A Different Perspective Official Podcast
God has a habit of wanting to speak right into the circumstances that we’re travelling through here and now; the very issues that we each face in our everyday lives. Everything from dealing with difficult people … to discovering how God speaks to us; from overcoming stress … to discovering your God-given gifts and walking in the calling that God has placed on your life And that’s what these daily 10 minute A Different Perspective messages are all about.
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A Rock Beneath Their Feet // Living the Life of Service, Part 4
10/22/2026
A Rock Beneath Their Feet // Living the Life of Service, Part 4
Everyone goes through stormy times in life. And when we’re bobbing around like corks in the ocean, what we really need is a solid rock beneath our feet. But what if God means us, you and me, to be that solid rock in someone’s life? I hate being on the water in a boat. I don’t mind swimming, I don’t mind being beside the water looking and I don’t mind diving under the water but I absolutely hate being on the water in a boat. Up and down, up and down … I get sick! I can just feel the waves of nausea crashing over me … up and down. I’ve always preferred terra firma, the more firma the less terra … up and down. Now, if you enjoy the water, God bless you but not this little black duck. No way! I like to have a rock beneath my feet, solid, firm, no movement, no up and down. To me there’s nothing more terrifying than looking out over an angry, stormy ocean, grey water, white caps, wind howling. The ocean’s a scary place in a storm don’t you think? There are storms in life too. And today on the program we’re going to spend a little bit of time looking at what it means for us, for you and me, to be the rock beneath someone’s feet. This week, and over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at what it means to live the life that God always intended. God has this great plan of joy and peace and grace and wisdom for us to live through all the things – whatever they are, ups and downs – that God has planned. Life has its downs. There’s beautiful poem called ‘The Weaver’. You may have heard me read this before but let me share it again. Life is but a weaving between my Lord and me, I cannot choose the colours as He weaveth steadily. Sometime He chooses dark threads and I in foolish pride, Forget He sees the upper and I the underside. Not ’til the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly Will God unroll His canvas and explain the reasons why The dark threads were as needful in the weaver’s skilful hands As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He hath planned. It’s the reality of life isn’t it? Amongst the richness and the joy and the blessing, sometimes there’s the odd dark thread as well. And so much of what we do in life is about being servants rather than being served. I spent most of my life living for “me” but I was never satisfied. And these days I’m living for Him – for Jesus and other people, and for you – and I am the happiest man, the most blessed man on this planet. I wouldn’t be doing anything else because God is just blessing me through this life of laying it down so that I can take it up again in Him. Jesus said, "I didn’t come to be served but to serve.“(Matthew 20:28) And that’s where the satisfaction is in life Today, we’re going to look at another practical way that we can serve someone else. One of the most wonderful things that we can be for someone is a rock beneath their feet in the midst of one of life’s storms. A storm out on an angry ocean is a horrible thing but a storm when your feet are on solid ground, well it’s not overly pleasant but it’s not as bad as being on the ocean. Looking back at my life, I hated Christians and everything they stood for, before I met Jesus. The important things in life were clearly money and career and the big flash car and the success. And that had consequences. They caused a storm of mammoth proportions in my life. And on the dark days I felt like a cork bobbing around in this angry ocean in the middle of a storm. And here’s the funny thing, the Christians, who I hated in my life (there were three of them), they were the ones that stepped up to the plate and gave me a home to live in, gave me support, gave me encouragement and gave me Jesus. They were the rock beneath my feet. I can’t much remember what they said but I will never, for all eternity, forget what they did for me. We all need solid foundations. So many people have cracks in their foundations. So many people are living life-like that cork bobbing around in an angry ocean feeling as though they’re going to drown. A storm comes and people struggle. You see it, don’t you? And often those people aren’t the easiest people to be around. I know I wasn’t when I was like that. Often they’re dysfunctional and they’re not pretty and they’re not nice and they’re upset but we can step up to the plate and we can be their rock in a storm. What an amazing privilege! Jesus said: Everyone will know that you’re one of my disciples if you have that sort of love for each other. (John 13:35) Unconditional love, love that hangs in there, love that’s solid, love that’s immovable, love that says to someone, “Doesn’t matter how bad your life gets, it doesn’t matter how bad that storm blows, it doesn’t matter how much you feel like you’re going to drown, I will be your rock, I will be the solid foundations beneath your feet.” What about someone near you? Someone in your life – a family member, a friend, a work colleague, a neighbour, someone at your local Church or football club or dance class, or one of the parents of the other kids at school – who is going through a storm and just needs a friend, just needs unconditional love, just needs someone to put their arms around them and say, “I understand. It’s okay, I’m here.” That’s part of living the life God always intended. It’s being Jesus to them. And it’s difficult some days, it’s not beautiful some days. Those people aren’t pretty some days but what an incredible privilege, what an incredible satisfaction. Those three Christians I was talking about before who were my rocks, now look at what God has done through me and is doing through me and continues to do in me and they know they were a part of that. Every time I open my mouth on this side of the microphone, their ministry is ministering to you. Their love to me is flowing to you, because I learned what the love of Christ was from them. I learned who Jesus was through them being the rock beneath my feet. It’s amazing! And when we live the life God always intended, Jesus calls us into that place to serve in a practical, hands-dirty, sleeves-rolled-up love to give them the love of Christ. Jesus said to Peter, the Apostle: On this rock I will build my Church. (Matthew 16:18) And Peter was this impetuous man who opened his mouth before he engaged his mind and he was a fisherman but he was passionate, he was real, he wasn’t perfect but he was prepared to step out of the boat and trust Jesus and walk on the water through the storm and Jesus said: Now this is the sort of man that I can use as a rock to build my Church on.“ Get out of the boat, get out in the storm, go be a rock that someone else can stand on. That is living the life God always intended.
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Ahead of the Game // Living the Life of Service, Part 3
10/21/2026
Ahead of the Game // Living the Life of Service, Part 3
What’s Providence? Well, it’s when God goes ahead of us and prepares the way. Pretty cool. But what if – I mean, just think about this – what if you and I could do that for other people? What if you and I could be God’s providence for them? I was looking up in the dictionary the other day the word “providence” because I wanted to know exactly what the word meant. Like most people, I’d always thought that providence was God’s provision, but literally, the meaning of the word is this: Care and preparation that takes place in advance. Foresight, wisdom that goes ahead of you. Isn’t that cool? God’s providence is Him going ahead of us, with all His wisdom and knowledge and love and grace, and preparing the way, smoothing the path so that by the time you and I walk into that place everything’s ready. Ah, it’s awesome! That’s what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote: We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10) Well, imagine just for a minute if we could do that for other people, if God used us to be His providence for someone else. What would the world look like then? Over these last few weeks we’ve been looking at living the life that God always intended. Now, sometimes when I say that, people picture one long holiday, luxury and wealth and health and happiness, but that’s not it. Life’s for living, all the ups and downs, all the good times and the bad times. There’s this rich fabric that we call “life”, and you and I, we’re people with gifts and talents and unless we exercise those in life, there’s no satisfaction. And no matter what our gifts and talents are, real satisfaction comes from serving other people. Whether you’re an artist or a musician or a brain surgeon or a shop attendant or a mum or whatever. Isn’t it about impacting other people’s lives? When you’re a parent and seeing your kids grow and become wonderful and mature adults who contribute to society, as they say, to give to other people. This week we’re looking at living a life of service; serving other people, practical ways of doing that, of making a difference just like Jesus did. When Jesus came and He said: I didn’t come to be served, I’m the Son of God, I came to serve you, I came to die for you, I came to give my life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28) Yesterday, as a really practical way of doing that – of living a life of service, we looked at the fact that when we let people be – when we let them just be who they are with all their strengths and weaknesses, when we let people be – God sets us free. I don’t think my day is meant to be ruined by other people’s weaknesses. There’s enough in me of my own that I have to deal with without putting up with someone else’s. And so there are people who are quite different to me in my life and I value their strengths and I love them in their weaknesses. And ninety-nine times out of one hundred those weaknesses just wash straight past, because God wants us to be mature and lacking in nothing. God wants us to have joy and peace and that comes when we lay down our lives and we say, “That person drives me nuts some days, but I love them and I’ll serve them and I’ll bless them.” Today, we’re looking at going ahead of people, exceeding their expectations. And if we’re going to live the life God always intended, what if God intended for us to be His providence in other people’s lives? Remember, providence is when God goes ahead – when He sends His wisdom and His love and His mercy and His grace and His power ahead of us to get things ready – so by the time we walk into them they’re exactly the way God meant for them to be. What if God used you or me to be His providence in someone else’s life? When we think about it, that’s what we do for our kids. As mums and dads we have greater wisdom because of our years of experience, so we let them walk through things and experience consequences while being there for them. We think ahead for them. That’s how they learn, that’s how they grow in a safe, loving situation. We do that. We’re programmed to do that as mums and dads. What if we did that for other people too? What would that look like? What if we just compensated for their weaknesses before they happened? What if we covered up for them when they fail? What if we supported them when they fell over? What if we opened doors for them to other people? Pro-actively doing things that go ahead to help them? What a world, what a relationship! Let me share a story with you. When God laid this whole radio thing on my heart I didn’t know anyone in radio. I just had a call from God, “Oh God, where do I start?” The answer was, I started recording programs in a studio and not a single station had agreed to take them. We’d put down three or four months worth of programs. You had to have a few months worth done before any station would even talk to you. One day Christianityworks, our ministry, was moving offices from office A to office B and I was carrying some really heavy boxes, down the corridor. I had recorded these few months of programs and I’m lugging this box down the hallway talking to God, “Lord, how are you going to get these programs out there? What’s the plan, Lord? I have no idea!” Truly I didn’t, and God spoke to me so clearly that day. He said, “Go and talk to the guy behind that glass partition.” You see our old office was in a shared office area where there were other ministries and that guy was a man called Nathan Brown. He was the Australian head of Michael Youssef’s ministry, Leading the Way. Now traditional wisdom, worldly wisdom says, “Well that’s kind of the competition. He’s another radio ministry and they try and get their programs on radio stations.” Now I don’t see the world that way, didn’t particularly know Nathan very well but God just impressed it on me to go and talk to him. So I put the box in my car and came back in again and knocked on Nathan’s door. And I sat down and I just shared my heart with him. Nathan was overjoyed. He said, “I would love to help you.” And he opened doors for our ministry through his relationships with so many stations. Chances are you’re listening to this program because Nathan was involved somewhere. Today, our programs are being heard in over 1200 radio stations around the globe. Nathan was God’s providence for this ministry and for me. This man had an open heart, a heart to serve, a heart of enthusiasm, a heart to share his wisdom and experience and relationships and to open doors. Now he looks at what God’s done through that and the guy is just overjoyed at having been used by God to be a part of that. Isn’t that a beautiful story? It’s hard sometimes to help people, it’s difficult sometimes but God’s love and God’s wisdom is pro-active. That means God just doesn’t sit around waiting for us to get our act sorted out. God goes ahead of us before we even think of things, and He does things for us so that when we walk into them we’re blessed. We know love by this, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8) Providence is pro-active and it’s not always easy to do. And sometimes people don’t appreciate it and sometimes people are difficult. But when God taps us on the shoulder and says, “Go help that one. Go open a door for that one. Go bless that one”, you’d better go. Because like Nathan, you know, it’s just an awesome feeling when you get a sense that God touched you by His Spirit and called us into a place just to do something little that we could do. And then God uses that and multiplies it and blesses so many people when we do that. Come on! It’s not always easy but are you living the life that God always intended? Come on!
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Letting Them Be, Sets Me Free // Living the Life of Service, Part 2
10/20/2026
Letting Them Be, Sets Me Free // Living the Life of Service, Part 2
Other people can frankly drive us nuts. But they are who they are – and here’s a thought, when we let them be, God sets us free. Great theory – but how does it actually work? Over the last three weeks or so we’ve been talking about living the life God always intended. We have one chance at this life, that’s it. It’s not a dress rehearsal. And what’s so incredibly sad for me is to run into people, so many people, who aren’t enjoying their lives. That’s not to say we don’t go through some rough patches. Obviously, we do, but by and large, life’s there for living, for making a difference, for touching other people. There’s incredible satisfaction in that. So this week, we’re kind of having a poke around in that, looking at what it means to live a life of serving other people. Today, we’re going to explore one way, a practical thing that we can do to serve other people. It’s so simple, it’s so profound it will touch people so deeply, it’s amazing. Here it is, just let them be. Let them be who they are. Let them be what God made them to be. And it turns out when we let them be, God sets us free. We’re all different, have you noticed? We’re good and bad at different things. We like different things. I like this colour, you like that colour. You like that taste, I like this taste. You like those clothes, I like these clothes. So different. And sometimes we get annoyed by those differences. Maybe you’ve heard me talk about this in the past but it’s a big issue. One of the biggest things that ruin our lives is other people being who they are. Their differences grate and annoy and drive us nuts. You know what I mean. But the fact is, we’re all different and the fact is, we always have to live with those sorts of people around us. God makes sure of it. God never puts us in a group where everybody is just completely the same. Let’s face it, that would be boring to start with, but God wants steel to sharpen steel. God wants us to learn to humble ourselves and to get on with other people. I had a recent experience. I was involved in a really large piece of work, a big complex project. And I was the key man doing the job and there were other people around me, helping me. It was a huge job. It took a lot of months to do. And what I’m good at is communicating, telling a story. I think in concepts and stories not detail but the job involved an enormous amount of detail and what I really appreciated were the people around me. They quickly understood the things that I was good at and also the fact that I wasn’t good at ferreting out and sorting through a lot of the detail. And so they served me and they helped me with the things that I wasn’t good at. They could have criticised me, they could have complained, they could have attacked me. Instead, they helped me and when that happens, it so validates who we are. It’s wonderful to work in an organisation like I do and to experience those things. The Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12, figures it out. He said (my paraphrase): We’re all different. We all have different motivations and abilities. Some people are good communicators, others are good teachers, and others are good encouragers, others are good leaders, others are good at caring for other people and serving. Others are real givers and yet others are great at showing mercy. (Romans 12: 6-8) But the flip side is, we all have weaknesses. Communicators like me, want to talk over people. Encouragers want to encourage so much that they end up running other people’s lives for them. People who are good at caring and showing mercy, well, sometimes are not the best time managers. And on top of that, we all have our own foibles; we all have our own ‘Achilles heel’, the things that we do wrong. So when we have people around who are different what does it look like to live the life God always intended? How do you do that, when people’s weaknesses disrupt our peace and joy that God wants us to have? You know, you have a great time with God in the morning, Yes! Hallelujah! And then you deal with someone in the middle of the day and they drive you nuts and that peace has gone and that joy is gone. If we want to live the life that God always intended, we have to let people be. And when we let people be, God sets us free. I have enough of my own faults without your faults ruining my day. In fact, if I let your faults and your weaknesses ruin my day then I’m adding your faults to mine. And if I let the next person’s weaknesses rub me the wrong way, I’m adding those to my load. And the next person after that, I’m adding those to my load. I’ve got enough of my own to carry around I don’t need to carry yours with me too… and the next persons and the next persons and the next persons. My time with God in the morning is a powerful way of changing who I am and living the day for Christ, to be a blessing, to live a life of joy and peace. And when I pick up your load and the next person’s load, it ruins my peace. I’ve made a decision. I’m going to let you be who you are, will you let me be who I am? When that weakness that rubs us the wrong way comes at us just let it be, just turn the other cheek and let it be. When we let people be, God sets us free. The moment we stop trying to change people, complain about them, whinge about them, get angry about them, get hurt because they offended us, our lives change. Why is it that God makes such a big thing about forgiveness? Jesus, when He was teaching His Disciples the Lord’s Prayer said, Forgive us as we forgive others. (Matthew 6:12) Wake up! Let those others be! Accept them just the way they are. And you know something, that’s a form of service. When we do that it puts them before us and people sense that, they notice that. When I say, “You know something, it’s okay for you to not be a really good time manager, even though that rubs me the wrong way, because you know something, I’m not very good pastorally but you are and we need both of us on this team.” When I say that, I’m validating who you are or who the next person is. Get a revelation! You and I have enough weaknesses and failures of our own without letting our next person’s weaknesses and failures ruin our day. Come on! I know people who are smart and clever and intelligent and good at what they do but they spend their whole time whingeing and complaining about other people. They’re touchy, they’re sensitive. When you are touchy and sensitive, you don’t have joy, you don’t have peace. You’re setting yourself up in the centre of the universe and saying, “Because this person doesn’t fit with my view of who they should be, I’m going to get offended.” Well, just as well Jesus didn’t do that on the cross with you and me. If I sound like maybe I’m getting into your face today, maybe that’s because it’s time to do that. Living the life that God always intended is about living our lives with other people and for other people just the way Jesus lived His life for you and for me. And as we lay down our lives for them, our rights for them, our self-righteousness for them, God changes us, God sets us free. Doing this stuff costs us. It costs us our lives but the prize is life itself. Bottom line … if we want to live the life God always intended we need to accept people just the way they are – willingly, kindly, gently, patiently, day after day, week after week. When we let people be, God sets us free.
