A New Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Release Date: 07/31/2025
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...
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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...
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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...
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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'...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineSixty years ago, heart transplants were an impossible dream. Today, thousands of people have heart transplants every year. They’re a reality. And it turns out that God – well, God’s in the heart transplant business too. In fact, He’s been in that business for a very long time.
I don’t know about you but I am old enough to remember the very first heart transplant. It was performed by Dr Christiaan Barnard on the 3rd of December, 1967. The patient was Mr Louis Washkansky. Sadly he lived for only 18 days and died, in the end, of pneumonia but his heart beat strongly until the end.
Since then, of course, there’s been many thousands of heart transplants and these days they are much more successful. The doctors have things pretty well figured out. They know how to stop the body rejecting the heart. I mean, for me, it’s impossible to imagine, how do they do that? Forty something years ago heart transplants were a pipe dream. Today, thousands are conducted each year around the world.
But here’s the thing, when the old heart is so diseased sometimes the only option, to bring life, is to implant a new heart. A heart that’s strong and healthy. A heart that will pump life to each of the hundred trillion or so cells in the human body for a good many years to come.
But this heart transplant idea, it’s not something new. Actually, it’s been around for thousands of years. Really!
This week on the program we’re looking at our hearts. No, not the fist sized muscle that beats between 2 and 3 billion times during the average lifetime. But our heart. Your heart. My heart. That deep place inside where we live. That place where we take things to heart. Where we lose heart. Where we long for something with all our heart.
When God talks about the heart, He’s talking about the inner being. The inner most part. The seat of our appetites, our emotions, our passions, our courage, our fear. The middle. The centre. The inner most part of the person.
And I remember when I first became aware of God. I mean really. A decade and a half ago when I decided to give my life to Jesus Christ. You know the amazing thing is, for all my life before then I thought I was fine. Yeah okay, I wasn’t perfect but I was pretty full of myself. You know, I thought I was pretty crash hot.
But then one day the Spirit of God came and touched me in a way that opened my heart. And one of the first things I realised was how rotten I was to the core. It wasn’t something I had to think a lot about. It wasn’t some guilt trip. I just knew when I gazed upon God for the first time I so deeply, so powerfully, for the first time really understood what He meant by that little word sin.
I was full of it and you know something, when we get a powerful revelation of God like that. When His Spirit reaches out and touches us with His truth like that, it’s a really common reaction. We’re gripped by our own inadequacy. And I think that’s important. Finally to realise that the clothes in which we once boasted were nothing but insubstantial rags.
It happened to the prophet Isaiah. Have a listen to what happens when he sees God down in the Temple in Jerusalem in the 8th century BC. Have a listen. Isaiah chapter 6 beginning at verse 1:
In the year that King Ussiah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of His robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above Him, each had six wings. With two they covered their faces and with two they covered their feet and with two they flew. And one called to another saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.”
The pivots on the threshold shook at the voices of those who called and the house was filled with smoke and I said, “Woe is me. I am lost for I am a man of unclean lips and I live amongst people of unclean lips. Yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
Do you see the reaction? This reaction of a sinner who encounters the holy, pure, perfect, glorious God:
Woe is me. I am lost.
He recognises his own sinfulness in the presence of God. Now if this kind of God experience has never happened in your life. You might think, well, I’m getting a bit weird here. But for me, when I experienced the warmth and the love and the forgiveness and the glory and the power of God. It was in that place that I came to realise how diseased my heart truly was. How desperate my need truly was. I realised the poverty of my own spirit and my own situation and yet it was for me and for you that Jesus said:
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
And I thought, “Well, now what? What do I do? How do I deal with this mess that I’m in?” That’s my natural reaction all the time. I’m a “doer” so I say, “Well what do I have to do?” Then one day I stumbled across these words in the Old Testament and they changed everything. Have a listen. This is God’s promise through the prophet Ezekiel and you can read it for yourself in Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 26 to 29. God says this:
A new heart I will give to 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. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors and you shall be My people and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.
What an amazing promise. God promises them a heart transplant. That’s what God promises us. A new heart. Have a listen again:
I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you.
God’s Spirit within us and that’s what changes the way we live. See, there’s a flow on effect of this new Spirit and if you read that passage again it talks about God’s blessing:
Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors. You will be My people. I will be your God. I will save you from your uncleanness. I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.
See God offers us a new heart and a new spirit and from those things we change and the blessing flows.
Sometimes when a heart is so diseased we can operate on it as much as we like but nothing makes a difference. We need a new heart. Have you ever felt like Isaiah? Have you ever felt that sense that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be good enough for God?
Well, me too and I want to share a prayer with you. The prayer of King David after he had committed adultery and murder and he came to his senses before God. He felt so rotten. So dirty. So unclean. And so he cast himself on the mercy of God and this is what he prayed. You can read it in Psalm 51, verses 10 to 12. He prays:
Create in me a clean heart, oh God and put a new and right spirit in me. Do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Just when we think we have to do it all ourselves, what we discover is that actually God has a different plan. God plans to give us a new heart and a new spirit. Nothing that we do, something that God does. And you know something, that’s what I’ve discovered.
In one sense God changing me is still so much a work in progress but the closer I drew to God the more I discovered changed attitudes. A compassion I never had before. A desire to serve and not to be seen. A heart for people and a passion to serve God. I never had those things and somehow they just happened without me thinking too much about them.
God gave me a new heart, just like that!