bless this into the hearts of all the people who support the ministry.”

It doesn’t matter what we do – it doesn’t matter how good it is in the world’s eyes, unless He’s in it; unless His Spirit goes ahead and opens hearts, it won’t deliver the joy of the Lord that it was meant to. And that’s true in everything in life! We can race ahead and think, “God will just show up.” There’s power in prayer – prayer is the power to change – prayer is joining hands with the Lord to do His will. Think about it! The God who created all the stars in the whole universe – trillions of them – joining hands with Him to see His will done here on earth.

That’s what prayer is and part of His will is to bless you and me – part of His will is to provide for you and me – part of His will is to bring healing into relationships, to put food on our table. He wants to do all that, He’s our Dad, He loves us. But prayer is about joining hands with God and seeing His will done.

I’m not a great prayer – I’m not some super-spiritual prayer – you know, what I just try to do is, most mornings, I sit down with God. I just rest with Him and say, “Lord, you know, I’d love these programmes to be heard by more people. I just want to see Your Word change more and more lives”, and just through that simple prayer – no more than that – in two years we have millions of people listening to the programmes each week. That’s God; that’s prayer! It doesn’t get any better than that, does it? That’s the sort of prayer Jesus spoke about – that’s the sort of prayer the Bible talks about – it’s awesome.

We lay our lives down and just come to Him simply and humbly and say, “Lord, I want to join hands with You to do Your will.” We can ask for anything and it will be done for us.

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Prayer is not always what we think it is. We expect instant results. But God’s ways aren’t our ways’ His thoughts aren’t our thoughts. Which is why Jesus told some strange parables about prayer.

A FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT Today we are continuing on our series called the, “Power of Prayer”. And over the last couple of weeks we’ve been looking at ‘how to pray’ and it’s pretty simple; it’s pretty straightforward. Prayer is a humble, genuine communication with God. It’s not about show, it’s not about impressing other people or impressing God.

It’s just coming humbly before Him and communicating – listening to Him and speaking with Him. Just like people communicate, just like a husband and wife communicate – telling it how it is. And, look, if you’ve missed any part of the series so far, you can listen to it again online at our website: www.christianityworks.com.

Today we are going to look at more teaching on prayer. The Bible teaches us to pray with persistence and with boldness. Hang on a minute, how does that work? We’ve just been talking about humility – surely I have to bow and scrape and whimper and kow-tow or whatever I have to do? I mean, if God is God and I’m me, praying with boldness kind of seems a bit counter-intuitive?

I guess we can get boldness and arrogance all mixed up. On the one hand, if my children come to me with arrogance and ask me for something, well, they’re unlikely to get very far. But if they come in a quiet confidence knowing I’m their dad; knowing that they’re my kids and because of that relationship they can come to me with any need – now there’s a whole different ball-game.

Let me say it again. God’s Word, the Bible, teaches us to pray with boldness; with a quiet assurance that God’s our Dad and that based on what Jesus has done for you and me, we can ask Him for anything.

Now today we’re going to have a look at three, apparently contrasting passages about bold prayer. And the first one – at first glance – appears as though we have to, well, kind of whimper when we pray. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it. We’re going to open it up at Luke chapter 11 and we are going to look at it from verse 5 – Luke chapter 11 beginning at verse 5 – just after where Jesus teaches His disciples how to pray the Lord’s Prayer.

Now have a listen to what He goes on to teach them after He teaches them the Lord’s Prayer. It comes through a parable; a story and this one is definitely worth unpacking.

Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says to him, ”Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have nothing to set before him.” Then the one inside answers, “Don’t bother me. The door is already locked; my children are in bed with me – I can’t get up to get you anything.” I tell you, though he won’t get up and give him the bread because he’s a friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

See at the start of the parable, it kind of looks like we have to grovel. The picture is this: Jesus is saying that prayer looks like this – imagine it’s the middle of the night and you have a visitor and they’ve just arrived and you open the cupboard and there’s not enough to give the guy a sandwich. So you think, “Well, what I’ll do is I’ll go and knock on my neighbour’s door and borrow the proverbial cup of sugar or the loaf of bread.”

“But it’s the middle of the night – the neighbour doesn’t want to get up – why would he?” But ultimately, Jesus says the neighbour won’t get up because it’s convenient; he won’t get up because you’re his neighbour; he won’t get up because you’re his friend; he’ll get up because of your boldness and your persistence.

And notice this parable is not about borrowing one loaf of bread, it’s says, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread.” In the middle of the night, what’s wrong with two slices? You know, I don’t think, when we come to God with a need, we can inconvenience Him. You know, He’s a 24/7 God and the implication of this parable is not that God is asleep and we waking Him up but it argues from a lesser to a greater. Jesus is saying, “Look, here’s a story, you know it, if you go and knock your neighbour’s door in the middle of the night, he won’t want to get up but ultimately, if you’re bold and you persist, the neighbour will get up and get you the three loaves of bread.

Now if a neighbour will do that, how much more will God respond to your boldness? Look at what Jesus says straight after that, so He says:

“So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you dads, if your child comes and asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, you will give him a scorpion. If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your kids, how much more will your Dad in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

See Jesus is teaching us to pray with boldness. Why? Because we’ve got a relationship with Dad; because we believe in Jesus and so He is our Dad in heaven and He does want to meet our needs.

Do you believe in Jesus? Then He’s your God and you are one of His children. In fact, if you look at that parable, the man who was asleep in the night, where were his children? His children were in bed with him and it’s the same thing – God is our Dad. We’re not some neighbour that has to knock from next door to come in.

God is Dad and He wants to meet our needs and we go to Him at midnight and say, “Dad, lend me three loaves of bread” and of course, He’s going to respond. You see, there is a ‘right’ boldness when we approach God. There is a ‘right’ boldness.

It’s not about groveling and yes, sometimes we have to persist in prayer – yes, sometimes we have to ask God again and again and again because He gives in His timing. And as we will see a bit later in the programme, sometimes He tests our persistence and He tests our faith. But the main thing here, that Jesus in teaching through this parable, is that we can be bold in prayer.

We’ve got a relationship; our faith is in believing with God that He will intervene. If we have a need, faith is that God will show up. If we have a hurt, faith is believing that God will heal. What can we ask for? Just about anything if we have a right relationship with Him and we’ll look at that a bit more next week. But the purpose of this parable is to say prayer is something that we should do in boldness and persistence.

PRAYING WITH POWER We are talking today about praying with power. You know, it rolls of the tongue so easily, doesn’t it? But it is much harder to live that out and when we know that we’ve failed; when we see who God is and how far we fall short of that; when we look at how other people seem to have all their acts together and we compare ourselves with mister or miss’s super Christian next door, you think, “Me? Me? Me, pray with power? No I don’t think so. I think that’s for other people, not for me. I have to come and whimper and grovel and pick up the scraps on the ground.”

You know, even if we are feeling just like that, we have to have the strength of conviction.

There was a time when Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon and a Canaanite woman from the vicinity came to Him crying, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.” Jesus didn’t say a word, so His disciples came to Him and said, “Look, Jesus, send her away. She keeps crying out after us – she’s a bother, a nuisance. And He said, “Well, you know, I was only sent for the lost sheep of Israel.” And the woman came and knelt before Him and said, “Lord, help me.” He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and to toss it to the dogs.” “Yes, Lord,” she said, “But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.” And Jesus looked at her and said, “Woman you have great faith. You’re request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

You know, Jesus response seems to be cold and it seems to be brutal. He says, “I only came for Israel,” and this woman was a Canaanite; she wasn’t an Israelite. Then He say, “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs,” because, you see, the Jews referred to the Gentiles as ‘dogs’. And in the face of that she says, “But Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”

And then Jesus shows everybody else what He was up to. Jesus knew this woman had faith; Jesus knew this woman had boldness. And this story has been kept for two thousand years – for you and me – to show us what He is like. Jesus defies everyone’s expectations. Why? Because this woman was bold about her faith and she put her faith in who Jesus was. He tested her – you know, it wasn’t a softly, softly approach – He tested her to show those around him and to show us what it means to persist and come to Him in prayer.

And that’s exactly what the Apostle Paul talks about in the first chapter of Ephesians. Got a Bible? Open it up at verse 17. Now have a listen to what Paul says about this whole issue of power. Just in that passage, where we looked at Matthew chapter 15, about this woman – we saw her persistence and boldness. And now I want to talk about power. This is what Paul writes – Ephesians chapter 1, verse 17:

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened so that you would know the hope to which He has called you; the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for those of us who believe.

That power is like the working of His might strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand; far above any name or authority or rule or power or dominion on this earth, far above every title that can be given, not only in this present age but also in the age to come. God placed things under Jesus’ feet and appointed Him to be the head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.

Paul is saying, “I wish that you would get some wisdom and revelation, that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened”. In other words, get a revelation – wake up! As you get to know God better, open your eyes. There are three things that you already have if you believe in Jesus.

The first one is a certain hope, the second one is the riches of our glorious inheritance and the third one is incomparably great power for us who believe. The same power, in fact, that raised Christ from the dead and makes it so that He is seated above everything in the universe. That’s power – far above all rule, authority, power, dominion.

Does Paul say, “Go and whimper and ask God for strength and power? No! He’s saying, “I am praying for you to wake up to the power you have already got in Jesus. Wake up! Live a life of victory!” None of us has everything together, but we are not relying on our power, we’re relying on God’s power and He says, “incomparably great power”.

If I had to take those Greek words and I guess transliterate them into English, it would come out something like this – hyper-ballistic, megathonic dynamite. That’s what the words; the Greek words, kind of literally come across as. Incomparably great power – hyper-ballistic, megathonic dynamite. Like, Paul is going way over the top here in talking about God’s power.

Imagine there’s a room full of dynamite and we have this little fuse called ‘Jesus’ and we have this little spark called ‘faith’ that lights the fuse. Where does the power come from? The little spark? No! The power comes from the dynamite.

It’s time to shake ourselves up with the Word of God and say, “WOW! This is how God sees prayer.” “WOW! Maybe I’ve been missing the point; maybe it’s not about my power – got nothing to do with my power.” You see, we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us. Do you get it? The whole point in the relationship is that He has the power and in Christ He has already given this resurrection, new life power to you and me.

Now that doesn’t mean that our God is a pet dog who jumps through hoops on command. That’s not it at all. It’s not some slot machine where you put a coin in and pull the handle – we’ll look at that some more next week. But Jesus and Paul both taught very clearly that, firstly we need to pray boldly and persistently and secondly we can rely on the power that we already have through Jesus Christ. Have to tell you – He’s never let me down. He’s never not been there when I’ve needed Him.

And maybe it’s time to change our whole perspective on prayer. Instead of praying for power, we need to start praying with power – the power that we have when we put our faith in Jesus Christ.

BOLDLY BEFORE THE THRONE OF GRACE I trust by now that, as we unpack God’s Word, we are getting the picture that He means business when it comes to prayer. Sometimes, you know, we can feel weak and inadequate and like total failures and other times we kind of have this vague, nagging suspicion that maybe my prayer is not good enough. But I tell you, anybody who is prepared to bow their lives down to Jesus Christ has the right to come boldly before the throne of grace.

How do we know that? Because that’s exactly what God’s Word says. Hebrews chapter 4, beginning at verse 14, says something along these lines:

Jesus isn’t just some god in heaven. He’s walked in our shoes; He’s been through every trial and temptation that we have to deal with so He gets it. He understands exactly what we are going through and because of that we can come boldly before the throne of grace with a quiet confidence that we’ll find grace and mercy just in time to meet our every need. He gets it!

I love this phrase – ‘come boldly before the throne of grace’ because it speaks of a confidence, not in me; not in you; not in ourselves, but in Jesus – in what He has done for you and me. Because when He died on that cross He paid for my sin, my failure and when I put my faith in Him, when you put your faith in Him, we have free access to God. We can draw near to God because we are forgiven.

Jesus has been hot and bothered; He’s been disappointed; He’s been through everything that you and I will ever have to travel through and then some; temptation; other people failing Him. You name it, He has been there. Yes, He’s God in heaven. Yes, He knows everything. But you know something, He doesn’t just know it because He’s God, He knows it because He’s been there.

And that’s why we can come as we are and that’s why we don’t have to be afraid and sit down and pray, “Lord, you know something Lord, today I blew it and I’m sorry – forgive me.” Can I share with you a phone message from a listener that I received the other day that kind of says it all? He’s a young man, he says:

“I’m only a new Christian – I’ve only been with the Lord, probably about ten weeks and you know, I’ve been going great guns and then I had a night when I went out drinking and I told my friend, whose not a Christian, I wasn’t sure if I could be a Christian any more. I felt real terrible about it and I thought I had really blown the whole thing with God. It’s only when you came on the radio tonight that I realised that that’s why Jesus died for me. I want to say God bless you guys and thank God for His grace. God bless you, man. God bless you, He was awesome tonight.”

See, this young man was exactly where you and I sometimes are. “I blew it! God couldn’t possibly be pleased with me”. And right at that point God comes along and says, “Come boldly before the throne of grace.” You know what ‘grace’ is? Grace is unmerited favour! Let me say that again – ‘grace is unmerited favour.’ In other words, it’s favour that we don’t deserve. If you deserve it, it’s not grace – if you deserve it’s something you deserve. If its grace, by definition, you don‘t deserve it.

So this phrase ‘come boldly before the throne of grace,’ means exactly when you don’t feel worthy; when you don’t feel like God will listen to you; when you don’t feel you could possibly approach God, that is the moment to come boldly before the throne of grace – because grace is unmerited favour. And the only reason we can do that is because of what Jesus did for you and me.

You know, when we pray in Jesus name – it’s not some formula; it’s not some ritual – it’s fact. The only way that we can approach God; that we can ask Him for anything, is through the cross of Christ where the price for my rejection of God and the price for your rejection of God, has been paid for in full and then some.

The price that God paid for our sin is so huge; it so vastly exceeds the fullest extent of my sin and yours that we can always throw ourselves on the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, because that is what Jesus suffered and died to purchase for us.

And the truth is without Him we are never good enough. Can I encourage you today – it is time to pray boldly. It is time to pray persistently. It is time to pray with the power that we already have through Jesus Christ – to come boldly before the throne of grace, to pray with power. Anything less than that is less than what God planned for us. Anything less than that is less than what His Word specifically says that prayer is.

“But Berni, right now I feel so weak and so inadequate”. Right now is the time to come boldly before the throne of grace and pray with power.

Father we ask You, that as we have listened to Your Word proclaimed today, Lord, that Your Holy Spirit would take it and write it on our hearts. Lord, give us a confidence in who You are and what You have done for us through Jesus Christ. Give us a boldness to come to You at the time when we need mercy and grace; at the time when we just don’t deserve it and come to You and cast all our cares, all our failures, all our fears, all our concerns, all our hopes, all our dreams, on Your grace. Lord, we just take You at Your Word today because of what Jesus has done, that we can come boldly before Your throne of grace with a quiet confidence that we will find grace and mercy just in time to meet our every need. Father, we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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When we go to God to pray, all too often we head in with a shopping list don’t we? “I need this … I need that … oh God please help me with this … oh God please end my pain and suffering … oh God” … but what if I told you that by and large, at least according to Jesus, prayer isn’t all about me. It’s not all about … you.

IT’S NOT ABOUT ME This week on the programme we are continuing in our series: “The Power of Prayer”. I don’t think we can really talk about prayer without looking at how Jesus taught His disciples to pray. And of course, that teaching in the Lord’s Prayer has been recorded for us down through the centuries and it’s still available to us, here and now.

Now there’s no record of Jesus teaching them how to preach. You’d think, if He was getting all these disciples together and He wanted them to go out and form the church after He was crucified and rose again and ascended into heaven, we’d have some record of Jesus teaching them to preach. But no. The record that we have is of Jesus teaching them to pray.

And that makes sense. I mean it was pretty clear that Jesus had the most amazing relationship with His Dad in heaven. Of course, we believe in the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three persons. One God for all eternity. But the incarnation was something special.

When Jesus became a man, He laid His glory aside. He became one of us. He had to establish a relationship with His Dad in heaven in just the same way as we do. And time and time again, you see Jesus stealing away on His own, to pray. When the crowds were after Him. When the disciples wanted Him. So often, He’d gone off quietly on His own to pray.

And obviously He had a really special relationship. In the Lord’s Prayer, He actually teaches us how to pray. Now we are going to look at that in a bit of detail today, so if you’ve got a Bible, grab it. Open it up at Matthew chapter 6. It blows me away – it’s such an awesome place. Jesus teaching on how to pray.

There’s got to be some power in that and there is. There’s power in prayer and there are some amazing gems in there that I think if we want a powerful prayer life, we need to unpack the Lord’s Prayer just a little bit. And that’s what we are going to do today.

Most people kind of know the words that we call the Lord’s Prayer. You know:

Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be Your name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Those words were actually spoken by Jesus and they are very well known. But what we sometimes miss are the words that He spoke just before that. The teaching that He gave to His disciples that sets the context of prayer. Have a listen to what Jesus actually said – you’ll pick it up in Matthew chapter 6, beginning at verse 5. This is what He said:

And when you pray don’t be like the hypocrites – those people love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners and to be seen by everyone. I tell you the truth; they’ve received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Dad who is unseen, because then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, don’t keep on babbling like the pagans. They think they’ll be heard because of their many words. No, don’t be like them because your Father knows what you need even before you ask Him.

There are two parts to that – let’s take a look at them. Let’s see exactly what Jesus said and He seems to be talking about, “don’t think about impressing other people; don’t be like the hypocrites – those people love to stand up in the synagogues and on the street corners and to be seen by everyone.”

You know something; prayer is not about impressing other people. And it’s not about impressing God. Look, “Don’t keep babbling like the pagans because they think they will be heard because of their many words. Don’t be like them.”

I have listened to people pray, particularly when I’d just become a Christian and I’d listen to them and go, “wow! You know, those people can pray like I could never pray. I’m sure God’s going to listen to them; He’s not going to listen to me because I don’t have those sorts of words.”

And Jesus is saying, no, that’s not what it’s about. It’s not about ‘me’. I’m not at the centre of prayer – it’s not about me impressing anyone; it’s not about me impressing God.

And you know what I think we sometimes do? We start off in prayer with this underlying thing, it’s about me. Yet the first thing that Jesus taught people about prayer is that it’s not about us – it’s not about you or me, we are not in the centre of the universe. And how does He teach us that? You don’t have to begin by impressing anyone. In fact, prayer is not about impressing anybody.

What a blessed release! I don’t have to learn a formula; I don’t have to look good, or sound good or anything else. The starting point for prayer is not about me, it’s not about you. You know where the power is in all of this? The very teaching of Jesus about prayer is to get the ’me’ out of the way – my ego, my self, what other people think of me, what God thinks of me. Jesus is saying, “Wake up. No”.

Can I tell you? I think that this is one of the most important lessons to learn about praying. There’s power in laying the ‘me’ down. There’s power in laying our ego aside – when we do that we usher something new and something fresh and something powerful and something exciting in.

When you pray don’t be like the hypocrites who love to stand in the synagogues and on the street corners and to be seen by everyone. I tell you the truth; they have already received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father who sees what you are doing in secret will reward you. And secondly, when you pray, don’t keep babbling – don’t think it’s about lots of words. The pagans think that they will be heard because of their words. Don’t be like them because your Father already knows what you need before you ask Him. Don’t try and impress anybody, just come and pray.

Well, if the ‘me’ is no longer at the centre of this prayer thing, who or what is?

HALLOWED BY THY NAME Well, let’s have a look at how Jesus taught His disciples to pray – to pray with power. The first thing Jesus teaches us, as we have just looked at, is firstly, do it in secret. Prayer is a personal, private, intimate thing – it’s not for show; it’s not to impress other people. You think about husband and wife communication – the deep things, the important things. How do they talk about those? In private!

The second thing is it’s not about a lot of words. We talked just before the break about the fact it’s not some formula – we don’t have to impress God somehow; it’s exactly the opposite. We just get to sit down with Him, and tell Him in our own words, the way we see it.

Now let’s look at how Jesus teaches us to pray. He begins:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

There are two words in the New Testament for ‘Father’ – “Abba” – Dad – which is a kind of a close, familiar, tender expression. But that’s not the one that’s used here.

The one that’s used here is “Pater” – from which we get ‘patriarch’ or ‘paternal’ – it’s the more formal approach. “My Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name” – what does it mean to ‘hallow’ – it means to make holy; to venerate; to honour; to bow down. So the beginning of prayer for Jesus is to worship God.

See, we said just before, “it’s not about me!” Well this is the very thing that Jesus is saying. “It’s about God first. It’s about worshiping Him.” It’s an amazing thing, when we worship God, when we reach into our heart and soul and spirit and gaze upon Him – our Father in heaven – and we honour Him and revere Him and worship Him.

I have to tell you, just that one thing in my prayer life, has transformed me from the tough, hardnosed businessman, with an ego the size of a small planet – always trying to feed that; always trying to impress people; constantly peddling harder and faster to be the ‘me’ I think other people want me to be.

In worship I loose sight of that. In worship I forget myself. I don’t have to do that anymore. I get the ‘me’ out of the road and just worship God and that’s an awesome thing. There’s a peace and a joy and a security and a sweet delight in that – don’t have to impress anyone anymore.

Worshipping God is the most selfless thing we can do. And when we can get the ’me’ out of the road – “Yipee!” – I have peace. I lay the ‘me’ down. I die to the ‘me’ and become alive to God, to the Father, with a joy unspeakable. I don’t know, I just can’t put it into words any more than that.

Prayer isn‘t first and foremost about me, it’s about You, Father. The needs, the shopping list – there’s a place for them. We’ll come to those later. But first God wants us to behold Him. to experience Him. And the way that we do that is by worshipping Him.

I used to start off with my shopping list but now I start off by focusing on Him. You know what happens? His power takes a hold of me and changes me and cleans away the rubbish and sets my heart at peace. Why did it take me so long to figure this out, I wonder?

And the very next thing that Jesus says when He’s teaching us how to pray – it’s kind of like … it’s like a physical outworking of that worship. Have a listen:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Now that I’ve lost myself in You, Lord, come and reign in my heart; be my King. That is what ‘Your Kingdom come’ means – the reign; the rule; the Kingship of God in our hearts.

“God, I don’t just want to worship You now, I want to live out that worship. I want Your Kingdom to come. I want You to be my Lord. I want Your Kingdom to come, in me, in those around me, in every situation and circumstance and trial and temptation.

Every time I want to act up and criticise, and malign and argue or be dishonest. No, Lord, no, I want to hallow Your name. I want Your Kingdom to come. In fact, I want Your will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Not my will, not me, no – Your will – You.’”

So often we can skim over these words – ‘Your Kingdom come’ – because we know the Lord’s Prayer so well. And we think, “well, I hope the God’s Kingdom comes in that person’s life, because, I tell you, they need it. And that one over there. That one too for that matter. In fact, if God’s Kingdom comes in all their lives, my life would be so much better.” See what happens?

We put the ‘me’ at the centre of the universe again and the power of prayer that Jesus teaches is laying the ‘me’ down. In fact if God’s Kingdom comes in all those people’s lives, is my life going to be any better? No!

God’s Kingdom coming is seeing His will done in my life – it includes me. It includes when it’s not convenient. When it hurts. When I’d rather have my life on a padded sofa than on a hard cross. The power of the prayer that Jesus is teaching us here is it’s not about me – it’s about Him.

Can I tell you something? God’s Kingdom coming in my life and in your life is painful sometimes. It’s downright inconvenient. It involves me dying to myself and you dying to yourself and putting Him first. And if we want power in our prayer, that is where it comes from. Worshipping God and inviting His Kingship, His Lordship, His reign to be in our hearts, in our spirits and in our lives.

I NEED SOME BREAD We are looking today on the programme at the “Power of Prayer” and all the stuff we’ve been looking at to this point is about putting God first. If we get that bit wrong – if we get it the wrong way round – we end up missing the whole point of prayer. Now that we have it the right way up, Jesus goes on to teach us that it’s ok to ask for our needs.

“Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.”

I love this bit too! “Give us this day our daily bread”, says it’s ok to ask Him for the things we need. For strength, for wisdom, for home, for safety, for family, for work. “Lord, I really just want a special touch from You today”. He already knows our needs and we don’t have to heap up a whole bunch of words and impress Him.

Look how simple this is – “Lord give us this day our daily bread. Don’t be like the pagans – your Father knows what you need even before you ask Him.” It’s ok to ask God for all sorts of things but with Him first – His will, His Kingdom, His reign, His praise and His honour and His glory first, that’s where the power is.

It always sticks with me how Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before He was betrayed and crucified. He said, “Father, if this cup of suffering could pass from Me, then take it away, but not My will, let Your will be done.” And then He went on to allow Himself to be crucified.

The single most powerful act in all history, happened when Jesus laid His life down for you and me – when He put the will of His Father before His own will.

I’ve often wondered about this ‘give us today our daily bread’. I’ve wondered how that prayer feels to someone – one of the billions – who is starving on this planet? Just to be able to go to God simply and say, “Lord, give us today our daily bread” – to be able to make that request and at the same time to lay our lives down for God. There’s such power in sacrifice.

When we get the ‘me’ out of the equation, and put God there instead, in our hearts, then there’s power in that. That’s the place when we come and put our needs before Him. We have the power to ask for the things we need – the power to ask for help or guidance or just a special touch from Him today because that’s what we need.

“Lord, I honour You and I praise You and I want to be in the centre of Your will, no matter what the cost. And Lord, I need Your help putting food on the table for my family tonight. I need Your help paying the rent. I need Your help to do a miracle in my marriage. I need Your help at work, Lord. I’m struggling with this – I’m struggling with this temptation.”

That’s powerful prayer.

“And Lord, no matter what comes I’m going to honour You and put You first.”

‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’, and in that context, we can come to Him and say,

“Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.”

Forgiveness – to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us – a shear acknowledgement that we do make mistakes.

My pride says I don’t need forgiveness, but humility recognises I do. And notice something – the high premium that God puts on forgiveness. It’s a big deal, that’s why Jesus went to the cross and He wants to set us free not only from our sin, by being able to go to Him and ask Him for forgiveness but look at the second part of this. ‘Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors’ – in other words He wants to set us free from the sins of others against us.

If I’m carrying anger and retribution around in my heart toward those people, I may go to God for forgiveness but God’s saying, “I’m not going to forgive you because first you’ve got to forgive them. Get free from your un-forgiveness and then come to Me and ask for forgiveness.”

And finally, He says, “Lead us not into temptation.”

“Lord, I want to live my life for You. I want You to protect me from falling over all the time and I’m not going to do this in my strength because I can’t.”

The devil has been around the block just a few times more than you and I have. He knows all the tricks and techniques. He knows how to push our buttons. He knows how to drag us away from God.

And here is this humble prayer, saying:

“Lord, I can’t do it on my own. I need Your help. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but Lord, deliver us from the evil one.”

When we unpack how Jesus taught us to pray, it’s exciting; it’s dynamic; it’s powerful. In every verse we see how He calls us to lay the ‘me’ down and to call Him Lord. You know, even when we go to Him and ask Him for our daily bread, ‘Give us today our daily bread’, is an acknowledgement that our daily bread comes from Him.

‘Forgive us our debts’ is an acknowledgement that we need forgiveness. ‘Lead us not into temptation’, is an acknowledgement that I need His help to live my life for Him – that I can’t do it in my own self.

Every verse of the Lord’s Prayer puts God first. That is powerful. The Kingship and the Lordship and the praise and the glory of God are where the power is in prayer. And God changes us through that.

When you and I, with all our heart, invite Him to let His Kingdom come, to let His will be done – when you and I with all our heart, lift our hands and say, “Lord, I praise You, hallowed be Your name”, the Spirit of God does something in us that you can’t put into words. The Spirit of God does something in us that nobody else can do.

The skilful Surgeon’s hand comes and takes the sin away. The Healer’s hand heals our lives. The Lord’s Prayer is not something for us to just rattle off because we have memorised the words. The Lord’s Prayer is Jesus teaching us how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is Jesus saying to you and me, “There’s power in putting God first.”

Jesus said this – you can read it in John chapter 15, verse 7:

“If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be given to you.”