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Nothing Worse Than Lousy Service // Living the Life of Service, Part 1
10/19/2026
Nothing Worse Than Lousy Service // Living the Life of Service, Part 1
There’s nothing worse than going to a coffee shop for a good cuppa and getting bad service. And it turns out that we’re all in the service business one way or another. How we serve others, makes a difference. There’s nothing worse than going somewhere, a shop or a cafe or a restaurant, even a ride in a taxi and you get bad service. There’s this little cafe close to home where my wife, Jacqui and I, love going. We know the owner and we just get good coffee there. But there’s one woman that works there that’s so surly. She never smiles. She never says, “Hello.” She never recognises us. We have the same coffee every time and each time she asks us, “What will you have?” instead of saying, “Just the usual?” Now everyone’s entitled to a bad day every now and then, and sometimes people are going through rough patches in their lives. But in this case, I’ve just come to the conclusion that this poor woman is in the wrong job. And you know, whatever we do and however we do it, we’re all somehow in the service business – at work, at home. The thing that makes society and the economy go round, is the fact that we all do things for other people. What a shame to spend your life serving other people, while all the time they’re looking at us thinking, “Boy isn’t that one in the wrong job!” Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at what it means to live the life that God always intended. We’re born, we eat, we sleep, we go to work and then we die and that’s life. It’s like that for all of us. And sure, there’s routine and there’s drudgery, like that woman in the coffee shop. I mean, I don’t think she wakes up every morning thinking, “Wow, it’s back to the coffee shop again! I just can’t wait until Berni and Jacqui come down so I can get their skim flat whites and their one muffin that they cut in half to share.” I think it’s really sad. Life is for living and living has so much to do with serving other people. Just think about the economy again. We all make money by doing specialised things that other people can’t do. We do it for them, so we get paid and that’s how we make money. And other people do things for us that we can’t do, so they get paid and that’s how they make money. It turns out, how much we enjoy serving others, has a lot to do with what we get out of life, whether it’s a paid job or a stay at home parent bringing up kids or whatever. There’s this important principle that says, “It’s not so much of what I pour into my life that gives me satisfaction, but it’s what I pour out of my life, what I give, what I sacrifice.” Now, a lot of people aren’t good at giving or serving. And in a sense, you know, just quietly between you and me, we can all be a bit selfish sometimes, can’t we? But when we serve other people, it makes such an incredible difference, not just in their lives, which is wonderful, enough but in our lives. I want to tell you about a startling piece of service that I received recently; in fact, it started a few months ago. For the last quarter of a century I’ve been using the same, pre-electric shave lotion. Now Berni’s not much into lotions and potions, I have to tell you, but this lotion just makes the horrible job of shaving every morning a bit more pleasant. And I went to a few of the big department stores that normally stock this thing and they were completely out. Now you know department stores these days, they have hardly any staff on, particularly during the week and it’s pretty hard sometimes to get any service, let alone good service. But this woman, Margaret, she said, “Well there’s none there and we normally have some. Mr Dymet I’ll investigate it for you and give me your phone number and I’ll call you back.” “Yeah, right.” Who’s been called back by someone who works in a department store lately? Doesn’t happen very often does it? It turned out there was some new packaging and so this stuff wasn’t available for a few months but the miracle is, within two days she actually called me back to tell me. Well that was the last I heard and she said it will be available in a few months time and that was it. But just the other day, four months later, my phone rings, “Mr Dymet it’s Margaret here, from the department store. Those things you were after, they’ve just come in. Now we haven’t got many and they’re half the price they used to be, so would you like me to set a couple of bottles aside for you? That should keep you going for a couple of years.” Can you believe that? I was completely gob-smacked! It is so rare these days to get that sort of service out of anyone. I keep telling people about it. And it’s like that right across life – at work, at school, at home – people are rushing around, they’re just in it for themselves. People don’t much want to serve one another anymore. So when we serve them, really serve them, exceed their expectations, go the extra mile, it stands out from the crowd. It speaks volumes about what we think of them. It touches them and they tell other people, just like I just told you about Margaret. Margaret’s story has now gone around eighty countries across the world because she went the extra mile. My kind of service is not working in a shop or a café. I spent seventeen years as a consultant in the Information Technology industry and some days were really hard. But the satisfaction came from helping clients through really difficult projects, getting to the end knowing that I’d played a small part and I’d brought the things I know I could bring and work with other people with unique skills and help to guide the project to successful conclusion. Come on! Jesus said: I’m the Son of God and I came not to be served but to serve. (Matthew 20:28) Jesus always turns our selfishness upside down; it’s why a lot of people got upset with Him when He was wandering around Galilee and Judea. Jesus has this way putting His finger on something and going right to the nub of it. He is the Son of God, He had every right to come to be served and not to serve and He said, “No, no actually I didn’t come to be served, I came to serve you, to give my life as a ransom for many.” We know He did, what an amazing concept!! But what about us giving our lives, to serve other people? It’s going to cost something. It means that I’m not the centre of the universe anymore; it means that some days it won’t be convenient; it means that some days it will hurt; it means that some days people may not appreciate or even notice that we’re serving them. But Jesus is saying: Be like me. I gave my life up for you. I gave up my rights for you. I gave up all the glory that I’m entitled, for you to let some men beat me and spit on me, nail me on the cross so that you could have eternal life. That’s God. That’s Jesus. And when we live that life of service, we end up bringing Jesus to people. We end up touching them with His love. And the crazy thing is, we try and cling onto our lives, our comforts and our rights and life’s hollow, it’s empty. Those who try and save their lives will lose them but when we pour ourselves out for others – lose our rights and comforts and entitlements – and all of a sudden life becomes richer and more meaningful and real. Those who lose their lives for Jesus’ sake will gain them (Luke 17:33). The rest of this week on the program, we’ll look at some really practical ways that we can serve others, that not only blesses them in the most amazing way, but in doing, that blesses us. In taking the risk and stepping out saying, “Jesus, I’m prepared to lay down my life for You. I’m prepared not to have the last say in an argument. I’m prepared not to win. I’m prepared to lose for You. I’m prepared to be no-one for You. I’m prepared to lose my reputation for You” – take that sort of a step, that sort of life and all of a sudden we’re living the life that God always intended.
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Despite God's People // Rekindling the Flame, Part 10
10/16/2026
Despite God's People // Rekindling the Flame, Part 10
No man is an island … actually, it’s true of women too. But sometimes, it seems like the rest of the world is pretty much ready to desert us. And when we feel all alone, we wonder if we still have anything useful that we can do. So … do we give up, or do we keep going? You know there are parts of the Bible that I’m prone to skimming over. For instance the genealogies. They’re so long and boring and dry, particularly the one that goes on for pages and pages at the beginning of 1 Chronicles in the Old Testament. Who has time to read that? But one man did, a guy by the name of Bruce Wilkinson and he stumbles across the prayer of Jabez, one of the most powerful prayers in the Bible and of course he wrote the book, “The Prayer of Jabez”. And that’s how often it is with those bits we’d rather just skim over. The introductions to Paul’s letters or epistles in the New Testament, we always want to skim over those. But there is such a richness and power in those, we do so at our own peril. And finally the bits that I used to be prone to skimming over were some of the personal notes at the end of Paul’s letters. He’d write all the rich, meaty theological stuff that you and I can apply to our lives and then almost like a p.s. at the end of a letter he kind of writes to say, “Say gidday to Fred and tell Betty to come and visit me soon and give my regards to all my friends in wherever it is.” You know, all that stuff. But just the other day as we were exploring what it means to rekindle the amazing gift that God has placed within each one of us, we read this in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16: That all Scripture is useful for teaching, reproof, correction and training so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work. So as we draw to the end of Paul’s letter and we get to that personal bit I’m going to resist the temptation to skip over that bit because as is always the case there are some gems hidden in there that the Holy Spirit wants us to take and write on our hearts. Paul sets out his purpose of his letter to his young protégé Timothy way back in chapter 1. Timothy’s going through some terribly tough times so Paul reminds him of all that trouble that God’s gone to, to get him to this point in his life. And he writes, 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 6: For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. And verse 14: Guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. This letter is about rekindling the gift that God has put into each one of us and using it for the glory of God. Why? Not only because doing that is so incredibly satisfying and fulfilling, which it is, but because the time is short and people are going to a Christ-less eternity as we saw yesterday on the program. And I pray that you, like me, have been powerfully encouraged and motivated to rekindle the gift that God has placed within you over these past weeks as we’ve let God’s Word transform us. So, here we are drawing to the end of the letter, and we get to this personal bit. What does the Holy Spirit have to say to us through this if indeed every Scripture is inspired by God and is useful in our lives? Well let’s have a bit of a read about what Paul has to say on the personal front, 2 Timothy chapter 4 beginning at verse 9. He says to Timothy: Do your best to come to me soon for Demas in love with this present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica, Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia, only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you for he is useful in my ministry. I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. When you come bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm, the Lord will pay him back for his deeds. You also must be aware of him for he is strongly opposed to the message. At my first defence no one came to support me but all deserted me, may it not be counted against them. But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lions mouth, the Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom, to him be the glory for ever and ever, amen. That’s quite a devastating story, isn’t it? All these people who’ve done Paul harm and deserted him and left him, remember at this point after many years of ministry in Jesus name across the known world it’s pretty much the end of his career. Paul is now on death row in a Roman dungeon. He’s escaped execution and all that stuff and the lions a few times. He’s been through court hearing after court hearing, he’s served the Lord so faithfully and through so many trials and tribulations and now this, everyone’s deserted him. God’s people, the very ones who should have stood by his side, the very people who should have been there for him have either deserted him on mass or as in the case of Alexander the coppersmith, have done him great harm. Can I tell you something? There is nothing, absolutely nothing that is more damaging than when the people who are close to you, the people you should have been able to trust, the people who should be caring for you and standing with you in your distress, God’s people after all, desert you and betray you. Our immediate response to that is, “This shouldn’t be happening!” And when it does it ranks right up there as our number one excuse for not exercising the amazing gift that God has given us for His glory. It’s our top excuse as we conclude that well if all those other Christians in my Church can’t get their act together, why should I? Have you ever had that thought running through your head, as though because others lose the plot it must therefore be fine and dandy in God’s eyes for us to lose the plot as well? For us to put our gifts and abilities on ice and let countless people head off to a Christ-less eternity. Let me ask you, is that what Paul did? No! He relied on the Lord and even when he’s locked up, chained to a Roman guard, this is what he does, he uses the opportunity to tell the Romans about Jesus. We read about it in Philippians chapter 1 beginning at verse 12. He writes to the Philippians: I want you to know beloved that what has happened to me has actually helped us spread the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ and most of these brothers and sisters having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear. Don’t you love that? Would the time appear favourable there, chained up in a prison? Probably not and yet Paul used his gifts and his abilities to turn that around for good and bring Jesus to his jailers for goodness sake. I want to encourage you today not to let anything, any disappointment, any adversity, any betrayal stop you from taking your gift, your unique ability back out of the locker and putting it to work right where you are for the glory of God. Don’t wait for a better time, don’t wait for the storm to clear, don’t wait for God to put you in a much better place. Start using your unique gifting right now to be as Christ to a world that desperately needs a saviour whether they realise it or not. Because in all likelihood there’s someone close to you, someone that God has deliberately put in your proximity space who needs to hear about this amazing Jesus through your unique ability to tell them, through your gift of service or your gift of encouragement or whatever it is that is your gift, your shtick in life. And one day you’ll meet them on the other side of eternity and you’ll have all eternity to rejoice in Christ with them. That’s the plan and it’s a fantastic plan. It’s a plan where God wants to use us just where we are, just the way He’s made us, in exactly the circumstances we find ourselves in, in order to tell people about the saving love of Jesus. Remember Jesus didn’t turn back from the Cross because the time wasn’t good; Jesus went to the Cross because He knew that’s the one thing we needed of Him. Friend, use your gift, tell people about that Jesus.
