An Amazing Machine // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Release Date: 07/28/2025
Distractions // Building a Godly Family, Part 11
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
With all the entertainment options and gizmos available to us these days, there are so many distractions. Things that stop us from interacting and doing the things that we need to do to build a godly family. I remember with great delight the days that I used to come home from school in my younger years. I was allowed to watch an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half of TV. It was a great big hulking black and white model that sat in the corner of our lounge room. I used to watch Gilligan's Island and Mighty Mouse, and later on Batman. Our time in front of this tube was strictly limited by our...
info_outline
Children and Honour // Building a Godly Family, Part 10
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Honour is not something that gets talked about a lot these days. But Commandment number 5 out of the top ten is to honour your father and mother. And it turns out that there’s a very good reason why it’s right up there at number 5. It's funny how the way we think; the things that we think are important. They change over time. If you got a 15 year old down with a 45 year old and a 60 year old and a 90 year old and got them together and asked them what things are really important my hunch is we'd get quite different responses from each of them – the values of my parents generation, people...
info_outline
When Two Becomes One // Building a Godly Family, Part 9
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
They say that what marriage is all about is two becoming one. It’s a great theory but, well, as I heard someone say once, it’s the “becoming” that’s the problem. That’s where the hard work really is. Well, over this last week-and-a-half, on the program, we've been talking about building a Godly family and this week in particular, about realising the enormous blessing that comes from having a peaceful home. Its great stuff isn't it? And yet, for many, it seems so impossible, this notion that our family, our dysfunctional family, with all its bumps and wrinkles and imperfect family...
info_outline
Wife and Mother // Building a Godly Family, Part 8
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We think of men being the stronger sex and the Bible even talks about women as being the weaker sex. But some of the strongest people I know are women – and you women, your particular brand of strength can be such an amazing blessing to your families. You know, so often we look at men and there's something about their physical size and brute strength, their ability to go out and crash through problems. It's easy to make the mistake and think that it's the man who's the strongest force in marriage and in a family. Well maybe that's true. But you know something, there's another 'tour de force'...
info_outline
Husband and Father // Building a Godly Family, Part 7
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We men are a funny breed – we have the whole provider and protector thing going on inside us. And you know something, if we know how to live that out in a godly way, we can be such a blessing to our families. We men are a funny breed. There's something deep inside us that makes us the protectors and providers for our families. Most men, not all but most men are programmed, hard wired, to provide and protect. Yet these days, women so often work and bring an 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...
info_outline
The Blessing of a Peaceful Home // Building a Godly Family, Part 6
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
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. 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, 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 and water to drink and...
info_outline
Setting the Course // Building a Godly Family, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
This week on A Different Perspective, we’ve been chatting about building a godly family. Well, at some point – the talk has to turn into action, otherwise nothing’s ever going to happen. The question is – are you ready? Well, are you? This week we've been talking about building a godly family on the program. The whole gist of it has been this – it doesn't matter how dysfunctional a family ours 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 some awesome and mighty changes. It will probably take time. Maybe...
info_outline
Breaking with the Past // Building a Godly Family, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
The first thing a doctor tends to ask us when we visit is about our family history. And just the way that physical things get handed down to us genetically, so do emotional, behavioural and spiritual things. Question is, what can we do about them? One of the things that brings so much dysfunction into families is, well … things from the past; things that have been handed down genetically, emotionally and spiritually. It seems such an incredible paradox to me that the people who are most likely to sexually abuse a child are those who were themselves, abused when they were young. Doesn't that...
info_outline
The Ideal Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Let me ask you something – if you could set about building a Godly Family – what would that look like? I mean how would you know when you’d arrived? A Godly family. Man – wouldn’t that be amazing. I'm excited because this week we're kicking off a few weeks looking at what it means to build a Godly family. That's why I'm so excited. Because I've been praying, praying that of the millions of people that will listen to these programs this week, God will transform countless families. Think about it, the family is God’s smallest, fighting formation. In the battle of life, He uses the...
info_outline
The Dysfunctional Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
It’s easy to look around at other people’s families and think “Boy – how come I didn’t get a normal family like them.” Truth is though, that no family’s perfect. And no matter how dysfunctional your family might be, God has a plan. We don't have to look very far to see that, in society today, families are becoming more and more dysfunctional. It doesn't matter where we live, how wealthy, how poor. In the wealthy west, you know, teenagers have less and less contact with their parents. They use the internet and cable TV and their friends to tell them who they are and how they...
info_outlineThe average human heart will beat between 2 and 3 billion times in a lifetime. Amazing little thing. But when it’s sick, when it’s diseased, that can be life threatening. And it’s the same with our other heart too – that deep place where we live – you know, our heart.
Your heart and my heart, well I don’t know if you’ve ever thought much about this but our hearts are amazing little machines. Let me give you just a few vital statistics. This ball of muscle in your chest, it’s about the size of your clenched fist but it’s much, much stronger.
It’s built like a Sherman tank. In fact, when it comes to staying power, pulling power, reliability, durability, a Sherman tank has nothing on your heart. In a lifetime your heart will pack much more punch than any Sherman tank will in its lifetime.