You see, if we do it Jesus’ way – if we hang close to Him; if we honour Him; if we put God first, then we can ask for whatever we wish because He’s had the chance to change our hearts. And He says,

“This is to My Father’s glory that you bear much fruit and show yourselves to be My disciples.”

The Lord’s Prayer is about putting first things first. The Father’s glory and in that context we get to ask for whatever we wish. We will look at that more in next weeks programme. There is power in praying the way Jesus taught us to pray. There is power in laying down the ‘me’ and putting God first. There is power in calling Jesus ‘Lord’.

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Communication between people – I mean real, meaningful communication is becoming harder to come by. Technology lets us be more connected – but somehow we communicate less. With people, and with God…

THE COMMUNICATION GAP Now this week on the programme we are starting a new series that I’ve called, “The Power of Prayer” – the power of having a conversation with God – a relationship, an intimate, delightful relationship. But you know, the more technology we seem get in our hands, the more connected we become.

Way back when, the postal service was a major innovation, then came telephones and cars and then faxes and mobile phones and emails and these days my daughter communicates with her friends through websites like myspace.com.

And the other thing you notice is, the more of this stuff we have available in our lives, the busier we become, the more options we have. So we cram pack our lives full of doing and stuff and stuff and stuff. And the incredible paradox of all this is that the more communication devices we have at our fingertips, the less we communicate.

You know the sort of communication that happened when we went camping as kids or sat around a fire and just talked. Somehow we are so busy these days that that sort of comfortable, relationship building, affirming communication seems to have gone out the window, whether it’s with other people or with God.

This paradox is real; it’s alive; it affects almost everybody. Somehow, technology and work and all the entertainment options that people have these days, instead of opening us up to other people, closes down. You see teenagers who are wired to their ipods.

On the news last night, they were saying here in Australia that one in three adults has an MP3 player. And I proudly thought, ’well, that’s not me’ and then I realised that my mobile phone is also an MP3 player.

It’s all so seductive – cable television, internet movies, restaurants, on and on and on and ok, we can’t all afford all of those things all the time, but we all go chasing after some of that stuff and we want more and more and people are working longer and longer. And you know, those leisurely lunches with families and friends on the weekends are replaced with rushing around shopping centers, and buying stuff and trying to get this organised and that organised.

I’m as much a victim of this as anyone else. One of the things that I’ve had to do is to deliberately carve out time with people. To deliberately say, ’no, those emails can go unanswered today because I need to spend some time with my wife.’ I have this very good friend, his name is James. Once or twice a week, James and I will catch up for coffee, just to have someone to talk to and some friendship.

We need to decide in all this busy-ness, to stop the merry-go-round, get off and smell the roses. And these days it’s a deliberate decision – these days we almost have to go against the flow to get that sort of communication happening.

It’s true in my relationship with people and it’s true in my relationship with God. Lots of people know how wonderful it is to pray – regular communication with God – stopping and pausing with Him, just resting there with Him every day. But many of those people are just too busy to do it.

You get up, have breakfast, you commute to work, you’re flat-out all day, you come home tired. How do you fit in great family communication, let alone spending some real, wonderful time with God in prayer?

Well, that’s a good question. I spoke on this subject a couple of years back at a conference of Christian leaders in the field of media and communications. And I made the point that the most important thing each one of us has to do in our lives, is have a relationship with God.

A young lawyer came to Jesus and said to Him, “Jesus, what’s the most important thing to do in life?” and He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength. This is the greatest commandment and the second one is just like it – love your neighbour as yourself.”

So on my ‘to do’ list and on your ‘to do’ list, the most important thing – THE most important thing – is to spend some time with Jesus every day and we call that ‘prayer’. And you know, one by one, at this conference, afterwards, these leaders came up to me quietly on the side, and said you know something, “I have such a problem with this. I’m so busy I don’t know what to do.” And it’s a really common problem – it’s not just me; it’s not just you; a lot of people have this problem. How do I find time to pray?

Most people know that a regular prayer time, most days, is one of the best things they can do. When I spend that time quietly each morning with God, the peace and the joy and the rest getting ready for the day, I seem to handle things so much better – it works! But we are so busy doing the urgent things; we don’t have time for the important things.

Priorities – we set our priorities; we allocate our time; we decide and if we don’t do this, what happens is a communication gap. It happens in a family; it happens in a marriage; it happens in work; it happens in any relationship you care to mention. If we don’t spend good time together, we drift apart and the communication gap gets wider and wider and wider.

You know what I’ve noticed? My fellowship with God gets deeper and richer when I regularly, every day, have this prayer life with Him. If I let it go a day here, a day there, then it becomes two or three days, then it becomes a week, then I sit down and try and pray and it’s like the conversation is bouncing off the ceiling. It’s the nature of relationships really, isn’t it?

We have a decision to make – do I want a rich relationship with God – I mean do I really want that – is that the most important thing on my heart? And if the answer is ‘yes’, then it has to translate into the priorities in our ‘to do’ list. We have to carve out that time and keep it whether it is quietly in the morning or on the bus or the train or in the car or in the evening, whenever it works for you and whenever it works for me.

There is power in prayer, real power and rest and delight and wonder but it just ain’t going to happen if we don’t set that time aside each day.

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND Prayer is such a funny thing. I mean it is based on this notion that we can talk to someone we really can’t see or hear, at least, not in the same way we see and hear the people around us. Sometimes people pray out loud, other times in their heads, so He can read thoughts too? And after all who are we praying to – this God, this Jesus – who is that?

It’s kind of like we go looking for someone – God – but do we ever find Him? And who is He anyway and do we want to find Him? Where do we go looking for Him in the first place? I mean they are all good questions. If you are going to be talking with someone you can’t see, then surely, first you have to seek Him and find Him don’t you?

I don’t know where you are on your spiritual journey or whether you’ve ever pondered those questions. Maybe you’ve just assumed them, maybe you’ve never worried about them. Prayer is a wonderful thing but it’s a step of faith. It’s talking with someone that we just can’t see. Now, either He’s there at the other end and all that makes sense, or He isn’t and we’re kidding ourselves and then it’s a loopy thing to do.

This week on the programme and over the next three weeks, we’re talking about the power of prayer because I believe that prayer is a powerful thing. It is a wonderful thing to do. But before we can go there we have to go back to square one to seek out this God that we are praying to in a time of need. I did – life’s going along ok and all of a sudden – bang! And you think, “help and who do I turn to?” – I’ll pray!

It happens over and over again. Sometimes it seems the only way God can get our attention is in those times of need. And it happened to the nation of Israel. They were exiled in slavery in Babylon for seventy years and Jeremiah, the prophet – you can read about it in Jeremiah chapter 29.

If you have a Bible, grab it – we are going to Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11. They were going through some really tough times in exile – wondering where God was and how come Jerusalem had been destroyed and here we are in slavery and whatever happened to all of God’s promises?

And God speaks to them through Jeremiah and He says this:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord; plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you,” declares the Lord, “and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Now this is really interesting because here God links the two things I have just been talking about – seeking God out and praying. Have a look at it again, verse 12:

“Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you.”

Verse 13:

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you declares the Lord.”

It kind of makes sense – before we can really have any deep relationship or communication with someone, you seek them out.

I mean, today, my wife Jacqui and I have a really close relationship and I communicate with her in a way that I don’t communicate with anyone else. It’s deep and intimate, but when we first met she was just a face in the crowd and our courtship was really when I went seeking her out.

And that’s exactly what I did – in a sense I had to go after her and she had to come after me. And we had to seek each other out before we could have the relationship we have today. And my hunch is it’s exactly the same with God.

One of my favourite books of all time – “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer – this is what he writes on the subject of seeking out God – he says:

“Where the modern scientist has lost God amid the wonder of His world, we are in danger of losing God amidst the wonders of His Word.”

You know, we’ve almost forgotten that God is a person and that, as such, a personal relationship can be cultivated with Him.

In this hour of all but universal darkness, one cheering gleam appears. Within the fold of Christianity, there are to be found increasing numbers of people whose lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They won’t be put off with words or shallow logic; they won’t be content to busy themselves with nervous activity, and yet still they know this inner emptiness.

These people are athirst for God and they won’t be satisfied until they have drunk deep at the fountain of living water. They desire God above all – they are athirst to taste for themselves, the piercing sweetness of the love of Christ, about whom the prophets wrote and the Psalmists sang.

They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, see with their inner eyes, the wonder that is God. And I want to deliberately encourage this might longing after God. Jesus waits to be wanted – too bad, that with many of us, He waits so long, so very long in vain. And that’s exactly what God said through Jeremiah:

“When you seek me with all your heart, then and only then will you find me.”

“Oh Berni, I’ve tried praying on and off, but you know, it’s empty and hollow and, I don’t know, it doesn’t work!” Ok, let me ask you a question – have you sought after God Himself, with all your heart – have you gone after Him? Do you want a relationship with Him more than anything else on this earth – with all your heart?

God says:

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. Then I will be found by you,” declares the Lord.”

My hunch is that this is the starting point of a powerful, and rich and rewarding prayer life with God.

COMING JUST AS WE ARE Whenever I speak with people about praying, you know, one of the most common reactions is ‘well, I’m not good enough; I’m just not good enough. I mean, that person over there, well, she probably would be and that one over yonder, well, yea, I think he would be, but not me.

You see, you don’t know me – I mean, the things I’ve said and done and thought … “no, I just can’t bowl up to God and start praying.” If that’s your reaction, in one sense you’d be right, but in another, completely and utterly wrong.

Because on the one hand God is a perfect and holy God and we fall well and truly short of that but on the other hand, He knows that and that’s why He sent Jesus Christ His Son to die for us, to pay for all our falling short, so that we can have free access. Jesus, it turns out, is the key. God is having a party and it is come as you are.

I’ll share a story with you – a few years ago I went to Government house in Australia where the Governor General, the Queen’s representative, the head of state, lives. His name at the time was Sir William Dean. And Government House is a beautiful old building, in a place called Yarralumla, just outside the national capital, Canberra. I’d asked him to do a short radio interview and his secretary rang and said, “yes” and so I drove there.

Now when you drive up to Government house, there are two gates – there’s kind of, you know the staff entrance or the servants’ entrance and then on the right hand side there’s this big gate with this sweeping drive and that’s where Prime Ministers and Kings and Queens and Presidents drive up to see the Governor General.

And I arrived and I went to what I thought the staff entrance and they said, “Oh no, sir, please go to the other entrance, the main entrance and we’ll let you through.” And you drive up this huge, sweeping drive and you pull up where Queens and Presidents have pulled up and James, the butler for thirty eight years, opens the door and ushers me in.

And as I’m driving up this driveway I look on the bonnet of my car, dark, beautiful car it was back then in those days, and there’s this big bird plop on the bonnet and I’m thinking, ’oh my goodness, you know, if I’d known I was driving up this driveway I would have washed the car.

I was so self-conscience and yet, when I met the man, when I met Sir William Dean, the Governor General, he was the most humble and delightful human being you would ever hope to meet.

He almost made me feel as though he was the one who was honoured by me being there. He is a small man physically, but huge in stature. He didn’t give a toss about whether I had washed my car – I don’t think he even noticed. And he even invited me and my wife and my daughter back the next day to have a wander around the grounds.

I mean it’s a great picture – I never forget it – it’s so ‘not’ what I expected and over the years I’ve discovered it’s exactly the same with God. He looks straight past the spots and blemishes and stains, to our hearts. He just takes us the way we are – He can because of Jesus – because of the price Jesus paid on the cross, if we believe in Him, you and I are wiped clean. If we just believe – just put our faith in Jesus and what He did for us on that cross – we have open access to God.

Have a listen to this huge, eloquent, well-structured, articulate prayer, prayed by the first person who ever went to heaven because he believed in Jesus Christ. He’s one of the two criminals who were crucified alongside Jesus.

Now one of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at Jesus.” We’re reading from Luke chapter 23, beginning at verse 39. “One of the criminals, who hung there, hurled insults at Jesus, “Aren’t you the Christ? Go on, save yourself and us,” but the other criminal rebuked the first one. “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? Here we are hanging on a cross – we’re being punished justly; we’re getting what we deserve, but Jesus, Jesus hasn’t done anything wrong?” And then this second criminal said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, before today is out you will be with me in Paradise.

This criminal is about to die – he has nothing to give Jesus – he couldn’t do anything for Jesus – you and me, we wouldn’t have given him a prayer, but that’s all he had and that’s all it took. From one cross to the next, out of his pain, hanging on the cross, about to die, all he says is, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Just a few short words – but you know what they were? They were words of faith; they were a prayer of faith. And Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, before today is out, you will be with me in Paradise.”

When are we finally going to wake up that that’s what prayer is – just a simple step of faith – right from where we are; right from who we are? God is having a party and it’s ‘come as you are’ and the key is Jesus. Just a simple faith and all my ‘yuk’ is paid for on that cross. I can come to God – you can come to God through that faith in Jesus in our time of need.

And that’s exactly what God says through the Book of Hebrews – have a look at Hebrews chapter 4, verse 14 and it says something like this:

Jesus isn’t just some God in heaven; He’s walked in our shoes; He’s been through every trial and temptation that we have to deal with, so He gets it; He understands exactly what we are going through and because of that, we can come boldly before the throne of grace, with a quiet confidence, that we’ll find grace and mercy, just in time to meet our very need.

He gets it! That phrase: “come boldly before the throne of grace” speaks of a confidence, not in ourselves but in what Jesus has done for you and me. And that’s why we can come as we are – that’s why we can say, “I’m going to seek out God through Jesus and I’m going to find Him and I’m going to spend time and I’m going to pray.” That’s why we don’t have to be afraid to sit down and pray, “Lord, I blew it today.”

I want to share with you a phone message, from a listener, that I received just the other day and it says it all. This is what he said; his exact words on the phone: “I’m only a new Christian and I’ve been with the Lord probably about ten weeks and I’ve been going great guns and then I had a night when I went out drinking and I told my friend, whose not a Christian, I wasn’t sure if I could be a Christian any more.

I felt real terrible about it and I thought I had really blown the whole thing with God. It’s only when you came on the radio tonight that I realised that that’s why Jesus died for me. I want to say, “God bless you guys and thank you for His grace. God bless you, man, it was really awesome tonight.”

And it is really awesome when we finally realise that we have free access to God through what Jesus did for us on the cross. We can get really busy and run around and chase after this and chase after that, but at the end of the day, you know something, there’s power in prayer. We are going to look at that power over the coming weeks. And there’s a joy and a peace that happens in prayer.

And we can come to Him just as we are, seek Him out with all our hearts, say, “Lord, I want to have a fantastic relationship with you and the way I’m going to start, the way I’m going to take my first step, I’m going set aside just ten or fifteen minutes every day, quietly, alone, just to spend with you.”

And you know when we do that, something awesome happens … Jesus shows up!

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Each person who believes in Jesus has a battle going on inside. Between the desires of the flesh, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Each one. Sometimes we feel as though it’s a battle we’re losing, even though we’ve already won. How can we actually live out that victory? How can we walk in in the Spirit?

THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT One of the most encouraging things God has ever said to me in His Word, the Bible, the most powerful thing I think, is that He is not surprised or perturbed or put off His purposes for me, one little bit, because of my sin. I mean, He doesn’t like it; He doesn’t want it to be the norm in my life but it is no surprise to Him. How do I know that? Well, simple. The Apostle Paul writes that very thing in the Book of Romans, beginning at Romans chapter 7, verse 22. Paul says of himself:

Look, I delight in the law of God in my innermost self but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who is going to rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

And this is from a man who wrote almost half the books in the New Testament – Paul the Apostle. And you know what Paul was going through is exactly the same thing that you and I go through. There’s a war going on between our flesh (the original Greek word for ‘flesh’ is ‘carne’, from which we get ‘carnal’ – right?) and the work of the Spirit in us.

And that battle can get us so down – it seems some days as though we are never going to win the battle – but Jesus has already won. “Who is going to save this wretch from this body of sin and death?” asks Paul, “Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ our Lord.” And that’s the fantastic news I want to share with you today. Are you ready for it?

One of the things I don’t hear much chatter about in Christian circles is this reality of the battle that is raging within us between the flesh and the spirit. And when I finally go to be with the Lord, I want to find Paul and thank him for being so direct and honest and real about this reality in his life. He tells us here in Romans chapter 7, that he knows the right things to do – I mean he even wants to do them – he just can’t seem to do them. That’s the problem. Not that he doesn’t know, not that he doesn’t want to, but that he just can’t.

And our mate Paul wasn’t some woos. He was no airy fairy weakling. Paul was tough as nails when he had to be. He was driven, he was focused, he was an achiever, he poured out his life for the Gospel and even he had this very same problem.

Can I go on record and say I had this very same problem happening in me? And I know, I know absolutely, that you had the same thing going on in you. That’s why church is never perfect because it’s full of people like you and me – people who are growing and improving and changing but people who are, never the less, a lot like Paul.

And his answer to everything is the grace and the power of Jesus Christ. I am going to share with you now what he goes on to say about how to win this battle that rages between the flesh and the spirit because the answer has everything to do with the power of the Holy Spirit in us. Are you ready to settle down and join me for this wonderful passage? Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 1. He comes straight of the back of this problem that he is talking about and says, look:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from this law of sin and death. Because God has done what the law, weakened by our flesh, simply could not do: by sending Jesus, his Son in the likeness of our sinful flesh to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk, not according to the flesh any more but according to the Spirit.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those of us who live according to the Spirit, we set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh, frankly, is death, but to set our minds on the Spirit, that is life and peace. It is for this reason that the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law – indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh simply cannot please God.

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, because the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ in them, does not belong to God. But if Christ is in you, though the body might be dead because of our sin, the Spirit is life because of God’s righteousness.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit that dwells in you. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to our flesh, to live according to the desires of our flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you will put to death the deeds of the body and you will live.

I love this! Because what it is saying is: look, boys and girls, I don’t care how bad things are, God’s not going to condemn you if you put your trust in Jesus. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Your slate has been wiped clean and that is your starting point of your relationship with God.

But now we have to deal with this battle that everybody has between the desires of the flesh and the work of the Holy Spirit in you. And the way we do that is by sorting out what we really want. Do you really want to follow the nasty desires of your humanity – greed, anger, sexual immorality, hatred, selfishness? Is that what you really want for your life? And if it is, then set your mind on that and that’s what you are going to get! If that is what you set your heart on, friend, it’s going to kill you.

But if you set your mind and your heart and your desires and your focus and your attention on the Holy Spirit, that’s going to bring you life. Your body may well be dead in sin, but set your heart and your desires on Christ and you will have life. Seems to me that whatever we set our hearts on; whatever we turn over and over in our minds, it’s what we end up living. Set your heart and your mind on the Spirit of God and you will end up walking in the Spirit.

Elsewhere in writing to his friends at Philippi, Paul puts it this way, really powerful. Philippians chapter 4, beginning at verse 8. He says, look:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just and pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, then think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you.

You see, our thoughts are where our actions come from. And that’s something effectively, that you and I already know. I am in the process at the moment of shedding a few kilos of weight and often times I would just love not to go out for a walk after work and miss out on that calorie burning exercise. And often times I think, “Gee, look at that piece of cake. That would be nice for morning tea.” Do you know what keeps me on track? I keep thinking about what it will be like when I reach my target weight.

God has already given His Holy Spirit to each person who has put their trust in Jesus. We already have the Spirit of God – we have the power. What God is calling us to do here is to turn that over and over in our minds; to keep focused on that; to keep thinking about how wonderful it will be when we finally overcome our anger or overcome our selfishness or whatever it is that’s plaguing our lives. If there is anything commendable or excellent or praiseworthy, think about those things and the result of that is that we will end up doing the things that we have learned and received and heard from God.

Thinking comes before walking. And so when it comes to walking in the Spirit and seeing the power and the blessings of that walk flow out into our lives, all we need to do is to set our hearts and minds and desires on the Holy Spirit and discover that by doing that we engage His power – the power to do the things that, in our own strength, we simply could never do.

It’s good news, hey?

CHILDREN OF GOD One of the greatest blessings in my life was my parents. Now, no one’s parents are perfect and I know there are a small percentage of them who are absolutely horrendous. But what I got from my parents as I grew up in the Dymet family, in the small but comfortable home just south of Sydney in Australia, was safety and security and nurture. And I try to imagine sometimes what it would be like to be a child growing up in fear – afraid of being beaten, afraid of being abused, afraid because they are completely alone.

Sadly many, many children grow up like that. Their parents have died or they live in poverty, completely alone. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in fear as a child – at a time when you are weak and vulnerable and defenceless. There is something precious about belonging to a family. We are made to need that sense of belonging and frankly, we are not made to live in fear.

Over these last few weeks we have been chatting about walking in the Spirit; living our lives and journey in the presence and the comfort and the guidance and the nurture and the blessing of God Himself because His Spirit dwells in us. God Himself dwelling in us! And today we are going to finish off by looking at the powerful sense of family and belonging that comes through walking in the Spirit.

Earlier we were chatting about how to walk in the Spirit – laying hold of the Spirit, rather than the desires of our flesh in our day to day walk. And it comes down to this one simple thing, according to God’s Word:

… those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. It is for this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; does not submit to God’s law – indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

It’s about where we set our minds and what we desire in our hearts. It’s a powerful thing! Because when we set our hearts and minds on God; on the Holy Spirit, it’s like putting a car into gear and letting out the clutch. By faith we are engaging the power of the Spirit! And there are two other things that the Apostle Paul has to say about walking in the Spirit. The first … the first of those has to do with family, belonging to God’s family. If you have got a Bible, open it. Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 14. He says:

For all who are led by the Spirit are children of God. See, you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry out, “Abba! Father!”, it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are in fact, children of God and if children, then we are heirs, we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – since we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

See, the Spirit of God in us witnesses the truth to us, that we have been adopted into God’s family. When we give the Holy Spirit full sway in our hearts, through Him we know that we know that we know that we know that we are children of God – precious in His sight. And here is the thing about being a child: what happens whether we live with our natural parents or whether we have been adopted into a family, is that we take on many of the traits and the mannerism of our parents.

You may have heard me tell this story before but I remember the first time I saw myself interviewed on television – I was completely gob-smacked at how much I was like my father. The mannerisms, the way I spoke … it just completely blew me away. How could this be? Well, because he’s my dad and some of the things I had inherited genetically from him and others, without ever realising, I had learned by mimicking him over the years. I was an absolute revelation to me.

As we come to the realisation that God is our Father; that you and I are His children, I have to tell you, exactly the same thing happens. We start looking like Him and sounding like Him and thinking like Him and loving like Him and sacrificing like Him – right? And that’s what is meant to happen. Being a child of God takes the fear away from our lives – the fear of being alone, the fear of not belonging – because when we are adopted back into God’s family (which is actually where we were always meant to be in the first place) we know the blessedness of having God as our Father. And when we cry out to Him, “Father”, “Abba”, “Dad”, right then and there the Holy Spirit tells us that we are His kids.

But secondly, children aren’t just children. Children are heirs and in this case, we are co-heirs with Christ when we put our faith in Him. In other words, walking in the Spirit gives us the certainty that we have a destiny … an eternal destiny. Let’s go on and read the second part, beginning at Romans chapter 8, verse 17. Paul goes on to write. He says, look:

… if we are children of God, then we are heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ – since we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation has been subjected to this futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning like…..like in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for this adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved.

So, Paul is saying, look, indeed there is going to be suffering – Jesus suffered, we certainly will but because the Holy Spirit is in us every moment of every day, we know that we have a destiny … an eternal destiny. As we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need fear no evil, because God is with us and He is witnessing to us that we have a future – not just here on this earth, but a future with Him for all eternity.

One day this world as we know it will cease to exist. One day you and I will no longer be alive on this planet and when either of those two eventualities takes place – whichever one happens to come first, we will spend the rest of eternity with God if we have placed our faith in Jesus today. We will be there with Jesus, so the suffering we are travelling through just doesn’t compare to the glory of our eternity with God. Anyone who walks in the Spirit as the days and the weeks and the years pass by, knows that more and more in their hearts because the Spirit of God speaks it to us in a way that it becomes a part of us.

Friend, walking in the Spirit is about experiencing the presence and the power and the promises of God. Let me say that again – walking in the Spirit is about experiencing the presence and the power and the promises of God. And that happens when we yield our lives to Jesus and set our hearts and our minds and our hopes and our dreams and our passions and our desires on the things of God; the things of the Spirit, rather than on the things of this world. And a huge part of that is setting our hearts on the destiny we have because of Jesus.

And all of a sudden – and many of you figured this out way, way before I ever did – then all of a sudden we get the things of this world into perspective – the pleasures and the pains, the triumphs and the trials. We walk through each and every experience with power and peace, focused on the end-game; focused on the reality that we are saved in Jesus Christ; we are here to do His work; we are here to sacrifice our lives for Him. And one day we will be there with Him for all eternity, to worship Him and to rejoice with Him in His glory. Friend, that is God’s plan – nothing more, nothing less – for those who choose to walk in the Spirit. Hey, that’s quite a plan, isn’t it?

GLORY, GLORY, GLORY!! So let me ask you – this fantastic stuff we have been talking about, not just today but over the last few weeks on the programme – is it just all too much to believe? Do you look around sometimes and think, “Yea, well, maybe for that preacher on the radio, maybe that stuff is happing in that guy’s life, but mine … holy good night!” If you are thinking that right now, you wouldn’t be alone and from time to time, to tell you the honest truth, that’s how I feel too.

You see, things happen in your life and you think to yourself, “Is God really in this place?” Well, seems the Holy Spirit knew exactly what you and I would be thinking when He had Paul pen Roman chapter 8. Have a listen with me. Just let the wonder of God’s Word melt into your heart. Listen as though He had Paul write this for you, because you know what, He actually did. Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 18. Paul says, look:

… the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. … For in hope we were saved. And hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what they can see? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

So the Spirit helps us in our weakness; because we do not know how to pray as we should, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, and for those who are called according to his purpose … What then should we say about these things? If God is for us, who can possibly be against us? … Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … I am convinced that neither death, or life, or angels, or rulers, anything in the present, anything in the future, no power, no height, no depth; nothing else in all creation, will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What is God saying? He is telling it just the way it is. There will be suffering and pain and all that stuff, but right here in the middle of this, the Holy Spirit is interceding for us; right here in the middle of this mess, God Himself is working things out together for good; working things out for His glory. And this Apostle Paul who went through all of the things he lists here – all of them: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword – has experienced the presence of God, the very Spirit of God, right there with him in the middle of all that stuff.

And as a result, because of that experience, he is convinced absolutely nothing: not death, nor life, not angels, nor rulers, things in the present, things to come, powers, height, depth … nothing in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ. Halleluiah!!

Friend, this is what it means to be filled to overflowing in the wondrous Spirit of God. It’s what it means to be baptised in the Spirit, drenched in the Spirit, drowned and changed and transformed in the Spirit. To live life, all of life, all of the ups and downs – two steps forward, three steps back – in the certain knowledge God is here in this place with us. God’s Spirit is at work in us, changing us, cleaning us, pruning us, growing us. Halleluiah!!

Friend, it takes power to live as Christ. It takes power to forgive as Christ forgave those who crucified Him. “Forgive them Father, they don’t know what they are doing,” as they gambled over the very clothes on His back. And it takes that very same power – the power of the cross; the power that raised Jesus from the dead – that same power that is alive and effective in you and me as we yield our lives to Jesus, as we are filled with the Holy Spirit just as Jesus promised.

Isn’t that what you want for your life? Well, in Christ it’s yours!

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One of the things that I’ve noticed is that I don’t have the strength, or the power in my own right to live the life that God wants me to. Have you noticed that too? We try … and we fail. What we need, is power. Power from high. Fortunately that’s exactly what Jesus has in mind.

POWER FROM ON HIGH Great to be with you again this week and today we’re continuing in this series of messages called Walking In The Spirit. You know, I often think about this – it’s kind of strange to me how God sets things up. He Himself is Spirit: we can’t actually see Him or touch Him or hear Him here in the physical dimension where you and I live.

Now of course at one time in history He stepped into the physical dimension when Jesus came and dwelt among us but that was two thousand years ago. And whilst we can read about who Jesus is, and what He has to say, and what He does, we can’t experience God in the physical dimension in the same way as those people did way back then.