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Keep Shining // Rekindling the Flame, Part 9
10/15/2026
Keep Shining // Rekindling the Flame, Part 9
For anyone who believes in this Jesus, one of the things that God wants us to do is to keep on shining His light into this world. Sometimes we look at our circumstances – the conditions around us and things seem far from favourable. So do we stop, or do we keep shining the light of Christ into this world? Over these last few weeks we’ve been chatting about rekindling the gift that God’s put within us. And you know the exciting thing about that? When we use our gifts, I mean when we take the things that we’ve been given in our make up and put them to work, it is just so incredibly satisfying. I know myself, one of the things I really enjoy doing is playing the piano. In my young years I practised hard, all the scales and arpeggios, sat the exams practical and theory. But when I moved away from my parent’s home I went years, maybe twenty years without playing the piano much at all. Eventually my mother gave me the grand piano we had out in the music room and when it arrived at my home I started playing again. These days it sits in my study where I pray, where I write my books, where I prepare these radio messages and a few times each day I’ll go and play for ten minutes or so and it is such a delight and a joy to do that. I mean, that’s just one small, almost trivial example. But as we’ve been chatting over these last few weeks I know I’ve been emphasising the fact that our God-given gift is meant to be a blessing to other people. I’m blessed through your gift, the things that you can do that I can’t do and hopefully you’re blessed through mine. That’s how it’s supposed to work and it does. But there’s something so incredibly special about the enjoyment, the fulfilment that we get when we use our gift and we see the impact in other people’s lives. All my life I was looking for fulfilment in things I could get and I didn’t realise that fulfilment comes when we take the things we have and give them away to bless other people. About eighteen months ago a young teenager from a broken home contacted me in response to one of these radio messages that she heard on her local station. She’s only thirteen at the time and going through a really terrible time at home but she also had a hunger for God. And so she asked me some questions and I was able to share a few things with her and within weeks she gave her life to Jesus and she was filled with His Holy Spirit and she had a joy and an excitement in her that she had never experienced. Well I was praying for her the other day so I sent her a quick email to find out how she was going. She came straight back to tell me that she was powering on with God, that her whole life had been changed. Now look, I just had a small part to play in what God was doing but the joy and the sense of satisfaction that I gained from knowing that God had used me, me of all people, this fifty-two year old man who’s never met this young teenager, who isn’t what you’d call made to be involved in youth ministry, it still makes me smile. Does that make sense? It’s so easy to forget that we have to use it and when we do even though it can be really hard work, using our God-given gift is so fulfilling. And to emphasis this the Apostle Paul is writing to his young protégé Timothy encouraging him to rekindle the gift that Gods put within him has this to say. 2 Timothy chapter 2 beginning at verse 4: In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and in view of his appearing and his kingdom I solemnly urge you proclaim the message. Be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable, convince, rebuke, encourage with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine but have itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of a evangelist, carry out your ministry to the full. As for me I am already being poured out as a libation and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith, from now on there is a reserve for me, the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will give to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing. And right here Paul is giving Timothy and us focus on the big picture. One day soon Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead. Time is short and because of that I solemnly urge you to keep telling people about Jesus irrespective of whether the time appears to be favourable or not. Be persistent, keep telling people, convince, rebuke, encourage with the utmost patience, whatever it takes. Now Timothy’s gift, the one that he was being called to rekindle was the gift of teaching and preaching. Praise God, not everyone in his family is a preacher and a teacher but do you see how this applies equally to each one of us irrespective of what our particular gifting happens to be. If you’re an encourager it applies equally to you, if you’re a giver it applies to you too, if you’re a compassionate pastoral person it applies equally to you. There is great joy and satisfaction in exercising our gifts, sure there is but what we want to do is we want to pull back and take a breather when the time appears to be unfavourable. “No!”, says Paul, the time is short. I mean Paul was at the end of his life here, the sense of satisfaction he has running the race and fighting the good fight, Paul was at the end, Timothy was still in the main thrust of it and he was saying to Timothy, “People are dying, people are going to a Christ-less eternity.” Jesus is planning on coming back some time soon to judge the living and the dead. God has put each one of us where He’s put us with whatever gift that He’s given to us in order to make a difference in this world. In order to bring people to know Jesus, in order to see them growing, to see them realise their giftings and start using those. And we need to be doing that because the time is coming when people won’t put up with sound teaching, they’ll have itching ears, they’ll accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, they’ll turn away from listening to the truth and wandering away to some myth. Isn’t that the truth? It’s something that we see all the time, people chasing after this and chasing after that. People trying to pull alongside so called guru’s who tell them what they want to hear. Jesus never told people what they wanted to hear. Now He was very sensitive to where someone was at and where they were coming from but He didn’t dress it up, He didn’t put any spin on His message because truth is truth. There is a heaven, there is a hell and many, many are heading the wrong way however enticing that way may seem to appear to them right now. Have you ever watched the news and heard some so- called Christian leader tickling people’s ears with the sort of stuff they want to hear? Just the other evening I saw a Christian denominational leader standing side by side with a Buddhist monk and a Jewish leader and leaders of other religions proclaiming that there was more that binds them together than pulls them apart. That’s not what Jesus said, that’s not the truth. The thing that puts Christianity out on it’s own is that it is based on the truth that Jesus is the only way, that no one will come to the Father except through Him and this is the reason that we need to continue living out our giftings, each one of us, for the glory of God. I know that there are those listening who’ve turned back; I know that there are those listening who’ve lost sight of their gifting, their one particular God given gift all together. And today I believe that God is speaking especially to you through His Word. I believe that today God is calling you back to the plans and the purposes that He has for you. And before you tell me that it’s all too hard, that there’s too much weighing against you let me say this. Inevitably when we’ve seen amazing breakthroughs in the lives of people here at Christianityworks – young Ami who recently was pulled back from the brink of suicide – the time for proclaiming Christ was not favourable at all, we just went and did it and you know what we discovered, we discovered that Gods grace was more than sufficient for us.
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The Foundation of God's Word // Rekindling the Flame, Part 8
10/14/2026
The Foundation of God's Word // Rekindling the Flame, Part 8
You know what I’ve noticed? It’s awfully easy to lose our way in life. We each have this God–given gift or ability and we head off into life with our dream for using it. And then the cares of the world take over and we’re off on the wrong track. How do we stay focussed? How do we get our lives back on track? One of the people with whom I have been greatly blessed in my life is my good friend and mentor Graham. Graham would be twenty odd years older than me I guess. We first met when he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army and I was a brash young Captain. We hit it off and within a few years he and I and a couple of other ex military sorts were involved as partners in a Management and IT Consulting firm. So for almost two decades I worked with Graham and benefited so much from his wisdom and his insight. To this day he is seriously one of the wisest men that I have ever met and if you’re a regular listener to this program much of the wisdom that I’m able to share with you came to me through my friendship with Graham. Sadly mentorship is something of a lost art these days, at least in the western world and here I am now in my fifties and as I reflect on life I realise that none of us can do it all on our own. We need to be surrounded by wisdom from somewhere else. When the going gets tough and when we’re tempted to race off in this direction or that direction, having some wise trusted counsellors close by, well you just can’t put a price on that, you just can’t. And as we continue our look today at rekindling the gift that God has placed within each one of us I’d really like to chat about that with you some more. Because when the going gets tough and when we’re tempted to pull off the path that God prepared for us, to use our God-given gifts for His glory, then right there in that place we need some good advice. If you were with me yesterday on the program you will recall that we again looked at this whole thing of rekindling the gift that lies within, rekindling the flame, rekindling our dreams through the Apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy his young protégé. And the thing that Paul talks a lot about was the adversity that Tim was facing. Let’s have another listen, 2 Timothy chapter 3 beginning at verse 1: You must understand this that in the last days distressing times are going to come because people are going to be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of Godliness but denying it’s power. Avoid them for among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all their desires, who are always being instructed but can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. What a list. I mean there’s pretty ugly stuff I think you’d agree. We don’t expect to find those people in our Churches or our families or our work colleagues or amongst our friends but they are definitely there. People who want to stand in our way, people who want to tell us we’re not really that gifted, people who’ll do absolutely anything to stop us from living out our God given gifting as a leader or a teacher or an encourager or however it is that God has made each one of us. And it’s because of this brutal reality that Paul says to Timothy, ‘Look, for this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift, the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.’ Because God doesn’t want us to stop using the gift that He’s given us. Well, all good in theory but when we’re in the heat of the battle, when the emotion and the exhaustion and the misinformation, when the fog of war envelops us how do we stay on track? What do we need to do to maintain the course that the Lord our God has set for us? Well that’s the question that Paul now goes on to answer for Timothy. 2 Timothy chapter 3 beginning at verse 10: You’ve observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and suffering, the things that happen to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, what persecutions I endured yet the Lord rescued me from them all. Indeed all who want to live a Godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted but wicked people and imposters will go from bad to worse deceiving others and being deceived but as for you continue in what you’ve learned and firmly believe knowing from whom you’ve learnt it and how from childhood you’ve known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All Scripture is inspired by God, it’s useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work. Well, he goes back to what I was saying earlier about having a mentor, and in this case the first thing Paul says to his protégé Timothy is, “Look Tim I know it’s tough but remember me, remember your mentor, remember the things you saw me doing through the trials and the persecutions. Trials and persecutions by the way that you too are going to have to travel through at some time. Tim follow my example.” And as I look around and look back on my journey God has put some people like that in my life. Graham of course who I mentioned earlier, Phil the pastor of the first Church I went to when I became a Christian. What a powerful example that humble man has been in my life. My good friend James and several others and these are people who have acted as, well as signposts in my life. Keeping me on track to use the gifting that Gods entrusted to me. Are any of those people perfect? Of course they’re not and yet God has used them mightily in my life, to tell you the truth I wouldn’t be here with you had He not put them along my path because I’m sure I would have wandered off in completely the wrong direction ’cause that’s what we do isn’t it? And the second thing, the second thing that God calls us to use powerfully to stay on course is His Word, the Word of God: As for you (says Paul to Timothy) continue in what you’ve learned and firmly believe knowing from whom you’ve learned it and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God, it is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work. So many people imagine that they can follow Jesus without reading His Word, the Bible, for themselves and I’m sorry if you’re one of those people who subscribes to that school but it is just plain wrong. God has gone to an enormous amount of trouble to preserve with an unparalleled degree of accuracy the sixty-six Books of the Old and New Testaments so that you and I will what? Use them as a door stop or an ornament on a bookshelf? No. So that you and I will open them up and read them and allow God to transform our lives through His wisdom and His counsel and His truth. We need wisdom from above and it comes to us when we drink it in from God’s Word the Bible and it comes to us as it’s reflected off other godly men and women right into the dark patch that we may be in right at the moment. My friend as I often say, you cannot make it even through kindergarten on a twenty or thirty minute teaching session once a week so why do we Christians imagine that we can make it through life based on one short sermon every Sunday? Because we can’t. The Lord our God is so passionate about seeing us rekindle that gift that He’s placed within each one of us. So passionate. He knows about the adversity, He knows about the temptation for us to turn back and give up. And so He’s given us sign posts – godly men and women – and above all He’s given us His Word to keep us on His path so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
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In the Face of Opposition // Rekindling the Flame, Part 7
10/13/2026
In the Face of Opposition // Rekindling the Flame, Part 7
We each have a God–given gift or ability – something that we’re able to do better than just about anybody else that we know. But it’s a funny thing – when we run into opposition and trials in life – the first thing we want to do sometimes is to stop using that gift. To stop living out who God made us to be. Why is that? Now I don’t know if you’ve picked this up in your life but life ain’t always easy, have you noticed that? We kind of figure to ourselves it should be, at least it should be easier than what it is. And yeah there are some great things that happen in life, they really do but there’s always something there, some adversity that seemingly takes the shine off things. I’ll tell you what that does to us, it discourages us. It starts to tear away at the hopes and the dreams that we’ve had for our lives and as we’ve observed over this past week on the program we each have hopes and dreams and more often than not our dreams are built on the foundation of the gifting that God has woven into our DNA. I have a dear friend, Keith, in fact Keith and I have written a book together, and his particular gifting is to be a teacher. Now he doesn’t stand up in front of a classroom and lecture, that’s not Keith at all. He’s more your life coach, not a self appointed franchise owning life coach like those you find on the internet but a natural gifted life coach. People come to him naturally for advice and encouragement and he helps them understand their own giftings and abilities to get their lives back on track. It’s a God given gift that Keith has and his hopes and his dreams for the rest of his life are built on this foundation of his gifting. It’s a part of who he is. He understands that, he knows the stuff he’s good at and loves, absolutely loves doing the things that he is good at. Back in the 1980’s he suffered a surfing accident, broke his neck and he was almost killed firstly by the surfing accident and secondly when the rescue helicopter crashed. And some days Keith suffers terrible migraine headaches, totally debilitating. I called him the other day and he sounded like death warmed up. He told me later that he really thought he was going to die that day the pain was just so bad. But here’s the thing about Keith, the adversity doesn’t distract him from living out the special gift of teaching and encouragement that God’s given him. The adversity doesn’t rob him of his dreams that he has for blessing other people through this God given gift. Do you remember last week we chatted about this whole gifting thing through the Apostle Paul’s second letter to his young protégé Timothy? And these were the two verses that in particular leapt out, 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 6 which says: For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. And 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 14: Guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. See Timothy was struggling obviously in this adversity of pastoring a growing Church and he was at risk of losing sight of his God given gifts. So the Apostle Paul writes to him exalting him to rekindle that gift and to guard the good treasure entrusted to him. Why? Well because adversity was tearing away at him and today we’re going to have a look at the adversity that he was facing in his life and his ministry. Have a listen to what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 3 beginning at verse 1. He says: You have to understand that in these last days distressing times are going to come because people are going to be lovers of themselves and money and boasters and arrogant and abusive and disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of Godliness but denying it’s power. Timothy avoid them for among them are those who make their way to the households and captivates silly women overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires who are always being instructed but can never arrive at the knowledge of the truth. As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses so these people of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith also oppose the truth. But they will not make much progress because as in the case of those two men their folly will become plain to everyone. I love the way that Paul starts off his advice to Timothy about this adversity. He says, look you must understand this that in these last days distressing times will come. It seems that Timothy, perhaps like you and me, wasn’t expecting adversity. It’s not something we hope for or look forward to and invariably one of adversity’s biggest impacts on us is that sense of surprise. But Paul’s saying, “Look young man this is the reality, this is what’s going to happen, don’t be surprised. People are going to come against you and what a list, listen to it again. They’re going to be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power.” Wow, what a list. Now tell me do you expect to find those people in your Church or in your family or in your circle of friends or in your workplace? Is that what you expect? No. But Paul’s saying, don’t be surprised, they are there and more often than not they are going to be a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing, they’re going to hold to the outward form of godliness, like pretend to believe in God but denying it’s power on the inside. In other words they’re going to pretend that they’re holier than thou but in reality they’re out there to tear you down because on the inside they deny the power of God. And this is the context, this is the reality, this is the opposition which causes Paul to say to Timothy: For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. Do you see? Adversity isn’t our excuse to give up on doing good. Adversity and criticism and opposition don’t give us cause to give up using our God-given gift to love and to bless and to encourage and to comfort those around us. To the contrary, it’s the reality in which we live, it’s the reality in which Timothy was operating, it’s the reality in which Paul was operating, it’s the reality in which you and I operate. And I believe that in this reality, in the harsh, cold light of day with people like this around us, not all of them but some of them, God is calling you and God is calling me to rekindle the flame, to rekindle the gift that He placed within each one of us when He handcrafted every strand of our DNA when we were in our mother’s womb. And that’s what I encourage you to do today. Because I know without a shadow of a doubt that for some the dream of using their God-given gift has grown cold. I know without a shadow of a doubt that there are some who have pulled off the path that God has chosen for them because it’s all just become too hard. Because there’s all these people around them that tear them down, that criticise them, that hurt them. Oh surely God doesn’t want me to use my gift in this place, surely. Imagine for a moment, just imagine where you and I would be today if Jesus had turned back from the cross because it was all too hard. Adversity is the very place where we are called to grow and exercise our gift because here’s the thing, the gift we have from God, that one special ability that we have to make a difference in other people’s lives invariably turns out expressing the love of God to those people who benefit from our gift. Whether, as in Keith’s case as he coaches people back onto the path that God has for their life, or as in my case as I use my gift of story telling to share the good news of Jesus with you and others, or as in your case as you use that special gift that God has given you to bless others. Adversity is not our excuse for giving up on our God given gift, it’s the trigger to use it more to bless others because where there is opposition and adversity there, right there in that place more love and more grace is actually required.