In an average life time a human heart will beat somewhere between 2 and 3 billion times. About 70 to 80 beats each minute. Minute after minute. Hour after hour. Day after day. Year in, year out. Without skipping so much as a beat. Every day your heart will pump around 7,000 litres, that’s about 1,500 gallons. In a life time your heart will pump enough blood to fill between 80 and 100 Olympic swimming pools, or about 500 average backyard pools.
Here’s the amazing thing, we don’t even notice it. Yet let it stop beating and you and I would die within just a few minutes. Because it’s our lifeblood. It pumps the blood which delivers oxygen and removes waste. Just a few short minutes without that blood being pumped, every one of our hundred trillion or so cells in our body, and life ceases.
Pretty amazing little device the old heart.
And yet, in the developed world about half the people over the age of 55 have Coronary Heart Disease. In fact, Coronary Heart Disease is the number one killer in the western world. So whilst in the developing world HIV AIDS and lower respiratory infections are the big killers followed by heart disease and diarrhoea, in the developed world heart disease and stroke are by far the greatest killers.
But here’s the crazy thing, we know how to prevent heart disease. What are the top causes? Well, being over weight, high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure, lack of exercise. I don’t think there’s one person listening today who couldn’t have listed those. And what’s more, most of them are relatively easy to deal with.
People can dramatically reduce their risk of heart disease by losing some weight, eating healthier foods, quitting smoking, exercising. By and large, we can save lives by taking some very simple steps. Yet we don’t.
Here are some stats. Back in 2002, just over 57 million people died in the world. 42% of those were through heart disease. Now if we take that to just the developed world, the percentage killed by heart disease is much, much higher.
This isn’t some statistical apparition. It’s not some odd blip. Millions and millions of people each year are dying before their time because of something that, for the vast majority, is entirely preventable. Those morbidity statistics don’t begin to count the cost to health care systems, to economies. They don’t begin to tell the story of misery and suffering and years of chronic disease and isolation and fear and…
Are you getting the picture here? This is nuts. The heart is such a powerful, precious, life-giving thing. And we abuse it to the point of death. The human race is so smart, so creative, so amazing. How can we be so stupid? It defies understanding. We’re like a bunch of lemmings all heading in the same direction, over the edge of a cliff to fall to our deaths.
Now why are we talking about this? Well interesting but the heart is something that God talks a lot about too. Although He’s not so much meaning our human heart. But the heart is a picture of, well, who we are. It’s a symbol both in the Old Testament and in the New, of the essence of the person.
We acknowledge that a lot in our every day language. We talk about losing heart. Throwing our heart into something. Doing something with all our heart. We use phrases like taking things to heart. The heart of the matter. Setting our hearts on something.
The heart is, it’s a symbol of the essence of life. And given what the heart actually is, that’s not surprising.
When God talks about the heart He’s talking about the inner being. The inner most part. The seat of our appetite, our emotion, our passion, our courage, our fear. The middle, the central, the inner most part of the person.
Over these next few weeks we’re going to spend some time looking at our hearts. I’ve called this series on the program, “Oh God, Come Heal My Heart”. Because in the same way that wrong eating and wrong living and lack of exercise is killing millions of people each year needlessly. So a different heart disease is robbing people of life, here and now. And not just here and now but of eternal life.
The worlds full of a disease of the heart that’s stunting people’s lives. Stopping them from living their lives to the full. Stopping them from living the life that God always planned for them to live ’cause that’s what heart disease does.
And just like the physical heart we behave as though nothing’s wrong. We behave as though there’s not a problem. We know the facts but we ignore them.
Solomon was talking to some young men. He was writing to them this amazing wisdom from God. And this is what he says in Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23. He says:
Above all else guard your heart …
What a great piece of advice. Guard your heart. Value it. Treasure it. Keep it safe.
… for it is the well spring of life.
Problem is, we just live life. We shove food into our mouths. We don’t exercise. And then we wonder why we’re having heart attacks in epidemic proportions. And why should the inner heart be any different?
If we have an angry heart or a fearful heart or a hard heart or a sorrowful heart. If we lose heart or set our heart on the wrong things. Why is it that we would imagine that those things would somehow help us to lead a full life? Why is it that we would imagine that we wouldn’t lead a diseased life? Let me read it to you again. Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23:
Above all else guard your heart for it is the well spring of life.
Literally what it says here in the original Hebrew language in which it was written in the Old Testament is:
Diligently guard, watch over and preserve the heart in the way that the watchmen of old would stand on the rampart of the fortified city to keep watch for the enemy that was coming to attack. Keep watch. Be watchful. Watch over, guard and protect your heart.
Cities, in those days, had walls and fortifications built around them to protect them from attack. That’s what this piece of God’s wisdom is all about. And look at the priority it gives. Is it the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th order of business in our lives?
Above all else guard your heart…
No, it’s not down there at the bottom of the list. It’s up there at the top and there’s a very good reason for that. Because:
… it is the well spring of life.
If we have a diseased heart you’ll have a diseased life. Let that disease rule your life and you lose your life. There are so many people in this world with a diseased heart and a diseased heart robs us of life. Fear, anger, pride, arrogance, deceit, envy. They all live in the heart. They’re diseases and diseases that we need to deal with decisively.
Question is, how? I mean chronic disease is the sort of disease that’s been there for ages. It’s the hardest sort of disease to deal with. Almost impossible in fact. How do we deal with it?