So now we have something of a dilemma. God lives in a dimension that is spiritual and you and I, we live in a dimension that’s physical. How do we communicate with God? How do we know not just about Him but how do we know Him? Well fortunately that’s something that God thought about, and to do that He sent us His Holy Spirit, one of the three person of the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in us.

See, this problem happened the moment Jesus was set to depart from this world, the physical God departing leaving what? Well fortunately leaving behind the Holy Spirit. And this is the promise Jesus made to His Disciples, the ones who were to become the Apostles who would spread His good news throughout the known world. John chapter 14 beginning at verse 15. He said:

If you love me you’ll keep my commandments and I’ll ask the Father and He will give you another advocate to be with you forever. This is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him or knows him but you know him because he abides with you and he will be in you.

So Jesus promised to send His Holy Spirit to those who believed in Him with their lives and in fact in those final days and hours before He was crucified it’s something that He promised again and again. That through the Spirit of God the Father and the Son would come to make their home in us.

Now you and I, we have a body, we have a soul, our mind, our will, our emotions and deep down we have a spirit and it’s at this level that the Holy Spirit connects with us. So after Jesus was risen again and just before He ascends into heaven and leaves His disciples behind He gives them this instruction, Acts chapter 1 beginning at verse 4.

He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. This, he said, is what you have heard from me. For John baptised you with water but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

Now the disciples, as it turned out, thought that was fine but that wasn’t the most important thing on their minds. You see, Jesus was the Messiah, and to a Jew in the first century that meant something like a warrior king, like David of old, to boot out the Romans from occupying the land and to restore the king of Israel. The Disciples, despite three and a half years with Jesus, were more interested in what was going to happen in the physical dimension of their lives rather than the spiritual dimension.

Have a listen to the exchange between them and Jesus, between the physical concerns of the disciples and the spiritual priorities of Jesus. Acts chapter 1 beginning at verse 6:

So when they’d come together they asked him, ‘Lord is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?’ And he replied, ‘it’s not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.’ When he said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.

Do you see that? See they were interested in perhaps the most important thing from their perspective. So when is God finally going to restore the kingdom of Israel? And Jesus brushes them off because He didn’t come to restore the kingdom of Israel, He came to usher in the Kingdom of God and that’s spiritual not physical. Again have a listen to what Jesus had said earlier on this subject. Luke chapter 17 beginning at verse 20:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisee’s when the Kingdom of God was coming and he answered, ‘The Kingdom of God isn’t coming with things that can be seen nor will they say, ‘Look here it is’ or ‘There it is’. For in fact the Kingdom of God is among you.

No Jesus, in the very last thing that He said to them before He left them and ascended into heaven, He wasn’t so much interested in the physical dimension, His priority for them, these men who would go on to found the Church, His real concern is that they should have spiritual power from God in them. Acts chapter 1 verse 8:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Why is that? Why is this Jesus’ greatest concern? Because He knew that without the power of God, without the witness and communication and encouragement and guidance of the Holy Spirit these men simply wouldn’t be able to do the things that they were called to do. You read the Book of Acts of the Apostles (which in my view should really be called The Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles) and what you see is that these men came across horrendous opposition.

They were called on to do mighty things and many of those things were miraculous. They went way beyond the ability of eleven men and Jesus knew that if these men had power from on high, if they were filled with the Spirit of God they could do whatever God needed them to do and then some.

And friend, that’s how it is with us. We think sometimes it’s all up to me, my gifts, my abilities, my hard work – and hey, I’m not knocking any of that – but even as I sit here and share these things of God with you I know, I mean I know beyond any shadow of any doubt, that I couldn’t do what I’m doing if it weren’t for the power of the Holy Spirit.

See part of walking in the Spirit is being filled to over-flowing with the Holy Spirit so that we have the power to do what God has called us to do. The power to resist the evil one, the power to overcome temptation, the power to love those who abuse us, the power to die to self, the power to take up our cross every day and follow Jesus. Friend, those things take power. They take power that is way beyond any of us and it’s for that reason that God sent His Spirit to dwell in us.

Now after the break we’re going to see how the Spirit of God, even before He came upon these men in power, guided them in the physical dimension. That’s the exciting thing. The spiritual and the physical dimensions aren’t two separate things, as the Holy Spirit dwells in us He gives us the guidance and the power that we need to operate for Gods glory right here in this physical world in which you and I live. See that’s the exciting bit.

PRACTICAL GUIDANCE FROM ABOVE Now, it’s kind of fine to talk about walking in the Spirit, it’s fine to talk about having power, and a little later we’re going to see how the Spirit was poured out, but what about the rubber hits the road stuff? What about the next step, the next decision you and I have to make? How does the Holy Spirit guide us? How can we know what the Holy Spirit wants us to do? How can we seek Him out and discover God’s good and perfect will for us?

Well that’s what we’re going to look at right now. We saw earlier how Jesus ordered the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and to wait for the power that God would pour out upon them. At that point He ascended into heaven. So there they were over the coming days waiting in Jerusalem and it occurred to them that they were now down to eleven disciples as a result of the exit of Judas Iscariot and they had to do something about that.

So here’s how it unfolds, if you have a Bible grab it, we’re going to read from Acts chapter 1 beginning at verse 15:

In those days Peter stood up amongst the believers together with a crowd numbered about one hundred and twenty people and he said, ‘friends the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share of the ministry. Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness and falling head long he burst open in the middle of all his bowels gushed out. This became know to all the residents of Jerusalem so that the field was called, in their language, Akeldama which means field of blood.

For it is written in the Book of Psalms, ‘let his homestead become desolate and let there be no one to live in it and let another take his position of overseer’. So one of the men who had accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out of among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.

So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas who was also known as Justus and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, ‘Lord you know everyone’s heart, show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry an apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go his own way’. And they cast lots for them and the lot fell on Matthias and he was added to the eleven apostles.

Can I tell you something? This is a passage of Scripture that I have struggled with for a long time because me, I’ve always been taught if I want to know Gods will, well the place to discover that is in God’s Word, the Bible. And that’s true, I mean that’s what they did, they went back to the Psalm and read that they had to replace Judas.

But many is the time when I’ve been facing a particular challenge or dilemma and surprise, surprise in the very next chapter of whatever Book of the Bible I happen to be reading at the time, in the very next bit something leaps out at me and the Holy Spirit speaks to me and I just know what God wants me to do. I’m sure if you believe in Jesus and you’re someone who listens to Him through His Word that that’s something that’s happened to you on more than one occasion because God speaks to us first and foremost through His Word.

And right here, smack bang in the middle of His Word the eleven Apostles – the guys who’ve spent three and a half years at the Jesus school of discipleship, the best theological seminary anyone will ever go to – these guys to make a decision cast lots! How did they do that? Well we don’t know, maybe they flipped a coin, heads Joseph wins, tails Matthias wins and hey presto it came up tails so Matthias becomes Apostle number twelve.

Now friend doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd? I mean, why didn’t they go to the Scriptures to decide between the two? No, they flipped a coin to make one of the most important decisions in the history of the Church. A coin? Give me a break! Why didn’t they take a vote amongst the hundred and twenty or so Jesus followers who were in that room at the time? That’s probably what most Churches would do today. No, no. They cast lots. Well doesn’t that just take the cake!

What’s God trying to say to you and me through this? Because all Scripture is inspired by God, it’s used for teaching, for proof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that’s what 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16 says. Well here’s what this Scripture has done for me. It’s opened my mind to the creativity of the Holy Spirit in speaking to me and guiding me and making His will known in my life.

I remember being convicted of sin one day when I was watching a family movie. God spoke so powerfully to me through what one character was doing. It’s like God held a mirror up to my face and said, ‘Berni, that’s you’. And over the years I’ve discovered that the Spirit nudges us and guides us and encourages us and convicts us in so many different ways.

I am doing what I’m doing right now, sharing the love of Christ with many people across the globe, because one man came up to me at a conference and spoke some words to me. And without any shadow of a doubt I know that I know that I know that God was speaking to me through this humble gentle man. Is the Bible my absolute authority for truth? Absolutely. Do I need to discern experiences and things people say to me and impressions I have from this or from that? For sure.

“Test all things” the Bible says. But friend, as we journey along our path, walking in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is with us every moment of every day, He is with us and if we’ll open our hearts and our minds and our eyes and our ears to Him He will speak to us. Am I suggesting we discern Gods will by flipping a coin? Probably not. But hey, it’s in the Bible so the last thing I’m going to do is tell God what’s appropriate and what’s not.

THE SPIRIT POURED OUT Okay, God’s guidance doesn’t always happen the way we expect. And speaking of the unexpected, right now I’d like to spend some time sharing with you the story of when, as Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit was first poured out on the believers. Again can I say in our experience, especially can I say for those who like me have something like a conventionally spiritually narrow western mind set, this is pretty way out there too? So join me as we have a listen to what God is up to on the day of Pentecost. If you have a Bible grab it, we’re going to read from Acts chapter 2 beginning at verse 1:

Now when the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place and suddenly from heaven became a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as a fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each one of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them the ability.

Now there were devout Jews there from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem and at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one of them heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished they asked, “are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each one of us in our own native language?”

Parthians, Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome both Jews and proselytes, Cretens and Arabs in our own language we hear them speaking about Gods deeds of power.

All were amazed and perplexed saying to one another, “what does this mean?” but others sneered and said, “they’re filled with new wine” but Peter standing with the eleven raised his voice and addressed them. “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let it be known to you and listen to what I say. Indeed these men aren’t drunk as you suppose, it’s only 9 o’clock in the morning.

No this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel. In the last days it will be, God declares, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophecy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves both men and women in those days I shall pour out my spirit and they’ll prophecy and I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist, the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the Lords great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Now this is quite an event. I mean I’ve had a few really powerful encounters with the Holy Spirit but never anything quite like this. A powerful sound like a rushing wind and then these flames of fire resting on everyone and all of them, all of them speaking in foreign languages and all the different nationalities there could understand the good news of Jesus in their own language.

And of course the first thing, the very first thing that happens when God does something powerful and unusual like this is that everyone else has to poke fun and to criticise what’s going on. They must be drunk. Well sorry buddy I know they perhaps looked a little intoxicated but they were all Galileans speaking in different languages. Being drunk certainly doesn’t explain that, I mean it doesn’t right?

So what do we do with this? Well the Apostle Peter gets up to explain what’s going on. He explains to the Jews assembled, ‘hey this is exactly what God promises in the Old Testament.’ That all of these powerful things would happen and in fact if you were to read on you discover that after he finished speaking many of the people there gave their lives to Christ. Many of the very same people who only weeks before were crying out to Pontius Pilate ‘crucify Him’.

See there’s a clash here between the conventional, what normally happens in the physical dimension and the spiritual, the super natural. And it was a surprise to everyone. I mean if you’ve been around the Church for any length of time you’ll know that there are some who say, ‘Okay, what happened there back there two thousand years ago on the day of Pentecost, it was absolutely a one off. It was the first time God poured His Spirit out, fair enough He did something powerful’. And then there are some others of so called charismatic and Pentecostal persuasions who claim that God is still doing mighty powerful things like this today. What do you make of it?

Well God’s Word is clear. If we don’t have the Spirit of Christ then we don’t belong to Him, Romans chapter 8, verse 9 and yet at the same time there are plenty of people who have the Spirit but where the Spirit hasn’t been unleashed in power in their lives. See these Apostles are uneducated bumpkins; most of them went on to do the most amazing things for Christ. They had so much opposition, they preached the Gospel, so many people came to Jesus through them and in fact the Church around the globe, a few billion people, are Christ-followers today because of the start that the Church got from these Disciples.

And most of them, they ended up dying for Him in the end because the power was unleashed in their lives by the Holy Spirit on that day. They did what they did, they could only do what they do because they were filled to overflowing with the Spirit and the presence and the power of God.

Jesus promised to baptise us in the Holy Spirit. He did. And the wonderful thing is that this baptism, this drenching in the Spirit happens in different ways in different people’s lives. God knows we’re different. God knows that you and I are totally different people. God is going to touch you and fill you with His Spirit in a way that He knows will work for you and that way maybe totally different to the way that God deals with me.

You know something, I don’t have a problem with that. I mean God’s God. God gets to decide what He does, how He does it, when He does it and I am not going to sit there and point fingers at other people and say, ‘Well God did it differently over there, they must be wrong’. It’s not how God does it, that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that in fact we are filled with the Spirit.

The important thing is that the power of God is unleashed in our lives so that we can live a life that brings glory to Him: a life that bears fruit, a life that has an eternal impact in the lives of other people. Don’t you reckon that’s the most important thing? It’s what God’s Word says and God’s heart is to see His power and His might unleashed in you and unleashed in me as His Spirit drenches us and utterly transforms us and unleashes the power of God through us in a lost and hurting world.

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One of the things that we’re promised about Jesus is that when we let Him into our lives – He’ll sort the good from the bad – the wheat from the chaff in each one of us – and then burn the chaff with an unquenchable fire. At first that sounds a bit confronting. And yet when Jesus gets to work cleaning out the muck we have on the inside – talk about setting the captives free!

REFINER’S FIRE Hey, it’s great to be with you again on the programme today. Last week, if you were able to join me, you may recall that we are talking about walking in the Spirit and the importance of yielding to God. Lots of people who believe in Jesus want to see the power of God at work in their lives; they want to walk in the Spirit, relying on God’s wisdom and guidance but at the same time, they shun God’s Word, the Bible. “Ah, no, I don’t have time for that. I’ve got a busy life.” They run their own race, doing this and doing that and then they wonder, “So, where’s God in all this?”

And friend, it’s only when we yield our lives to God and let Him into every part of our lives, that we start to experience the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s only when we say to God, ‘You know, Lord, everything is on the line for You – there is nothing that I am going to hold back from You,’ that He truly goes to work in our lives. Anything less than that is pride and we know that “He opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” James chapter 4, verse 6.

And today on the programme we are going to see what the Holy Spirit gets up to in our lives when we give Him free reign – it’s truly powerful stuff. So I hope you will be able to join me in our time together today, to discover the power that’s available to you through the Spirit of the Living God.

When Jesus was about to begin His public ministry in First Century Israel, John the Baptist went ahead of Him to herald Jesus’ arrival. John’s central message was for people to confess their sins, to repent – that is to turn away from their sins and back to God – and to be baptised. Interesting message for God to send ahead of the entrance of His Son! It was about turning away from selfishness and sin and turning back to God and being ready … being ready to accept Jesus into peoples’ lives. And this is what John the Baptist specifically had to say about Jesus because many people were already asking him, “Are you the one? Are you the promised Messiah?”

And just before Jesus came to John to be baptised, this is what John said about Jesus. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it at Matthew chapter 3, beginning at verse 11:

John said, “I baptise you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptise you with Holy Spirit and fire, his winnowing fork in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary but the chaff he will burn with an unquenchable fire.

Now, this is a powerful description indeed of what Jesus is about in our lives. And I used to read this and understand it in this way: that in clearing out the threshing floor, what Jesus would do is take those who are good and righteous, they were like the grain and they would be gathered up into the granary, but those who weren’t would be cast into the fire.

And I think a lot of people understand this passage that way. Until one of my lecturers at Bible College challenged and asked me, “What is the context here, Berni? What is John talking about?” and I answered him, “Well, baptism. He is saying that Jesus will baptise us with Holy Spirit and with fire.”

Now, I will talk about this baptism of the Holy Spirit, which causes so much controversy and division in the church, later today. But right now, back to the context: so the fire that Jesus is going to wield will be part of my baptism of the Holy Spirit, from Him. So when He goes on to talk about what that fire will do, He is talking about what it will do in my life and in your life if we so allow Him to baptise us with Holy Spirit and with fire.

What will happen when we allow the Holy Spirit to dwell in us by accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour – by yielding to Him our whole lives – is that the fire of the Spirit will burn in us and Jesus will get inside us, as indeed He promises to do, and sort through what is going on in us – what is in our hearts, our thoughts, our desires, our attitudes, our intentions – with a winnowing fork in His hand and He will clear the threshing floor of our hearts. The good He will keep, but the chaff, the sin, He will burn with this unquenchable fire with which He baptises us.

I would encourage you to read this passage again for yourself (Matthew chapter 3, verses 11 and 12) and just see how, with this baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire, His intention is to clean us out; to make us pure and holy. After all, there is a reason that the Holy Spirit is called the ‘Holy’ Spirit and what He does when He comes to dwell in us – just as Jesus promised – one of the things He does is to begin the life-long work of making you and me holy.

And friend, there is always a cost to that. If someone has a cancer that needs to be cut out, there is an incision to be made, there are stitches that go in, there is time in hospital, there’s recovery, there’s rehabilitation and perhaps even some treatment like chemotherapy or radiotherapy. But whilst there is a cost, the whole point of course, is to bring healing to the person by cutting out the cancer.

And the same is true of the Holy Spirit when He gets His winnowing fork out in our lives and starts to sift through the rubbish, the disease, the sickness, the sin that has accumulated in us over a life time. And there is almost always pain involved. Giving up anger – as I had to do – involves such pain. I had to learn not to vent my anger on people; to humble myself; to hold my tongue. And you know what, at times that really hurt and it still does sometimes. Am I a better person because I yielded to God’s Word and God’s Spirit in allowing Him to work in me? Absolutely!! Was it worth it? Without a doubt!! And I am glad that He took the time to do this in me? For sure!

So when we yield our lives to Jesus, what He does by His Spirit is He starts to burn the chaff, the sin, in our lives with an unquenchable fire. The first thing He starts with is me and you. We all want to see some power and some miracles and feel His presence and joy and peace and of course, as we walk in the Spirit, those things do come. But in order for us to grow, to be all that God made us to be, to shine the light of His Glory into a lost and a hurting world – He needs to rake the muck out of us. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

As I said, later we are going to talk about this baptism of the Spirit, without any denominational baggage. I’m not interested in that, can I tell you? I just want to know what God’s Word has to say on the subject. But right now I think the point that God is leading us to, is this: He wants free reign in our lives; He wants to be invited in to deal with the sin in our lives; the stuff that is robbing us of the abundant life that Jesus came to give us.

So let me encourage you to read again the thing that John the Baptist said about Jesus: Matthew chapter 3, verses 11 and 12. Let me encourage you to open your heart and your soul to the power of the Spirit of God. Give Him full sway in every part of your life. Hold nothing, absolutely nothing, back from Him, for He means to clean you from the inside out; He means to set you free from the sin that been robbing you of life all this time; He means to shine His glory out through you, a clean, pure, holy vessel. You know, through the likes of me and you.

DRENCHED IN THE SPIRIT One of the things that I have been learning as I journeyed through my life with Jesus at my side is that I can’t achieve much on my own. Now, let me explain that. People do clever, brilliant, powerful and effective things, apparently without the help of God, all the time. There are plenty of brilliant musicians, gifted leaders, effective counsellors and so on, who don’t believe in Jesus.

And before I came to faith in Christ, almost two decades ago now, I was able to do plenty of pretty good things. I was part of building an international I.T. consulting firm, I can make a piano sing, as it were, but when I came to faith in Jesus, what I discovered was, that when it comes to doing things of eternal significance – like what I am doing right now with you – well, on my own, I can do nothing.

Oh, I can probably entertain you; I can engage you with a whole bunch of other things, but the one thing I can’t do is to effect a change in your heart that will impact you eternally. It turns out, that’s because only God can do that. How do I know that? Because it’s exactly what Jesus said. John chapter 15, verse 5. He said:

I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them will bear much fruit because apart from me, you can do nothing.

So in order for you and for me to bear good fruit … fruit that really, truly makes a powerful difference in the lives of others, we need to be connected – grafted into Jesus, who is the vine. And when you think about it, the thing that flows from the vine to the branches to allow the branch to thrive and to bear fruit is the sap of the plant. In this analogy of Jesus, that is the Holy Spirit.

One of the things that make me really sad is that the Holy Spirit and how He works in our lives, is the source of so much conflict and disagreement between different denominations of the church. It seems that everyone has a … well, a different perspective. But as we saw earlier, John the Baptist said something interesting about the Holy Spirit and what Jesus would do through the Spirit in our lives. Matthew chapter 3, verses 11 and 12:

“I baptise you with water,” said John, “for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire, His winnowing fork in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and he will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

He said that Jesus would baptise us with the Holy Spirit and, as it turns out, with fire. Well, that’s something of a mixed metaphor. Because what ‘baptism’ really means – the Greek word is baptidso – is to be drowned and drenched and changed in something. For instance if a ship sank and went under – it had been baptidso’d. If a piece of cloth was put into some dye to change its colour – it had been baptidso’d.

So, to be ‘baptised’ or ‘baptidso’d’ in the Holy Spirit, means to be dunked and drenched and changed in the Holy Spirit. Imagine that piece of fabric coming out of the liquid dye – it’s dripping, completely saturated. And on top of that, it’s a brand new colour. That’s the picture; that’s what it means to be baptised in the Holy Spirit.

Now much of the controversy in the church surrounds the question of timing. When does this happen? Does it happen to every believer the moment they believe or is it something that happens later on? Seriously, as though we can put God in a box like this and telling Him He has to do it this way or that way or at some later time! Can I tell you something? My Bible – don’t know about yours – but my Bible actually contains an historical record of both! Cornelius and his family, when Peter the Apostle, preaches the Good News to them for the very first time. Acts chapter 10, verse 44:

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.

Right when they first believed! But you see, in Ephesus, a bit later it happened quite differently. Acts chapter 19, beginning at verse 1:

While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? They replied, “No, we have not even heard there is a Holy Spirit. Then he said to them, “Into what then were you baptised?” They answered into John’s baptism. Paul said, “John baptised with a baptism of repentance, telling people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. Altogether, there were about twelve of them.

See, it seems to me the point isn’t when or how. God is going to do what God is going to do and I for one am not about to put Him in a box and tell Him how He has to do things or when. Whilst every believer may well have the Holy Spirit in them – and again, God’s Word makes it clear that unless we do, we don’t belong to Christ, (Romans chapter 8, verse 9) – not every believer is drenched in the Spirit.

Not every believer has yielded their life completely to God and given the Holy Spirit sway in every part of their lives. Not every believer is drenched in the Spirit of God. Plenty, in fact, walk more in the flesh, in their own worldly desires, than they do in the Spirit. Again, that’s something that God’s Word makes clear – Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 5:

For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

So, my friend, the question for each one of us is simply this: have we yielded our lives fully to Christ? Have we invited Him to have complete sway in every corner of who we are – every nook and every cranny? Or are we holding something back?

I know people, for instance, who say they love God and they do – absolutely, and yet they choose to live together, man and woman, without being married. That is holding something back from God. That is not honouring to God. And people who deliberately hold something back can’t be fully drenched in the power of the Spirit because it’s like wrapping some cling wrap over that part of their lives. You go down to be baptidso’d in the Spirit and you come out and not all of you has been change.

I decided a long time ago – after being caught up as though in limbo by this futile, senseless argument about when and how we are baptised in the Holy Spirit – to give that whole thing a miss. ‘When’ and ‘how’ is simply not the point. The point is, that I am completely drenched in the Spirit, that every part of me, every … every bit of sin and stubbornness within me, is open to the Spirit of Christ because I hold nothing back from Him.

And that way … that way, when Jesus comes into my life with His winnowing fork to get rid of the chaff, to burn that in an unquenchable fire, He has free reign and free access to do so. Because what I want to do with my life is to walk in the Spirit, to be guided in all things by Christ Himself, to have the power of God to travel the roads He calls me to travel, and to go through the trials He calls me to go through.

Now, walking in the Spirit is something we are going to talk a lot more about next week, but for the moment, let me ask you, have you been drenched in the Spirit of God? Have you yielded your life completely and utterly to Christ so that He can get about sorting out the wheat from the chaff?

CLOSER TO THE FLAME I would like to spend just a few minutes with you as our time together draws to a close today, to hopefully speak God’s truth into your heart about this baptism of the Holy Spirit. Next week of course, we are going to speak more about the Holy Spirit being poured out into the lives of every man or woman or child who puts their faith in Jesus Christ.

But as I see the dissent and the wrangling and the ill-will across different parts of the church over the work of the Holy Spirit and how He manifests Himself in the lives of individuals and churches today, I truly want to weep. The conservative evangelicals on the one hand and the Charismatics and the Pentecostals on the other. Can’t tell you how many sermons I have sat through over the years where a so called conservative or evangelical derides the Charismatics and the Pentecostals – virtually calling them heretics for believing, for instance, that they should speak in tongues, the language of angels, as the Apostle Paul calls it.

And granted, to a traditional Western mindset, this ‘speaking in tongues’ thing, well, it doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, this is what the Bible has to say about it. The Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians about this very thing. First Corinthians chapter 14, beginning at verse 4:

Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church. Now I would like all of you to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

Did you get that? “Those who speak in a tongue build themselves up.” And Paul would like us all to speak in tongues. So if that’s what the Bible says, what are we doing knocking people?

And on the other side of the coin, I have heard Charismatics, those who believe in the spiritual gifts bestowed on believers through the Spirit, say that unless you speak in tongues then you are not really saved. Well, the Apostle Paul again, asking a series of rhetorical questions to make the point, says that that is just not true. First Corinthians chapter 12, verse 27:

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed you in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. Are all of you apostles? Are all of you prophets? Are all of you teachers? Do all of you work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do you all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” (The answer to all of those questions obviously, well, duh, no!) “Then strive for greater gift. And I will show you a more excellent way.”

Do you see the point? This nonsense; this petty wrangling and stupidity over something that is so important – being filled with the Holy Spirit and yielding our lives fully to Him and walking in the Spirit and seeing the power of the Spirit of Christ transform our lives and flow through our lives into a lost and hurting world – here’s the conclusion I have come to.

My God is a HUGE God and the church, well, there are well over twenty thousand denominations in the world – as unbelievable as that may sound. There is a rich diversity in the church – different cultures, different perspectives and because God understands that and accommodates that, He shows Himself differently to different people and to different groups.

Have I seen the odd bit of emotionalism and manipulation around spiritual gifts? Yep, of course I have. And when I see that, I either speak against it or I walk away from it. But equally on the other side of the fence, I have seen a hardness of heart. I have seen people completely closed to the surprising work of the Spirit and devoid of any real passion and enthusiasm for God. I have seen that too – it’s the same thing – I will either speak against it or I will walk away from it.

Friend, the Holy Spirit is one of the three persons of the Godhead. He is God who comes to dwell in us and my God and your God, well, sometimes God does surprising things. As we saw earlier, the Holy Spirit comes according to the sovereign will of God and manifests Himself is different churches, in different groups, in different people, in different ways.

The point isn’t how! Who am I to tell God how He should do things? The point isn’t when! Who are you and I to tell God that He should drench someone with the Spirit the moment they believe or He should drench people with the Spirit sometime later? Every believer receives the Holy Spirit and at some point, if we open our hearts to God, He will drench us.

The point is that you and I are drenched; that we are drowned; that we are changed; that we come up filled to overflowing, dripping with the Spirit of God, because that’s the plan Jesus has for us. That’s the plan that Jesus promised to us. That is the plan that Jesus has to change this world by taking the gifts and the abilities and the motivations He has put in my heart and in your heart and empowering those through His Spirit and shining the glory of God into this world.

That is God’s plan!

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So many people wish that they could say they’re living their lives by walking in the Spirit. But that’s not really how their life works at all. In fact God often seems a million miles away. Well, there’s a reason for that – it comes down, as it turns out, to a question of priorities.

DECIDING WHAT'S IMPORTANT Today we are kicking off a new series that’s called ‘Walking in the Spirit’. Now that’s a phrase that might get some mixed reactions. Many Christians will have heard it and it speaks of walking along the path of life in the Spirit of God – the Holy Spirit – with the Spirit guiding us, encouraging us, comforting us. But equally, many who fall into that group, who call themselves Christians – as much as they have heard that phrase, ‘Walking in the Spirit’, they really haven’t experienced it in their own lives.

It’s like, “Well, other people may well walk in the Spirit and maybe it’s for Mr or Mrs Super-Christian over there but it seems that it’s never going to happen for me”. And to those who perhaps haven’t yet given their lives over to Jesus, it may all sound a little bit weird – ‘Walking in the Spirit’. Really?