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Rediscovering the Gift // Rekindling the Flame, Part 6
10/12/2026
Rediscovering the Gift // Rekindling the Flame, Part 6
Each one of us has something that we’re good at; something we enjoy doing; some God–given gift or ability that we just excel at. But all too often, it’s been buried under years of neglect. And so many, many people live their lives, without ever living out their dreams. But what if God never meant for that to happen? Over the past week we’ve been chatting about rekindling the flame, the passion in our hearts for being about the business of God. The business that God’s left us here on earth for, His business, God’s business. Many, many Christians love Jesus and they want to follow Him but they’ve lost their way. Not so much because they don’t love the Lord but because the way they spend their lives and their resources and their time isn’t what God had intended. What we believe and what we do are meant to be linked. That’s why faith without works is dead. What does that mean? It means that if we believe in something with all our hearts and yet we fail to live it out eventually what we believe will start to die and that’s what’s happening for many people who’ve set out on this journey of loving Jesus and following Him. Their faith has begun to die because they’ve lost focus on what they are meant to be doing. Interesting how that strikes home, interesting how we sometimes focus on our faith and we forget about living it out and then wonder why our faith is dying. Why we feel like a rudderless ship on the ocean being tossed this way and that way. Now, can I say that’s something that many people go through and so those who don’t believe in Jesus look at us and what they end up seeing is a hypocrite, what they see is someone who’s living out a disconnect between what they profess to be true and how they live. So this week we’re continuing on our journey of rekindling this flame. And if you were able to join me last week on the program you’ll recall that what we’ve been doing is opening up the second letter that the wise old Apostle Paul wrote back in the 1st century to his young protégé Timothy. It seems that young Tim was having the same problem. Timothy was pastoring a Church and as anyone who’s ever tried to do that will tell you, that quite simply is not an easy job. It would be much easier without the people of course but I guess that wouldn’t be the point. And there are two verses in particular that really leapt out for me in what Paul was saying to Timothy. The first was 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 6 where Paul says For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. And then down to verse 14: Guard the good treasure that has been entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. It comes back to this concept, that each one of us has been given a special gift or ability by God that’s been handcrafted into our DNA by God Himself and He’s done that with a purpose. In Timothy’s case that gift was preaching and teaching so I relate really well to what Paul’s saying to Timothy in this letter and clearly Timothy was finding the going tough as we’ll see over the course of this week. He was facing quite a bit of stiff opposition from all sorts of different people and when things are tough it’s so easy to lose focus isn’t it? It’s so easy to forget that God’s given us this special gift that God means for us to exercise and to use this gift that Gods plans and purposes for this world and for the people around us and indeed for you and me are intricately linked to the exercising of that special gift or ability that God has given us. Is that really true you might ask? Do I really have a gift and is it really important in the scheme of things for me to use them? My answer to that is absolutely you do and absolutely it is. Today we’re going to journey off somewhere else to another of Paul’s letters, indeed his letters to the Roman Church and I want to share with you a passage that you may find familiar because while I was reading it the other day something leapt off the page for me and into my heart, something that I’d never seen before despite the fact that I’ve written a whole book that revolves around this passage. Have a listen to it, it’s Romans chapter 12 beginning at verse 4: For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function. So we who are many are one in the body of Christ and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. Prophecy in proportion to faith, ministry in ministering, the teacher in teaching, the exalter in exaltation, the giver in generosity, the leader in diligence, the compassionate in cheerfulness. Let love be genuine and hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with mutual affection, out do one another in showing honour, do not lag in zeal but be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Now what this is all about here is explaining how we as men, women and children who love Jesus should live together in fellowship and a community of faith. That’s how God changes us, that’s how God transforms us, in a community. Here He uses the analogy of the body of Christ but how does that community function? Well, quite simply Paul’s saying, “Guys, we’re all different. One of you has been put here by God to speak His will into the community of faith, that’s what prophecy is all about. Another’s been put here to minister, to serve. Another to teach. Another to exalt or encourage. Another to give. Another to lead. Another to show compassion.” You look at this list of seven gifts and it’s pretty comprehensive, it’s the way things are meant to be but that’s not so much the angle I want to come at this particular passage today. As I said I’ve written a whole book about this to help people locate their particular motivational gifting or as we might say today, their personality type. It’s called incidentally, that book, “My Personality GPS” and GPS being a locating device. But will you please notice with me what Paul says that each of the people with these different gifts should do and we all have at least one of them in our make up. The prophet should do what? Prophecy according to his or her faith. The minister or server should do what? Minister. The teacher should? Teach. The leader should? Lead diligently. The giver should? Give generously. The one with compassion should show? Compassion with cheerfulness. In other words God is saying here through Paul, “Would you please live out the gift that I’ve given you?” Do what God made you to do, do you see that? It’s right there in the text. God is commanding us to be, to live out who He made us to be. Why is it that so many people are unhappy? Well it’s this, it’s because they’re trying to be someone else, they’re trying to do things that they were never meant to do. And it’s by living out this one particular gift that we’ve been given that we end up showing genuine love and notice with me how Paul finishes off this particular passage. Do not lag in zeal but be ardent in spirit and serve the Lord. Be zealous, be ardent in using your particular gift to serve God. Why are so many of us finding it hard to live out our faith? Why have so many of us lost our passion? Why has the flame gone out in so many a Christ followers’ heart? Because we’ve stopped living out the gift that God gave us. It’s something we all struggle with; Timothy was struggling with it which is why Paul writes to him to remind him to rekindle the gift of God that is within him through the laying on of Paul’s hands. And friend today I believe God is reminding me and God is reminding you, I don’t know what your circumstances are but I will bet a penny to a pound that there are so many things in your circumstances that are screaming at you that it’s not the right time to use your gift, that you’ve lost it, that you should do something else, that the comfortable job you’re in is what you should be doing. Friend it is time to get back on focus, it is time to get back on purpose because Gods plan is to bring a lost and hurting world back to Him and that plan involves you using your special particular gift to be part of that. It includes your gifts and your abilities. Gods plan is to work through the person that He has made you to be, to share His mighty love with the people in your life. That my friend is the plan.
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Set Apart for a Special Purpose // Rekindling the Flame, Part 5
10/09/2026
Set Apart for a Special Purpose // Rekindling the Flame, Part 5
We each have a special gift or ability that God’s given us – unique to us. And so often we have a dream for using it … but somehow it doesn’t ever quite happen. Somehow this special gift or ability, just ends up being ever so ordinary … without much of an impact in this world. Ever wondered why that is? You know, on the one hand the world’s always shouting at us that we’re special, that we deserve the best, that we should pamper ourselves and aspire to achieving this or that. By and large it’s the advertising industry hype reaching into our desire for significance. You realise though that what they’re really doing is playing on our insecurities in order to get us to part with our hard earned cash because quite obviously whatever it is that they’re selling will help us to feel secure. Of course it never works that way, it never does that. So they try and sell us the next thing and the next thing, that’s how the whole cycle works. The result of this inexorable cycle is that most of us don’t think we’re anything special at all. Most of us have so much of the world’s dirt sprayed all over us that any specialness we might have had ends up being obscured, hidden as it were under layers of muck. And yet in each one of us there is something special, very special, not because you or I happen to be super clever or anything like that. Paul tells us that he knows that in his flesh in his human nature he’s rotten to the core and that there’s nothing good to be found there. We’re special because you and I are made in the image of God and He’s given each one of us a special gift or ability to use for His glory, if only we could find it amidst all the muck. So today we’re going to have a look at what God has to say about all that. If you’ve been with me this last week you’ll know that the thing we’re exploring on the program is the special gifting that God has given to each one of us because He has a purpose for our lives and you won’t be surprised if I tell you that who He made each one of us to be is a perfect match, an absolutely perfect match for what He’s planning for us to do. Someone who’s call in life is to work with kids is going to have a special mix of compassion and a teacher and an encourager in their make up. And because that’s how they’ve been wired they’re going to absolutely love working with children every day. Whereas that would send me absolutely bonkers. And someone who does what I’m doing is going to love telling stories and have a way of putting words together and holding people’s attention so that they can do what they do and I’m sure that would drive the person who loves working with children absolutely bonkers too. Now this is not just me saying this, it’s in God’s Word. God has brought us into His Kingdom through Jesus Christ not just to bless us but to let our gifts and our abilities be a blessing to other people. Have a listen, Ephesians chapter 2 beginning at verse 1: You were dead through the trespasses of sins in which you once lived following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh following the desires of the flesh and the senses and we were by nature children of wrath like everyone else. But God who is rich in mercy out of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through trespasses made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing, it is a gift from God, not the result of works so that no one may boast for we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. So God has done this amazing act of grace by saving us from death that’s certainly coming from our sin, it’s a glorious act of mercy and anyone who’s received that mercy, man we should be dancing in the streets. It wasn’t through our works but as a free gift from God so that none of us may boast. In fact what He did was to create us in Christ Jesus and we are what He made us to be and He created us with a purpose for good works, the works that He has already prepared beforehand for us to do. So who we are, and what He’s made us to do, fit like a hand in a glove. But then having been saved, as we saw yesterday, we seem to want to fall straight back into our own ways. It’s like we’ve been let out of the mud, washed, clean and then we want to race straight back and roll around in the mud again. We’re pretty good at that actually. And as Paul sets out to teach Timothy, when we do that, well we’re hampering God’s plan for our lives. Have a listen to this sobering instruction from the old Apostle Paul to his young protégé Timothy, it comes in the second letter of Paul to Timothy, chapter 2 beginning at verse 20. He says: In a large house there are utensils not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay. Some for special use, some for ordinary. All who cleanse themselves with the things I have mentioned will become special utensils, dedicated and useful to the owner of the house, ready for every good work. Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies, you know that they breed quarrels and the Lords servants must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone. An apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth and that they may escape from the snare of the devil having been held captive by him to do his will. You know the picture Paul paints here for me, it’s the picture of being a special vessel. Clean and pure in Gods hands. Made of gold or of silver. Being used to pour Gods Spirit and Gods love and Gods mercy and Gods grace into the lives of other people. I can’t go past that, to be a utensil like that in the hands of God is just the most awesome thing but some, some are clean so they’re special utensils, others are not and they’re just there for ordinary every day use. And then again Paul goes on to list what appears to be an excerpt from the B list of sins, youthful passions, stupid and senseless controversies. It’s not murder or adultery or theft but smaller ones but sin is sin and all sin acts like a snare from the devil and so renders us unfit for use as a special vessel. God’s looking for men and women who are mature in Christ. Those who pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace from a pure heart. Those who are kind, correcting people with gentleness. That’s the sort of person Gods looking for, to be a special utensil in His mighty powerful hands because if we’re dirty on the inside, well He can’t use a dirty vessel to pour His love and mercy and power and grace and joy and peace out on someone else, can He? It’s obvious. So here’s the sobering thing that God wants to say to you and to me today, we may all well have a dream, we may be aware of the gift that God has placed in us, we may have a great hold on the purpose that He has for our lives but persistent sin is going to hamper that plan. It’s going to hold us back from being the special vessels set apart for a very special purpose that God has for us. And friend only God Himself can get us clean, through our faith in Jesus as He forgives us and as He wipes us clean and through the Holy Spirit whom He would place in each believer to grow us and to mature us and to cleanse us and to get us fit for the special purpose that God has for each one of our lives. This is why some people have an apparent gift that makes little or no impact in the world because they’re not yet cleansed. Some people today are missing out on living their dream because they haven’t cleansed themselves through faith in Jesus and through cold, hard, brutal repentance, turning away from their sin towards God and that my friend, that is really sad.
