Let the Oppressed Go Free // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We tend to think of oppression in global geo-political terms. But normal, everyday people experience all sorts of oppression – sometimes, in the most unexpected of ways. Oppression is just a fact of life in this world, we tend to think of it in political and in social terms, on a national or international scale, and it is huge. But oppression happens right at home too, oppression isn’t about nations, it’s about individuals like you and me. To be oppressed means to be down trodden. A husband can oppress his wife, a mother can oppress her child, a boss can oppress their employees, and...
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Sight for the Blind // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Imagine just for a moment that you’re blind and all of a sudden, your sight is restored. What would that be like? How would it feel? As a young man I used to have 20/20 vision but like just about everyone else, when you get to your late 30s and early 40s the old vision gets a bit blurred, and I needed glasses. These days I wouldn’t even think of driving a car or reading a book without the old multifocals. When you think about it, little by little without us even noticing, our vision becomes distorted. It’s like that with glaucoma too, little by little people lose their sight and by the...
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Release to the Captives // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
It must be an amazing feeling for a prisoner to be set free after years of incarceration. I wonder when they step out of the prison – what that freedom looks like, tastes like, smells like. I’m not sure if you every saw that movie in the mid 90’s called The Shawshank Redemption with Morgan Freeman. But it’s about two men essentially who find themselves in jail, one played by Morgan Freeman is there because he committed murder, the other one is there because he’s been framed. Anyhow there’s a scene in the movie where the Morgan Freeman character finally gets parole after decades,...
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Good News for the Poor // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Most of us like to watch the news, or listen to it on the radio, or read the newspaper. But really, there’s precious little good news these days. It all seems to be bad news, especially for the poor. But Jesus said that He had good news for the poor. So what did He mean? One of the little rituals that I love to perform every night is to watch the evening news on television. It’s just, I don’t know, my way of unwinding for the day and I guess it’s my way of finding out what’s been going on at home and around the world. But have you noticed whether you watch it on TV or listen to it on...
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From the Inside Out // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Believe it or not, God has this edgy, amazing plan to change us on the inside through His love and mercy and grace ... and then for that to work its way to the outside – in what we say and do. That’s the plan. I love meeting people where what I see is what I get. The person that I see on the outside is the person who they are on the inside even, you know, if they're a bit abrasive on the outside at least you know what you're getting. It's the people who pretend to be one thing to your face and then they go around behind your back and tell other people what they really think, they're the...
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Connecting Inside and Out // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Sometimes what we do on the outside reflects what’s happening on the inside. Other times, we try to hide what’s happening on the inside by behaving differently on the outside. And in the long run – that just doesn’t work. Something we love to do, it comes pretty naturally, is to have a disconnect between our spirituality or our faith on the one hand and our lives on the other. Maybe we go to Church on a Sunday, that sacred zone over there, you know you go there and you sing songs and you worship God. "Oh God, you're so wonderful, I love you so much, I exalt you above all. Lord, I...
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Choosing What Is Better // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Some people are so busy doing stuff, they don’t have time for relationships. Other people are so relationship-focused that they never actually get anything done. So, which one is better? Most of us understand the concept of smelling roses. We're so busy, so flat out running around doing stuff that we don't take the time to smell the roses, to stop and pause and wonder and think and enjoy God’s creation. How many husbands take the time to woo their wives? How many fathers these days take the time to go to their son’s football game or their daughters dance concert? How many people take the...
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The Heart of Worship // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Love is something that begins in the heart. So is hatred. In fact, just about everything we say and do on the outside, begins with what’s happening on the inside. The same holds true for – worship. One of the things that we all kind of know is that the great achievements that we have on the outside all start on the inside. Somewhere deep in her heart a little girl dreams of being a great athlete. She nurtures that dream. Every morning she's up at 4.00 am to go to training, day after day, month after month, year after year. It's that thing that's been going on in her heart that sustains...
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Who or What do I Worship? // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
It turns out that we all worship something. Success. Money. God – whoever that might be. There’s invariably something that dominates the way we feel, think and live. I'm not much into religion per se, you know the whole structured ritual thing but one of the great spiritual concepts that sometimes gets tagged with religious baggage is this idea of worship. Well when you hear the word worship, what does it mean to you? People who don't have any particular faith in God might see it as something that religious people might do in Churches or temples, maybe candles and incense or chanting and...
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Physical Touch // The Five Love Languages, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
If only. If only she’d want to hold my hand still. If only she’d touch my cheek like she used to. It’s funny how as we get busier in life, we become less and less intimate in our marriage. Here’s a cold, hard, statistic – depending of course in which country you live in. Somewhere between 30 and 45% of all marriages end in divorce. In California the registry of births, deaths and marriages is now known as the registry of births, deaths, marriages and divorces. Is it because people don’t set out wanting to love one another? No! Is it because 30 to 45% of...
info_outlineIt’s funny how we embark on each new year with great expectations of new things – and yet, we never take a look at ourselves. Our attitudes. How we function on the inside. That never changes. So why would anything else change?
Have you ever heard this? Dit dit dit, da da da, dit dit dit, you may recognise it, it's Morse code. Dit dit dit is an "s", da da da is an "o" and dit dit dit in an "s" again. SOS - Save Our Souls, Save Our Souls. It's the emergency distress signal when a plane or a ship or a submarine is going down. Save our souls, SOS.