So, over the next few weeks on the programme, I’m hoping that you and I will be able to spend some time together just unpacking this idea of ‘Walking in the Spirit’, because as I am discovering, day by day in my life, it’s a fantastic way to live life. And life is something we live, breath-by-breath, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour. Not just on some super-spiritual plane, not kind of riding around on cloud nine with the angels, but down here on the dusty roads of this earth; along the highways and the byways of life; over hill and dale.

And the thing that people often find difficult is living out their relationship with God in the reality of their lives. It’s not easy sometimes. This idea of walking in the Spirit might sound wonderful, but how do you actually live your life, day by day, immersed in the Spirit of God – guided by Him, knowing His healing touch and His love in the middle of conflict and strife and busyness and all the stuff we go through in life.

I guess it’s that very thing I would like to explore with you over the coming weeks. Interesting, just over the last few weeks in my life, things have been so incredibly busy and so what’s been happening in my walk with the Lord is that, well, my quiet times with Him, instead of being unhurried in the still of the morning, as they usually are, I just haven’t had those times. My times of prayer have been short and fragmented – often because I’m up early, getting ready to speak at a Men’s Breakfast or whatever.

And whilst it’s been a season of just a few weeks, here’s what I find. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness of doing life, doing things for God, doing this, doing that, and what happens is you lose sight of the God who loves you; the Spirit of God who dwells in you. And I get all caught up in busyness. Do you find that too? My hunch is, most of us do.

The sad thing is when that way of life becomes a lifestyle. The sad thing is when people who love Jesus and believe in Him allow themselves to get so busy that they find their time with God is somehow squeezed out of their schedule. And before you know it, God seems like He is a million miles away. Of course, He’s not really, but our fellowship with Him has been interrupted; our relationship with Him becomes fragmented and that’s why it feels as though God is a million miles away.

Now the knock on effect of that on our lives, is that we start imagining that all the doing we have to do, all the striving to achieve that we are involved in, that that is the most important thing in life. So we peddle harder and harder and we start to feel exhausted – spiritually, emotionally, physically … And this is a great time for the devil to start attacking us; it is a great time for us to start worrying about things and getting depressed about things. It’s like this downward spiral and many, many a person who loves Jesus is living their life that way – down somewhere in that dark, deep hole.

So the other morning as I finally arrived back home, I went back to my usual pattern of spending time with the Lord, in the still of the morning when everyone else is still in bed. So many issues were playing on my mind, so many pressures, so many things to pray about, so many things to distract me in my quiet time. And I opened my Bible to pick up where I had left off last time and I found myself in Philippians chapter 3 and as is so often the case, I found the salve to soothe a battered soul.

It’s the Apostle Paul writing about this very issue, about where we put our confidence; about deciding what’s really important in life. He writes a stern warning about putting our confidence in who we are and what we do – making the point that if anyone has the right to be confident in themselves, he does – a Jew, one of God’s chosen people of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised according to the law, a Pharisee – one of the strictest of all the sects in Judaism in the first century – Paul has every right to be full of himself and to be busy, busy, busy in doing stuff for God, but have a listen to what he says. Philippians chapter 3, beginning at verse 7:

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.

In other words, the thing that was really important to the Apostle Paul wasn’t who he was and all the things he could do. No, the most important thing of all was the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. Next to that, everything else was rubbish for him, in order that he would find Jesus and be found in Him and to know His power amidst the sufferings of life.

Friend, walking in the Spirit, as we are going to be seeing over the coming weeks, is an awesome way to live our lives. Truly, it is! But it begins with a decision. It begins by deciding, “What’s the most important thing? All the busyness and the stuff I’m involved in, all that I am and all that I want to be OR knowing Jesus?” I mean, knowing Him first hand; being found in Him, knowing His power?

Because truly, if we are all wrapped up in who we are and what we do in the busyness of our lives, then as close as God might be; as effective as the sacrifice of Jesus is to save us from eternal punishment; as much as we may yearn to be close to Him, our eyes will be dull, our ears will be deaf, our heart will be closed to His presence because we have taken Him and put Him on a shelf in our lives and just left Him there.

Walking in the Spirit begins with getting our priorities right. It begins with setting aside some quiet, unhurried time with our Lord each day to rest in Him, to hear from Him, to worship Him.

THE LIGHT ALONG THE PATH Sometimes I just wish that life made more sense. We all have hopes and dreams but often things get in the road of those. We plan a career but often it doesn’t turn out the way we planned. We hope for this and dream for that but it seems there is always someone or something to get in the road. And then we are left wondering, “Okay, what’s next? How do I go forward?”

What I love about God is that He is a realist. I used to imagine that if I became a Christian and if I gave my life over to this Jesus and if I lived my life for Him, then things would become oh so clear and the way forward would become straight and easy. Well, many things have become much clearer – sure they have – but the path is anything but easy. And you know what, it’s exactly what Jesus promised would happen. Matthew chapter 7, beginning at verse 13:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

And as we spend some time today and over the coming weeks looking at what it means to walk in the Spirit; to walk in an intimate relationship with God – and I want to do that, not in some theoretical way, but in a way that brings the truth of God to life, amidst the reality of your life and mine.

As I have walked with Jesus, now going on to a couple of decades, the greatest joy for me is in discovering the grace and the mercy of God; the joy and the peace that His presence brings as I live out my imperfect life here on this earth. As I deal with conflict, as I deal with misunderstandings, as I deal with things that happen that I wouldn’t have chosen for myself.

Discovering God at work in me and around me and through the circumstances that I wouldn’t have chosen, that is an awesome thing! It is in that place that we discover the faithfulness, the kindness, the mercy and the power of God. It’s in that place that the Spirit of God helps us to live out the truth, the wisdom and the love of God often at a great cost to ourselves. And there is a particular verse, in fact three verses of Scripture that speak deeply into this reality for me. Have a listen. Psalm 119, beginning at verse 103:

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

God speaks through His Word – we call it the ‘Bible’. And sometimes what people want to do is they want to experience the power of the Spirit of God in their lives. We want to see powerful miracles and mountains moved and we want to experience the joy and the peace of God, but the Bible? “Nah, no thanks – stuffy old book. Not for me – no, no, no!”

But listen carefully to what the Psalmist says. He is saying that the reason that God’s Word is sweeter than honey to him, because, through this Word, God has given him understand; God has given him wisdom to choose the right way, rather than every other false way. And so God’s Word is, in fact, a lamp to his feet and a light to his path.

Now the Bible was written by people but inspired by the Holy Spirit, so we can’t separate God’s Word and God’s Spirit – they are the one thing. And so often in life the things that go wrong aren’t anyone’s fault but our own. So often we are living in the consequences of our mistakes because we made some bad choices – can I be so bold as to say some ‘wrong’ choices? And those wrong choices have consequences – simple cause and effect. You smoke; you are going to die young. You eat the wrong foods; they will make you sick and tired. You commit adultery and it’s going to tear your family apart. Clear, simple, plain, obvious – cause and effect.

But God has given us something: He has given us His Word so that we can eat it like sweet honey; so that we can gain wisdom and insight; so that we can start making good choices; right choices. Is that going to take all the pain out of life? No, stuff still happens! But as you may have heard me say before on this programme, as I look at my own life, I can honestly say that ninety percent of the pain was caused by me. My hunch is, if you are going to be honest with yourself, that’s probably true in your life too.

And here, God has given us His Word to guide us on our path and since the gate is narrow and the road is hard, we need God’s help to stay on the path that He has chosen for our lives. And listen … listen again to how the Psalmist put is:

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Two things: a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. When we are walking along and it’s dark and the road is narrow and treacherous, then what we need right then and there, is a lamp for our feet. Enough light to know where to take the next step. That’s what God’s Word is! These days when I find myself say, in a situation of conflict, when the easiest thing in the world would be to do the wrong thing, God’s Word is lamp for my feet. His Spirit brings His Word to my recollection and I might hear Him whisper, “Turn the other cheek.” That’s the lamp to my feet bit. He shows me which step to take next when things get tight.

But His Word is also a light to my path. As I look up and as I survey the path ahead and wonder, “God, where is this leading me? Where is life headed? Where do You want me to go?” Then His Word is a light to my path. I am doing what I am doing now because God spoke His call on my life, into my heart through His Word. And friend, this whole Psalm – Psalm 119 which, at 176 verses, is the longest of all the Psalms – is all about praising God and thanking Him for His Word.

It’s not that God is loading some heavy pack on our back and making us carry around a bunch of rules – it’s that God’s Word is God’s wisdom for our lives. It shines a lamp down to our feet; it casts a light forward along the path to make our lives all that God wanted them to be. When we begin to walk in God’s Word, here’s the thing: we are beginning to walk in God’s Spirit.

DESIRING GOD’S WAYS There’s something about yielding our lives to God that is such an important first step to walking in the Spirit. ‘Yielding’ – now that’s a word that many people don’t like! We are not taught to ‘yield’ so much as we are taught to win. It’s great that kids play competitive sport – and adults – but competitive sport, at the end of the day, is about winning and ‘yielding’ seems to be the complete opposite – it seems to be the same as losing. If I yield to you in something, I have to give up my desire to have my way; to win, if you will, in order that you can have your way.

Now, I would like to spend the time we have left together today, just kind of unpacking this idea of ‘yielding’, because in it lays the secret of walking in the Spirit. In this notion of yielding lies the secret of laying hold of the abundant life that Jesus said He came to give us. Funny thing – when we discover God’s wisdom, God’s truth, so often, it turns our worldly concept completely upside down. Yielding in order to win? Let’s have a look – Psalm 25, beginning at verse 1:

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me. Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.

Now, those words were written by King David and if you know anything of David’s life, you will know that even though he eventually became King of Israel, he went through some really tough times. His predecessor, King Saul, tried to kill him, the nations around Israel came against him when he was King and tried to annihilate him, even his own son plotted against him. So he is speaking here out of one of those times of trial and through it all, David has figured out that God is his salvation; that God is trustworthy.

When all these enemies of David’s come against him, David puts his trust in the Lord our God and God never forsakes him. And because he has learned in his own terrible experience that God is faithful and trustworthy because God has always been there for him, he now makes what would seem to be a strange request of God. Have another listen and see if you can pick it up. Beginning at verse 4:

Make me to know your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.

I know it may sound a little odd here but what David is doing is, he is yielding to God. Not because God is twisting his arm but because he has discovered the faithfulness and the goodness and the loving kindness of God. He has discovered that, come what may, God’s way actually works – which incidentally, is why the ministry that I am part of in producing these radio programmes, is called ‘Christianityworks’, because it actually does.

And so because David has experienced the faithfulness of God, he is now yielding to God and pleading with Him, “God, show me Your ways. God, teach me Your ways. Lord, lead me into Your truth. Teach me, because You, O God, are the God of my salvation and for You I will wait all day long.”

And ‘yielding’ is only yielding when it’s done as David did, willingly – at least, in God’s eyes. Yielding to God isn’t about grumbling or complaining. He wants us – because of what He has done through Jesus on that cross – to lay down our lives at His feet; to crucify our selfishness; to nail it to the cross; to die to self and live to Him. Romans chapter 6, beginning at verse 3:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him in baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

The whole emphasis here is on dying to the old self and rising again to Christ to be what God always intended for us to be.

Now, I’m not saying for one moment here, that we need to work our way into God’s favour. Anyone who has ever tried to scrub themselves clean before coming to God, as I did, will know the absolute futility of that. The only One who can make us clean is God Himself, through Jesus. And the only One who can bring our new life to life in us is God, as He pours His Holy Spirit upon us.

But the thing that stops us from experiencing the power of the Spirit of God, His love, His guidance, His wisdom, is our stiff opposition and our pride. The idea that, “I don’t need to listen to God because I know what I’m doing.” And when we have that attitude, there’s one thing absolutely for certain, God will oppose us every time: “… for he opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” James chapter 4, verse 6.

And here in David’s plea to God: “Show me your ways; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me,” we see this essential first step to walking in the Spirit; to experiencing the new life that Jesus wants us to have.

And that … that essential first step, friend, is to yield to God. Not just in some things but in everything – all that we are, everything that we have, all our hopes, all our dreams for the future – laying everything at His feet and saying, ‘Lord, all of this You have given me but more than that, You gave me Jesus, Your Son, so now I lay everything down, I worship You with all that I am and all that I have. And now, dear God, show me Your ways.’

When we come to God this way, yielding all, opening our hearts to His Spirit and His Word, then we have stepped into that place where His Spirit would lead us:

For it is no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me.

The Spirit of God Himself dwelling in me, in you, in anyone who would thus yield their life to Christ.

So many people desire with all their hearts to walk in the Spirit and yet are unwilling to yield to the Spirit. For they know when they yield, the Spirit will go to work in them and there will be a price to pay. There is always a price to pay to cut out the cancer of sin. The question is simply this: will you yield, will I yield?

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Sure. We’re created to be an individual, but not in isolation – in community, and community doesn’t work if it doesn’t accept and love and value the uniqueness of each individual in it.

IS YOUR LIFE GOING TO COUNT? Each minute that slips by is one less minute that you and I have to live on this earth. How we spend this precious time has everything to do with the sort of life we’ll have lived when it comes to an end. And so today, we’re chatting about living a life that really counts for something.

Now, when we’re young children, most of us don’t think about dying. We pretty much have this mind-set that we’re going to live forever here on this earth, but as time slips by, our own children come and then they go, and before you know it the grey hairs start appearing, and the thing that really surprised me? The body doesn’t work quite as well as it used to.

At first I was really surprised and then annoyed, and then a sense of my own mortality crept in. At some point, the stark reality that our life on this earth isn’t infinite becomes real in our consciousness – in our hearts. And that, my friend, is a sobering realisation.

Perhaps you’re at that point or maybe way beyond it or perhaps you’re not, but at some point many, most come to the realisation that the end is a lot closer than it used to be. At that point, how will we look back at our lives? Come on, how will you look back at your life? And just as importantly, how will others look back at your life? A life well-lived? A life with impact? A life with purpose? A worthwhile life? Or maybe not so much.

I remember being confronted by those questions when I read a book in my mid-thirties called, ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen Cody – a business bestseller. One of the habits, the second one in fact, is to begin with the end in mind. In other words, to set your life on a course that gets you to where you actually want to go. He begins that chapter by taking you to a funeral – your funeral, as though you have a chance to listen to what other people will say about you when you’re gone. And the question that he asks the reader (me, as I read it) is this: Will the people say about you the sorts of things that you’d really like them to say, or not? And that right there is an incredibly confronting question because it speaks directly about the gaps, small or large, between the sort of life you’d really like to be living and the one that you’re actually living.

Are you really living the sort of life that you’d like to be living? Is it having the results, the impact, the outcomes, that you’d really like it to be having, or not? Because if it’s not, then the only way it’s going to change is if you change. The only way that your report card at the end of the day is going to be different is if the attitudes, the desires, the motivations and ultimately the things that you say and do become different. And with life slipping away with each tick of the clock, my friend, do you really have time to waste?

It was that very question that brought me to a complete turning-point in my life at aged 36, because I decided that there was a huge gap between what I wanted my life to add up to at the end of the day, and what it was going to add up to if I kept heading in the direction that I was heading. I was living my life by and large for me, me, and me. And that, as it turns out, is no way to get the results that I was really looking for, because the results that I was looking for from the people who would one day stand up at my funeral were about the positive impact that I’d had on their lives’ journey.

Some would call that maybe a mid-life crisis; I don’t know, but at some point we each need to ask ourselves whether our lives are headed in the right direction. So without putting too fine-a point on it, can I ask you quietly, gently, respectfully, is your life headed in the right direction? Jesus once told this story about a man. Luke 12:16:

The land of a rich man produced abundantly, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do if I have no place to store all my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I’ll do this. I’ll pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.”

But God said to him, ‘You fool! For this very night your life is being demanded of you, and the things that you prepared, whose will they become?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich towards God.

That story had a huge impact on me because I was that guy. I thought it was all about what I could build; what I could have.

We’ve no doubt all heard that saying: “You can’t take it with you”, to which I would rather stupidly respond: “Well, you know what, if I can’t take it with me, then I’m not going”. Right; like that’s an option! At some moment in time, we’re all going. We’re all going to breathe our last breath. My heart will stop; your heart will stop; and within just a few short minutes, every cell in our body will be dead. If I had the opportunity to look back on my life in the weeks, the days and the hours leading up to that event, I decided that I’d like to be able to look back on my life with contentment and satisfaction.

Every life has mistakes and regrets – yours does, mine does. Things that we wish we could unwind; things that we wish we would have done differently, but the greatest tragedy of it all would be to get to the end and to look back on it all with way more regret than satisfaction. The greatest tragedy of all would be a wasted life. So is your life headed in the right direction? And if not, what are you doing about it? Well?

There’s something that the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians in the New Testament that had a huge impact on my life. It was the thing that God used to turn my life around, and just quietly, it’s still turning around. It’s still a work in progress. None of us is there yet; at least, I don’t feel that I am. Have a listen to these amazing words. Colossians 3:1-3:

So if you’ve been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ.

And then, just a little further down in the same chapter, verse 16:

And let the Word of Christ dwell richly in you.

For me, change didn’t happen (I mean real change, radical change, the sort of change that set my life on the course that would give it the impact and the results that deep-down I was secretly hoping for) until my perspective changed. Once I stopped focusing on this life, what I could get out of it, what I could build, and once I lifted my gaze – set my mind on heavenly things, the things that are above, the things that will last, rather than the earthly things that seem to satisfy today but in reality are as fleeting as the morning mist – what I wanted actually changed. What I desired changed, and my life started to turn around and head in the right direction. Up until then, I tried everything – I mean, everything! The only thing that worked was following Jesus Christ; setting my heart on Him.

And so if I died tonight, would I be content with the life that I’ve led? Well of course, there are still some things that I’d love to do and love to achieve, but if the Lord called me home tonight, if this is it, you know what? I’m content with the life I’ve lived. You can’t ask for much more than that.

IMPACTING YOUR COMMUNITY You see, in the west, we think as individuals – individual freedom, individual belief, individual rights, individual this and that. Now to a point, it’s of course great to have individual freedoms, but in eastern cultures people think far more collectively – as families, as communities, and that brings in a strong component of mutual responsibility and respect. Take either of those to the extreme (individualism or collectivism) and that’s not a good thing, but I guess the point I’m trying to get to is that if my life and your life are going to have a real impact, if we’re going to leave a lasting legacy, then a part of who we are needs to be serving our communities – serving other people.

I want to come to the western concept of church, and whilst a lot of good things happen in church, yet I see so many people struggling to find genuine connection; genuine belonging; genuine community in church scenarios. And whatever you may believe, whatever faith or belief-system you may ascribe to, come on; community is really important.

Have you ever wondered what community really is? To me it’s not a complete subjugation of the individual. We’re all individuals. No two people look alike, except maybe the very rare sets of identical twins, and even then, no two people have the same abilities, skills, outlooks, and experience. Each of us is unique, and uniqueness was never meant to mean isolation, which is what individualism leads to for many.

Do you see the kind of paradox that emerges here? Sure. We’re created to be an individual, but not in isolation – in community, and community doesn’t work if it doesn’t accept and love and value the uniqueness of each individual in it. That doesn’t mean that we have to say that everything someone does or believes or thinks is right. Clearly, there are times when in a community, people do do the wrong things, and that’s where community brings a sense of mutual obligation into play.

Can I ask you something? What part do you play in your community? How do you contribute to your community? Do other people benefit from your uniqueness in the relationship of genuine family and community? Because if not, then I don’t believe you’re living the life you were made to live. None of us was ever made to live in isolation, yet I see so many people bruised, hurt, injured by others, withdrawing into their shells a bit like a hermit-crab, as though that’s a solution to anything.

Come on; community is laughing and crying together. Community is sharing the ups and the downs. Community is serving each other, and benefitting from each other, and benefitting from serving one another. The most beautiful picture that I’ve ever come across of community is a picture that I find in God’s Word (the Bible) in the New Testament. 2 Corinthians 12:15:

If a foot would say, ‘Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body’, that wouldn’t make it any less part of the body. And if the ear would say, ‘Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body’, that wouldn’t make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would our sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members in the one body.

The eye can’t say to the hand, ‘Look, I don’t need you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I don’t need you’. On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are actually indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable, we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more respectable members don’t need this.

But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior members that there may be no dissension within the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. Because if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. If one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.

Can I ask you, what part are you playing in your community – this beautiful picture of a body – your church, your local neighbourhood or your block of apartments? Do you serve the person in need next-door? Anyone who wants to have an impact in this world needs to be part of their community – serving it, and benefitting from it.

The problem is that too often we’re too busy worrying about us. Too often we’re too concerned about who’s on the top of the heap; who’s got the best reputation; who’s going to get the accolades; the most money; the nicest house; the most well-adjusted children; wealth … and so it goes on. Greatness isn’t about winning; it’s about losing.

Being the first is really about being the last. That’s what that picture in the Bible is talking about. That’s what Jesus said. In setting straight the religious leaders of His day, who for the most part were hypocrites who manipulated the common folk in the name of God and religion, this is what Jesus said. Matthew 23:11-12:

The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Do you want to live a life that will have people remembering you when you’re gone – with fondness, with a sense of gratitude for the impact you had in their lives? Then my friend, it’s time to focus on your community. How can you serve? How can you make a difference? Is there sacrifice involved? Yeah. Absolutely, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing so satisfying as using your unique gifts to serve others, even when that serving is hard.

That’s what community is. God made us not as loners, not as hermit crabs to live in isolation; He made us to be social beings. Community creatures. And if perhaps you’re one of those people who’s forgotten what community is, whether in a church setting or frankly in any other setting, maybe today is the day to repent that. Maybe today is the day to engage, to become part of, to serve, to sacrifice for your community. That’s what it means to live a life that counts.

TEARING DOWN THE WALLS That picture of the Berlin Wall is a powerful one. Germany, you may recall, after World War Two was separated into east and west by the allies. Berlin was in the soviet zone, so as part of the arrangement between the allies, Berlin itself was divided so that the soviets controlled one part, and the democratic government of West Germany controlled the other. The wall was a terrible thing: Separating families, parents from their children, husbands from their wives … It was a brutal thing of division and suspicion. I wish we had time to chat about the events that culminated in its destruction in 1989. It was a fascinating time in history.

Nevertheless, walls are always damaging. Sometimes they exist as physical structures, but most often they live in the hearts of people. We saw it for centuries in Northern Ireland where historically, peace is a relatively recent phenomenon. We’ve seen it for centuries in Israel; in many parts of Africa; tribal, national, international wars continue to rage. We see religious divisions. We see it sometimes even in violence over sport. Somehow our capacity to divide people, to set one against the other, to live in suspicion and fear of one another, is incredible, but it’s not the macro perspective that I’m so much interested in today. It’s the micro; the individual; the personal.

Many people live their lives with walls in their hearts, rejecting loved ones over all sorts of reasons; being suspicious of people in the workplace – of their motives. Sometimes we build walls around our hearts for protection after being hurt. You see that a lot, sadly, in marriages, where husband and wife have their own Berlin Wall running right through the middle of a relationship – a wall that each of them built, brick by brick, over many years until they find themselves living on either side of it. Do you recognise any of that in your life? It’s just as destructive in our lives and relationships, tearing us apart, as the Berlin Wall was in tearing a community, families and lives apart.

What walls do you have in your life? What unforgiveness, fears, suspicions are you carrying around in your heart? Because these are the things that rob us of life. These are the things that stunt our growth, that give us an outlook on life that just ruins everything. I want to share with you today, as you look forward to the rest of your life, how you can tear down your walls, brick by brick. The Germans tore that wall down literally with their bare hands – this wall that had limited them for too long, and what followed was a united single Germany.

And in a real sense, that’s what I’m talking about here – tearing down the walls that divide us, brick by brick, by hand. I don’t care what you believe, or what you don’t believe. There’s really only one way to do that, and that’s through forgiveness and reconciliation – not through religion. This is how Jesus put it. Matthew 5:23:

When you’re offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come back and offer your gift to God.

He’s talking about putting reconciliation before sacrifice to God. He’s saying here: ‘Look, you can’t have a right relationship with God when you’ve got an argument going on with someone else. First, go and be reconciled with that person; then, come and make your peace with God’.

As I said, I don’t care what faith you belong to; what belief-set or values you have: We all need to deal with these issues in our lives. Just picture that mighty Berlin Wall that divided families and communities for so long. The change happened when the mood of the people swelled up. ‘Enough of the division! Enough of this separation! Enough!’ I remember at that time on television, seeing people tearing that mighty wall down with their hands. That would have been hard; that would have been painful; that would have left some hands bruised and bloodied, but they tore the wall down.

Who are the people on the other side of your walls? Perhaps it’s a family-member, a mother, a child that you haven’t spoken to for years. Perhaps it’s a wife or a husband, whom you’ve isolated. Who knows? Perhaps it’s someone in your community who believes something different, or lives differently to you. I’m not saying that we have to say that anything goes. I’m not saying that we have to say that wrong is right – just that it’s time to forgive; just that it’s time to lay aside fears and prejudices and angers and animosities … Listen. Love is always better than anger. Forgiveness is always better than unforgiveness. If you and I want to live the life we’ve been made to live, love is the answer. Tearing down the walls is the answer.

What walls need tearing down in your life? I’m not talking here about something that is so hugely complicated. It’s simple. I love the way Paul puts it in his letter to the Ephesian church (4:32):

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

And there’s the key. God’s forgiven you and me everything the moment we believe in Jesus, and He did it at a huge cost – the torture, the death of His Son. Unforgiveness eats away at us like a cancer. It rots our souls. It robs us of an outlook on life that could be so full of anticipation of what the future holds. Do you believe in God? Do you want to live the life He always intended you to live? Then my friend, unforgiveness simply isn’t an option. Let me say this again: Forgiveness is not an optional extra to our relationship with God; it’s a vital element. Mark 11:25:

Whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father will also forgive you.

Colossians 3:12-13:

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

The list of those Bible-references about forgiveness goes on. It is not an optional extra. Trust me. As hard as it may appear, forgiving those who’ve wronged you is the most powerful thing that you can do to get a fresh beginning for your life. Friend, let me ask you this again: What walls is God calling you to tear down in your life today? Well?

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As long as you hold onto that thing from the past, it has a hold over you, and as long as it has a hold over you, you can’t take hold of the blessings that are coming your way.

WHO’S IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT? Imagine you’re driving along in your car one day, and you see a car swerving all over the place. Why? Because behind the wheel in the driver’s seat is a gorilla with a crazed look on his face. Would you be shocked? Yeah, me too. Driving a car is a serious business. The moment we get behind that wheel, we’re in control of a lethal weapon. But how often do you actually think about that before you unlock the car-door, hop in, strap your seatbelt on, and turn the key in the ignition?

Most of us don’t think about it at all, and to be honest, I’ve been driving now for almost thirty years and until March last year, I didn’t think too much about it either. I’d just hop into my car, turn the key, and off we’d go. I was an aggressive driver because of my personality-type; I want to get where I’m going as quickly as possible. I’d tailgate people; I’d blast the horn; still do now and then; I’d zig in and out of traffic, without really thinking too much about the consequences.

But in March last year, everything changed. I attended an advanced driving course. Now somehow in my head I imagined that I’d be learning how to drive faster still – how to zip in and out of the traffic more effectively, but instead, they taught me about the consequences of driving like a lunatic. The morning was spent in the classroom, and the afternoon on the racetrack. By the end of the day, I came to the realisation that for the past…well…thirty years of my life, there’d been a lunatic behind the wheel of my car. Me! A bit like that crazy gorilla I was talking about earlier.

It’s not that I’m an overly bad person, per say; it’s not that I was intentionally being a lunatic about my driving – and in any case, my driving wasn’t all that outrageous; plenty of people drive like that – but once I listened to someone who knew what they were talking about, an expert; once I hopped into my car and participated in some controlled tests at what were in fact relatively low speeds, and I discovered the consequences of the way I’d been driving, I was confronted with the reality that my behaviour behind the wheel, unwitting though it may have been, was putting my life at risk; the lives of the people I love most – my family; and the lives of other people on the road.