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A Firm Foundation // Rekindling the Flame, Part 4
10/08/2026
A Firm Foundation // Rekindling the Flame, Part 4
It never ceases to amaze me how we manage to rework God’s Word to suit ourselves – to make it say what we want it to say. People argue about all sorts of things that if we were honest are plainly obvious. There is one way, one truth – plain and simple and it’s like a firm foundation beneath our feet. This week on the program we’re talking about staying focused on the God-given purpose that we have in life. But not in some legalistic sense, not this idea that God has a plan and therefore I have to conform to His plan whether I like it or not. Actually God gives us a choice to walk away from His plan and many people do. I did for much of my earlier years but there’s this thing that I keep coming back to again and again, that God’s made you in a certain way and me in a whole different way and He’s given us each the days that He’s set aside for us. And you and I are going to have different gifts and different dreams and different purposes and different days. And real fulfilment and real joy and real life only happen when we’re living out who God made us to be and when we’re living out what He made us to do. That’s what I love about God. It’s not that He’s full of a whole bunch of do’s and don’ts, it’s not that He puts us in a straight jacket, it’s that He has this awesome plan to make us this complex, intricate, wonderful, beautiful creature created in His own image and yet absolutely unique and then to plan a life for us that fits hand in glove with who He’s made us to be. And yet you and I, we manage to find all kinds of ways to wander away from that plan and then to miss out on the joy and the fulfilment that lies in Gods plans and Gods purposes for our lives. You and I, we find all sorts of ways to pierce ourselves with the many pains of living life our own way. Sometimes we fall by the wayside and no doubt there are some today who relate to that but God’s call is for us to rekindle the gift that He has placed in us and that’s what we’re all about on the program today. And we’re doing that through Paul’s second letter to Timothy, his protégé, in the New Testament. A beautiful letter all about rekindling the gift and guarding the treasure that God has placed within us. Now one of the ways that the gift grows cold and the treasure wastes away is that we allow little foxes into our lives and those little foxes are the ones that spoil the vine. Most of us have this idea that there are big sins and there are small sins. Sexual immorality, adultery, murder, theft, they’re up there on our hierarchy as amongst the biggies but a bit of anger or some arguing or maybe this idea or that idea we get into our heads that doesn’t quite fit in with God’s Word, well hey, we all have that, they’re just little sins and as long as we keep away from the big ones who cares about those little ones? We may never have quite put it in those words but that’s how most of us think, that’s how most of us operate. Now let me say this, the Bible knows nothing of this human hierarchy of sin. To God sin is sin; it’s about missing the mark. You can miss by a little way, you can miss by a long way. Missing is missing right? And so as the Apostle Paul counsels Timothy about rekindling his gift and staying focused on the purposes that God has set before him he actually takes some time to deal with sins, many of which appear to be more than the little ones. Let’s have a listen, 2 Timothy chapter 2 beginning at verse 14: Remind them of this and warn them before God that they are to avoid the wrangling over words which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed rightly explaining the word of truth. Avoid profane chatter for it will lead people into more and more impiety and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus who have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place. They are upsetting the faith of some but Gods firm foundation stands bearing this inscription, ‘the Lord knows who are his’ and ‘let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness. So here Paul is telling Timothy how to shepherd his flock and the big thing that he’s on about is to warn them to stop wrangling over words, to avoid profane chatter. What’s the big deal here? Can’t people have an opinion? Can’t there be healthy debate? Smack bang here in Paul’s exhortation for Timothy to stay focused, to rekindle the gift that God has placed in him, to guard the treasure that Gods entrusted to him. Why would Paul seemingly go off in this strange tangent telling Timothy to tell his flock to be careful about what they say and who they listen to? Because it’s the little foxes that spoil the vine. Or to use Paul’s analogy here, this loose talk will spread like gangrene. Yuck …! Okay, what loose talk? It’s talk about the most important thing of all – truth. What’s true and what’s not. It seems that there were some people with some rather long and difficult to pronounce names wandering around spreading the lie that the resurrection of believers had already taken place which seems kind of silly since by definition the people spreading the rumours had missed out. So what’s Paul’s point here to Timothy and why 2,000 years on are we talking about this when the main topic of our conversation over these weeks is staying focused on the plan that God has for our lives? Well, the answer is really simple. I have seen so many people led astray by others who throw red herrings into the conversation about the truth and then people go chasing after that and before you know it, instead of being focused on what Gods calling them to do they’re off on a tangent miles away from where God wants them and needs them to be. I know one man who spends his life being ultra critical of Church structures. In his view there shouldn’t be any leaders, we’re all equals and there shouldn’t be a preacher, we should just sit around and chat together about the Word of God. So when, over coffee, I’ve asked him to tell me where in God’s Word he comes up with that, he kind of fluffs around and gets back to his theme and hardly ever comes to Church or participates in any sense of community. It’s really sad because he’s a very clever guy and in many respects a delightful human being with much to offer. What he should be doing is offering his gift, his ability, his unique contribution to the body of Christ instead he’s off on some theory that ain’t in the Bible and he’s missing out. Friends we can pick holes in just about anything and Church – Church being full of a bunch of sinners on a journey – is about the easiest thing of all to poke holes in, let me tell you. But what happens is its like gangrene, it ends up robbing us of life. The good news of Jesus is pure and simple. God so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. That’s the firm foundation here, the firm foundation is that God knows which of us belongs to Him and which of us doesn’t. And when we belong to God because our faith is in Jesus Christ, we’re not here to argue this or that or pick holes in this or that, you know what I’m saying? That takes us way, way off course. That’s not how we rekindle the gift that God has put in us, that’s not how we make an impact in people’s lives for Christ, that’s not how rivers of living water end up flowing out through our hearts into a parched dry land. Let me encourage you, if you’re off on some thing, if you have a bee in your bonnet about this thing or that thing, take your bonnet off, let the bee out. Get back to a firm foundation in Christ by reading His Word, by praying, by learning, by growing, by serving using your special gift and your special ability. God did not put us here to argue about what’s truth or not. God’s Word is clear, it is abundantly clear, it is crystal clear and God’s truth in God’s Word is His solid foundation, His solid rock beneath our feet. For some people today it is time to get your life back on track.
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A Soldier for Christ // Rekindling the Flame, Part 3
10/07/2026
A Soldier for Christ // Rekindling the Flame, Part 3
Here’s a question for you – do you take your faith in Jesus seriously? Well, what I mean is … if … if following Jesus was like being a soldier and following Him into battle, would you go? God’s Word actually uses that picture and so we’re going to take a look at what that actually means. I don’t know if you’ve been able to join me so far this week on the program but we’ve been chatting about, about getting back on purpose. You can always tell a politician who’s struggling because that would be the politician who’s been drawn off message. They become overly reactive to the opinion polls, chasing after people rather than leading from the front by being opinion makers. And you can always tell a Christ follower who’s struggling because that would be the Christ follower who’s been drawn off purpose. They’ve become overly reactive to their circumstances, chasing after what the world says is the right thing rather than persevering through the tough times and doing what Gods called them to do. I spent ten years as an officer in the Australian army and all levels of leadership from junior to senior ranks; one of the key principles of war is the selection and maintenance of the aim. In other words staying on purpose. In other words knowing which hill it is we’re capturing and when the bullets start flying and the shells start going off around you, you stay focused on that one hill which is the reason that we’re out here in the first place getting shot at. It turns out that being a Christ follower, which is what a disciple is, is about exactly the same thing. And there are far too many who have been drawn off purpose and so have ceased following Jesus. Now that may seem a little harsh and direct so humour me and let me unpack that with you. We’ve been looking this week at the Apostle Paul’s second letter to his young protégé Timothy because it’s a letter all about maintaining our sense of purpose and focus. Remembering what we’re here for despite the bullets that are flying around and the shells that are going off around us, despite our circumstances, be they mundane or be they challenged or be they wonderful. Whatever our circumstances are, the easiest thing to do is, especially let me say when the going gets tough, is to lose our sense of what God made us for – what our gift is. And so Paul, who himself is chained up in a prison, counsels Timothy through that. The two verses that really stick out are these. 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 6: For this reason I remind you Timothy to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. And verse 14: Guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. As I said, it’s the easiest thing in the world to forget the gift that God placed in us. That one thing that you love doing, that one thing that you’ll do better at than just about anyone else that you know and to have the treasure stolen from us. God didn’t give the gift just to bless us, He entrusted His treasure into our care to be good stewards of it to use it. As I shared with you the other day, not so long ago when I was travelling through a particularly rough patch in full time ministry someone suggested to me that perhaps I should go back to being an IT consultant again and earn lots of money again. But I could no sooner do that then flap my wings and fly to the moon because I have a real sense of the gift and the treasure and the purpose that God has given me in my life to be doing what I’m doing right now. But it can be hard to hang on to that gift, that purpose, that treasure when stuff is flying through the air. So let’s pick up what Paul has to say to Timothy about this very thing. 2 Timothy chapter 2 beginning at verse 1. He says: You then my child be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well. Share in the suffering like a good soldier of Christ, no one serving in the army gets entangled in every day affairs, the soldiers aim is to please the enlisting officer and in the case of an athlete no one is crowned without competing according to the rules. It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have first share of the crops. Think over what I say for the Lord will give you understanding in all things. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David that is my gospel for which I suffer hardship even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God isn’t chained therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is sure, if we have died with him we will also live with him, if we endure we will also reign with him, if we deny him he will also deny us, if we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. See Paul starts off with a premise that suffering – again remember how over last week we talked about the fact that whenever suffering comes, our first instinct is to compare that against what the world says equals success and figure that we must be failing God, but Paul starts off with a premise that suffering is normal. When we’re hurting we forget over and over and over again that God’s Word promises that we will suffer, that we will face trials, that He will discipline us. Do you get it? So Paul, on the premise that suffering, if it’s not the norm then at the very least it’s not an unusual occurrence, uses three powerfully simple analogies about staying focused on our gifting and our purpose through the suffering. The first he uses is a soldier. Now I’ve been a soldier so I really understand this: Share in the suffering like a good soldier of Christ. No one serving in the army gets entangled in every day affairs. The soldiers aim is the please the enlisting officer. So the soldier isn’t meant to be chasing after a whole bunch of other things. The soldier is meant to be focused on the business of war, the soldier is meant to be focused on the business of winning the battle. That’s the soldiers job, to do that well and to please his enlisting or his commanding officer. The second picture that Paul uses is that of the athlete. No athlete wins the prize unless they train hard and unless they run the race according to the rules. You’ve got to be there, you’ve got to show up, you’ve got to run the race. And the farmer who does the work is the one who’s entitled to his fair share of the reward. Each of those three examples, the soldier, the athlete and the farmer are about maintaining the focus on the end game. Each case is the same. Stay focused on the end game through the suffering, through the battle, through the hardship, through the pain, through the training, through the ploughing and the planting in order to be who we were meant to be, to do what we were called to do and ultimately to reap the reward of having stayed the course and done the distance. Do you see the heavenly perspective here, the eternal dimension? Paul’s helping Timothy to step back and to see the bigger picture because when we’re suffering our eyes are cast down and we focus on the immediate and then Paul goes on to speak of the power of that endurance, the powerful outcome in bringing people to God and in ultimately being accepted into the Kingdom of God with eternal life through Jesus Christ. Time and time again I see people giving up because it’s tough. I see people pulled off purpose because it’s all gotten too hard. And the picture that the Lord’s given me is that when I’m following Jesus down the dusty, sometimes very lonely road, when it gets hard and I see other people pulling off to the left or to the right and parking on the side of the road, even turning back, I should keep going. Following Jesus even if I’m completely on my own save for His presence alone. For the saying is sure, if we have died with him we will also live with him, if we endure with him we will also reign with him, if we deny him he will also deny us, if we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. Let me encourage you to take God’s Word into your heart today. If it’s all too hard, if every fibre of your being is screaming out at you to stop; to give up, to turn back, take heart from Paul’s counsel for it is God’s Word meant for you and for me. And let me encourage you to rekindle the gift He’s given you.
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Don't Be Ashamed // Rekindling the Flame, Part 2
10/06/2026
Don't Be Ashamed // Rekindling the Flame, Part 2
The world is pretty clear in telling us what success looks like and since for most of us, our idea of success is more informed by our culture than God’s Word – we’re kind of immersed in it. Living our lives for God though often means that in the world’s eyes we look anything but successful – and some people are ashamed of that. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how different Gods plan for success is from the world’s plan for success. I mean you and I know the world’s plan all too well. We have it shoved in our faces and dangled under our noses at least a hundred times a day. You’re successful if you’re beautiful, if you’re wealthy, if you have power and position, if you have a big house and a shiny new car, that’s when you’re successful. Just recently I visited the city of Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, for only the second time in my life. And a good friend of mine, Ben, drove me around to show me the sights and one of the places he took me to was billionaire’s row. A few streets with some of the most expensive houses in the country. Now they were lovely houses but they were absolutely massive, they were built to make a statement ‘Look at me, look at what I can afford’. And this image, this model of success is what we have dangled under our noses so many times each day that, well it’s easy to start believing it. And that’s where we can get our wires crossed. That’s when we can start equating the blessing and the favour of God with what the world says makes you successful. So then when things don’t seem to be going well in our lives, when we’re travelling through a trial or a temptation, sometimes even torment we can easily come to the conclusion that obviously God isn’t pleased with us or we’ve failed God. Obviously something’s wrong, I’m in the wrong place, I’m doing the wrong thing, I’m on the wrong path. Obviously, right? And so instead of pursuing that one gift that God has placed within us, that one call on our lives to go and be what God made us to be and to do what God made us to do, it’s so easy to be ashamed of that failure. I remember when I decided to toss in my rather lucrative career as an international IT and management consultant to go into this full time ministry. One of my colleagues joked that I was pursuing a career of gentile poverty. It’s so easy to be ashamed when we’re trying to live our lives for God and things don’t seem to be conforming to the worlds idea of what success is. And then what happens is we get pulled off course, we give up, we head off in another direction. You know I remember a time not that long ago when here at Christianityworks we were doing things really tough financially and most of the staff hadn’t been paid for a few months and someone said to me, “Berni, maybe it’s God saying to you you’re in the wrong place. Maybe you’re meant to be going back to consulting and earning some serious money. Maybe you’re doing the wrong thing in being in ministry.” This was the day after a young woman, Ami, who had come to my online blog at the point of suicide, had been pulled back from the brink because I was able to share the Word of God with her, because others who were visiting the blog encouraged her and prayed with her. And just the day before she’d been at the point of taking her own life. And then she posted these words on my blog: Last night I had my first encounter with God. I could actually feel Him. Wow, seriously the best feeling ever. He kept me up practically all night and unlike last week where I was hiding my face in my pillow so my parents wouldn’t hear me cry last night I was hiding my face in my pillow so that my laughter wouldn’t wake them up. I kept bursting out in laughter and song and dance while lying in my bed. I’d been crying out to Him for so long to let me feel His love and His presence and He finally answered my prayer. I have never felt this good in my life, it is awesome. Thank you to all who prayed and for the words of encouragement and yay God. So go and tell Ami we’re in the wrong place here at Christianityworks doing the wrong thing. Do you see how easy it is to be misled, to be drawn away from God’s greater purposes by mistaking a worldly idea of what success is for the real thing? Now this is nothing new and the Apostle Paul was encouraging his protégé Timothy to rekindle the gift that God had placed within him. Paul takes the trouble to talk about this whole tension around success and how you and I can become ashamed. 2 Timothy chapter 1 beginning at verse 8. Paul says: Do not be ashamed then Timothy of the testimony about our Lord or of me as his prisoner but join with me in suffering for the gospel relying on the power of God who saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our works but according to his own grace and purpose. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our saviour Christ Jesus who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher and for this reason I suffer as I do but I am not ashamed for I know the one in whom I’ve placed my trust and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. See Paul suffered in order to bring the good news of Jesus to a lost and hurting world and before him, Jesus suffered. Jesus became an abject failure so that you and I might have eternal life. You and I, we’re not here to be successful in the world’s eyes, we’re not here to get all the glory. The one place that I have discovered real fulfilment and real joy and real satisfaction and real life is in taking that one thing that God has given me, that gift and ability to be a story teller for Him and using it the way I am right now. There’s an alternative, a clear alternative to chasing after the world’s brand of success. There is a true way, not a way that crosses the wire and equates worldly success with Godly success but a narrow road and oft times difficult road, a road full of trials and temptations that every Christ follower is called to take and that way is a way that Paul shared with Timothy as he was travelling through his own trials. 2 Timothy chapter 1 beginning at verse 13. Paul said: Hold onto the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted in you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. You’re aware that all who are in Asia have turned away from me including Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain? When he arrived in Rome he eagerly searched for me and found me, may the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day and you know very well how much service he rendered me in Ephesus. See everyone’s deserted Paul in his trials and his afflictions except one man. Everyone’s gone their different way and in the face of that what does Paul do? Does Paul take the easy road? Does Paul deny Christ? Does Paul chase after the mob? Does he base his actions on the opinion polls? No. He writes to his dear friend Timothy and says, “Their opinions aren’t worth anything. Stick to Gods Word, stick to the sound teaching of Jesus and guard this treasure, this gospel that’s been entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you.” Paul is not swayed by the worldly template of success, by the opinions of men. He knows he was called to be an apostle, he knows he was called to be one sent out to take the good news of Jesus to the world. He knows that Timothy had been called to be a pastor and a teacher. One called to grow people in their faith in their relationship with God. And Paul’s not ashamed of the chains, of being in prison. He’s not thrown off course by some imposter called success. He counts as nothing what he left behind, his seat on the ruling Sanhedrin, the potential to grow a mega following as a leading Rabbi in the Pharisee sect and he presses on to follow his calling and to exercise his gifts. And here’s the thing, 2,000 years on we’re still talking about him. 2,000 years on God is still ministering to us through the Apostle Paul.
