The Blessing of Peace // An Abundant Life in Jesus, Part 7
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Release Date: 01/14/2025
Enough to Go Around // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
One of the greatest things in life is when you sow a good seed and one day you get to reap a good harvest. That’s probably why so many cultures have harvest festivals. But – what do we do with that harvest? What we get out of life depends pretty much on what we put into it. It's a self-evident piece of blindingly, glimpsingly obvious wisdom isn't it? That’s why this week we've been looking at the whole idea of sowing and reaping in our lives. We're confronted by a tough or a difficult situation and if, instead of running away or kicking and screaming, we actually sow some...
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Waiting, Waiting, Waiting // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We pretty much know that to reap a good harvest, we have to sow a good seed – but I’ll tell you sometimes it’s a long way between sowing and reaping – waiting, waiting, waiting…. I'm not a farmer but I've often imagined what it must be like, you know you spend the money, you buy the seed, you prepare the soil, you plant the seed and then you wait. So many things can go wrong, too much rain, not enough rain or it rains at the wrong time and pests and disease and fire and hail. Sometimes it can be a different one each year but eventually after some hard work, the investment and the...
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Weathering the Storm // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Have you ever noticed – when you take a good decision to plant some good seed in difficult soil – all of a sudden, a dirty great storm whips up. Hey, I’m trying to do the right thing – God what’s going on? We all like sunshine and warm weather. You know when the weather forecaster comes on and says it's going to be cold and wet tomorrow, we go, "Augh yuck," but of course without the rain we'd all be dead. It's as simple as that, and sometimes it comes down in torrents, storms blow, the rain pelts down. Have you ever noticed the plants and the trees and the bushes in all that?...
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Watering the Dirt // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Sometimes, when we go through a bit of a rough patch, instead of running away (which is always our first instinct) instead, we make a good choice and decide to plant a good seed in that place. But then for a while, it feels like nothing’s happening. Have you ever planted a seed into some dirt? There’s something that, well frankly, is unnerving about this simple transaction. You take the seed and invariably it costs you something, you put it into the dirt and you cover it up and it's gone. There's a little kid inside each of us who wants to sit there and say, "Ok, well. I planted you, I...
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Planting the Seed // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Sometimes when you’re going through a bad patch – all you want is for it to get better. But actually, sometimes, what we need to do is to plant a good seed while we’re waiting. Can I ask you, what do you want to get out of life? I mean when you stand back and survey the landscape called, “your life”, the highs and the lows, what are some of the things that you’d love to see there? Relationships, achievements, family, career, money, a promotion, holiday? We’re all different, but basically my hunch is that we kind of want the same sorts of things in life. We want health and...
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Back to the Future // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
One of the things that nobody ever really tells you when you’re a teenager, is that the tough lessons you learn now are going to be so important later on in life. Is that really true? There's a great film that was produced back in 1984 called, “The Karate Kid”. It's about a teenage boy who had just lost his father and who ends up studying karate under an older Japanese man called, Mr Miagi. And for the first few months, all Mr Miagi does is to get this young Daniel Laruso to do menial chores – polish the car, paint the fence, sand the deck and after months Daniel has had enough. He...
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The Marque of Maturity // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
One of the things I did when I was a teenager is that I wanted to act like a child and yet, to be treated like an adult. So what are parents looking for in their teenagers as key indicators that they’re actually growing up? Can I ask you a question? How would you define maturity? I mean, you look at two people, similar ages, similar backgrounds and you think that one, well she definitely has it but that other one over there, he just needs to grow up. So what’s the difference between the two? What sets them apart? What makes one person mature and the other one immature? Interesting. We...
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God's Plan for Honour // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
It’s an amazing thing – but God places a very high premium on children honouring their parents. And that’s not always easy. I mean for starters – what does “honour” actually mean here in the 21st century, mm? I asked my 16 year old daughter Melissa, the other day what she thought the word “honour” means. She immediately responded, "It means obedience." "Mmm," I said, “That's part of it but not the whole lot." "What do you mean?" She asked, "Well," I said, "Your Mum and I honour you, don't we?" She hadn't quite thought of it that way. She looked around the room and said,...
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Rebel Without a Cause // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
It seems par for the course that at some point, teenagers want to rebel. I know I did. So, why is that? What’s going on in their hearts when they get this urge to rebel? Now I remember when I was a teenager it was a time of anger and tension and conflict with my parents. You see, I knew that I knew everything and I knew that they knew nothing; I mean they were so old fashioned. They made me have my hair cut short when all my friends had long hair. They made me clean my room every Saturday morning, I mean come on! All my friends were allowed to have messy rooms. I had to learn the piano...
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Just Grow Up // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Growing up isn’t easy. That whole journey from being a little baby to a well-adjusted young adult is tough. So – what’s growing up all about? What happens along the way? You know, I think that one of the hardest things in life is just growing up. You start of life as this helpless little baby; can’t do anything for yourself. And the somehow 20 or 25 years later you're supposed to be this well-balanced mature young adult capable of taking on the world. But along the way there are lots of growing pains. I don’t know how you found it, but for me I think growing up was hard. There are...
info_outlineI don’t think there’s a single person on this planet, who doesn’t want to have peace in their lives. A cessation of conflict and wrangling and fighting. Of course conflict comes in many different forms – the words, is a conflict with God. Turns out that one of the things Jesus wants to bless us with, is peace.