It was a shock, I can tell you, and that shock – being confronted with the deadly consequences of my behaviour – resulted in an instant change in the way I drove my car. In fact, these days, I see people doing what I used to do and immediately I think: ‘How can you do something crazy like that? Ah, yeah, I remember how.’

Now if driving a car is a serious business, living your life is even more of a serious business. What we believe, how we see ourselves, what we think, what we say, what we do, our relationships, our loves, how we cope with adversity, how we cope with success, how we live our lives, that’s a serious business. Steering our lives through all the obstacles and hurdles this world throws up at us from beginning to end. Let me ask you a question: “Who’s in the driver’s seat of your life? Is it a lunatic, or is it someone with a good heart, a wise head, a steady hand?”

Let’s say, a bit like going to an advanced driving instructor, you paid a forensic psychologist to review your life – your attitudes; your successes and failures and how you handle them all; the depth and the effectiveness of your relationships; your whole life – what might they find? What sort of a scorecard would you end up with? If someone brought you face to face with the consequences of some of your wrong attitudes towards others – perhaps your own perception of yourself, your foibles and insecurities and all that stuff – how would you go?

The sort of life we end up living comes back to who or what is in the driver’s seat. It comes back to the skill and the wisdom and the integrity and the insight of whoever’s driving our lives, and the whole thing of educating us on how to drive our lives is left somewhat to chance.

Some cultures handle it quite well, but others (in fact, the more affluent cultures where people see themselves primarily as individuals, rather than members of a family or members of a community) we don’t handle this life-education stuff that well at all. So where do you go? How do you get the sort of input into your life that sets your course in the right direction? Here are the words of the very first Psalm in the Old Testament. Have a listen to this:

Happy are those who don’t follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers. But their delight is in the Word of God, on which they meditate day and night. Those people are like trees planted by streams of water that yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves don’t wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

The wicked, on the other hand, aren’t like that. They are like chaff that’s blown away by the wind.

Academically, I’m a pretty smart guy. But when it came to actually living out my life, I didn’t have a lot of wisdom. Being smart and being wise are two entirely different things, and so unwittingly, I wasn’t living the sort of life that I had the potential to live. I wasn’t taking what I was smart at, what I was good at, and using it with wisdom and compassion, and so, I wasn’t all that happy.

The turning point came when I let someone else take the driver’s seat. The turning point for me was when I let Jesus drive for a while, for a long while; when I started to listen to His words – what He has to say. Then, all of a sudden, my life started yielding the fruit it was always meant to yield.

Just stop and think about this: God made you and me who we are. He knows exactly what He made us good at, and the things that we’re not so good at. And when we stop taking the advice of the wicked, when we stop treading the path that sinners tread, when we stop sitting in the seat of the scoffers as though somehow we’re in a position to judge people, something awesome happens. We discover the freedom that we’ve always been looking for. We discover that we were made with a purpose.

We’ve been given some gifts and some abilities that are absolutely unique and special, and when we live out who God made us to be according to His wisdom, His ways, when we drink in His words and His wisdom the way a thirsty tree sends down its roots into the soil to draw up the water, then you can’t help it. Fruit starts to appear. We end up producing the goodness and the yield that we were designed, handcrafted to produce.

And look, maybe you know something that I don’t, but there isn’t one thing on this planet that I’ve found to be more satisfying, more fulfilling, than being who God made me to be; doing what God made me to do; producing the fruit that others get to eat – the fruit He always planned for me to produce. But it only started happening when I got out of the road, and let Jesus hop into the driver’s seat. Can I ask you this question again? Who is in the driver’s seat of your life?

WHAT’S DRIVING YOU? Ok, so the alarm clock goes off again in the morning. Great! You switch it off, into the bathroom, get dressed, have breakfast, and then you’re off and running. For some of us, it’s off to work. Perhaps you have a long commute ahead or maybe you work from home. You get to your workplace and the day begins, or perhaps you’re a stay-at-home mother. Other people think: “Man, wouldn’t it be great to be able to stay at home and not have to go to work!” But kids are hard work, right? Housework is boring and no one seems to appreciate all that you do. Maybe you live on your own. A lot of older people do. The day is going to be lonely and empty, so you’d like to sleep in for as long as possible, but somehow you seem to be waking up much earlier these days.

Some people seem to have such exciting jobs. I remember when I was a consultant, almost every week I was flying off somewhere here or there, and people would look at me and say: “Wow! I wish I had Berni’s job”. Little did they know how sick I was of taxies and airports and hotels and planes and landing and scrambling to get to the next meeting … There’s a hotel in Wellington in New Zealand, where I’ve stayed one hundred and eight times. That’s a hundred and eight return-trips between Australia and New Zealand. Even what appears to be glamorous or desirable really ends up being a grind, so I’m going to come back to it.

Whatever your lot in life is – however you spend your day, however glamorous it may appear to others or however boring – what motivates you to get up out of bed every day? Is it just that you have to? You have to get up. You have to go to work. You have to do that long commute and sit in that cubicle and do that job, ‘cos that’s what pays for the mortgage, that’s what puts food on the table, and that’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it’s always going to be.

The tragic truth is that that’s precisely how it is for a lot of people. They’re stuck on this endless merry-go-round of drudgery and pressure and stress, that has precious little in it to be motivated about. I lived a lot of my life just like that. There was nothing in it to motivate me and to give me satisfaction. Now let me say, I did have some motivations. I wanted to make a lot of money, and I was on the way. I wanted to be successful and to some degree, I was. I wanted to be a recognised leader in my industry, and to be sure, people knew who I was and my consulting services were very much in demand.

Those were my motivations, but there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They’re motivations you’d think that if realised would bring a great degree of satisfaction and contentment. Well, there was a bit of that, but it was all too fleeting. It didn’t last. Deep down, at the end of each day, when I laid my head on that pillow, that sense of achievement and satisfaction at what I had achieved that day simply wasn’t there. And of course, in just a few hours, that alarm clock would be going off again and, hey presto…

Come on, what are your motivations, your hopes and your dreams that get you out of bed every day, and most importantly, are they the sort of motivations and hopes and dreams that are going to bring you the sense of satisfaction and contentment and fulfilment that you’ve been spending most of your life looking for? Well, are they, or aren’t they?

You know that Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, but that’s how many people live; can I say, most people live. ‘Well, you know, I’m not content. I’m not satisfied, but if I just keep doing it, if I just keep working harder, maybe it’ll come.’ Can I be really direct here? No, it won’t! Because 99% of that sense of satisfaction and contentment and fulfilment that everyone’s yearning for has to do with what’s going on inside your heart. And there’s a simple yet profound switch that each one of us can flick on the inside that changes everything. Would you like to know what it is? Well, here it is – the words of Jesus. Matthew 23:11-12:

The greatest among you will be your servant, but all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

That switch is turning our lives around from filling ourselves, gratifying ourselves, satisfying ourselves, to using who we are and what we have to serve others. It’s turning our lives around from dreaming about how successful we can be, to harnessing our hopes and dreams to impact other people’s lives. And when we do that, here’s what happens.

The things that we’ve been doing that seem mundane all of a sudden have a purpose outside themselves, and that purpose is to help and to bless other people – to use who we are and what we have to make their lives better, and that is where the satisfaction and the contentment and the greatness are. What’s greatness? Greatness lives in the hearts of the people whose lives we’ve impacted, doesn’t it? All of those who humble themselves to be servants will be exalted because their greatness will live on in the hearts and the lives of those people whom they’ve served. It’s a simple switch.

‘Oh, Berni, you don’t know how boring, how terrible my job (my life) really is, do you?’ I have no idea, but God does, and this is what His Word for you today is. If that’s what you’re going through right now, have a listen to this. Colossians 3:22:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while you’re being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task is, put yourself into it as though you’re doing it for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord, you will receive your inheritance as a reward. You serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

Serving God ultimately means serving people. When we love Him and we want to serve Him with all our hearts, He often calls us into difficult places; dark places, to be that one light that shines there; to be, in effect, His light shining in the darkness, and that is what brings meaning into the reality of our mundane existence. That’s what brings purpose to our lives – a focus to serve Him, and then impact others with His love.

No, people won’t always be falling over one another to come and thank us. We won’t always feel appreciated and some days, it’s going to be a tough gig, but that’s ok, because when we do it for Jesus, then it’s from Him that we receive His inheritance as our reward. When we’re in the business of serving Jesus, that’s the only place so far that I’ve been able to find the peace, and the contentment, and that sense of fulfilment and satisfaction I’ve been looking for.

A CHANGE OF DIRECTION Probably one of the most devastating things that could happen to us in life is when we lose our soul-mate. A wife loses her husband or a husband loses his wife. There are many widows out there because we men have a tendency to die a bit younger than our wives, and depending on what country and culture you live in, there are plenty of men out there whose wives have divorced them. It’s hard to imagine something more devastating than losing your soul-mate, except perhaps losing a child.

Now none of us wishes those things on anybody, right? We certainly don’t wish them on ourselves, but here’s the one thing I know. At some stage, my beautiful wife Jacquie and I will be separated because for one of us, our time here on this earth will be over. I’ve seen people react to that sort of loss in a few different ways. First of course, there’s a time of grieving, and that’s so normal and people should be allowed to grieve. And that’s followed by a sense of emptiness and loneliness – a void that it doesn’t seem that anyone else can fill. But after that, there are basically three different ways that people can handle that sort of a loss.

Some will never recover. They never get over the loss and they pine away, and often they pass away soon thereafter. Then there are those who never quite recover. They live a kind of a half-life, never really enjoying the rest of their lives. And then there are those who (whilst they will always miss their soul-mate) get on and live this new stage of their lives in a different way.

It may not be a loss of a soul-mate. Maybe you lose your job; or your house burnt down; or all your possessions, all those things that you were sentimental about, are gone. Perhaps you suffer an injury that stops you doing what you were once able to do. The thing is that we never know what’s around the next corner and what’s over the next rise, do we? Life’s going along just fine, and then bang! It seems to blow up in our faces.

Okay, so now what? I know with absolute certainty there are people today listening, thinking: “That’s me! That’s where I am in life”, and I also know that there are people listening who next week or next month or next year are going to be hit by one of these terrible, life-changing events, and who’ll be left reeling, wondering what to do. So, what do you do? What’s the answer?

I’ve been through a couple of those in my life, and as I look back on them, I would never wish them on anyone – not even my worst enemy – and yet those tragedies (which have left their scars) in a sense are part of who I am. They’ve changed me and moulded me and shaped me into a person that I would never have been but for the tragedies, in a good way.

Of course I grieved. Of course I struggled for a time, and I needed the help of friends and loved ones around me, but there came a point where I had to make a decision – a three-way decision. Do I just give up on life altogether? Do I live this kind of grey half-life that some people seem to live? Or do I get on, and grab life by the horns and get on with it, and live my life to the full? What am I going to do?

Tragedy has a way of immobilising us, but I’m naturally your glass half-full kind of guy. That’s how I see the world, and so the couple of times that my life has taken a twist that I would never have dreamt of or wanted for myself, what I’ve discovered is a world full of new possibilities. Does that make sense? Tragedies take away someone or something that we love. That’s why it’s a tragedy, but with the benefit of hindsight, they also tell you that when the dust settles, when the grieving’s over, tragedies remove limitations and boundaries, and open up new possibilities.

There’s a man by the name of Job, who lost everything. It’s a long and tragic story. I mean, the guy lost all his wealth, his possessions, his family, his friends, his health – everything; his status … and he was really a good guy. He was a man who honoured and obeyed God – He was devastated. His friends criticised him, he went to God and asked God why and God refused to answer him, but at the end of all those trials, this is what happened to Job. Job 41:10:

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.

Sometimes we’re so busy holding on to that which we’ve lost that we can’t take hold of the new blessings that the future holds. When Job was struggling through all his devastating trials, he could never have imagined that he’d end up with double for his trouble.

Can I ask you, what are you grieving over? What is it: Something that you lost, something that hurt you, something that left you feeling worse-off? As long as you hold onto that thing from the past, it has a hold over you, and as long as it has a hold over you, you can’t take hold of the blessings that are coming your way. As long as we’re grieving over the past, that grief displaces the joy that we can experience today and in the future.

Sometimes things happen that aren’t fair. Sometimes things happen we would never have chosen for ourselves, and that we wouldn’t even wish on our worst enemy, but I know with all my heart, with every fibre of my being, that there are new blessings waiting on the other side of that. The only question is whether you’re prepared to take hold of them.

The simple yet profound truth is that God is a God of blessing. Suffering and blessing visit our lives. Jesus wasn’t immune to either. Do you remember how He suffered and died, and yet through it all, God was with Him and at the end of his story is this. Ephesians 1:20:

God put His power to work in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. And He has put all things under His feet.

Jesus is the name above all names. Yes He suffered; yes He died, but yes, He rose again, and everyone and everything is under His dominion. Earth is His footstool, and it’s the perfect hope that we have in this Jesus that gives us back our future after a tragedy. Let’s finish with God’s Word about hope. 1 Peter 1:3:

By His great mercy, God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you. Rejoice in this! Even if now for a little while you have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith (which is more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire) may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus is revealed.

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Every hurt, every pain, every argument, every flash of anger every desire for revenge, the only way to defeat those things is with the steadfast love of the Lord our God.

I’M ANGRY With all my heart I believe that you and I are created to live an extraordinary life, but one of the things that robs many people of that sort of life is negative emotions, and today on the program we’re going to chat about three of the most common ones – anger, the desire for revenge and fear. So let’s kick things off. Let me ask you, how much is your anger robbing you of your extraordinary life?

Anger is something different to annoyance. We can be annoyed by little things and some people sadly spend a lot of their life in the state of annoyance. It’s something you may have heard me talk about recently on this program. But anger is a much bigger thing.

Let’s imagine for a moment that someone says something nasty about you or someone consistently fails to meet your expectations of honesty and loyalty. Or someone speaks lies about you behind your back. There is every chance that those things are going to make you angry right? When is the last time that you were angry? Maybe you’re angry right now? Or it happened earlier today or just yesterday? With the way this world is, it’s probably not that long ago. Can you remember how you felt?

It comes on quite quickly doesn’t it? It kind of rises up within you. Sometimes we want to shout or hit out, sometimes we just want to glare the person down, above all things we want recompense an apology and sometimes even revenge. Anger is a complicated emotion. And so often when we experience anger we make stupid decisions; we say something or do something that destroys a relationship or hurts someone, sometimes ourselves and sometimes other people.

Ok, back to the last time that you were angry, can you still remember it? Then here is my question. How long were you angry at that particular person? Was it a minute or two before you calmed down? 5- 10 minutes perhaps? A half hour or an hour or all day? Overnight perhaps? A week, two weeks? Are you still angry with that person? I know a people who have been angry with each other for years and literally haven’t spoken to each other for all that time, because somehow they couldn’t let go of anger.

The fullest and most horrific conclusion to unbridled anger is of course murder, and murder, Jesus said, begins in our hearts. Anger is something that happens deep down in our hearts and unless we learn to control it we can end up doing some terribly destructive things in life. There are many people whose marriage, whose families, whose careers are laying on the scrap heap right now because they didn’t learn to control anger. I’m sure you probably know one or two people just like that. So, there are two aspects of anger that we’re going to chat about today – how quickly it happens, and how long it takes to get over it.

First of all, how quickly. Remember earlier I said that anger can rise up very quickly indeed, especially if that person has already made us angry before; especially if that person has hurt us in some way or has been dishonest in the past. I want to encourage you today to be someone who is slow to anger. This God I mentioned earlier, the one who sent Jesus His Son to pay for my sins and yours, well his Word the Bible says this about God’s anger. Psalms 103 verse 8:

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

God gets angry but He’s slow to anger, because he’s abounding in steadfast love. Love is the key. Caring deeply for other people is the key. If we can become servant-hearted then we can show grace and mercy. I happen to believe that there is a God and that you and I are created by him in His image, and so it makes absolute sense that we should be like him, prepared to show mercy.

Can I ask you, when you do something stupid, something that with the wisdom of hindsight you knew was wrong, and we all do that don’t we? Would you like others to cut you some slack? To show you some mercy? To be gracious and forgive you? Of course you would, me to! And that’s how we should be; slow to anger and full of mercy and grace. When that’s how we live our lives we become angry fast less often, we accept the limitations that other people and we even compensate for them instead of getting angry with them.

And the second part of anger I’d like to chat about right now is how long we stay angry because that’s a huge issue. The quicker we get over it, the quicker we forgive, the quicker we move on, the less destructive our anger is going to be. So how does God handle it? Well let’s have a look at the very next verse in that same psalm in the Old Testament and what it says about God’s anger. Psalm 103 verses 9 and 10:

He will not always accuse, not will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor does he repay us according to our iniquities.

It other words, God gets over his anger, instead of hanging onto it and he doesn’t pay us back quickly. So, how do we minimise the damage that anger can course. Here it is again. Be slow to get angry and when we do forgive quickly. Not bad hey? And what is it that allows God to behave that way? Again it comes back to this one simple thing, the next few verses in that Psalm. Psalm 103, verse 11-17:

For as the heavens are high above the earth so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east from the west so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.

For he knows how we’re made, he remembers that we’re just dust as for mortals their days are like grass. They flourish like a flower in the field for the wind passes over it and it’s gone and it’s place is known no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is forever lasting to ever lasting on those who fear him.

And that one simple thing, his steadfast love his rock solid love, a love that goes on and on and on. Let me ask you, is that a love that you have experienced? If it is, imagine asking God to give you the power to show that kind of love to those around you. The sort of love that a good father has for his children. And if it isn’t a love that you’ve ever experienced, I want to encourage you today to go to God and ask him to show you that love, just a quick simple love. “God I heard about you today, I heard about your love today and I want some. Will you please pour that love out on me. In Jesus name.”

Every hurt, every pain, every argument, every flash of anger, every desire for revenge, every dark and evil thing that wants to grow in ou hearts and inflicts itself on those around us, the only way to defeat those things is with the steadfast love of our Lord our God. And when we experience that love poured out on our lives, when we live in that love, when we have our being in that love, it’s the power of His love that curbs our anger. When we experience the mercy of God it becomes so much easier to show mercy. When we lay hold of the power thing that happened on that cross 2000 years ago when Jesus bought anger and punishment that you and I deserve it is so much easier for us to suffer in order to forgive. It hurts sometimes to forgive. Be slow to anger and quick to forgive just like God and my friend the only place I’ve discovered the power to do that is in Jesus Christ. No where else.

I WANT REVENGE We each have some people in our lives who have hurt us deeply. Sometimes they do something really, really bad like abusing you when you’re a child, or a wife or husband cheating on their spouse or a business man swindling you out of money. Other times it’s not that there’s any particular big or bad thing they’re done, it’s funny how the little things can really hurt as well.

One of my greatest memories of growing up as a child is that I was never really one of the ‘in’ kids. I was always different somehow. All the other boys were good at sport or running or jumping or football and cricket, and I wasn’t. Instead I came from a musical family. I was almost always at the top of my class, I was a keen learner but I couldn’t play sport for nuts. And in the sports mad nation of Australia as a kid growing up that was a big deal.

So the other kids would poke fun at me or pick on me. That affected my own view of myself, it affected what they call my self esteem. And it only got much worse when after finishing school I joined the military and that whole negativity was reinforced, so they don’t have to be big things.

I remember wanting to take revenge on the kids who made fun of me and picked on me, I’d plot sinister things in my mind. Whenever I hear about one of those high school massacres it brings back those dark and difficult days and I can still remember quite vividly my feelings of revenge. Of course I never seriously contemplated anything like a massacre but I have some small understanding of how the pressures of the other kids can cause someone to snap like that. It’s a terrible thing.

Many people spend much of their time thinking about revenge. Wars are about revenge. It doesn’t restore things, it doesn’t make things better. Revenge may appear logical, but it’s the worst thing we can do. The opposite of revenge is forgiveness. The opposite of revenge is reconciliation. One of the great marvels of the ending of the apartheid in South Africa was the leadership of Nelson Mandela who, having spent something like I think 27 years in prison, took on the presidency of that nation with a heart to seek healing instead of revenge. Jesus had this to say about revenge:

You’ve heard it said, and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but I say, don’t resist an evil doer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other one also and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give them your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go the second mile as well. Give to everyone who begs from you and don’t refuse anyone who wants to borrow money from you. (Mathews chapter 5:38-42)

So my first reaction to that when I first read it was that this was about being a weakling. What? I should just roll over? I should just be a door mat for people to walk over and wipe their feet on? But as the years have passed its more struck me that turning the other cheek is a huge act of courage. It takes a lot of strength to not lash out in revenge; it takes a huge amount of courage to refuse to take revenge. If someone offends you and you just want to say something harsh back to them, holding you tongue staying silent is really hard isn’t it?!

Letting injustice pass and simply forgiving it without having your say, without getting restitution, without at least taking a swipe back, is so difficult. And yet, as we see in Mandela’s case, as we see in Gandhi’s case in recent history, there is a greatness in choosing to break the cycle of revenge. There is a greatness in reconciliation, there is a greatness in being the person who says, “no I will not take revenge”. It takes courage, it takes character, it takes the ability to forgive. And that right there is maturity in greatness.

I wonder how different this world would be if you and I would learn to be people who turn the other cheek? How much less conflict would there be? It seems to me that turning the other cheek well it’s going to cost us something in the shot term but it’s the one thing that will break the cycle of abuse and revenge. When we refuse to strike back, it takes the wind out of your assailant’s sails. It turns the opinions of those around you against the person who’s doing wrong. It brings goodness into a difficult situation. We’re never going to overcome evil with evil are we? The only way to over come evil is with good because evil begets evil.

Let me encourage you, the next time you want to take revenge, try something different. Turn the other cheek you might just be surprised at the result. You know, words are cheep. It’s easy for Jesus to say these things but it’s another thing entirely to live them out. But you know, that is exactly what Jesus did. It isn’t just say things about turning the other cheek, he lived it! On that night that he was betrayed by one of his own to be crucified they came to arrest him in one of his favourite places, the garden of Gethsemane. And Peter one of his disciples, decided to draw his sword and cut off the ear of one the assailants. Luke chapter 22 verse 51:

But Jesus said, “No! No more of this” and he touched the ear of the man who had been struck and healed him.

And having done that, Jesus allowed them to arrest him. To falsely accuse him. To beat him. To humiliate him. To nail him to a cross. I mean he took this turn the other cheek thing to such an extreme that it cost him his life, his everything! And whilst at the same time it appeared to be the greatest defeat in all of history, the Son of God nailed to the cross it turned out to be the greatest victory of all. Revenge never wins, but turning the other cheek does. Forgiving does. Love always defeats evil and good always defeats evil and that’s what the apostle Paul wrote many years later:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thoughtful for what is noble in sight of all. If it’s possible so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with everyone. Beloved never avenge yourself but leave room for the wroth of God. For it is written Vengeance is mine and I will repay says the Lord. Now if your enemies are hungry feed them, if they’re thirsty give them something to drink. For by doing this you’ll be heaping burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil but over come evil with good. (Romans chapter 12:17-21)

So are you challenged by that? Yeah well me to! No it’s not always easy, it’s counter intuitive. But then in a world full of evil, goodness and righteousness so often are. I just want to encourage you today though the simple and powerful example of Jesus himself to have the courage to be different; the courage to turn the other cheek. I’ve taken revenge before in the past and its’ something I’ve always regretted, but turning the other cheek, even though it hurts at the time, is something I have never regretted doing. Ever.

I’M AFRAID When was the last time that you were afraid? I’m not just talking about a little bit nervous; I’m not just talking about being a bit anxious about something; I’m talking serious fear – the sort of gut-wrenching debilitating fear that we all go through from time to time. When was the last time you felt that cold-bladed fear piece your heart?

I have no doubt whatsoever that you know exactly what I’m talking about. We’ve all been there in that place and I have no doubt that you can remember great fear in your life as though it was yesterday; the sort of fear that grips every cell of you body. Perhaps it was during the time when one of you children was gravely ill? Perhaps you travelled through divorce as many people have and you know the fear and the uncertainly of the future? The terrible thing about fear, aside from the how it makes you feel, is that it’s a totally debilitating emotion.

It does one of two things, it either causes us to lash out and do stupid things, things that aren’t in our best interest, things that are only going to make our situation worst instead of better. Or the other thing that fear does is that it makes us freeze. It’s as though we’re totally immobilised: incapable of thinking straight, incapable of taking any actions that will make things better and keep us safe. A bit like that rabbit on the road at night caught in the headlights of an on coming car. It freezes and unless it moves quickly it’s going to get run over.

Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been talking about how to live an extraordinary life in this series of messages that I’ve called, ‘The Art of Living’. See, my theory is this. We only have one crack at this life here on earth. We can either waste that life completely or we can live a mediocre life that never amounts to much, it never impacts others lives and that’s what most people seem to do, or we can live an extraordinary life. And part of living that extraordinary life is knowing how to get through fear, how to deal with fear and cope with fear because it doesn’t matter who you are, what your position or status is in life, you and I are going to experiences fear at some point.

Now I’m a very strong person emotionally, it’s just the way I’m wired. My personality type has some downside but one of my upsides is my strength. But still there are times when I’m afraid, and the only place where I’ve been able to deal effectively with fear, the only place where I’ve been able to discover the peace of God in the middle of the storm is in God himself.

Have a listen to what God has to say about fear to you and to me today. Isaiah chapter 41 verse 10:

Do no be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be afraid for I am your God, I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

This God who sent Jesus His Son to suffer and die for you and for me is a God who loves us, a God who doesn’t want us to be afraid and the truly awesome thing about that is that we only really discover the power of his love and his faithfully to us is when we are afraid.

I have no idea where you are at in your life, it may be that you simply don’t believe in this God and okay, that’s completely your decision I’m not hear to ram anything down anyone’s throat. But what I’ve discovered in my experience is that it doesn’t matter how fearful I am, it doesn’t matter how overwhelming my circumstance are, this same God of whom I speak is prepared to step into our space, to walk with us, to be with us, to protect us, to provide for us. I don’t care what it is a tsunami a earthquake, God is right there in the middle of it with us. Psalm 46 beginning at verse 1:

God is our refuge and our strength a very present help in time of trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains should shake and fall into the ocean, though the water should roar and foam and though the mountains should tremble with the tumults. And it doesn’t matter which way you look at it, no matter what angle you come at that from hey that is great news, that is fantastic news an the only way to discover if it’s true or not is to try it the next time you’re afraid. To pray, to commit your situation into his hands and to wait on him to see what he is going to do. There is no other way to find out if it’s’ true.

Someone asked me recently, “But Berni is it the right thing for me to do in a sense to just assume that God wants to help me, to rely on God in this way? Isn’t that wrong to just expect God to just show up when I’m afraid maybe he wants me to be afraid? Maybe he’s too busy, maybe…I don’t know! Am I being presumptuous?” Ah I guess I can see where that person was coming from, they don’t want to seem presumptuous so is it right to depend on God in this way and my answer is just quietly….ABSOLUTLY IT IS! That’s exactly what God wants you to do. Have a listen to these few Scriptures; let God write them on your heart. Joshua chapter 1 verse 9:

I hereby command you, be strong and courageous do not be frightened or dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Psalm 23 verse 4:

Even though I walk though the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me.

Romans chapter 8 verse 15:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the spirit of the adoption as children by whom we cry Abba father!

Hebrews chapter 4 verse 16:

Therefore come boldly before the throne of grace so that you may receive mercy and grace right in the time of need.

Hebrews chapter 13 verse 6:

So we can say confidently the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what can man do to me?

2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 7:

For god hasn’t given you a spirit of fear, but of love and power and of a sound mind.

And my friend that’s just a handful of the scriptures that’s just a smattering of the many, many passages in God’s Word when He tells us, that He doesn’t want us to wimp about fear He wants us to boldly and confidently rely on him. He wants us to – listen to it again – boldly and confidently rely on him.

My friend when you are afraid I encourage you to turn to Jesus to cast all your fears and your cares on him and to trust in him and the peace of God which passes al understanding will guard and your mind in Christ Jesus.

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My Friend, if your life is drifting the buck stops with you and it’s time for you to do something about it; the alternative … well, the alternative is getting to the end of your days here on this earth and looking back at a life-long missed opportunity.