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A Different Perspective // Rekindling the Flame, Part 1
10/05/2026
A Different Perspective // Rekindling the Flame, Part 1
Ask anyone you like what their purpose is in life … and no doubt we’ll get quite a variety of different answers. But let’s take a look at that question from a different perspective. What’s God’s purpose for your life? That might just have a few people stumped. It’s such a blessing for me to be able to join you again today, not just for the beginning of a new week but at the beginning of a new series of messages. I’ve called this series “Rekindling The Flame” because I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get tired. I mean I love doing what I do, I absolutely love it but even when we love doing what we’re doing, even when we’re serving God with all our hearts sometimes we get tired, sometimes we get run down. Sometimes so many things around us seem to be going wrong that well we lose our drive, our sense of direction, our determination, our purpose in life. Have you ever found that? Just this morning I was sitting praying feeling as though I was getting close to running on empty and asking the Lord to fill me afresh which He did but this reality of being drained by life, by service, by all the things that we go through is a reality that pops up again and again for the most of us. Have you noticed? So that’s why we’re going to spend the next few weeks on the program in God’s Word, letting Him speak to us, letting Him into the deepest and darkest places in our hearts to rekindle the flame and there’s no better place to be doing that than the Apostle Paul’s second letter to his young protégé Timothy. So let’s have a look at how Paul opens up his letter to young Tim. See Tim has served with Paul all over the place, in Ephesus as a courier, they wrote a few of the letters in the New Testament together. So Paul was obviously Timothy’s mentor and as any mentor has for his protégé Paul had a special place in his heart for Tim. So why is this significant? Well as you and I spend the next couple of weeks in this letter my prayer is that in this fatherly warmth that we discover from Paul to Timothy we too will experience the fatherly warmth from our Father God who is speaking to us through Paul’s powerful words. So how does Paul kick this letter off? 2 Timothy chapter 1 beginning at verse 1: Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. To Timothy my beloved child grace, mercy and peace from God the father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I am grateful to God whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I’m reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and now I’m sure lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self discipline. What a fabulous start. Remember Paul’s been through so much in his life, he’s been beaten, reviled, he’s lost his position and status. He’s had a murder plot against him or two, riots, been run out of town, he had to flee for his life. Unbelievable stuff and he starts out with a statement, a feisty statement if you will of his central purpose in life. To be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. Why does he do what he does? To bring the life that comes only through faith in Jesus out into a lost and hurting world. The easiest thing in the world when you’re travelling through difficult times is to lose your focus but nowhere, not once in any of his letters do we see that of Paul. He is called by God to be an apostle, one sent out to do the will and the work of God and as we’re going to come to see this whole tension between trials and temptations and tribulations that we go through on the one hand and the call of God on our lives on the other can throw us completely off course. That is, as it turns out, is what this letter to Timothy is all about because Paul wants something special for Timothy. He wants a special blessing for this young man: To Timothy my beloved child grace, mercy and peace from God the father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you see that? Paul wants Tim to experience grace and mercy and peace and this letter is all about showing him how. Paul’s been praying for him even though he himself is going through some really, really difficult times. And Paul recalls the tough times they’d been through together in Christ’s service – the tears. And now he takes the opportunity to get Timothy focused on his purpose, focused on his mission. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church is perhaps best known for his book and teaching series “The Purpose Driven Life”. But this isn’t something that Rick somehow invented in the 21st century, he discovers it right back here in the 1st century through Paul and others who would not be shaken from the purpose that God had for their lives. And God had such a purpose, not just for Paul but for Timothy. So Paul reminds him of three things. First the trouble that God’s gone to … to hand a deep powerful faith down to Timothy. Have a listen to this: I’m reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now I am sure lives in you. When we go through tough times we do well to remember the amazing things that God has already done in our lives. The faith that He’s placed in our hearts. Do you ever go through tough times and then all of a sudden God reminds you, “Look at the trouble I took to bless you. Look at the trouble took to get you here. Look at how I’ve protected you over all this time.” It is an awesome thing friend, to look back and see the things that God has done in our past, and so we’re going through some tough times and we remember those and they give us strength. “I’m reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that came from your grandmother to your mother to you.” Secondly in light of this faith Paul calls Timothy to do something amazing: For this reason (he says) I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. We each have a gift, something that God’s given us that we can do better than just about anyone else we know. And how easy is it for that gift, that ability, that dream to become obscured by the cares of this world, by the sheer grind of living out our lives day after day after day. Friend you have such a gift, you have such a dream and when you think about it back there in the 1st century rekindling something wasn’t easy. When there were just smouldering embers left there lying in the fireplace it would require a careful gathering of dry kindling, placing it delicately over the few remaining embers then fanning the flames, seeing the flames catch to the kindling, placing slightly larger pieces of wood onto it then even larger pieces before it again became a raging fire. This is what Paul is calling Timothy to do, to rekindle the gift within. This is what I believe God is calling us to do. Is it hard? Is it scary sometimes? Yeah sure it is. We can only gather here because of what Paul is saying to Timothy that young Tim was at risk of losing his way, at risk of losing the purpose of God placed on his life, at risk of forgetting the dream. That’s what Paul writes and says: I remind you because of all the trouble Gods gone to to rekindle the gift within. And Paul knows that what he’s asking Timothy to do is hard so the very next thing he says is: God didn’t give you a spirit of cowardice but a spirit of power and of love and of self discipline. Friend, over the coming weeks we’re going to be chatting about rekindling the flame in your heart because I believe that many, many people have been drawn away from the purposes of God for their lives by this imposter of the world called success. And I believe with all that I am that God wants us not to waste our lives. He wants us to fulfil the destiny and the plans and the purposes that He set out for us before any of our days yet existed.
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A Shining Light // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 10
10/02/2026
A Shining Light // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 10
Jesus once said – I am the light of the world. None of us much have a problem with that. Of course He is. But He also said something else – to His disciples. He said – You are the light of the world. Now, when you think about it, that’s mildly problematic. That’d require some serious miracle, eh? For many years, I walked in complete and utter darkness. It didn’t feel dark. Back then, I’d have said everything was fine. I didn’t need religion. I didn’t need God. I was successful. I had plenty of money. A comfortable home – big too, nice suburb – a successful IT company that was growing. No, I’d never have described it as darkness. Deep down though, I knew that something wasn’t quite right. I rarely thought about that, I tried to ignore that nagging feeling – something’s not quite right – I would never have admitted it to myself, let alone anybody else. But that was it. I certainly wouldn’t have described it as darkness. But the longer I ignored it, the darker it became. You may have heard me once before tell the story of how I almost took my own life. That’s how dark it got. And all the time, on the surface, to other people – I looked as though I had it all together and I looked as though I was at least moderately successful. I think the thing that made it even worse – is that I called that darkness light. And it wasn’t until I was on the brink that I came to the realisation of how terribly dark that darkness really was. Jesus nailed that reality when He said this – Matt 6:20: The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness. How does He know all this stuff, I wondered when I first read that. That isn’t some piece of trite theology to me. It so perfectly described my predicament; that I marvelled at it. My problem was my unhealthy vision. I was looking at things, life – everything, the wrong way. I was looking at the world through the prism of self – selfish didn’t begin to describe me. And that’s how many people are. We’ve been sold the line that it’s all about me for so long, that we’ve actually swallowed this stuff hook line and sinker. It’s why many families are dysfunctional. It’s why marriages are falling apart. It’s why so many people are so dissatisfied with their lot in life. Whether they realise it or not they’re walking in darkness. And then Jesus walks into your life – He is the light of the world, He said so Himself – and I don't know if you relate to this, when we see ourselves and our circumstances and our relationships and our jobs – when we see all of those things in His light, they look completely different. We see things for what they are. We see our bad motives and intentions for what they are. Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ – John 8:12. And that’s how I’ve felt ever since I gave my life over to Him. Now of course, there are many times when we want to hide in our darkness. When our sin is so bad, we just want to hide it. And there are times when we still delude ourselves – even though we think we’re walking in the light: Whoever says, ‘I am in the light,’ while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. 1 John 2:9 But fundamentally Jesus shines a fresh, clear, warm, bright light into our lives and we see things the way they really are. I for one am sick of deluding myself. I’m sick of playing games. If I’m getting something wrong, I want to know, so I can set it right. All our staff here at the ministry of Christianityworks know that I don’t want them to just sit there and whisper if I’m making an idiot of myself. For goodness sakes, tell me so I can fix it. Right? And the more we open ourselves up in that way to the light, the more exposed we are to the light to Jesus – the more He transforms us and the freer we become. Do you really want to walk in darkness? Or do you want to be filled with light? The light that makes your heart glow with love for someone who’s doing it tough. The light that makes you want to honour God with all your being. The light that just transforms your life and brings you a freedom and a joy that you just can’t begin to describe? And when we’re in the business of letting Jesus transform our lives that way, everything changes, because all of a sudden, that light that Jesus shines into our life, shines out through our lives into the lives of others. That’s why He said to all those people listening to Him: You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matt 5:14–16) The goodness that people see in how we speak and what we do and how we react to difficult circumstances, starts to influence them. Of course, one of the things that often happens to start with is that people who are living in the darkness, will shy away from the light. Have you ever had someone make fun of you because you stood up against the pack and did something that was good and decent and honourable and right, even when no one else was doing it? That’s what that’s about. People accustomed to darkness, selfishness, evil intentions, manipulation … all that stuff, will often shun the light. You know how it feels when you’re just waking up in the morning and someone opens the blinds and the bright sunlight streams in – we recoil, we put our hands over our eyes, because we’re not used to the light. But my friend, the more that the Light of the World transforms you – by the wondrous miracle of His Holy Spirit dwelling in you, the more you yield every part of your life to the Spirit of God. The more His light will shine through your life into the lives of the other people around you. And so one of the greatest miracles of Jesus in our lives, one of the Great God Miracle Makeovers that you and I experience, is that all of a sudden, one day, we find ourselves being the light of the world in other people’s lives. We may not feel as though we are; we may not even notice that we are; but we are. And then their lives start to change; because they’re influenced by our goodness and at some point, they want what we have. They want … Jesus. My friend you are the light of the world. So don’t just sit there, get out there and be that light. Don’t hide the light under a basket – but get it out there, so it will shine into the lives of others. Whenever something I’ve said or done, touches someone deeply, I truly feel like a bystander. That’s not some sense of false modesty. That’s actually how I feel. It’s a sense of privilege at having been there to shine the light of the world, into their lives. In this series – God’s Miracle Makeover for You – we’ve chatted about the amazing transformation that God is in the business of bringing into our lives – scrubbing the muck of, cleaning the windows, so that we become totally different people. Even though we still have the same body, and the same character and the same gifts and abilities. As I think back to those of God’s people who have been the light of my world, I know that none of them feel as though they've done anything special. And yet, each of them rejoice in the amazing part that God’s given them to play in my life, as they were there to shine the light of Jesus into my darkness. The greatest transformation of all, is the sort that makes us vessels in the hands of God, to bring newness of life and transformation into other people’s lives around us. And my prayer for you today is that as you hear God’s Word, you will truly become the light of the world, in your little part of the patch where you live. May you be blessed as you live out your amazing relationship with Jesus – and shine His light into a lost and hurting world.
