A New Life is Possible // Dying to Live, Part 5

We’ve all heard so called Christians talking about being “born again”.  Sounds, I don’t know, kind of strange.  How can you be born again.  Is it religious mumbo jumbo, or is it real?

There are so many paradoxes in life, so many things that promise to deliver what we’re looking for, but they don’t. Somehow they just don’t, and no matter how hard we try, something’s still missing. People are dying to have a great life but somehow often, they’re just not prepared to pay the price.

Jesus had an interesting spin on that; you have to die to live. So often we have "me" at the centre of the universe, and it doesn’t work, have you noticed? I want "Me" in the driver’s seat, maybe it’s ok but it’s not the best that it could be. What does it mean you have to die to live? What does it mean being Born Again? Are they just religious buzz phrases or real life experiences?

I’m joined today by a young man, well, he’s young to me anyway, by the name of Gary Brown, he’s tall, dark and handsome just like me. And you couldn’t pick a name that’s more every day than Gary Brown could you?

Berni: G’day Gary!

Gary: G’day Berni!

Berni: I did a search on Google by the way, I love doing this when I talk to someone, I did a search on Gary Brown on the Internet and there were 30,300,000 hits, so Gary is Mr Average. I mean, he does average very well, don’t you mate?

Gary: Yep, very … very.

Berni: How are ya, Gary?

Gary: Yep, very well Berni thank you.

Berni: Now listen we’ve been talking this week on "A Different Perspective", about this whole issue of dying to live and changing our lives. I know over the last few years there have been some big changes in your life and I just wanted to ask you about those things, but tell us a bit about your early life … you traveled around the world a lot with Mum and Dad, how’d that work?

Gary: Yeah Dad worked for Coca-Cola …

Berni: That’s the "real thing" …

Gary: Yeah absolutely, the other force taking over the world. We’d left England when I was about 24 months old and we went to Hong Kong and then South Korea, and then Singapore, Indonesia, and then we came to Australia when I was about 14.

Berni: So you’ve been around and was it a happy childhood, or was it hard moving around?

Gary: No, I thought it was great; it was all I knew so that was normal to me, moving countries every 3 or 4 years.

Berni: And your teen years, now when did this whole God thing happen for you? Are your parents Christian, or how did all that happen?

Gary: Yeah, I was very blessed to grow up in a Christian household, but it was when we were in South Korea at a camp and I can remember it very clearly, and we were sitting, and I was looking at the fire. Throughout the camp (it was organised by the church), I felt very close to God at that time at the campfire, and one of the leaders had seen just a change in my behaviour, I just became very quiet and very peaceful and she goes, "you know what are you feeling?" And I say, "I just feel I would like to give my life to God and to ask Christ in", and she led me through the prayer and yeah, that happened at about age 10.

Berni: 10

Gary: 10, age 10.

Berni: You’re an early starter, and what do you remember of that experience? I mean, 10’s pretty young, 10’s…you’re not an adult, what impact did that have over the coming years as a young adult, a young teenager.

Gary: Yeah, it was a good decision but as I got older I suddenly realised there’s a bit difference between knowing about God, even believe in God, and then actually acting on it. When I got older in my late teens, I think I knew God but I didn’t have a relationship with him, and so there was a time in my life where I just walked away. I thought, "I’m gonna try this on my own, I’m gonna do what I wanna do, I wanna get the things I wanna get, I just want to do life the way that I wanna do it." It went down hill very, very fast.

Berni: Very unusual for a teenager really, to think that way.

Gary: Yeah, that’s right. Mr Average did the Mr Average thing.

Berni: What’s down hill? What does that mean?

Gary: Down hill for me was ah, gosh, completely undisciplined, I did what I wanted to do, I saw what I wanted to do, I used to go out drinking so I’d spend all my money on that, I would watch whatever I watched, so I dunno … that would include pornography when it was around, we never went around to get it but if it was around wasn’t disciplined in not looking at it. Not being disciplined with some of the friends that I may have hung around with, swearing and just doing what I wanted to do and not really caring about anyone else.