WEIGHING UP THE PAST There are so many people walking around on planet earth today whose failures and disappointments of the past are ruining their present and robbing them of their future. Can I ask you a question? Are you one of those people?

I remember a time in my life when my past was weighing me down, a time when in fact my past became such a burden, such a huge load, that it was completely unbearable. It was so bad that I came very close to taking my own life. I remember standing on the 8th floor balcony of that hotel seriously considering jumping over the edge. I’ll share with you a little bit later what it was that pulled me back from the brink.

We’re kicking off the year with a series of messages which I have called, ‘The Art of Living’ because if we’re going to realise the hopes and the dreams that we have for this New Year we need to spend some time thinking about our lives. Most of us don’t do that. We kind of know the hurts, the things that aren’t working so well. A lot of people brood about the negatives in their lives, but mostly we just think about the symptoms. So today and over the coming weeks we’re going to go a bit deeper than just the symptoms. We’re going to be chatting about exactly how we live our lives and the best place to start is with our past.

We each have a past, and as I’ve said there are just so many people for whom their past is ruining their present and robbing them of their future. Now in a very real sense, unless we let go of the past we simply can’t enjoy our lives today. We simply can’t look forward to our future without that sense of hope and anticipation. Let me give you an example.

I know a man who has had a very difficult life. He was abused when he was young and for many years people told him that he just wasn’t good enough. Instead of encouraging him the people around him, his work colleagues, even his family, kept telling him what was wrong with him. They focussed on his failures and his faults rather than on the good things about him. Now come on, we’re all something of a mixed bag aren’t we? We each have certain strengths and certain weaknesses and it’s really sad when people just focus on our weaknesses. And that’s exactly what happened to this man.

So today he looks at his world through that set of eyes, through a mindset that’s deeply affected by his past. He can’t really enjoy who he is and what he has, and he has rather a lot, when he looks forward to his future he doesn’t have a sense of anticipation, even for tomorrow and the next day let alone for rest of this year and the rest of his life. We can talk about all sorts of wonderful things that this year might hold, but unless we first let go of the hurts and the disappointments of the past then none of that means anything.

You’ve probably heard that old saying, “Don’t cry over spilt milk”. Now there’s a reason for this for once the milk is spilt you can’t un-spill it. You can clean up the mess, you can apologies to someone if it hurt them or inconvenienced them, you can even learn the lesson that might stop you from doing it again but you can’t undo it. None of us can change the past and for some people today it’s time to let go of your past.

When I was standing on that balcony on the day almost 20 years ago now, it was the past that was pulling me over the edge. Even though I had many successes along the way I’d made some mistakes, some big mistakes and I just didn’t know if I could live with the consequences of those mistakes. It seemed like the present wasn’t worth living; it seemed like the future was bleak and hopeless and when we lose hope, hey what’s the point of living.

I know there are some people who are thinking that way today and what makes it even harder is that everybody else is out there focused on starting off the new year and looking forward to what the year has to hold. The thing that pulled me back from the edge on that cool, sunny morning was something that I’d read the night before. For some reason someone had put a Bible in the top draw of the bedside table in my hotel room. I’d taken it out and I read something in it that night. It said this:

Don’t be afraid for I am with you; don’t be afraid for I am your God. I’ll strengthen you, I’ll help you and I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

That’s what gave me hope; the hope of a present where I wasn’t alone; the hope of a future that just might be worth living. None of us can change the past but on that day on that hotel balcony began for me the process of letting go of my past. The future begins today, the past has gone and while we should learn lessons from it, it has no right to rob us of the days and the months and the years that lie ahead.

And can I tell you, the very reason that God sent us Jesus His Son, the first time that Jesus stood up and spoke in public he read these words from Isaiah Chapter 61. He a said:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, to comfort and provide for all who mourn to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the Spirit of praise instead of a faint spirit. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

My friend, Jesus has a future for you. He understands how the past has battered you and bruised you. He knows the baggage that you’re carrying around just as he knows all the baggage that I’m carrying around and what He wants to do is lighten the load, to lift that burden. Since that day when I stood on that balcony my life has changed completely. It’s not that some days things aren’t hard, of course they are. They’re hard in everybody’s life. But you know somehow I look forward to each day, each month and each year with a sense of hope and anticipation because Jesus has healed me of my past. My failures and my hurts no longer rule my life, He does and that makes all the difference.

So as you stand on the threshold of a brand new year I want to leave you with this fantastic truth: Jesus came to set you free from your past and to give you a present and a future that truly are worth living.

IS YOUR LIFE DRIFTING? Now imagine for a moment that you are on a sail boat in the middle of a large ocean. Your sails are down, your rudders out of the water and you’re just drifting. How soon do you think you will get to where you’re going? In fact, will you ever get to where you’re going at all?

Alright, let’s put ourselves in that drifting boat for a moment out there on this massive great ocean. No sails, no rudder. It’s frankly no way to get to where you’re going and eventually unless you do something about it you’re going to die. With the oceans covering 71% of the earth’s surface and with the way the tides and the currents travel the chances of making landfall that way are somewhere between Buckley’s and none. Stay in that boat, your rudder out of the water and the sails down on the deck and eventually you’re going to die.

And the tragic thing is that back here on dry land, back here on terra firma many people, way too many people are living their lives that way – just drifting aimlessly. And on top of that their expectation is that they should be getting to where they want to go. Don’t believe me?

Last night on the news they interviewed a 16 year old girl who had just had triplets. Now she and her boyfriend were unemployed relying on the Government to keep them afloat. When the interviewer asked them whether they were planning on getting a job they both answered ‘No!’. Their plan was to stay on Government Welfare and have more children. Now that’s by no means an isolated case. Extreme? Yes, but not unusual.

Whether it’s in our lives or in our jobs, drifting aimlessly along is not a recipe for success. Not that I’m suggesting that we should all be chasing after this success ‘thing’ – the big salary and the big house and the big care – and nor am I suggesting that all the positive outcomes in our lives have to do with hard work alone, but there are many people just drifting their way through life wondering, Why is nothing happening?; wondering why they’re not getting to where they want to go.

This week being the beginning of the New Year we’ve kicked off a series of messages which I’ve called ‘The Art of Living’. It’s about being deliberate in planning and living our lives here on this earth. One of the mistakes I see people making – can I say, particularly amongst the Christians that I have so much to do with – is that somehow they over-spiritualise their existence: “Well you know it’s all in God’s hands; I have to wait for Him to do everything”. Others might rely on something else – on Karma or whatever they rely on.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am a Christian; I believe in God, I believe in Jesus and I know that many of the big things that have happened in my life have happened not because of any brilliance or hard work on my part but because God’s mighty hand was on it in the first place. But I also know that laziness doesn’t bear fruit. Have a listen to these:

Laziness brings on a deep sleep. An idle person will suffer hunger. (Proverbs 19:15)

I passed by the field of someone who was lazy, by the vineyard of a stupid person and see, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles and it’s stone wall had been broken down. Then I saw and considered it. I looked and received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed warrior. (Proverbs 24:30-34)

Well, I don’t know where you’re at in life but humour me here. Imagine that God is God, that He loves us like a father, would you expect this God to bless laziness, to bless idleness, to bless a lack of planning and a lack of vision and a lack of a sense of direction? Well the answer is kind of self-evident. We live in a world of cause and effect – planning, diligence, hard work, application, dedication, focus, persistence, those things tend to yield good results most of the time. Idleness, laziness – those things tend to yield bad results most of the time.

So let’s come back to this boat we were drifting on. If your life is like being in that drifting boat I’m going to ask you a question here. Now you may not like but I’m going to ask you anyway. Whose fault is that? Well, we can blame our parents, we can blame our circumstances, our education or lack of it, our looks, our physical weaknesses, perhaps even our disabilities. But none of those things really cut it do they?

If your life is drifting the buck stops with you; if my life is drifting the buck stops with me, it’s as simple as that. We’ve all seen people with incredible disabilities achieve amazing things, haven’t we? And we’ve all seen people who were born into a fantastic family, had plenty of money, good looks, intelligence to go with it make a complete hash of their lives.

Now you see it’s not our circumstances that determine the direction of our life. Look at Nelson Mandela, 27 years in prison, look at Mother Teresa amongst the poor, look at Mahatma Ghandi and look at the dozens of very ordinary people that you know in your life who’ve achieved extraordinary things despite their circumstances. It has nothing to do with our circumstances. Adversity is no excuse.

If your life is drifting, it seems to me that you have a couple of options. Option 1 – well just let it drift on by and one day you’ll die out there in that drifting boat. Option 2 – is doing something about it; deciding here and now that this status quo, this endless life of drifting is simply no longer an option; that life can’t go on like this. It’s time to do something about it. It’s time for a new start, a new beginning and what better time to come to that conclusion than at the beginning of a new year.

My friend, if your life is drifting the buck stops with you and it’s time to do something about it. The alternative … well, the alternative is getting to the end of your days here on this earth and looking back at a life-long missed opportunity. That’s not such a happy thought, is it? And let’s just take this one step further.

You may remember the parable of talents that Jesus told of the three servants, each left with a huge amount of money by their master to invest in order to get a return. Two of those servants did really well. On the master’s return they gave him the original capital plus a 100% return and those guys got a huge pat on the back. But one of the servants was afraid so he hid the money to keep it safe. He returned the original capital to his master when he came home but without any dividend. Now you might think, well the master should be happy, at least he got his capital back. But listen to what Jesus says in Matthew Chapter 15 beginning at verse 26:

You wicked and lazy slave, you knew, did you, that I reap what I didn’t sow and gather where I didn’t scatter, then you should have invested the money with the bankers and on my return I would have received what is mine with interest. So take the money from him and give it to the one who has lots of money, for to all those who have more will be given and they’ll have abundance but from those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus doesn’t mince His words, does He? He’s made a huge investment in our lives and He expects us to live our lives in such a way as to deliver a huge return. He’s not calling us to live a life of missed opportunities and excuses; He’s calling us to live a life that counts. No ‘ifs’, no ‘buts’, no ‘maybes’.

YOU CAN’T JUGGLE CHAINSAWS Have you ever tried to juggle two balls – easy; three – not so easy; four – well that’s impossible for most of us. Now imagine juggling four chainsaws with their blades spinning around – now that’s scary. So why do some people try to live their lives like that.

So let me ask you, are you one of those crazy people who are trying to juggle four chainsaws with your bare hands? Is that how you’re living your life? You may be wondering, “What on earth is Berni talking about?” Well this week on the program we’ve kicked off a series of messages that I’ve called ‘The Art of Living’ because as we look forward to the year ahead, one of things that a few people need to get sorted out is how they’re living their lives.

And before the break, just to recap if you missed it, we were chatting about the fact that many a person’s life is just drifting aimlessly, like a boat on an ocean without the sails up, without the rudder in the water. Now we can sit back and whinge and complain; we can wish that things were different or that things were better; we can blame other people; we can expect others to do it all for us, including God, but at the end of the day a whole bunch of this is up to us.

Sometimes the reason that we are not happy with life is that we have a wrong self-image. The hurts and disappointments of the past have put like a negative spin on our outlook, on how we see ourselves. Some people live their whole lives under this sort of oppression. Sometimes the people around us or the social structures tell us that this where you fit; this is the box you belong and that’s it. And yet all along you have this potential, this creativity, this dream that’s not being realised.

Some people are just plain in the wrong job. There are so many jobs on this earth given who I am, given how God made me, that I simply am not suited to; I could never make a good accountant. You would never want me as a personal carer of the elderly. There are so many things that I can do, but there are plenty that I can’t. See, some people spend their whole lives doing a job they were never cut out to do, a job that they don’t enjoy and a job they are never going to be any good at.

And we’ve seen so far today on the program that for some people it’s the relationship that’s robbing them of the joy and contentment in their lives. For others it comes down to their finances and resources and what I want you to do is to really think about your life strategically, beyond the symptoms and right down to the root causes, because it’s when we deal with the root causes that we can begin to think about what we can actually do to make the thing better.

That’s how a doctor works. Hopefully the doctor doesn’t just give you a painkiller for a persistent headache. They use the technology available to them to figure if there is something more sinister going on beneath the surface that they need to treat. And I continue to encourage you to do that in your life. As you look at the year ahead, what is it that is robbing you of the satisfaction and contentment that you’re really looking for? And what are you going to do about it?

Today I want to talk briefly about focus because for many people there is no doubt a raft of issues that are robbing them of the life they want to live. Perhaps the things going on your life are all kind of mixed up together in a way. You have low self-esteem which leads to problems at work and so you bring those tensions home with you and that in turn leads to arguments with your wife or husband. And that drags the children in because they sense the tension, they hear the arguments so now they’re on edge and they resent you and so that brings even more tension which in turn causes you to blame yourself pushing your self-esteem to lower levels. And if any of this seems vaguely familiar, you are not alone. That one scenario plays itself out over and over again in lives and families and workplaces across the globe.

But here’s the mistake that people often make; listen carefully to this. They try to fix all the problems at once. And that right there is like juggling chainsaws: a) its incredibly difficult; b) its dangerous; and c) you have a very high chance of failure. What is needed is focus, a sharp focus on the one thing that’s at the bottom of it all, the one thing that is the root cause; the one thing that you need to get sorted out before you can address all the flow-on impacts. Have a listen to this story from the New Testament of the Bible. Mark Chapter 18 verses 35 to 41:

As Jesus approached Jericho a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When He heard the crowd going by he asked what was happening. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’ Then he shouted, ‘Jesus! Jesus Son of David have mercy on me.’ Now those who were around, they sternly ordered him to be quiet but he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David have mercy on me.’ Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to Him.

And when he came near He asked the man, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And the man said, ‘Lord let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Received your sight for your faith has saved you.’ And immediately he regained his sight and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people when they saw it praised God.

See this man had a lot of problems. If you were blind in the 1st Century that had a lot of flow-on effects. He was poor, he was a beggar, he was isolated, he was unemployed, he was shunned by society, he was probably smelly because he hadn’t had a bath. This man had multiple dysfunctions in his life but he knew that the one root cause of it all was his blindness which meant he couldn’t go to work. If he could only go to work he could rejoin society, he could earn money, he wouldn’t be begging. So when Jesus came along, this Jesus who’d apparently been healing a lot of other people, the one thing that the guy begging by the side of the street focused on was the one thing he needed.

That’s how it is with us when it gets down to the one thing, the most important thing that He’s doing in our lives. And you know, in my experience this Jesus is always ready to oblige. Sometimes it happens quickly and miraculously like it did for the beggar. But other times, most times Jesus address our problems and meets our needs over weeks, and months and years and even over a whole lifetime. Some of the things in my life have been fixed really quickly by Jesus and other things seems to drag on and God uses this experience to teach me this, and that experience to teach me that.

It’s a remarkable thing, whenever you see Jesus touching people’s lives in one of those four gospel accounts of His life and His ministry – Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, take your pick – He always focuses on the one thing that needs doing, the one infirmity that needs healing, the demon that needs casting out, the sin that needs forgiving – just one thing. He doesn’t try to get people to juggle chainsaws; He touches them and heals them of that one thing.

Let me ask you, are you in that place? Because if you’re in that place in your life where the problems and the dysfunctions and the alienations are overwhelming you, everything seems to be against you, everything seems to be not going quite right – here’s what I’m going to encourage you to do.

Go to Jesus and ask Him to heal just one thing. And if you don’t know what needs healing, ask Him. He already knows and He’s already there, He’s already here waiting to touch you, to heal you, to forgive you, to give you a fresh start in your life. How do I know? Because I’m not teaching you a theory lesson, He’s done exactly that in my life, and in fact He still is doing that in my life. And from my own experience, now I know why it is that they call this ‘the Good News’. We have so many problems in our lives – friend, the answer is Jesus.

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When Christmas is done and dusted – what do you do with it? Put it back in the cupboard with the decorations for next year – or let the message of Christian burn on in your heart?

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he takes a fresh new look at Christmas.

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These days, having a child out of wedlock is pretty much a valid lifestyle choice in many cultures. I’m not saying that it’s right, just that that’s how it’s perceived. But back in Jesus’ day … man it was a huge scandal. Seriously.

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he takes a fresh new look at Christmas.

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Christmas – they talk about baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph – but this Jesus….is He who He says He is? Can Christmas really make a difference – I mean in your life and mine?

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he takes a fresh new look at Christmas.

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My hunch is that the whole Christmas thing began well before that starry night in Bethlehem. A long time before. Question is – how come God came up with it?

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he takes a fresh new look at Christmas.

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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.

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as opens God’s Word to discover the power – power UNLIMITED – that God has ready and waiting for you.

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They say that following Jesus isn’t easy. Because following Jesus means swimming against the tide of popular opinion. Following Jesus means, all too often … in fact most of the time … going in the opposite direction. That’s why we need power … power unlimited … to follow Jesus.

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as opens God’s Word to discover the power – power UNLIMITED – that God has ready and waiting for you.

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The Bible tells us (Ephesians Chapter 1) that God has already made His incredibly great power, His resurrection power, available to each and every person who believes in Jesus. So let’s take a look at what happens, when we lay hold of that power.

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as opens God’s Word to discover the power – power UNLIMITED – that God has ready and waiting for you.

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Too many Christians, in fact, way too many Christians, are living lives that fall so far short of the life that Jesus promised. When Jesus promised power, they instead end up living a powerless life. I wonder if you know anyone like that.

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as opens God’s Word to discover the power – power UNLIMITED – that God has ready and waiting for you.

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Over the last three weeks on Christianityworks, Berni’s been talking about the pain in our lives.  This week, he brings this series to a close by taking a look at the healing peace that comes with God’s victory in our lives.  Incredibly powerful. 

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover God’s wisdom and God’s healing for our pain.

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Some pain is inevitable.  But a lot of the pain we experience in life is, well … self-inflicted.  A lot of it.  Through some of the immaturities that we carry around inside – things that hurt us and that yet, try as we may, we don’t seem to be able to let go of. 

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover God’s wisdom and God’s healing for our pain.

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None of us wants to experience pain in our lives. We just don’t. But as much as we don’t want pain, it’s a fact of life. It just is. So … we can sweep it all under the rug and pretend that it doesn’t exist, or … we can learn to deal with it the best we possibly can.

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover God’s wisdom and God’s healing for our pain.

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Sad to say - but pain is a fact of life. Sure - we’d love to avoid it. But we all travel through pain from time to time. So - what causes it and does God have anything useful to say about pain. Does God’s speak into our pain? Can He make a difference?

Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover God’s wisdom and God’s healing for our pain.

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Suffering isn’t a subject most of us like to talk about, or even think about, but suffering is a reality in life. And right in the middle of that not-so-pleasant reality, I have some good news for you today. Your God wants you to have victory, right in the middle of your suffering.

VICTORY IN SUFFERING People pay a lot of money for wilderness eco tours these days, and yet as Christians, God seems to take us on wilderness tours free of charge on a regular basis. Why does He do that? I mean, can’t our lives just go along on a nice, even keel for ever and ever amen?

Funny thing, but when Jesus was baptised, as He come out of the water, the Spirit descended upon Him like a dove and a voice spoke from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”.

Did that happen at your baptism? No, me neither. Let’s take a look. Mark chapter 1, verses 9 to 13:

Just as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’. And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan.

A booming voice from heaven – “This is my beloved Son in You I am well pleased” … and yet, the very next thing that God did with His precious Son was to drive Him out (literally the word means ‘throw Him out’) into the wilderness to starve and to be tempted by the devil for forty days and forty nights. God didn’t even spare His own Son, but when He was finished, Jesus came out of the wilderness we are told ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’.

It’s just how God does things, get used to it. Suffering is part of God’s plan for our lives. None of us enjoys suffering. I don’t and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. But suffering is a normal part of life. And God tells us that when we suffer, we should consider it nothing but … pure joy!! Come on! Is that bizarre or what!? Have a listen to this. James chapter 1, verse 2:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but pure joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, and lacking in nothing.

God’s plan is that in that wilderness of suffering, He will test and strengthen our faith. That’s one of the main reasons for suffering. So far, my record for bad days in my life, is that I’ve managed to survive each and every one of them just fine. In fact, that’s a one hundred percent survival rate, and there have been some real shockers in that lot, I have to tell you.

As I look back on them, I can see how the Lord carried me through, how He cared and provided for me, how He grew me and moulded me and how He’s used every one of those bad days for good in my life. Isn’t it amazing how the fire of trials and suffering refine us purer and purer each time?

When an athlete trains to compete at an elite level in their sport, they go through a lot of pain. They run until it hurts, they pump iron until it hurts. And what that pain, what that suffering does for them, is, well … it does two things really. It makes them strong, and it gives them endurance, both of those are important. Strength and endurance – you need both of them to compete well in a sport, and you need both of them to get through the tough patches in life. Strength and endurance.

Do you know what the biggest temptation is for you and me when we’re suffering? I think it’s the temptation to start behaving badly. I’ll just go out and get drunk, or I’ll sleep around, or I’ll be nasty to other people that are causing me the pain. Somehow we have this distorted ledger in our heads that goes something like this:

Well, God’s certainly not blessing me at the moment, so why not behave badly? Why not do what I want? Blow God!! What do I have to lose?!

Of course, in the cold, hard light of day, that’s a stupid line of reasoning, because we know that behaving badly, eventually, is just going to make other things worse. So just in case you were wondering, here’s God’s plan for what to do when you’re suffering. Galatians chapter 6, verses 9 and 10:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

God is a God of seasons. Look at how regularly they roll around – spring, summer, autumn, winter; year after year. Seed time and harvest, season after season. There are seasons of blessing in our lives, there are seasons of trials in our lives, there are seasons of temptation in our lives, and there are seasons of suffering in our lives.

And through it all, here’s the thing, if we don’t grow weary of doing what is right, we will reap the harvest that’s waiting for us. When? Well, at harvest time, of course! So don’t panic. Don’t worry, just cry out to God, pour out your heart to Him.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a small group Bible study with a bunch of earnest, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians. We were looking at that verse in Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7 that goes something like this:

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Great. So we discuss it, we prodded it and poked it, and we’re about to move on. The Bible study leader summarises with: “Well, that’s is really good, but we still worry, don’t we?” Berni – I can’t help myself at this point – Berni shouts out, “NO!” And they all stare at me.

Come on – do we take God at His Word or not? Here in this passage, He’s telling us, if instead of worrying, we pray and give thanks, His incomprehensible peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty good deal to me! All we need to do, is to take God at His Word in those difficult times, and keep on keeping on, and we will discover in our very own experience just how faithful God is.

POWER TO YOU Spiritual victory is an awesome thing. So many things come against us in this world – people, circumstances, our own selfish desires, the devil and his legion of demons, it’s almost as though we’ve been set up to fail, don’t you think? You look at all the stuff you have to get through in this life and there is just no way that you can live your life the way God wants you to live it.

Way too many people who call themselves Christians are living in that sort of a defeat but Jesus came to give us victory and victory we shall have if only we can get over our desire to be self-sufficient, if only we can get over this natural instinct we have somewhere deep inside us to set out on our own to become better people, to become better Christians if you will. How did we get that idea into us in the first place pray tell?

Well here’s how it generally unfolds in our lives. One of the very first things we try to teach our children is to become self-sufficient. I mean when they’re born they’re completely dependent on us for everything, by the time they leave home we want them to be able to cope with the big wide world out there on their own, we want them to be self-sufficient and that’s good but there’s a downside. The danger is that we take that thinking and that teaching, each one of us, into our relationship with God.

Jesus once said this to His disciples, John chapter 15 verses 4 and 5, He said:

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches, those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing.

Allow me if you will to paraphrase that so that we can get it into our thick skulls once and for all. In effect Jesus is saying this, look guys I don’t care how clever you are apart from me you can do nothing. I am the vine, you’re the branches and the only way that you can bear fruit is to be in me.

When I became a Christian that’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way. I was Mr Self Sufficient, in fact that’s still my natural instinct to try to crash through things on my own so it’s still a lesson I’m learning over and over again. When it comes to overcoming my sin, when it comes to blessing others, here’s what I’ve discovered. Apart from Jesus I can do nothing and nothing means NOTHING.

It’s exactly what God’s Word says by the way, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 56 and 57:

The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The only place you get victory is in Jesus. No, you can’t do it alone, the only place you can get victory just in case you missed it is in Jesus. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Berni that’s a great theory but exactly how does that work? Where do I go to actually lay hold of that victory? How can I experience this victory you’ve been yabbering on about in my life? How can I stop being a spiritual loser? How can I start winning the battles each day?

Well the most amazing thing about being a Christian is having the Holy Spirit dwelling inside you. Just stop and think about that for a minute – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three persons, one God, so when the Spirit dwells in you that’s God, that’s the God who created the universe, the Jesus who died and rose again for you, the same Holy Spirit who filled those disciples with power at Pentecost, that’s that God dwelling in you.

A lot of people shy away from the Holy Spirit, He’s a bit harder to get a handle on. The Father, yeah we get that, the Son, we get that too but the Holy Spirit, well it’s not so easy.

Listen up those disciples even though they spent three and a half years with Jesus, were a disorganised uneducated rabble. Even when Jesus ascended into heaven they still lacked that power, that ability, that focus to do what Jesus had called them to do – to be His witnesses even unto the ends of the earth.

Then something happened, have a listen, Acts chapter 2 verses 2 to 4.

Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like a rush of violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as a fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each one of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.

They were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. He brings such incredible power into our lives, the power to do things we never imagined, the power to be all that God made us to be, the power to overcome sin, the power to live our lives in victory come what may.

The Bible actually commands us, Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18 to:

Go on being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And yet some Christians shy from Him, like that makes sense somehow. The very same day that the disciples were filled with the Spirit listen to what Peter, the uneducated fisherman achieved, Acts chapter 2 verses 14 and 41.

Peter standing up with the eleven raised his voice and addressed them and those who welcomed his message were baptised and that day about three thousand persons were added.

He hadn’t been to the elite theological colleges of Jerusalem, no he was a fisherman from Galilee of all places. When Jesus needs him most during their many trials leading up to His crucifixion this Peter, who had promised to stand by Jesus denies Him three times just as Jesus had foretold.

Now let’s wind the clock forward to this day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit falls on the disciples, Peter gets up and speaks about Jesus to this huge crowd filled with the very same people who, just weeks before, had shouted, ‘Crucify Him’. He tells them about Jesus, about their sin. There was every chance that he too could have been arrested and crucified, instead we’re told that on that very day about three thousand people accepted Jesus.

Now that’s what you call power, the very same power that’s available for you today.

THE REST OF YOUR LIFE So let me get back to that question I just asked you, how are you going to spend the rest of your life? Defeated or victorious? It is such a terrible tragedy that so many of God’s people are living their lives out as losers when everything that needs to be done for them to have victory has in fact already been done.

Let me be blunt and direct with you here, I know that’s going to be a surprise to you given I’m such a shy and retiring type but let me whack you right between the eyes with the God honest truth. This is true for every man and woman and child who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, every man and woman and child who has put their complete trust in Jesus.

God means you to live out the rest of your life in victory through Jesus Christ, full stop, end of story. And He had a plan for that to happen before you were even born. Now granted life is a funny thing, it goes in fits and starts, sometimes there are long boring patches of the same old same old, you know business as usual interspersed with the odd high and the odd low.

All of a sudden something exciting happens maybe a marriage or a birth or a holiday or a promotion and then bang, car accident, relationship problems, the death of a loved one. That’s how life seems to play itself out. Sometimes without rhyme nor reason, more like a lottery than a life but that’s not actually the way it is. God knew before you were born, He already had a plan for your life, He already knew how your life would pan out, what He gifted you to do.

This is what He said to the Prophet Jeremiah about the life He’d planned for him, Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 5.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a Prophet to the nations.

And the same is true for you, your life isn’t a lottery, it’s a part of Gods plan and that right there is a great reason to bounce out of bed every morning with a sense of anticipation ‘I wonder what God has planned for me today’, don’t you think? Sure some days are going to be scary days, some days you’re going to have this feeling that God’s abandoned you, you’re pedalling so hard up hill, into the wind, into the driving rain, pedal, pedal, harder, harder.