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A Fruitful Life // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 9
10/01/2026
A Fruitful Life // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 9
Imagine for a moment, you’re an apple tree. Yeah, I know, I know – just humour me. You’re an apple tree. You grow tall and strong – you look very impressive. But in all your years in the orchard, you’ve never yielded a single apple. How do you feel? How does the owner of the orchard feel? The whole point of an apple tree is that it bears … Well, you know – apples, right? The whole point of a fig tree is that it bears figs. You don’t need me to tell you that. And the whole point of my life and your life, is that – with our rots planted deep in the good soil of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with the Spirit of God flowing through us, is that our lives too should bear fruit. Good fruit. But what if we don’t bear fruit? Jesus once told this story to His disciples – Luke 13:6–9: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the good soil? ’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ So, the owner of the vineyard wanted to cut it down. But the worker, the worker said … let’s give it one more chance. Let’s aerate the soil, fertilise it, water it, and see what happens. Now the first question I have is this – what was a fig tree doing in a vineyard? Have you ever wondered that? All the other plants in the vineyard were grapevines, right – that’s why it’s called a vineyard. And yet the owner of the vineyard figured, well – I’ve given this tree more space than all the rest of the plants. It’s taking up valuable real estate and yet, it’s not yielding any fruit. What a waste – get rid of it and stick another one there in its place – one that will give me some figs. After all, that’s what fig trees are supposed to do, just like the grapevines are meant to yield grapes, for winemaking. Have you ever felt like a fig tree in a vineyard? The odd one out? You look different, you feel different to everybody else. Perhaps people consider you a bit odd or eccentric, and so all too often, the others seem to poke fun at you, they shun you because you’re different. Have you ever been in that situation? I have, many a time, and I can tell you that your natural reaction is to want to crawl down your rabbit hole and shrivel up and die. Your natural reaction is to want to give up bearing fruit, because quite obviously, any fruit that you can bear is worthless, compared to all these other people from whom you are different. But that’s not the owner’s expectations. If you’re a fig tree, he expects you to grow figs. If you’re a grapevine … grapes. If you’re an apple tree … apples. Plum tree … plums. Just because we’re different to everybody else, doesn’t mean that we shouldn't be bearing the unique fruit that God made us to bear. The evidence that a fig tree is healthy and functioning as it was always intended, is that each year, in due season, it bears a bountiful harvest of figs. But who is the worker in this story, this parable? Who encourages the owner of the vineyard to give the fig tree another chance? Well, that’s Jesus. He is – the Bible tells us – our intercessor – He pleads our case with the Father. Hebrews 7:25: Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Jesus came and sacrificed for you, and for me, so He has a heart to perform miracles in our lives, miracles that transform us and get us back to where we should be, bearing fruit for Him. In other words when it comes to the wrath and the punishment of God – Jesus stands in our stead, in our place, He shields us from the coming judgement, because He’s already died to pay for our sins. He wants to see our lives transformed so that we end up bearing fruit. The fig tree, figs, the apple tree apples. The grapevine, grapes. The olive tree, olives. Our own, unique brand of fruit. And not just any fruit, but good fruit. Jesus again – Matt 7:15–20: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits. The plan of Jesus for your life is that as you come to the end of it, both you and He will be able to look back together at the bountiful harvest of fruits that your life has born in due season, season after season after season. Because the fruit, the good fruit, is the evidence of a healthy relationship with Jesus. That’s why in that first parable, Jesus the gardener, said to God the Father, the owner of the vineyard – hang on a minute. Leave it alone for another year so I dig around it, and feed it. And in a very real sense, that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re having our hardened ground, our hardened heart’s turned over, the barriers broken down, so that the Word of God can penetrate and feed us. Are you being fed right now? Do you hear the call of Jesus – the gardener who’s on your side when it comes to your ultimate judgement and destruction because we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Can you hear this Jesus speaking to you and saying – this tree is you? This gardener is me. And my plan is to feed you and water you so that you will bear much fruit. He wants to give you a helping hand. So – how does He do that exactly? How? Well, we’re told later by Paul in His letter to the Galatians as he speaks about the fruit of the Spirit – Galatians 5:16–26: Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to one other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. So the long and the short of it is, that instead of putting our roots down in bad soil – the things of this world, all that rubbish that Paul lists there that’s so obviously bad, instead of that … put your roots down in Good soil and drink in the Holy Spirit. Drink in the Word of God to feed you. And when you do that you are going to produce the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – not because you worked hard at it. Not because you had to struggle to deliver goodness, but because you have the very goodness of God flowing through your trunk, your limbs, your leaves … and yes, your fruit. Do you expect a good tree planted in bad soil to produce good fruit? Or do you expect a bad tree, planted in good or bad soil, to produce fruit? Of course not. My friend when you take the Word of God seriously, when you let it into your heart, the Holy Spirit takes it and performs a miraculous transformation on the inside, and then – let me tell you, you simply won’t be able to help it. You’ll be bearing good fruit not through your hard work, but because it comes naturally. All the time, the Spirit and the Word of God working in you and through you. Is that a miracle, or what? Is that something you want, or not?
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A Clean Heart // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 8
09/30/2026
A Clean Heart // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 8
Have you ever blown it? I mean completely blown your relationship with God. It was all going along just fine and then you went out there and sinned like … like you wouldn’t believe. And the whole God thing, the whole Jesus thing – seems to be completely blown out of the water. I’ve certainly been there. At that point where God seemed a million miles away, not because He’d up and left, but because I’d blown it. That sick feeling in your stomach when you wake up in the morning and you remember how through your thoughts or your actions or your deeds, you’ve turned your back on God again. Again! Why did I do that??!! You remember Jesus hanging there on the Cross, and you feel so ashamed that you treated HIM, in this way. Perhaps you stole something. Perhaps you … you had a terrible argument with your wife or husband and told them it was all over in a fit of rage. Perhaps it was sexual immorality. And you feel so dirty. I had a message on Facebook recently from a woman in the UK, who lives on the street, who found herself in such a place. This is what she wrote to me: Hi Berni. Can I ask a real serious question? The Word says all sorts about NOT being sexually active if you're professing to be a CHRISTIAN, right? Well to put a long story short all my Government Support cheques have been stopped. And so in desperation two nights ago I went out on 'THE Game' to earn some money because I'm in so much debt. I've now got a real huge dose of the guilt’s for degrading myself in this way. I feel repulsed at my own reflection and no matter how many times I shower I just CANNOT get to feel clean. All that and the fact that each time I think of what I am I physically get sick and vomit. Thing is each time since all I've been drawn to reading in Scripture are those that condemn me for my actions. I recall on one of your radio shows that you say there's no sin that's unforgivable but this MUST come close, right? Is there ANYTHING I can do to make things right with GOD or have I blown it totally, now? This isn’t a made-up story. This is a real life situation this woman suffered. I said to her: What makes you think that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is not sufficient for you . He died so that every sin of yours and mine could be forgiven. Including this one. Then I shared with her John 8:1–11: Then each of them went home, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again”. So I said to this women … be blessed as you are washed clean by the blood of the lamb. Go and sin no more. And what I wrote there to this woman applies equally to you and me. We are forgiven when we turn back to Jesus – so my suggestion? Keep short accounts with the Lord. Don’t tarry about outside, come into the holy of holies, into His Presence and cast yourself completely on His mercy. That’s the whole point of the cross. But … we need something more than forgiveness. We need the power to turn way from repeating this sin, over and over again. One of the things that seems to happen, is we get stuck in one sin – it may be sexual immorality, it may be anger or fear or whatever our particular favourite brand of sin is – and we get stuck in it. So we go to God and ask Him to forgive us through Christ, and then we turn around and we end up going out and doing exactly the same thing again. And so King David who, after committing adultery and murder and being held to account by one of God’s prophets, casts Himself on the mercy of God, but He asks for something more than just forgiveness. Have a listen, Psalm 51:1–12: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit So He goes to God, and He admits His sin fully. He’d taken another man’s wife and then, effectively had that man murdered, so he could keep her as his. Come on, it doesn’t get much worse than that, eh? He admits his transgressions, and like that woman who wrote to me on Facebook, his sin is ever before him. The gap between who God is and who David is, now that He’s done this massive thing, is so big. So David asks two things of God. Firstly – Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. In other words God please forgive me. You and I have been there plenty of times, and – as I said – no matter how large the sin, no matter how bad or ugly or brutal the sin, we should never shy away from going to God and asking Him to forgive us through the sacrifice of Jesus on that Cross. But secondly, David realises that He needs help cleaning up his act, cleaning himself on the inside, so that he doesn’t end up going there again. So he asks this of God: Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Create in me a clean heart O God and put a new and right spirit within me. In other words, David here is asking for an amazing miracle on the inside. He’s asking God to change His heart, to clean up the mess. He’s asking the Holy Spirit – the new and right Spirit that he talks about – to perform a powerful miracle and give him a new heart. This is so important. I’ve heard people say – we can choose not to sin. Sure, in theory, that might be correct. But if it was true in practice, we wouldn’t need Jesus, the Cross, the empty tomb, or the Holy Spirit. There are some sins that you and I fall into time and time again, because, try as we do to clean up our act in our own strength – we can’t. Well, let me tell you straight to your face, YOU CAN’T. You and I don’t have the power to do that. Only God has that power through the Presence of His Spirit in us. And this creation of a new heart is a miracle. Really. It is, in my view, one of the most powerful miracles that God ever performs – and He performs this one miracle in the hearts of people around the globe who ask Him for it, over and over again. This is a Miracle Makeover from the inside out, and let’s face it, when we have a change of heart, by the power and the mercy of God, doing what our heart desires – honouring God – is the most natural thing in the world. Why do so many of us try to clean up our act in our own strength? What’s the matter with us that we don’t get it? Create in me a new heart oh God, and put a new and right spirit in me. Now that’s what I call … a miracle.
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Purity Within // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 7
09/29/2026
Purity Within // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 7
Purity - now there’s a great concept. Everybody loves purity. From the junkie buying heroin on the street, to the savvy investor buying gold on the open market. Turns out, we all want … purity. This week on the program, we’re chatting about the Miracle Makeover that God has planned for you … and for me. Because God is a miracle-working God. He has the power and the desire to make an amazing difference in your life. Mostly we go to God and pray – God, can you change this, can you deal with this obstacle, can you help me in this circumstance, can you please provide this money, make this happen …. We’re always asking God to do something, to fix something, to provide something out there. The problem, in our mind, is always out there with other people or with the situation or with the circumstances. Come on, let’s be honest here. Rarely if ever do we take responsibility before God and ask Him to change us, to work on us, to help us overcome our blind spots and our failings and our wrong attitudes and our selfishness and …. We know the score. At least half of our problems in life – at least half, probably more – are all to do with our attitudes, our mistakes, and our perspective. How often do we take responsibility for those before God? That’s why we’re in the middle of this series of ten messages called God’s Miracle Makeover for You. Because He is that miracle-working God who wants to help us become all He’s made us to be. And that to me is such an awesome message. Theologians will talk about repentance, and sanctification. Good oh. Me, I prefer to think of myself as someone who needs help – like a physio in rehabilitation – to restore the full function of all I’ve been given. And, try as I might, there are plenty of times when I can’t help myself. And often, it’s because I don’t even see the mistakes I’m making. Often I’m completely clueless that I’m blundering in somewhere, and it’s not until I’m reading God’s Word and the Holy Spirit touches me deep inside somewhere that I realise. This is the miracle of transformation in Christ – it’s the radical change that God wants to bring into our lives. And today we’re chatting about purity, because it’s one of those areas where we have a great propensity to be blind to our failings. Now, purity is a great concept and whether we realise it or not, it’s something that we value extremely highly. Hmm. Well … sort of. It turns out that you and I can be very selective about purity. Let’s just have a think about when it is that we really value purity. I used the example earlier of the addict buying heroin. They’re spending money; they want to make sure they get what they're paying for – as terrible as that purchase is. Buying gold is the same thing. If I’m paying a huge amount of money for just a single ounce of gold, I want to make sure that it’s 99.99% pure, otherwise I’m being ripped off. Buying a drink at a bar – do you want the drink to be watered down, or do you want it to be … pure? When you’re dealing with someone in business, do you want them to have hidden, ulterior motives, or … pure motives? When you’re choosing your life–long soul mate do you want them to be promiscuous, or … pure? In each one of those instances the answer is blindingly, glimpsingly obvious. We want purity. In fact, when we’re on the receiving end of the transaction or the relationship, we always want purity in the other party. Makes sense. But what about when we’re on the giving end? How highly do we value purity then? You’re in a business transaction, and you want to close the deal on your terms. Do you bend the truth a little bit? Do you exaggerate slightly the advantages, play down the disadvantages? Sure, why not? It’s business. When you’re filling out your tax return. Do you drop in a few low value deductions for which you don’t have receipts because you never incurred the expenditure in the first place? Do you conveniently forget to declare some income that the tax department, really, is unlikely ever to find? Sure – why not, reduce your tax payment as much as you can? It seems that when we’re on the receiving end, we demand purity, but when the shoe’s on the other foot, well – then we’re prone to let ourselves off the hook rather easily. In fact most people will compromise on purity, if they think they can get away with it. That’s the reality. To God, purity is really, really important. Because He’s pure. Everything about Him is pure. His love for us is pure. His intentions are pure. His passion for us to become more and more like Him … is pure. And should we ever doubt that, we need only gaze upon the Cross of Christ and what He suffered so that we might live. Never, ever will we see love purer than the love that we have from God through Jesus His son. Have a listen to what God has to say about purity to you and me today – 1 John 3:1–10: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away our sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters. He starts off by telling us about His amazing love – just in case we should forget that His love means that we are His children. And just as children grow up and mature, you and I are on a journey toward maturity – and it’s a journey from impurity to purity. Have another listen: And all who have this hope in him, purify themselves, just as he is pure. And through John, God does on here and gives us a sobering slap in the face about sin. Just in case you were planning on compromising, just a little bit on your purity, He makes it really clear. You can’t have a foot in both camps people. You can’t be a child of the devil and a child of God. It’s either one or the other. You’re either on a path towards purity, or you’re not. So which one is it? And just when you and I are starting to feel totally down because we know, don’t we, that there’s sin in our lives, just when we’re about to throw our hands up in despair as we read this passage that says: if you’re sinning you’re in effect living out your life as a child of the devil – holy moly that’s strong, that’s not mincing words, that’s cutting right to the quick – just at that moment, He gives us the answer, the only answer that there is to our dilemma of impurity: The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. My friend Jesus is the answer. The only way to travel from impurity to purity, from sin to righteousness, from being a child of the devil to a child of the living God … is Jesus. He has the power. The power of the cross to forgive you. The power of His Spirit in every man, woman and child who believes in Him, the power for a new life through the empty tomb, the power to destroy the works of the devil. If purity is something that you want to value as highly as God values it in you – the answer, the only answer – is to walk the walk, with …. Jesus.