"Soul" is a word that’s bantered around a lot these days. “This place doesn't have any soul”, ‘soul music’ and in Christian circles, "soul" is a very common word but what exactly is our soul? I mean, what do you and I mean when we use the term 'soul'? It’s one of those terms that we use a lot and yet we rarely stop to understand exactly what it is. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 23, talks about us having a soul:
May the God of peace Himself, sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and your soul and your body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
So, as you and I stand on the threshold of a new year, what's our soul? Is it worth saving? And what does it have to do with our lives and the quality of our lives?
Over this week, we're looking at the rut that many of us get into. We have a tendency, this time of year, to think about life and we look at the rut and what we want to do is, we want to change our circumstances, we want to, kind of, run away from some things and ditch some things and improve some things and then our lives will be fine.
Problem is that, for many of us, it's not the rut that we're in but the shape that we're in that's the problem. For many of us we're bent out of shape. We've been squeezed into the worlds mould and it doesn't fit so well and so life is uncomfortable and messy. I can run away wherever I like but until I get out of that mould, my life's not going to be transformed, I'm not going to have a new life, nothing's going to change.
Yesterday we looked at our bodies. Today we're going to take a look at our souls. So what is our soul? What does God say it is? Well, the Greek word used in the New Testament for soul is actually a word that you and I are quite familiar with. It's the word "psyche". It's who we are and where we experience life. It is indeed the place of life, life itself.
The best description I’ve ever heard is that our soul is our mind, our will and our emotions. It's where we think, where we decide and where we feel. That's our soul. It's that incredible place where we are human beings and it is in our souls that most of our problems in life occur.
Yesterday I was talking about the body and the body's really important. The body's the place where the soul lives, it's the physical dimension and you can't separate the two. If my body isn't working properly, it's going to have an impact on my soul. Trauma in the body spills over into the soul.
Hormones are the great link between body and soul, you can't separate the two. And if the body isn't being looked after properly then it is going to have a huge impact on our soul - our mind, our will and our emotions – one of the reasons that we really need to look after our body.
But today, I want to talk specifically about our souls and the way that we tie ourselves up in a knots, the way we ruin our own lives because when we misuse and abuse our soul, that ends up ruining our lives.
Let me explain it this way. If you and I don't look after our posture, the way we sit and stand, if we don't sit straight or walk properly then ultimately, we going to end up being permanently hunched over. If I slouch in front of my computer all day, I'll end up with a sore back and with headache and weakened muscles and it won't be long, another 10 or 15 years, and I'm just going to be living all my life all hunched over.
In the same way, it's the same thing with the soul. If I'm constantly angry, unforgiving, proud, lazy, whatever it is, if I keep using my soul the wrong way, my mind, my will, my emotions, that soul is going to end up, well, hunched over, disabled in a sense.
The best word I've ever come across to understand that disposition of our souls is our attitude to life. Some people have a great attitude, positive, optimistic, kind, forgiving and others are more like Uncle Scrooge – always angry, nasty, dishonest, always wanting their own way.
See how a soul that's caught in that rut is going to ruin our lives? Some people are approaching their lives with a bad attitude; a soul that's hunched over, almost like it's cramped. A mind that's focused on self, a will that's brutal and won't yield and emotions that are all messed up.
If I asked you to name three people in your life right now, who have a bad attitude, I bet you could do that in a split second, you just know who they are. And you know something, when we're asked to do that, to name the people we know that have a bad attitude, a stunted soul, we almost never name ourselves in that list. Because we never, for one moment, imagine that it could be us with a bad attitude.
But if we're truly honest, brutally honest with ourselves, come on, we would admit that we all have some bad attitudes and those bad attitudes, those wrong and stunted, hunched over dispositions of our souls are ruining our lives. We're all bent out of shape.
Some people today, you're caught in a rut and you're thinking, "how do I get out of this rut?" And actually it’s the wrong question. We need to look in the mirror and say, "I'm bent out of shape. I need to get that thing sorted out and then I'll be able to see clearly. Then I'll be able to see if I'm on the right track of life." That's why the apostle Paul wrote:
Do not be conformed to this world (Don't let it squeeze you into it's mould) but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may know what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God for your life.
See, if we're stuck in the world's mould, in selfish thoughts and critical and angry emotions, all that stuff, that stuff is ruining our lives. Come on, do you need this wake up call today? We're so good at deluding ourselves, thinking it's everyone else’s problem. We completely miss the fact that it's our problem.
And that's why Paul said, "We need to start thinking differently, we need to have our minds renewed, our thoughts, the way we exercise our will, the way we feel things and start looking at it from Gods perspective through Gods will." He wants us to love, we want to be selfish. In the short term that works, in the long term it ruins our lives. And love's hard you know, it’s a painful thing at times but you look back on that sort of love and it's the best thing there is.
Well, we can go into this New Year carrying this baggage of a bad attitude and you know what, the New Year’s going to be the same as the last, it just is. It is time to unload that baggage and there's only one place I know to do that.
To go to Jesus, to ask for His forgiveness and to tell Him, "I need you to change me" and then, to step into a life that lets Him make those changes. So, so often I've heard preaching about Jesus and the cross and forgiveness as though, somehow it's not connected to life, here and now, but it is.
See, God wants to transform our lives. Jesus came to set us free from this delusion in our souls that we are at the centre of the universe. From the bad attitudes that have us living a hunched over, stunted life. Jesus said this:
If I set you free then you are free indeed.
This is what He wants us to be free from. Well!