Then one day you look up and God is nowhere to be seen and not only is He nowhere to be seen but the storm clouds have thickened and, well you’ve got the picture, you know exactly what I’m talking about because you’ve been there. When the whole world is lined up against you here’s the rub, Isaiah chapter 41 verses 9 and 10. God says to you, He is saying to you today:

You are my servant. I have chosen you and not cast you off. Do not fear for I am with you, do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

In other words God is still God, God still loves you, there’s no need to panic, there’s no need to be afraid, He’s right there with you closer than the deepest secret of your heart. God will strengthen you, God will help you, God will uphold you with His victorious right hand. Why?

Not because I say so but because He does. Isaiah chapter 41 verses 9 and 10, that’s His promise and when that little truth is tucked away in your heart you can relax. He has it all under control, so much so that right in the middle of one of those life storms He’s going to call you to step out of the pitching boat that you’re in, the pitching boat that seems to be keeping you alive, He’s going to call you out to walk on the water with Him.

Some people, entrepreneurs in particular are natural risk takers, others quite simply are not. Wherever you lie on that risk taking continuum I have something serious to share with you today. If you’ve set your heart on following Jesus you can leave behind any notion you’ll be able to stay in your comfort zone.

The twelve disciples were out in a storm in a small boat on the Sea of Galilee and even though some of them were experienced fishermen who knew these waters the storm became so ferocious that even they were afraid of drowning. Jesus comes walking across the water. They’re even more fearful because they think they’ve seen a ghost. Matthew chapter 14 verses 28 and 29.

Peter answered him, ‘Lord if it’s you command me to come out onto the water with you’ and Jesus said, ‘come’. So Peter got out of the boat and started walking on the water and came towards Jesus.

Now Peter, if you know anything about him, was obviously a risk taker, he doesn’t wait for Jesus to call him out there but he asks Jesus to invite him to step out of the boat. And when Jesus does just that crazy Pete steps out of said boat and walks on the water right in the middle of a howling storm. Now you’d think that Jesus could have calmed the storm first right? But no, He called Peter out of the boat in the middle of that raging storm. But that’s Jesus, that’s the way He does things, go figure.

You and I want to wait until the storms of life abate until we step out of the boat and follow Jesus but victory, real victory is stepping out and following Him in the middle of the storm. Again Matthew chapter 14 verses 30 to 33.

But when Peter noticed the strong wind…

So he’s out there, he’s on the water right? He notices the strong wind.

He became frightened and began to sink and he cried out, ‘Lord save me’. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him saying to him ‘you of little faith, why do you doubt?’ When they got into the boat the wind ceased and those in the boat worshipped him saying ‘truly you are the Son of God. (Matthew 14:30 to 33)

When Jesus says to you ‘follow me’ it isn’t an invitation to an easy life, far from it. Jesus promised His disciples quite the opposite. Hmm, I’ve been out on a few of those stormy oceans like that in my time, stepping out of the boat to answer Jesus call, it seems alright at first but when you’re out there on the water the storm gets your attention like nothing else and what happened to Peter has happened to me on more than one occasion.

The moment you take your eyes off Jesus and you focus on the storm, the problem, you start to sink. Note to self: keep your eyes on Jesus, would you?

One day, the day will come when you and I breathe our last breath on this earth. One way or another, either because our body has just given up on us or because Jesus returned, that can be a scary thought too, particularly the older you get and the more you feel your body aging but here’s another exciting bit of news.

No matter how it ends for you and me if we believe in Jesus, if we’ve been living our lives for Him, walking out on the stormy water even when the storm is raging, we’ve been living for Him the best way we know how then He has a promise that removes even the fear of death. John chapter 14 verses 1 to 3.

Don’t let your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me for in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it weren’t so would I have told you that I would go and prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and will take you to myself so that where I am there you may also be.

He has been preparing a place in His Father’s house for you so you can spend the rest of eternity with Him. Whatever happens to be going on in your life right now just let that one sink in for a moment, eternity with Jesus in His Father’s house. Whatever this life throws at you, however howling and raging the storm is between now and your last breathe eternity with Jesus in His Father’s house, that’s His promise – His rock solid promise.

That puts a whole new spin on things doesn’t it? God has a simple plan for you, to live your life in spiritual victory, that’s why Jesus came, that’s why Jesus died, that’s why Jesus rose again.

Sin couldn’t hold Him down and His victory is your victory now and forever.

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Many who call themselves “Christians” are not, in fact, living the life of victory that Jesus came to give them. Somehow, the promise of victory isn’t happening in their lives. Something has to change. Not next year, not next month, not next week … now!

A NEW WAY OF LIVING Over the last couple of weeks on the programme, we’ve been talking about the reality that Jesus came to purchase a special kind of victory for each one of us

The sort of victory in life that lifts us up above temptations, that lifts us up above the devastating impact of our sin that lifts us up above the power of the devil to destroy our lives.

The sort of victory that brings a sense of God’s abundance into our world so that no matter who or what attacks us, no matter who or what tries to rob you and me of the joy and the peace and the gladness in our hearts, we can have victory of that who or what and still have the joy and the peace and the gladness in our hearts.

That’s what I call victory and that abundance is precisely what Jesus came to give to you and me. A pivotal passage of Scripture that I come back to again and again in my life when the ravages of the devil and of circumstances are tearing away at my flesh is what Jesus said to His disciples in John chapter 10 verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

I sometimes ask people, ‘What sort of life do you think that God wants you to live?’ A boring life, an ordinary life or a stunning life. Come on, on a scale of zero to ten what sort of life do you think that God wants you to live? This God who sent Jesus to die and rise again for you. Zero – a rotten life, five – well an okay kind of life I guess, seven and a half – a pretty good life or ten – a stunning life.

Remember Jesus said that He came so that we might have life and have it abundantly and that anything less than that was from the devil. The original Greek word that sits aback of our English translation literally means ‘super abundantly’. That super abundant life isn’t always a comfortable life or a wealthy life, no often it’s not that at all but it is a life that weighs in and counts for Jesus, a life that bears fruit super abundantly. That’s the life that Jesus has planned for you.

The question is, how do you and I grab hold of that life because let’s be honest, of the millions of people who will listen to this message today in over a hundred and sixty countries around the world, the vast majority, eighty, ninety percent aren’t living that sort of a life?

It seems as though in the Kingdom of God today there are the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have not’s’ when it comes to this abundant victory. Which one are you? A have or a have not? Something has to change right? And I believe, in fact I know that the biggest con out there robbing God’s people of His abundant victory is this, that life is all about being happy, us being happy, me being happy, you being happy.

This big con, the reason that so many people are so unhappy in this world, is that we’re told happiness comes from self-gratification, from buying and having everything we want, that new dress or that new pair of shoes, that new camera, that new car, that new house, that new whatever it is, that’s why most people often think to themselves, ‘If only, if only I just earned a little bit more, just maybe ten percent more then I’d be happy’.

From bitter experience I can tell you that’s simply not true. In fact the biggest shock I had when I became a Christian back in 1995 was that once I started using my God-given gifts and resources to do things for other people, something frankly I had never done much of before, all of a sudden I discovered the satisfaction and the contentment I’d been looking for, for all those years.

That’s exactly what God tells us through His Word, Philippians chapter 2 verses 3 to 8:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ who, though he was in the form of God, didn’t regard equality with God as something to be exploited but he emptied himself, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

These days I bless other people, not because I’m a good guy because I’m not but because it makes me feel good because it brings me the peace, the joy and the contentment that I was always looking for but was forever unable to find so long as I was trying to make myself happy. Why did it take me so long to figure this out?

Probably because right from the beginning, right from when we’re little we’re taught that the aim of the game is to succeed, it’s about winning, it’s about coming first, it’s about me feeling good about myself. It doesn’t matter what game you’re playing the aim, the only acceptable outcome is to win.

Well, winning is all well and good, it’s great to be successful and yet so many Christians think that success is the name of the game that they’ve completely lost sight of Jesus. I even had one Christian tell me once that his aim was to have the latest BMW SUV sitting in his driveway. Really? Is that really what’s going to make you happy, success?

John chapter 19 verses 28 to 30:

After this when Jesus knew that all was now finished he said in order to fulfil the Scripture, ‘I am thirsty’. A jar full of sour wine was standing there so they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it up to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine he said, ‘It is finished’ then he bowed his head and he gave up his spirit.

When Jesus died on that cross He didn’t even have the clothes on His back. He was beaten, crucified, this miracle working Jesus who had promised so much looked like the biggest loser of all time. They scoffed at Him, they spat at Him, they mocked Him, ‘Save yourself’ they shouted.

And yet through His suffering He purchased eternal life for you and me. It’s fine to succeed but that’s not the aim of the game. Now He wasn’t a loser Jesus, when He gave up His life for you and me, far from it, He did it willingly, John chapter 10 verses 17 and 18.

For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

In the world’s economy losing makes you a loser, losing the argument, missing out on the promotion, not being as beautiful as the beautiful people, all that makes you a loser but that’s not the way it is in God’s economy. In my life and I know this has happened in yours too, many things have come against me.

I set out each day with faith in Jesus and the joy of the Lord in my heart and like a pack of wolves people and situations and circumstances and things come to tear away at my flesh, to attack my faith, to drag me down and our natural reaction to that is, well God what’s going on here? What have I done to deserve this? Can’t you make it stop?

We behave as though something is wrong when the truth is the moment we step onto the spiritual battle of life with Jesus in our hearts the devil is going to come after us with a pick axe, with all the powers of hell unleashed against us but no matter how bad it gets remember this powerful truth from God’s Word, Romans chapter 8 verses 37 to 39.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us for I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In this world there are winners and there are losers but in God’s Kingdom there are only winners, victors, conquerors. No sorry, that’s not quite true – more than conquerors, there … that’s better.

GIVING AND SACRIFICE Giving in sacrifice is an interesting notion because inevitably if you and I are going to live in victory we need to discover that real victory in this life only comes when we develop a generous heart. At the moment you decide to become a generous person you realise that it’s not all peaches and cream, generosity inevitably involves sacrifice and sacrifice inevitably costs us something.

More often than not it hurts, a lot, so do you still want to be generous? Do you still want to have victory over your cravings and desires by becoming a giving person? It stands to reason that generosity is one of the things that brings victory into our lives because God is generous and you and I, well we’re made in His image.

Let me ask you this, what was the very last act of creation? What was the very last thing that God did on the sixth day before He rested on the seventh day to enjoy all He had created? Most people would answer that the last act of creation was to make Adam and Eve, to create humanity, God’s crowning achievement and if that’s your answer too then sorry to disappoint you but it’s the wrong answer.

God did one more thing before He was finished, do you want to know what it was? Genesis chapter 1 verses 27 to 28:

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. God blessed them and he said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over everything that moves upon the earth’.

What was the last thing He did? He gave the whole thing away, He gave it to Adam and Eve, to you and me. He blessed them with all He had made, now that’s what I call generous. These days people seem to be in it whatever ‘it’ is for themselves. Generosity seems to be an old fashioned concept. Well in a sense it’s a very old concept, the very first act of generosity happened precisely six days after the beginning of time.

It was Gods idea and when you and I live out who we are, created in God’s image, by being generous with our time, with our money, with our emotional energy, with our gifts and abilities, then we’re living a life of victory. But you see God when He looks at your level of generosity and mine He’s not primarily interested in how much we give. That may sound a little odd at first but it’s true.

I had an elderly woman write to me recently and she said this;

I’m so sorry that I can’t give much to support your ministry, I’m only an elderly pensioner and I don’t have much to live on.

Those were her exact words. Now look I can’t respond to every letter that I receive, I wish I could but I can’t but this one I just had to respond to personally. I was able to write to her and remind her of what Jesus said about the poor widow who dropped her two small copper coins in the offering plate alongside all those wealthy guys who obviously had much more to give. Luke chapter 21 verses 1 to 4.

Jesus looked up and saw the rich people putting in their gifts into the treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in much more than all of them for all of them have contributed out of their abundance but she, out of her poverty, has put in all she has to live on.

Don’t you love that! Jesus was so excited, He grabbed His disciples, He shook them, He said in effect ‘guys check this out, look at this old widow, she gave more than all the rest because they gave out of their abundance but she gave all she had.’ Jesus isn’t interested in how much we give, He’s blessed each one of us with different things and in differing amounts but what He’s really interested in is how much it costs us.

For Him giving and sacrifice are one of the same, part of that is because He knows that you and I are enslaved by our desires and the one way to break that, the one way to set us free is to turn us into sacrificial givers. Jesus knows there’s a powerful yet very tender connection between our hearts and our wallets, Matthew chapter 6 verses 19 to 21.

Don’t store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will also be.

Jesus said some of the strangest things, basically the upshot of what He’s saying here is, where your wallet is there your heart will also be. Okay so I brought it into the twenty-first century but you get my drift. You read that and you think about it for just a moment and you have to come to the conclusion that He’s got it the wrong way around. Surely the money follows your heart right? But that’s not what Jesus said, He said that your heart would follow your wallet, they’re connected.

Keep spending on your own self-gratification and just guess where your heart’s going to end up. So what’s the answer? Well He gives it to us in the very same breath. Start living your life sacrificially with the aim of storing up treasures in heaven. In other words get focused on serving God and other people.

Do that and two things happen. Firstly, obviously you end up with treasures in heaven but secondly, not quite so obviously the power that money has over you is broken. Sacrificial giving of everything we are and everything we have breaks our enslavement to our own selfishness.

And in that one thing there is so much victory that flows out of learning to become a sacrificial giver. What’s sacrificial giving again? It’s giving that costs you something. God isn’t so much after our money, I mean think about it, He created the whole universe, He doesn’t need your help or mine in anything, no the thing He’s really after is your heart, not part of your heart, not a divided heart but the whole lot.

Let me share another letter that I once received from a man, it’s at the other end of the spectrum from that little old lady who had a real giving heart. This is what the guy wrote:

How dare you ask me to support your ministry? Don’t you trust God, if God wants you to be in ministry let Him provide for it.

Now on the surface of things that sounds pretty fair until you realise that ninety-nine percent of the time God funds His work through His people. The first fundraiser in the Bible is in Genesis chapter 25. God tells Moses to build a dwelling place for Him amongst His people, it was called the Tabernacle. Great God, how do you want me to fund that little number? Exodus chapter 25 verses 1 and 5:

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering from all those whose hearts prompt them to give, you shall receive the offering for me in accordance with all that I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all its furniture, so you shall make it.

So let me ask you, is God poor? Did He need their gold and silver and purple cloth and all the rest of the things He listed there to build the tabernacle? No, He just wanted their hearts. He knew that their hearts were attached to their money and He wanted to set them free to live in the victory that He planned for their lives.

You can’t live in victory if you’re enslaved to your own selfish desires and when we do let go, when we do start giving sacrificially something else amazing happens. The blessing of God, in all sorts of different ways, gets poured into our lives, Luke chapter 6 verse 38:

Give and it will be given to you. A good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put back into your lap for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

I used to think the more I gave to God’s work the less I’d have for yours truly, numero uno, me. But that simplistic thinking just doesn’t work in God’s economy because when it comes to God’s blessing the worlds formula’s are completely irrelevant. As God graciously led me through the transformation from being stingy to becoming more generous (a work by the way that remains in progress for the Lord), I discovered that the blessing of God began to flow in so many different ways that I simply couldn’t contain them.

Giving to God is not a zero-sum game; in fact it’s anything but.

FAITHFULNESS AND POWER When you think about it, it’s only in the tough times that we can in fact discover first-hand, in our very own experience, how faithful God is. In fact, sometimes, life is just plain tough. I don’t care who you are; how super-spiritual you are; how much people look at you and think, ‘Boy! That one there, they have it all together with God’, sometimes life is just a shocker! You believed in God for good; you did good; you gave; you sacrificed, but all you can see around you is devastation.

I love the beautiful old song that goes like this: ‘The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end: They’re new every morning, new every morning, Great is Your faithfulness, o LORD; Great is Your faithfulness.’ Do you know it? It’s an awesome song. It comes straight out of the book of Lamentations, chapter 3:22-24. The writer’s looking around, just after Jerusalem’s been destroyed and raised to the ground by the Babylonians. God’s city is gone; God’s temple is gone; God’s chosen people are gone out of His promised land, and in the middle of all that – that devastation, he writes this because he knows this truth deep in his heart: That the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; great is His faithfulness.

Despite all the evidence you and I may see to the contrary, that’s the truth, and when you and I can stand in the midst of the ruin and the devastation that comes into our lives, during those times of trial and suffering, and whisper those words from our heart – ‘Great is His faithfulness’, that right there is the victory that the Bible promises, and the victory that God calls us to, and the victory that Jesus died and rose again to give to you. In fact, to be honest, it’s the sweetest victory of all.

‘Great is Your faithfulness, LORD, unto me. Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed Your hand has provided. Great is Your faithfulness, LORD, unto me.’ Amen to that.

And from the very beginning, Jesus asked His disciples to get out there, and to give, and to sacrifice, but before they went, He gave them the power: The incredible power to do that and to get through it all, the same power that’s available to you and me. Back then after His resurrection and ascension, they began to proclaim Christ, and they began to see thousands of people coming to believe in Him! And they went out and they suffered much persecution, and they laid the foundations of the church and our faith, which still lives on two thousand years on. How did all that happen? Through the power of the Holy Spirit, despite the obvious failures and limitations of those disciples. Let me come back and say it again: The very same power that they had is available to you and me here and now.

Let me tell you the truth, each time I look in the mirror when I’m shaving in the morning, I see my own face – the wrinkles; the grey hair; the dimple on my left cheek; all the imperfections, and if you stare at your own imperfections long enough, you become fixated on them. No amount of wishing we could look different can change the face in the mirror, right? It’s like that with the rest of our lives too. I can’t change the way I am. I can’t remove the bad habits and the dimples and the imperfections from my life on my own, but fortunately I don’t have to. Neither do you, for that matter. Galatians 2:19-20:

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

In other words, the moment you believe in Jesus, the old person dies; a brand new person comes to life. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. It’s no longer you who lives, but Christ who lives in you. That’s the only power that will ever bring transformation. It’s the only power that will ever give you a new lease of life: Resurrection-power, the only power that will give you victory in this world.

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All too often, God’s people – who we’re told are meant to be more than conquerors – lie bloodied and beaten on the spiritual battlefield we call life. What they need is power, but they just can’t seem to find it. Well what if I told you that God has already provided you with all the power you need?

IT’S TIME TO REPENT I want you to imagine a person who wants to become an elite athlete, whatever their chosen sport may be. This person sets out to become a great tennis player or footballer or track and field competitor and yet all they ever do is they sit on the couch eating chips and sweets and drinking sugar-laden soft drink. Would you expect that person to realise their dream of becoming an elite athlete on that sort of a diet and that sort of an exercise regime? Not likely.

And yet that’s what so many Christians do. They want to live a life of spiritual victory in Christ and yet they fail to turn away from the things that are ruining their lives. Those things have a collective name in God’s Book – He calls them sin. Have a listen to the Apostle Paul’s take on all of this, Romans chapter 6, verse 21 to 23:

So what advantage did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death but now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God the advantage you get is sanctification, the end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For much of my life I shied away from God simply because I thought becoming a Christian meant living out some out dated, irrelevant bunch of rules that would restrict me and constrain me, a bit like a straight jacket. That’s the view that so many people have of being a Christian – you can’t do this, you can’t do that, how’s a person supposed to have any fun in this life?

What surprised me though when I looked closer at it is that God only tells us not to do the things that are actually going to hurt us and hurt other people. And the list of do’s and don’ts, well it’s actually quite small in the scheme of things and yet still there’s always at least one of those that we want to hang on to in our lives, isn’t there?

Listen up, there is no such thing as a small sin. Hang on to any sin and eventually it’s going to kill you, let it go and the reward is freedom today and eternal life for the rest of eternity.

Over the last few days on the program we’ve talked a lot about the powerful transformation that happens to you and to me the moment we believe in Jesus. Our past is completely forgiven, as far as the east is from the west so far does God remove our transgressions from us. So much so that our past misdemeanours become completely irrelevant in God’s eyes and in God’s eyes we’re as pure and as blameless as Jesus Himself.

That abundant mercy and grace is a kindness and a generosity that is simply indescribable and that kindness and generosity is actually meant to have a transformative impact on our lives, Romans chapter 2 verses 3 and 4:

Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself you will escape the judgement of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Don’t you realise that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

Isn’t it funny how quick we are to judge others and yet how readily we find excuses to rationalise our own behaviour. Maybe it’s time for us to stop kidding ourselves. Other people’s sin, by and large, isn’t our responsibility but our sin is and one day Jesus will come back and judge the living and the dead, each one of us, Christian and non-Christian alike will stand before Him to give an account for our lives, our behaviour and our sin.

Make no mistake judgement day is coming but right now God has done everything that needs doing, He has shown us every kindness, He has given us every opportunity to repent, to turn away from the things that we know are wrong and to turn our lives back to Him.

The right response, the only response to God’s kindness is repentance. The right response, the only response to Jesus death on that cross is letting go of our sin and loving Him in word and in deed. Surely that’s not too much to ask, is it? And it’s not as though we’re powerless to change because God gives us the very power we need to leave that sin behind. He never takes us to a place where temptation is more than we can bear, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13:

So if you think that you are standing watch out that you don’t fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength but with a testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

Let’s be honest we all struggle with sin, somehow each one of us has that one Achilles heel and one temptation, that one sin that we’re vulnerable to and doesn’t the devil know it. He waits for just the right time, when we’re tired, when we’re distracted, when we’re under pressure, when we haven’t prayed or opened our Bible for a few days or weeks and then whammo, he swoops in and he strikes.

The result, we succumb to the temptation, we stumble, we suffer guilt, we suffer condemnation and we want to run and hide from God just like Adam and Eve did. What’s your Achilles heel of temptation and sin? What are you struggling with? Are you wondering what you can possibly do to overcome it?

Well here’s a powerful promise from God, whatever it is He will never allow you to be tempted beyond your ability to withstand the temptation and He will always provide you with a way out. That’s Gods promise to you, He will always be there to help you overcome the temptation and that’s important because that sin robs us of the spiritual victory that He wants for our lives. That sin steals the very thing that Jesus suffered and died and rose again to give us, abundant victory.

God’s thought of everything, of forgiveness, to be set free from the past and of the power we need to overcome the future. Yeah, God’s thought of everything

THE POWER OF PRAYER For many Christians prayer is one of those optional extras. It’s something we fit in now and then when we can and it seems we’re especially good at fitting in a quick prayer when things aren’t going so well. ‘Oh God please help me, oh God please stop the pain, oh God when are you finally going to show up’? Sound familiar?

Imagine that someone you love only ever talks to you when they’re in trouble, it wouldn’t make much for a relationship now, would it? I wonder sometimes if we don’t have a completely wrong view of prayer because the only sort of prayer that the Bible teaches us about is the sort that has powerful results.

Let me say that again just in case you missed it – the only sort of prayer that the Bible teaches us about is the sort that has powerful results. Now when you think of it that way you have to ask yourself, so why do I keep banging my head up against a brick wall? Here’s how Jesus put it, John chapter 15 verse 7. He said that:

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you can ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

In other words if we’re close to His heart, if we know what He wants then our desires will be aligned with His and in that context we can ask Him for whatever we wish and it will be done for us. That’s a powerful statement and when we live that out in our lives it yields powerful results.

We’re in the middle of a series of messages called Your Road To Spiritual Victory because that’s what God wants for you, for your life, spiritual victory. And as I said at the beginning of this program, you can’t have that sort of victory if you don’t spend time in prayer. I mean you just can’t.

So many of Christ followers want spiritual victory but they’re too busy to pray. Huh, that’s about as smart as the couple who want a great marriage but are too busy to talk to one another about the things in life that really matter, as though that was somehow going to work. Yeah I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, ‘Berni that’s great for you but I don’t have the sort of faith that you need to get powerful results through my prayer.’

Well you’re not alone, I know many a Christian who firmly believes they don’t have enough faith to go and ask God for the things they need, for the help they need and for the victory they need. It turns out that these people have more than enough faith to believe that they don’t have enough faith but not enough faith to believe that their loving powerful God could give them the breakthrough that they so desperately need.

I mean when you put it like that it sounds crazy but that’s exactly what’s going on here. Now let me warn you, I’m one of these crazy nut cases who takes Jesus at His word. In other words, if Jesus said it it’s not just true but it’s actually true for me. So what did Jesus say about how much faith that you and I need to overcome a whopping great obstacle that’s in our road? Matthew chapter 17 verses 19 and 20:

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘How come we couldn’t cast the demon out?’ and he said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. Look truly I tell you if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you will say to this mountain ‘get up, move from here, over there’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you’.

Did you get that? NOTHING will be impossible for you. The answer to how much faith you need is that faith the size of a mustard seed which was the tiniest of all seeds known to human kind when Jesus was walking this earth, faith the size of a mustard seed is more than enough to move the mountain, to move the obstacle, that’s what Jesus said. Question is, will you take Him at His word? Because it’s not about the size of your faith, it’s about the size of your God – a God who is so powerful that He created the universe.

Have a listen to this beautiful and powerful truth, Psalm 33 verses 6 to 9:

For the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

Isn’t that beautiful?

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all their host by the breath of his mouth. He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle, he put the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him for he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood firm.

When you and I are praying that’s the God we’re praying to, the God who created the whole universe, a trillion trillion stars by the breath of his mouth. Do you think that He doesn’t have the power to deliver on His promises? Really? And yet He’s the very same God who wants to hear the deepest thoughts and secrets of our hearts. He is the God who delights in the intimacy of prayer. He wants a relationship, a real conversation.

The sort of prayer I was taught when I was growing up was formal prayer, kneel down, bow your head, clasp your hands together and then come up with some really sensible words maybe words that someone else wrote for you. The problem is though that that’s not the sort of prayer that the Bible talks about at all.

Jesus, just before He was crucified we’re told, threw Himself on the ground and prayed, He poured His heart out to His Father in heaven, He told His Dad exactly what He was thinking and feeling. Matthew chapter 26 verse 39:

And going a little further he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it’s possible let this cup pass from me yet not my will but let your will be done’.

Think about it, God loves you more than words can possibly ever say and when you love someone that much you want them to be real with you, you want them to pour their hearts out to you to tell what’s really going on, right? It’s exactly what Jesus did when He was under that terrible stress of being crucified.

Well, your Dad in heaven wants the same, your Dad in heaven wants your quiet times of prayer as the most intimate moments that you and I will ever have with God.

THE WORD OF GOD I guess in a good loving marriage if you love someone it’s not unreasonable to expect that they would from time to time, even reasonably often, say kind, loving, encouraging, uplifting things to you. Not an unreasonable expectation, right? And yet so many Christians have never heard God whisper those sweet nothings into their ears.

Why? I was having lunch with a friend the other day and he said something along the lines of, ‘Well, look, I don’t read my Bible, I find it boring. In any case I have a deal with God, as long as I have love in my heart that’s all that matters.’ Yeah right. My question to him was this, ‘So if you don’t read your Bible, if you don’t listen to the loving things that God has to say to you and about you how can you possibly have His love in your heart?’

If you want to hear God speak read your Bible, if you want to hear God speak audibly then read it out loud. That Bible is His love letter to you.

As we journey through this series on living our lives in spiritual victory we have to talk about one of the greatest maladies in Christendom today, the Biblically illiterate majority who are so longing for victory, real victory over sin, over the devil, over trials and obstacles and circumstances and situations and yet they leave the one offensive weapon in their armoury locked away in a cupboard somewhere.

The Apostle Paul had this to say about the spiritual battlefield on which we live, have a listen, it’s Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 to 17:

Finally (he writes) be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle isn’t against the enemies of blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

Therefore take up the whole armour of God so that you may be able to withstand on that day of evil and having done everything to stand firm. Stand therefore and fasten the belt of truth around your waist and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the Gospel of peace. With all of these take the shield of faith with which you’ll be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6: 10-17)

So there is one of the best pictures of the spiritual battlefield on which you and I live that you will ever find in the Bible. The point he’s making is that we focus on the things we see, the things of flesh and blood and yet there is a spiritual battle raging in the spiritual dimension, in the heavenly places, that is every bit as real as anything you and I can see or feel here and now.