We’re looking this week at Jesus’ outrageous promise of an abundant life. Have a listen, 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.
And as we unpack that promise, it’s worth unpacking isn’t it? What I’m keen to do is that we don’t misinterpret it. Because it isn’t something we can roll around in, like a pig in mud, imagining somehow that Jesus promised here to put us on “easy street”.
The easiest thing in the world is for us to assume that Jesus wants to bless us just financially or in some other physical way. And of course sometimes He does, but the blessings of the Kingdom of God are far greater, far richer than anything this world has to offer and anyone, anyone who’s ever chased after wealth and fame and fortune will tell you that those things never ever satisfy the deep yearning inside.
Am I right? Jesus didn’t come to give us things the way the world does. He came to give us the blessing of the Kingdom of God in our lives, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That’s the real deal, that’s what He died on that cross to give us, that’s what He rose again to bring us. An abundance of life, a rich life, literally, a super abundant life, life in vivid technicolour. And today, today we’re going to take a look at the blessing of peace.
Righteousness, we looked at that yesterday, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Those three in a nutshell are what the Kingdom of God brings into our lives. They are the fountain of blessing. And that little troika is put together by the Apostle Paul in dealing with the controversy over religious rules to do with food and drink that was raging back in the 1st century Church. And in responding to that in his letter to the Romans he’s saying, “Guys, guys, you’ve got a hold of the wrong end of the stick, don’t you get it?” Romans chapter 14, verse 17:
The Kingdom of God isn’t about food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
See that’s the context, because in exactly the same way as some people were taking a human worldly perspective on God’s Kingdom over religious rules back then, you and I we can easily take a worldly view of this promise that Jesus made of an abundant life through our consumer oriented 21st 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, paying off the credit card, “easy street”; I mean it’s the natural reaction right?
But this isn’t what Jesus was saying. As I said last week on the program this promise of an abundant life comes set in the context of a parable of a shepherd and his sheep. And a shepherd and his sheep lived difficult and dangerous lives out there in search for pasture where thieves often came and wild animals came to ravage the flock. Where, sometimes the shepherd had to lay down his life for his sheep. There’s nothing easy street about that little lot is there?
But if we stopped and thought about this whole abundant life thing for just a little while and thought, “If I want an abundant life what would be up there? Right up the top of the list. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 on my list of what it means to have a rich and abundant life.”
I think we’d come up with exactly the same list as Paul, righteousness, a right standing with God, finally the enmity between us and God is gone. Finally the threat of judgement is gone. Finally, where we’re meant to be back in a relationship with God and right standing with Him; so righteousness.
Secondly, peace. Is there anyone among us that doesn’t want peace on every side in our life? The absence of strife. And thirdly, 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.
So today we’re going to talk about peace and again remember we’re not talking a worldly view of peace here, we’re talking of a Godly view of peace and that’s exactly what Jesus instructed His disciples to do when He gave them His peace.
See Jesus 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’d been following this amazing Jesus around for three and a half years. His miracles and His teaching and now, all of a sudden, the dark clouds of death hung over their future and Jesus says to them, He says, John chapter 14, verse 27:
Peace I leave you, my peace I give you. I don’t give it to you as the world gives, don’t let your hearts be troubled, do not let them be afraid.
You see this? Peace not from the world’s perspective, not the way the world gives it to you, Jesus is saying take my peace, my deep inner peace. The security, the safety, that comes from being one of my disciples. The sort of peace that sheep have when they’re safe in the protection of the one true shepherd, the shepherd who’s prepared to lay down his life for his sheep.
And the clear thing that Jesus is saying to them is this, “Look my peace isn’t the same as the peace the world offers you. That’s why your hearts shouldn’t be troubled. That’s why you needn’t be afraid.” And as I’ve said previously that promise of an abundant life in John chapter 10, verse 10 comes set in a story of difficult, dangerous existence of a shepherd and his sheep. It comes set not wrapped in cotton wool but in the reality of life and it’s for that reason, the cold hard reality of life that you and I need peace.
Without that how can we have an abundant life? How can we? As I look back on my decade and a half of now walking with Jesus, through thick and thin, up and down, dark and light, through some great places and some places that look very much like that valley of the shadow of death that Psalm 23 talks about, His peace is one of the things that I value most about my relationship with Him. 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. That guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. I so relate to that because so often this peace from Jesus in a worldly sense it doesn’t make sense. It completely defies logic and surpasses all understanding because I should be afraid in this situation. I should be panicking. I should be running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but instead I have a deep inner peace. Psalm 23 verse 4:
Even though I walk through the darkest valley 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, any trinket that this world has to offer. This deep inner peace that Jesus brings. A peace delivered into our very beings by the Holy Spirit Himself and it’s a peace that only comes when first we have a right standing with God through Jesus.
That’s why Paul and his list of three things that the Kingdom of God is about kicks off with righteousness first, then peace because peace flows out of our relationship with God when we have a right standing with Him through Jesus. And then, once we have this relationship with God and the peace that comes out of that, the next thing, the icing on the cake almost, is joy. The Joy of the Lord which is our strength.