Berni: And that was a satisfying experience I guess?

Gary: Ah, absolutely not!

Berni: Why, what makes you say that? I mean, we think of freedom as being well, I wanna do whatever I wanna do. Why wasn’t it a satisfying experience for you?

Gary: My friendships weren’t very good, cause it was all about me, and when you hang around with people who’s all about them, you don’t wanna be around them because they’re always taking from you, so I found that my friendships died pretty quickly. In relationships with girls for instance, because it was all about me, they were very self-centered and empty and I ended up hurting some people, which is completely not my nature. So even though I did it, I hated doing it, yet I kept on doing it.

I guess the Bible says … Paul goes, :I do the things I don’t wanna do and I don’t do the things I want to do." So there was this complete clash in my life every time. So every time I wanted to do what I wanted to do, just for me, it just wasn’t me; it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

Berni: So how does that change? What happens in Gary Brown’s life?

Gary: I got to a point where I was very unhappy, my friendships weren’t good and I went to my brother-in-law, who at that time was an Anglican Pastor, and he said read the Gospel of John, read about Jesus and I read that and I thought that is the person I wanna be, I wanna see people healed, I wanna see people on the fringe and bring them into a relationship, I wanna give again, like give, not just be about me. I got to a point and I can remember when, in the end of John, and Jesus is praying about other people and when he prayed about other people it broke my heart because he was praying for me, so he’s about to go to the cross and he still prayed for me, and I thought, that is who I am, and I wanna get back to that.

Berni: So you make a decision, you decide that you wanna follow Jesus, what does life look like after that? I mean is it one of these sorts of fairy stories, you know my life was terrible, I believed in Jesus, now my life is wonderful? You know …

Gary: Yes and No. Yes, that I am so much more at peace with who I am, but no in the fact that, daily I’ve got all these desires that are still there, you know part of our nature is it IS all about me. So constantly I’ve gotta take those and go No! It’s not all about me, deal with it and look around me, look around to other people, and when I do that, there’s even more peace that comes through and it just … my life isn’t so bad.

Berni: Now you went on to work for an organisation called, "Youth Alive", tell us about it because that’s a real giving kind of job.

Gary: Yeah, Youth Alive was fantastic! It was organising large scale youth events for kids in high school and youth ministries around New South Wales, and we did these events with motor cross, and skateboards, and live music, and then we’d get a guest speaker, and you would see the last event was over ten and a half thousand people, praising God, in an open arena, in the rain!

Then the guest speaker comes out, gives a life changing message about, "Jesus loves you", and all these kids out there who just have never heard anyone say, "I love you", they don’t know that they were created, that don’t know that they were lovingly put together by God, and when they hear that message, and you can see the truth hits them and they break. You see some of these teenagers crying in the middle of all their friends, and then they say, "Do you wanna know Jesus?" and you watch literally over a 1000 of them raise their hand – and that was life changing! That just made coming back to Jesus all the more.

Berni: And it seems to be a switch around from it all being about me, which is kind of the buy-line of life these days and it’s all about you, to it being for other people.

Gary: Yeah, I found when I think about me, my world shrinks very quickly and my problems get really big. When I think about other people, my eyes come off myself and my life is actually very good, I’m in a great family, I’m married to a beautiful wife, we live, we’re very blessed with a house and I look around me and I go, "WOW, my life is blessed, I’m Ok!" And I just suddenly look around me and see all these other people about what I can do for them and it’s just such a more peaceful existence.

Berni: So just in a nutshell because we’re almost out of time, what does "Born Again" mean to you in real life?

Gary: It’s getting to know my creator, the person who made me, finding out why he made me, how he made me, so I’m at peace with myself. When I’m at peace with myself I feel free, I can look around, I can use the giftings that I know, and go out and just help people get back into a relationship with their God, so they can have the same peace. And to me I was born again from a selfish existence, to one where I’m at peace and I can help others.

Berni: Would you go back?

Gary: Never … never!