A spiritual battle that sits aback of the trials and the troubles that we experience in this world. A spiritual battle that we ignore at our peril. We can’t have spiritual victory without being aware of that spiritual battle and then doing the things that we can do to win it. As Paul puts it, ‘Putting on the whole body armour of God’ not just part of it but all of it.

Now when you think about it armour is by and large defensive, in other words, it’s there to protect you. The belt of truth holds things together, the breastplate of righteousness protects your chest, your heart, your lungs, the shoes for your feet they make it easier for you to run, the shield of faith quenches the fiery darts of the enemy, the helmet of salvation protects your head. All of those are passive and protective to stop the enemy attacks from hurting you, great.

But you don’t win a battle just by defending yourself, you win a battle by attacking, by going on the offensive and in that whole list we are given only one offensive weapon, did you pick it? It’s the sword of the spirit which is the Word of God. In other words your Bible – the living Word of the living God is the one offensive weapon in your armoury.

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness the devil came after Him by misquoting and twisting God’s Word, how did Jesus respond? Each time He responded with the truth, He defeated the devil with the truth, with God’s Word, Luke chapter 4 verses 3 to 12.

Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days and when they were over he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you’re the Son of God command this stone to become a loaf of bread’. But Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, man does not live by bread alone’.

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and the devil said to him, ‘to you I will give their glory and all this authority for it has been given over to me and I give it to anyone whom I please. If you then will worship me it will be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only him’.

Then the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God throw yourself down from here for it is written ‘he will command his angels concerning you, to protect you and on their hands they will bear you up so you will not dash your feet against the stone.’ But Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, do not put the Lord your God to test. When the devil had finished every test he departed from him until a more opportune time.’

Three times Jesus hit back at the devil with His one offensive weapon, the sword of the spirit which is the Word of God. But leave the sword in its scabbard; leave the sword in the scabbard at home in the storeroom and it won’t do you any good. We need to get it out, to read it, to let God speak to us through it, to listen to what He has to say about us and this world rather than the perversions that the devil will whisper in our ears.

Let me be perfectly blunt, you cannot, you simply cannot live in spiritual victory without regularly reading your Bible, it just isn’t possible, get it? You and I don’t have the power to defeat the devil, we don’t have the power to overcome the obstacles in life but God’s Word is so incredibly powerful. Why do we miss that? Why do we trifle with the Word of God?

One of the most frightening things that I see in the Kingdom of God today is people who call themselves Christians and yet they trifle with God’s Word. They have a Bible to be sure but it collects dust on the shelf or it’s tucked away in a drawer somewhere. They listen to sermons most Sundays, well sort of but by the time they’re having that post Church service cup of coffee their heart and their mind has already wandered off somewhere else.

In the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, we hear how God created the universe but let me ask you a question, exactly how did God create the universe? Answer, He spoke it into existence, Genesis chapter 1.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light and God saw the light and it was good and God separated the light from the darkness.

God spoke the whole universe into existence. As the Apostle Paul said later in Romans chapter 4 verse 17:

God calls into existence the things that do not yet exist.

That’s the power of God’s Word. I wonder what things, what blessings God wants to call into existence in your life through His Word. And His Word is the place where you’ll discover the spiritual victory that you’ve been looking for all this time. The sword of the spirit which is the Word of God – your one offensive weapon. Don’t leave home without it.

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Life is something of a spiritual battlefield and when we’re in the thick of things, it’s so important for us to know what side we’re on. Each one of us has a new identity in Christ, but how many of us know that deep in our hearts, in the heat of the spiritual battle we call life?

GOD’S GRACE Spiritual victory is something of an odd concept, we live life, we go through all the stuff we go through, we know somehow there’s a spiritual dimension to it all but for most of us, particularly westerners like me, the spiritual dimension of life can feel somewhat distant, irrelevant even in the cut and thrust of daily life. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

The battles we fight often appear to be battles against circumstances, adversity, and other people – especially other people. Our daily battles appear confined to the here and now when all along there’s a spiritual battle raging for your soul in the heavenly places. This is what the Apostle Paul writes, Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 to 13:

Finally (he says) be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil for our struggle isn’t against enemies of blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God so that you may be able to withstand on that day of evil and having done everything to stand firm.

So today we’re kicking off a brand new series of messages called Your Road To Spiritual Victory because Jesus didn’t come and die for you and rise again so that you could spend the rest of your life being defeated by your circumstances or by people or by satan or by your sin. Gods plan for your life is victory – spiritual victory. 1 John chapter 5, verses 4 and 5.

For whatever is born of God conquers the world and this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world? That the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

And that’s why today and over the next couple of weeks we’re going to focus on spiritual victory, your spiritual victory to be precise. Often when I start talking about this to people I get a response that goes something like this, ‘Yeah I hear you but I’m not good enough, I’m such a weak person, I don’t think I will ever experience the victory that you’re talking about.’

This is way more common than you think. Perhaps you’ve been thinking along similar lines as we’ve been chatting about this whole ‘spiritual victory’ thing today. Well my job is to open God’s Word with you and show you that that’s a whole bunch of baloney.

Let’s go back to Paul’s words about the spiritual battle and putting on the whole armour of God. The whole purpose of that, he says is quote, ‘So we may be able to withstand on that evil day and having done everything to stand firm.’ In other words ‘to win the battle‘.

‘But I’m not good enough,’ I hear you say. No, you’re not good enough, that’s the truth and nor am I for that matter, we’re all in the same boat. None of us is good enough or strong enough or pure enough or holy enough or smart enough to win the spiritual battle, that’s the whole point, that’s why we need Jesus, that’s why we need the Holy Spirit.

And the starting point for the transaction of spiritual victory can be summed up in one word – grace. And that’s something that your God and mine, has available in bucket loads for you and me. Again listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5.

But God who is rich in mercy out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, has made us alive together in Christ.

There are times in our lives when we know that we’ve blown it, I mean completely blown it. There is nothing worse than waking up the morning after the night before and remembering that you hurt someone you loved and damaged a relationship that was so terribly important to you. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have said that? How could I have done that? Yeah I know, you’ve been there right? So have I.

I remember one time when I was in that place when the person I had hurt reached out to me and without berating me, without showing anger, without judging me simply forgave me and opened the door to healing our relationship. I’ll never forget it. That person was Jesus. What He did is called mercy and here’s the thing, mercy is only mercy when it’s undeserved. If we deserved it, it wouldn’t be mercy, would it?

The Bible tells us that God is rich in mercy, ain’t that the truth.

For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing, it’s a gift from God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9)

See mercy and grace are two sides of the one coin. Mercy is when God takes away the punishment that we so richly deserve for rebelling against Him and grace is when He gives us instead untold blessings that we simply don’t deserve. You and I have rebelled against God and the wages of sin, as we’re told in the Bible, is death and yet because He loves you so much He heaps the death that you deserve on the shoulders of Jesus on that cross. Jesus suffered and died on your behalf – that’s mercy.

And then instead of the death we so richly deserve, He gives us a rich abundant life here and now, a life that we’ll spend with Him for the rest of eternity, that’s grace.

Some days we look in the mirror and we see just what we’ve done wrong. We see how unworthy we really are. We realise that there’s simply no hope and that’s the whole point, that’s why He sent Jesus, for you. He loves you so much, mercy and grace through Jesus Christ.

And so no matter how low the base that you’re coming off is in this spiritual game that we call life, God’s mercy will trump everything. In fact so much so that He’ll wipe away all of your past misdeeds, also known as sin. He’ll make your past completely irrelevant to you, to your life and to your relationship with Him. That’s how rich God is in His mercy and grace. Psalm 103, verses 11 to 14.

For as the heavens are high above the earth so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him, as far as the east is from the west so far he removes our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him for he knows how we’re made, he remembers that we’re just dust.

As far as the east is from the west – I recently had to fly from Sydney in Australia, it’s on the eastern seaboard up to Singapore and it takes about seven and a half odd hours to make that flight. Four and a half of those hours, over half of the trip, is involved just in flying from east to west to get out of Australia.

So as I made that flight I looked down on the red dusty land below me and I think ‘the distance between east and west is enormous’. So far has God removed our transgressions from us – as far as the east is from the west. Your slate is wiped completely clean and your past becomes completely irrelevant. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.

So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away and see everything has become new.

Your past is gone, it’s irrelevant. You want spiritual victory in your life then you need to know the truth so that the truth can set you free and the truth is this, it’s what I just shared with you from God’s Word today, the truth is that you are forgiven, completely and utterly, the truth is that as far as the east is from the west so far have your transgressions been removed from you.

That’s the truth and that’s the starting point of spiritual victory in your life – the truth.

YOUR IDENTITY Living our lives in spiritual victory over the devil, over sin and evil, over circumstances and adversity isn’t just some theoretical pipe dream, no it’s God’s plan for our lives. Let me be even more direct than that, it’s God’s plan for your life, Romans chapter 8, verses 35 and 37.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Don’t you love that? Not just conquerors but more than conquerors, not just victory but more than victory. There’s a reason for that and the reason is that God is a God of abundant blessing, abundant mercy, abundant grace, abundant power, abundant love. He’s an over the top kind of God and He wants you to live in this abundant life that Jesus came to give you.

And to make that happen for you, all this abundance, God gives you a new identity the moment you believe in Jesus. Instead of being the sinner you once were in God’s eyes, completely deserving of His wrath and His punishment, He transforms you through your faith in Jesus, it’s the beginning of victory.

And just as a soldier on a battlefield needs to know who he is and who he’s fighting for in order to win the battle, so you and I need to know to understand and to accept our new identity in Christ. Have a listen to this, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In other words, God transferred all our sin onto Jesus shoulders so that now, when you and I stand before God, through our faith we look a whole lot like Jesus to Him. Jesus took your sin, He paid the price, He died for you so that you might become the very righteousness of God. That’s now your new identity if you believe in Jesus – a complete right standing with God no matter what horrible things you may have done in the past.

And not only in the past, in the present and what is to come in the future as well because God has given you a new standing, a standing in fact as a member of His family. Romans chapter 8, verses 14 to 17.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are in fact children of God. For you didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry ‘Abba’, Father it’s that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are in fact children of God and if children then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ if in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

When the going gets tough as it invariably does out there on the spiritual battlefield that we call life, it’s so easy for us to imagine that God has abandoned us. There’s nothing worse than that feeling of abandonment because you and I we’re created to belong – families, societies, sporting teams, clubs even countries – they’re all about belonging, we need to belong, that’s how God has created us.

And when the going gets tough that sense of isolation, that sense of abandonment is devastating but our feelings are quite fickle, they aren’t always able to witness the truth into our hearts. In fact quite to the contrary because you and I are frail human beings the devil often uses our feelings to speak lies into us in order to rob us of the truth.

Listen up, God will never abandon you no matter how ferocious the spiritual battle becomes, no matter how heavily you may stumble and fall some days, if you believe in Jesus, yeah some day’s you’ll be called to suffering just like Jesus but that doesn’t change the fact that you are His child, that He loves you beyond measure. He will never abandon you. That’s Gods honest truth because He has given you a completely new identity.

You have become the righteousness of God through your faith in Jesus Christ. You have become a member of His family through Jesus. And there’s something else you need to know about how God sees you, have a listen to this truth from His Word, this is God speaking to you about how He sees you and what He thinks of you and what He’s going to do for you right now, Isaiah chapter 43, verses 3 to 5.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your saviour. You are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you. Do not fear for I am with you.

How we see ourselves – you and I – has a huge impact on the quality and the effectiveness of the lives that we lead and this life of yours, hey it ain’t no dress rehearsal, it slips away a minute at a time, a day at a time. And one day it’s going to be over, one day the end of this life will come.

What a tragedy it would be to have missed out on all that God has to offer you simply because you believed what the world said about you and as a result you lived out your life through your own inadequacies and insecurities rather than believing what God has to say about you.

Hey, do you believe in Jesus? If you do this is what God has to say about you, you are precious to Him, you are honoured by Him and He loves you. That’s who you are, that’s your identity, that’s what God thinks about you. It’s your passport through life. So who are you going to believe, the world or God? Hmm?

When the devil comes against you on the battlefield and whispers lies into your ears, ‘oh you’re not good enough and what’s more you never will be, you can never win, give up, throw in the towel’ all that stuff who are you going to believe? The devil, the father of lies or God?

God never lies and as one whom He has transformed into His very own righteousness, as one whom He’s adopted into His family and is called a child of God. There is something else that you have, something else which is already yours, have a listen to this, 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 to 5.

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading being kept in heaven for you who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Around where I live real estate prices have become so prohibitively expensive there’s a whole generation of young people who will have to wait for their parents to die before they can purchase a home using their inheritance. In most families children can rely on the fact that they’ll receive the lion’s share of their parent’s estate so why is it then that so many Christians are uncertain about their inheritance from God? Will I make it to heaven or won’t I? Will it be everything I expect? Will God keep my inheritance for me?

The future can be scary some days even more so as we approach that final hurdle out of this life into the next. So in case you’re wondering the truth is this, God has an inheritance waiting for you in heaven that is quote, “Imperishable, undefiled and unfading.” And not only that, it’s an inheritance that He has actively protecting through His power. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Do you see how your new identity completely transforms your own view of who you are? Seeing yourself through God’s eyes changes everything because as we look at ourselves through His eyes, through His truth, all of a sudden we realise that by His grace and His mercy we are a completely new creation.

So when the enemy comes against you out there on the spiritual battlefield of life, you can declare with boldness, ‘I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I am a child of the living God and He has an inheritance waiting for me.

Full stop – end of story.

ALL POWER TO YOU Power is so important in living a life of spiritual victory. We’re going to talk a whole lot more about power next week on the programme, but in the few minutes that we have left together today, let me give you a taste of the power that God has already given you. Ephesians 1:17-20, Paul writes:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know Him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened you may know what is the immeasurable greatness of His power for us who believe. God put this power to work in Christ and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.

It took me a long while (and maybe I’m a slow learner), but eventually I came to the conclusion that I cannot overcome my own sin in my own power. In fact, the harder I worked at it, the more I would fail, and the more condemnation I would feel. As far as I can see, working harder at becoming a better Christian is a recipe for guilt, condemnation and failure. What you and I really need is some power. I mean, serious power: Power to overcome our sin, and not surprisingly, God already has that figured out. Through the apostle Paul in Ephesians 1 (that passage we just read), God tells us that we already have available to us the same immeasurably great power that raised Jesus from the dead to give us a new life. The literal meaning of that verse, if I take the original Greek words (which is something I don’t often do on the programme) and I kind of transliterate them into English, it reads like this: Hyper ballistic, mega phonic, dynamic power.

See, this same incredible resurrection-power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to overcome your sin. It’s available to you and me here, now, today, through Jesus, so listen up. Stop praying for power, and start praying with power ‘cos you actually already have this power. Paul’s saying: ‘I wish, I pray, that you would through a spirit of revelation and wisdom come to know the immeasurable greatness of His power that’s already available to you.’

Stop praying for power, and start praying with power, but listen up. Prayer isn’t just a one-sided transaction. It’s not a one-sided conversation. I hope this is going to shock you (shocked me too, I have to tell you), but prayer is more, so much more than just rattling off our shopping-list to God.

Now don’t get me wrong; I absolutely believe in asking God for His blessing because without that, nothing I do is going to amount to very much at all, but if our prayer is a monologue rather than a dialog, then it’s not much of a relationship, is it? If our prayer is a one-sided conversation, us talking at God, then just imagine what we’re missing out on. Just imagine how God feels about that. Hearing the voice of God, hearing God speak back to us, that’s what the Holy Spirit is ready, willing and able to do, and there is such power when God speaks to us. Have a listen to what Jesus had to say on hearing His voice. John 10:1-4:

Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, the sheep hear his voice, he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. When he has brought out all of his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

Do you know His voice? Have you heard that sweet quiet powerful whisper in your heart? If not, be still. Just wait on Him. He will speak. Absolutely, He will. Take this whole communication thing, this whole prayer thing, seriously and you’ll be amazed at the victory that the Lord brings to pass in your life: Real victory, make no mistake. I’ve already said it, but let me say it again: You have the power to live your life in spiritual victory. It’s already been given to you. That’s the God-honest truth, and it’s that truth that will set you free to live your life in victory over the devil, over sin, over every obstacle that this world throws your way

May the Lord truly bless you as you receive His Word into your heart today.

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The Bible has something incredibly exciting to say about the purpose of God’s grace in your life. Not just the fact that God’s grace is amazing, which of course it is. But it also has a purpose. And that purpose is to take you on the path of freedom. Real freedom.

FORGETTING THE PAST Over the last little while on the program we have been chatting together about the amazing transformation that the grace of God brings into our lives. I like to think of it as a grace transformation.

If you’ve been able to join me, you’ll know that we’ve been spending some time in just one chapter of the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah chapter 43 because that one chapter happens to be cram-packed full of the transformation that God’s grace brings into the lives of His people.

It’s amazing to me how much Gods managed to pack into just one chapter of His Word the Bible, His living Word. And if you and I can just drink that in, the amazing power of God’s grace, then we’re going to experience a transformation in our lives that words simply can’t describe.

Now to some that might sound to be a bit over the top, a bit much if you will. Transformation? ‘Hey I’ve believed in God for years’, some people are saying, ‘I’ve never experienced any transformation’.

Well that may be you, that may ring a little true for you and if it does stick with me because we’re going to dig deep today into what God has to say into your life about His grace transformation for you.

Have you ever wondered what grace is? Grace is when you receive something good but you don’t deserve, it’s the flip side of mercy. Mercy is when you are spared a punishment that you deserve. Grace is when in its place, you receive a blessing that you don’t deserve. Two sides of the one coin – mercy and grace. And one of the greatest acts of grace that God could ever pour out on anybody is a freedom from their past.

Let’s dive into Gods Word now, Isaiah chapter 43, a pivotal time in the history of Israel, they were in Babylon of all places, having been captured and exiled as slaves by the Babylonians.

Now for them that was an outrageous thing because they knew that they were God’s chosen people. They knew that God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt some centuries before and brought them to the Promised Land, the Land He had promised to Abraham many many centuries before.

And yet here they were again, not living in freedom in that Promised Land but living in captivity as slaves in another land. Why? Well because they had turned their backs on God. Now God was patient with them but eventually His patience ran out and He allowed the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem, destroy the Temple and take His own people into captivity.

The Israelites were living out the consequences of their own sin. Does that sound vaguely familiar? It happens to all of us when we turn our backs on God and go our own way in sin, in rebellion against Him. We all end up living out those consequences and as far as the Israelites could see there was no hope for the future, they were stuck there in slavery, great, just, let me say, like it is for you and me when we’re wallowing in the slavery of our own sin.

But then God decides to speak through the great Prophet Isaiah. He speaks of bringing the power to change things. He speaks of breaking into their dismal reality. He speaks of the fact that He has redeemed them, that they are precious to Him, that they needn’t be afraid, that He’s going to open their eyes to the great reality, the great unseen reality which is Him.

He is bringing transformation, release for the captives, a new life, the very same thing He wants to bring into your life, the very same thing that Jesus came to this earth to bring for us.

But before that transformation, before that release can happen something else needs to happen in the hearts and the minds of His people. Have a listen to what God says through Isaiah chapter 43, verses 14 to 21.

Thus, says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, ‘For your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned into lamentation. I am the Lord your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King’. Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise as they are extinguished and quenched like a wick.

‘Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I’m about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, don’t you see it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people who I formed for myself so that they may declare my praise.’ (Isaiah 43: 14-21)

What is it that needs to happen? God needs to shift their focus off their circumstances onto the great and mighty redeemer that He is. And God needs to get them to forget their past and place their hope in Him for the future because if all they can focus on is their past failures and their present predicament then they won’t be ready to receive the freedom that He’s about to bring. And the very same is true for you and me.

There are some people tuned in today who are gripped by their past. They can’t get over their failures, they can’t get over their hurts, perhaps the abuse, whatever it is in their past that’s holding them back. And the thing about the past is that it’s so powerful it seems that nothing, NOTHING, can set you free.

That’s precisely how it would have seemed to the Israelites. Seventy years in captivity, seventy years of the punishment that by now they knew they so richly deserved and no hope for the future until all of a sudden, without warning the grace of God breaks into their bleak reality and God calls on them to forget their past and replace it with a vision of a bright future – a way in the wilderness, waters and rivers in the desert to give drink and to bless His chosen people, the people whom He formed for Himself to declare His praise.

I believe that God is saying the very same thing to us today, to you and me. Forget the past, He’s wiped your slate clean through Jesus, through the death and the sacrifice of Jesus on that cross for you, the past is irrelevant when you consider the future in the light of the grace transformation that God wants to bring into your life.

Do you hear Him through His word today?

LET GO OF YOUR IDOLS It’s one of the great paradoxes of life: that the good things in our lives can actually distract us from the best thing in life. It’s actually far more common that you may think.

Consider a marriage, the most important of all human relationships on this planet, always has been, always will be. How easy is it for a young couple to get married and then they buy a home and the mortgage cuts in and so they work longer and harder and in any case, they both enjoy what they do.

Then children come along and they focus on those as they rightly should. And as the months and years slip by they become so focused on all those other good things that they forget to focus on their marriage. And then one day they wake up and they wonder, ‘where did all the love go?’

Is it a bad thing to buy a home? No. Is it a bad thing to enjoy work? Of course it isn’t. It’s great to have a job that really invigorates you. Is it a bad thing for a husband and wife to bring children into the world and to love them and to nurture them and to sacrifice for them? No, that’s a great thing! In fact it’s hard to imagine a greater blessing than children.

None of those things in and of themselves are bad things, they rarely are. But when it comes to the health of that marriage, if those good things become more important then the best thing – the marriage that brought them to pass in the first place then that, that’s a bad thing, a very bad thing.

Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been looking at the nation of Israel through the eyes of the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah at a time in their lives where they’d been in exile as slaves because they turned their backs on God to follow after a whole bunch of other things that seemed good in their eyes.

We’ve picked up the story in Isaiah chapter 43 where God speaks of the amazing grace that is about to befall them, the grace transformation as I call it.

But to bring about change sometimes we have to let go of some apparently good things, things that are drawing us away from the best thing.

Let’s pick up their story now in the next chapter, Isaiah chapter 44 beginning at verse 9. God says this:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look all its devotee’s will be put to shame, the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up, they shall be terrified, they shall be put to shame.

The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong-arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and he’s faint. The carpenter stretches out a line and marks it out with a stylus and fashions it with planes and marks it with a compass.

He makes it in human form with human beauty to be set up in a shrine. He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it, then it can be used for fuel, part of it he takes and he warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.

Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire, over this half he roasts meat and he eats and he’s satisfied, he also warms himself and says, ‘I’m warm, I can feel the fire’. And with the rest of it he makes it into a god, his idol and bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘save me for you are my God.

They do not know nor do they comprehend for their eyes are shut so they cannot see and their minds as well so they cannot understand. No one considers nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire, I also baked bread on the coals, I’ve roasted meat and have eaten, now shall I make the rest of it a abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood’? He feeds on ashes and a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud’. (Isaiah 44: 9-20)

It’s a pretty simple and powerful piece of logic, isn’t it?

Okay back then, people made idols and worshipped them. Of course in some parts of the world that still holds true for the rest of us though we make idols out of other things, good things it would seem – jobs and careers and relationships and reputations and possessions.

Mostly none of those are bad, I mean the wood that the idol makers used wasn’t bad of itself but they become bad and they become dangerous and they become destructive when we elevate them to a level in our lives where we start believing that they have the power to save us and to make us happy. Because when we do that, in our hearts we have no need of God and He becomes less important in the scheme of things.

That’s exactly what Israel had done in the first place seventy years before which had landed them in this mess of slavery and exile that they found themselves in, a mess that God allowed to befall them to bring them back to their senses. They built these idols in their lives and in effect they worshipped them instead of God and it’s in the same way that we make idols of things in our lives and worship them in place of God.

Can an object make you happy on your deathbed? Can it? Or some prized possession that you’ll soon be parted from? No of course not, they’re powerless. It doesn’t make any more sense than taking a bit of wood and using half of it to cook your dinner and the other half to make an idol that you worship.

God’s grace is completely and utterly amazing but for God’s grace to have its full effect in radically, powerfully transforming our lives then you and I need to worship just the one God. The God whose poured His grace out on us through Jesus Christ. The God who has the power to transform our lives.

So you and I need to renounce some of the things that we’ve put above God in our scheme of things, some of the things that are just good things that we’ve elevated to the wrong level, that will be most of them and a handful of them will be the things that we know are wrong. Whichever they are we need to put them back into their rightful place so that God can be in His rightful place in our lives and our Lord of all. That’s where transformation begins.

A FUTURE OF FREEDOM Freedom is a big deal. I grew up during the cold war at a time when the threat of communistic dictatorship loomed large as a threat across the globe – or at least that’s how it appeared to most of us. And still today there are totalitarian regimes where people aren’t free to say what they think or do what they please within the reasonable bounds of a just law.

I remember some years ago I was in a place, a country in Asia, that on the surface of things seemed to be a peaceable, lovely place to live. I was doing some IT consulting work for a large well-known organisation. Late one Saturday evening when a few of us were still at the office getting some work done that had to go out as quickly as possible, we sat down to have a bite of dinner.

And I was chatting with one of the young men whom I’d come to know reasonably well over the preceding few weeks and I was telling him what a lovely country I thought this was. As I did, a dark look came over his face. His eyes darted around to make sure that no one else was within earshot. He lowered his voice and said, ‘Well yeah it is on the surface but understand we’re not free to say what we think. If I criticised the government in any way I would probably go to prison. It’s a terrible thing’, he said, ‘when you can’t say what you think.’

Up until that point in my life I’d never even thought about it because I have, all my life, lived in a country where we have complete freedom of speech and action and religion within, as I said, the reasonable bounds of a just law.

And yet the more I thought about it the more I realised how terrible it must be simply to not be able to have one of those basic freedoms, the tension and the oppression that a person must feel when they simply aren’t allowed to speak their mind.

My dictionary tells me that freedom is the power or the right to act, speak or think as you want, the freedom of choice, the absence of subjection to a foreign domination or a despotic government. The power of self-determination or that sort of thing.

To a degree that definition hits the mark and yet to a greater degree I think it completely misses the mark. Why do I say that? Because the dictionary definition of freedom, the common definition assumes that freedom means to be free from something out there somewhere whereas the most common slavery that we all experience is the slavery to the evil that lies within.

Don’t believe me? Ask anybody who has ever been addicted to something. Ask anybody who has ever suffered because of their selfishness or their anger or their dishonesty. Ask anybody whose marriage has ever failed because they were unfaithful. Yeah surely the greatest tyrant of all lies within and God calls it sin.

Now conventional wisdom has it that we are masters of ourselves, that we can determine how we think and act and feel and react and behave. The Bible on the other hand, God’s Word, maintains that we are all slaves to sin until God sets us free. It’s a view that’s one hundred and eighty degrees diametrically opposed to conventional wisdom in this world.

In the course of the story of Israel’s redemption from slavery in Babylon that we’ve been looking at and exploring together over these past few weeks through the Book of Isaiah chapter 43 and 44. It’s really interesting that God isn’t about just setting them free from their captors, the Babylonians who had enslaved them in a physical sense. God’s also is in the business of setting them free from their sin which led to their physical enslavement and which has enslaved them in a spiritual and emotional sense as they live out its consequences.

Have a listen to this, Isaiah chapter 44, verses 21 and 22:

Remember these things O Jacob and Israel for you are my servant. I formed you, you are my servant. O Israel you will not be forgotten by me. I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like a mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you.

I love that. I absolutely love that because you and I know that the most powerful slavery of all is our slavery to sin, our addiction to some behaviour based on a destructive attitude or thought pattern that try as we might we cannot, simply cannot rid ourselves of. It is every bit as powerful as a heroin addiction, this slavery that each one of us has to our sin.

And God comes along and says, just look at the powerful picture language here. He says that He swept away our transgressions like a cloud and your sins are like a mist for He has redeemed you. Past tense, done deal, end of story. Again centuries later the Apostle Paul puts it this way writing to his friends in Galatia, Galatians chapter 5, verse 1.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.