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Deep Cleansing // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 6
09/28/2026
Deep Cleansing // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 6
The big thing that the makeup and beauty companies sell is deep cleansing. Hmm. We all know that beauty is more than skin deep. There are times when you and I need truly deep cleansing. The sort that you can only get from one Source. Don’t you love those makeup advertisements: Anti–ageing. Wrinkle reducing. Look ten years younger in just ten days. Achieve deep cleansing of your skin. They promise the world. And all you women out there – well, a good many of you – you want to fall for this stuff, because you do want to look younger and you do want to look your best. And it’s not just the lotions and potions they flog on television, right? Many women spend huge sums of money on facials, exfoliation, masks, mud-masks even – all in the pursuit of what? Looking younger. These cleansers and moisturisers they sell for a king’s ransom, most of them cost a few pennies to make, then there’s the massive cost of advertising and marketing, and let's not forget huge profit margin on top. Deep … cleansing. Right. I know I’m only a bloke, and I apologise for that, but on that basis, I know I really don’t get the whole beauty thing. For over half a century, a cake of soap and some hot water has pretty much given my skin all the deep cleansing that I’ve ever needed. But, even I know that there’s something incredibly special about feeling clean. Back in my military days we would go out on training exercises where we fought simulated battles for 4, 5 even 6 weeks at a time. And in that month, month and a half, you were lucky to get a shower and a change of clothes once, maybe twice. So by the time we’d come back to barracks at the end of the exercise you were seriously on the nose – I mean, absolutely filthy dirty. I remember we’d been rolling in the dirt, fighting a war, rubbing black and brown and green camouflage cream into our faces, necks and hands so we’d blend into the bush. We were filthy. And to this day – what, 35 years on now – I remember that feeling of getting those reeking clothes off and getting into a hot shower and scrubbing all that muck, and camouflage cream off. Of course it didn’t all come off in the first shower, it was still embedded in the pores of your skin and under your fingernails for a week or two afterwards. But that feeling of being really clean for the first time in weeks was utterly sensational. Whenever I hear that term “deep cleansing” that’s what comes to mind. That sensational feeling of being clean. Okay – it’s one thing to be clean on the outside. Sure. Great feeling. But what about the inside. A lot of us – most of us – don’t feel clean on the inside. Why? Well – because there’s a lot of accumulated muck and grunge caking our emotions, our thoughts, our soul … our very being. Maybe you think I’m overstating that a bit. The old-fashioned word for it is sin – but a lot of people don’t like that word too much these days. What about baggage. Emotional hang–ups. Hurts. Inadequacies. Doubts. Fears. Scars. Blind spots. Recognise any of those in your life?? And what about the consequences of the stupid things that you’ve done in your life, that you’re still doing in your life – ignoring your family, being selfish or touchy or being over bearing or controlling … It’s a pretty long list. And the quickest, easiest way to sum it up, is to use that small, four-letter word (that’s what it is these days) – SIN. Now depending on where each one of us is on the scale of maturity, we may either deny that we have any of that stuff going on in our lives, or we may be nodding – perhaps reluctantly – but nodding and recognising that this SIN thing is eating away at us on the inside. This muck is caked on thick and dirty like that camouflage cream – black and brown and green – used to be caked onto my skin. And scrub as we will, somehow we can’t wash it off. It just won’t come off. Shakespeare had it right in Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1 when Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking, remembering the blood on her hands in conspiring to murder someone, looks down at her hands and exclaims: Out damned spot, out I say! One, two, why then, ‘tis time to do it. Hell us murky … Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh … In her mind, in her heart, in her dreams, she couldn’t get the blood off her hands; the guilt ate away at her … on the inside. And many, many people – whether they want to admit it or not – have that sense of guilt or perhaps shame or inadequacy eating away inside them. It’s not something we like to talk about. We hide it deep within, behind the façade of respectability and confidence. Behind the faces we put on. Behind the bravado and the apparent happiness, and the nice home and nice children and nice everything and yet … it eats away, it gnaws at our soul, as the guilt, the blood on our hands debilitates us just as it did Lady Macbeth. We’re on sensitive ground here aren’t we? When we start to talk about it in this way, we come face to face with the deep reality … may I use the word now … our sin. You can’t live an abundantly joyful life with that stuff going on, any more than I could have gone on to live a full, healthy life in my reeking clothes and with my cam cream still on and in my skin. Imagine if, without a shower, I’d hopped in my car and driven down to the local shopping centre, sat down for a pizza at the pizza joint, wandered through the department store. It’s not on. And nor is trying to live our lives with that muck caking our souls. So what’s the answer? Let me read you what the Apostle John wrote to some friends, in a letter – his first letter – around 60AD, so a good many years after he’d wandered the dusty roads of Israel with Jesus: This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5–10) So, if we think that we can walk in the darkness, live with that darkness inside us, and live in the light, live in a deep, intimate, fulfilling fellowship with Him at the same time, John’s saying here – come on, you’re kidding yourself. If we say that we have no sin, we’re deluding ourselves. But if we fess up, if we’re honest with ourselves, if we’re honest with God, if we bring our filth and darkness, our hang–ups and our inadequacies, our failures and their consequences to Him, if we take them out of the deep darkness within and bring them out into the light and give them to Him, then something amazing happens. Deep cleansing, the sort that only, only comes from Jesus. The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. The one thing that Lady Macbeth couldn’t do. The one thing that you and I cannot do. Wash away the sins. Wash away the guilt. The blood of Jesus, His sacrifice on that cross to pay for our guilt, to take our punishment on our behalf – He pays the full price, and the Spirit of God brings the peace of forgiveness and wholeness into our hearts. There’s nothing on earth like that. If we bring our sins into the light, if we confess then to God, then He who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and … listen to this bit very, very carefully … and cleanse us – deep cleansing – cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness. That my friend is why Jesus came. And if you know in the depths of your heart that you need that cleansing, then it’s time to pray this prayer with me. Father God, today I have heard your Word. I realise in the depths of my heart that sin is tearing me apart. I realise that I’ve been hanging on to this muck inside me – as though somehow I can hide it from you. But I can’t, not anymore. I confess it to you – you know what I’m talking about here. You see it all. You know it all But I just want to come to you know and fess up, and admit it to you. Openly and honestly. And you know Lord that I am so much like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Doesn’t matter how hard I scrub, I can’t get clean. But I believe that in Jesus – in Jesus alone – I can be cleansed. So I cast myself on your grace and your mercy through Jesus – and I ask you to forgive me and to cleanse me. In His mighty name I pray. Amen.
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Christ in You // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 5
09/25/2026
Christ in You // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 5
Intimacy is a wonderful thing. Well, as it turns out God is into intimacy – both spiritual and emotional. And the intimacy on offer from God is meant to make a profound difference in our lives. So – let me ask you, is it making a difference in your life? God’s miracle makeover, sounds a little pretentious perhaps, a little grand, a little over stated. Can God possibly want to do that in my life, in your life? I know there's someone wondering that today, perhaps it's you, you look at your circumstances and you think to yourself, 'nah, that joker on the radio has to be talking about someone else, no miracles here in this place, in my life'. But actually if that's what you're thinking then today this message is most probably for you. The reason sometimes we don't see miracles happening in our lives is that we simply don't expect them and when our faith doesn't reach out to expect them then what we're told in the Bible is that miracles are probably not going to happen. You may remember the other week we took a look at this passage about Jesus when He travelled to His home town Nazareth, Matthew chapter 13, verses 54 to 58: He came to his home town and began to teach the people in their Synagogue so that they were astounded and they said, 'Where does this man get this sort of wisdom and these deeds of power? Isn't this the carpenter’s son? Isn't his mother called Mary and are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas with us and are not all his sisters with us too? Where then did this man get all of this?’ And they took offence at him but Jesus said to them, 'Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and within their own house' and he didn't do many deeds of power there because of their unbelief. People just didn't expect Jesus who they knew, who they'd seen grow up, to be the Son of God, to do these miracles that they'd heard He was doing everywhere else. And mark that final sentence, 'and He did not do many deeds of power there because of their unbelief.' Yet this very same Jesus, this same miracle-working Jesus is prepared to be as close to us, as intimate with us as we would ever like. If we're interested in a miracle makeover then the person we want to be close to is the miracle-working Jesus. Just have a listen to this powerful passage as God speaks to us through Paul's letter to the Galatians chapter 2, verses 19 and 20: For through the law I died to the law so I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I who live but it's Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. See Paul’s talking to people here who were thinking they had to work hard to get into God’s favour, to be accepted by God. We're like that often, we slog away and we wonder why blessings don't just drop out of the sky sometimes. We imagine therefore we have to work harder, be better. But Paul's saying, 'Look no, you've got it all wrong. That guy who used to think that way and slog his guts out, he's been crucified with Christ'. In other words the old me is gone and as a result it's not the old me who lives anymore but it’s Christ, Jesus Himself who lives in me. Now you know what, that may well sound like, I don't know, like theological mumbo jumbo to you and to be honest with you in the early days of my walk with Jesus it sounded precisely like that to me and in those early days I made my mind up that I'm not much into theology for theology's sake if that makes sense. Now given what I do these days sure I call myself a theologian but still today I don't want to play theoretical games here. I want to understand what God’s Word really speaks into my life in a real practical life transforming way and into your life, are you with me? I have this passion, I want to live my life for Jesus, I want it to count for something as imperfect as I am. I want my life to be changed and transformed step by step by the Holy Spirit, not by me, by Him as I walk side by side with Jesus down the road that's my life's journey. So I come to this Scripture looking for meaning and answers in that context, with that desire in my heart. So let's read one more time and see if there are any real answers in there, for you and for me for our lives: For through the law I died to the law so I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I who live but it's Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. When we believe in Jesus the old me, the old you is dead. We die to the idea of having to obey all these rules and laws to work our way into God’s favour, man that's great news because try as I might, I think you're with me here, try as we might we can't keep all the rules all the time. Living your life trying to dot every 'i' and cross every ’t’ is no way to live your life at all. The old me, the old you, those guys are crucified with Christ. We've abandoned the old person and now it's no longer the selfish me and the selfish you that's living in our bodies but Jesus. It's no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me. Now that's forensically true for anyone who believes in Jesus. Several times throughout the Bible we're told that the moment we believe we receive the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God dwelling in us. That's this intimacy thing that I was talking about at the top of the program, it's like marriage but only much, much, much more intimate because Jesus is in me and in you if you're a believer, in us 24/7 around the clock and He never leaves us or forsakes us. The same miracle-working Jesus who performed all those miracles we talked about last week and the week before on the program, now that's a game changer, that's a total game changer. Because now all of a sudden if I spend time consciously with Jesus His power and His love do things in me and through me that I could never have done for myself. We hunger for transformation in our lives. We want to grow and mature and be better and stronger and faster and smarter. That's what all those reality TV programs are all about, the makeover programs, the talent quests, the transform someone with raw talent into a polished performer. They all pedal transformation because we yearn for it deep in our hearts. But the real transformation comes when the Spirit of God, Jesus Himself takes up residence in us, starts to live in us and through us and starts to woo our hearts and influence our thoughts with love and mercy and starts to strengthen our resolve to serve Him, to be honest and decent and fair. See this transformation comes through the power of God in us and I have to tell you from where I sit that's much, much better than me on my own having to follow a bunch of rules which is what for many religion is all about. I'm not into religion, I'm not into rules and fortunately nor is Jesus. He's into relationship and love and transformation and grace and mercy and my friend I'm here to tell you, that those things have transformed my life and is still and will continue to transform my life. And this is where the theological rubber, if you will, hits the road, the presence of Jesus in us combined with the death of the old man, the old woman who was hell-bent on destruction, quite literally, is the place of powerful transformation. A few verses on, Galatians chapter 3, verse 27 Paul uses a slightly different metaphor. He tells us that if we put our trust in Jesus we're clothed in Him, we're wearing Jesus. So we have Him on the inside and we have Him on the outside and that right there is what I would call God’s miracle makeover for you. It's for me, it's for you, it's for anyone who believes in Jesus. I don't know what you're looking for in life but I have to say this is probably a really, really good place to start looking.
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Born Again // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 4
09/24/2026
Born Again // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 4
“Born again” is one of those terms that carries a lot of baggage around with it. So, if you consider yourself to be ... “born again” … can I ask you, what difference does that actually make to your life? What difference did it make yesterday? What difference is it making today? Born again, as I said there's a term that carries quite a bit of baggage around with it and even in the Christian community. It's a term that people use without thinking through it too much. It of course comes from the discussion that Jesus had with Nicodemus one time. The old Nic was one of the good guys, he unlike most of the Jewish ruling body called the Sanhedrin, he actually believed in Jesus. Problem was the rest of them were so anti Jesus he had to sneak over one night in the dark so no one would see him to have a chat with this Jesus fellow. Here's how that chat unfolded, John chapter 3 beginning at verse 1: Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, 'Rabbi we know that you're a teacher who's come from God for no one can do these signs that you're doing apart from the presence of God'. And Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly I tell you no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.’ Nicodemus said to him, 'How can you be born after having grown old? Can you enter your mother's womb a second time and be born?' And Jesus said, 'Very truly I tell you no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and of spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh but what is born of the spirit is spirit. Don't be astonished that I say to you, you must be born again.’ What was Jesus really driving at here? His point was that just as we've been physically born into the world, as plain and as patently obvious and necessary as that physical birth was, so too if we're to enter the Kingdom of heaven there needs to be a spiritual birth. A birth that He refers to as being born again or being born from above, born of the Holy Spirit. Now you see for the most part we kind of see that as a theological statement or maybe a statement of fact but do we really see it as a personally relevant statement? Are we impacted? Are you deeply impacted and moved by this reality? If you've accepted Jesus do you think much about the fact that you've been born again? Does it make a difference to your life? To be honest with you as excited as I am about the life that I have in Jesus this passage hadn't really impacted on me. It hadn't impacted on how I see and feel this amazing grace that I've experienced until relatively recently. I was reading a newspaper, Spurgeon used to say that a preacher should have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, so I'm reading my newspaper and I come across an article entitled Guilt, Innocence And The American Way. I just want to read the first part of it to you, I wonder whether it will impact your perception of being born again the way it did mine. Here's how it went: Death row inmates who have beaten the needle are leading a campaign against capital punishment, writes Nick O'Malley. The first man to be freed from death row in the US because of DNA evidence remembers the moment his lawyer gave him the news as though it was yesterday. ‘It's as clear as the vision before me now’ says Kirk Bloodsworth who was exonerated in 1993 after nine years in prison. He was sitting on his bunk in a death row cell when his lawyer was ushered in and told him that he was innocent and that he would be released in a few days. He began to weep. 'Of course I cried, everyone cries at birth’ he said, ‘I have been born twice, once as a baby and once as a grown man and after that I saw the whole world fresh.’ There it is. Here is this man who was on death row born once, condemned to die, then born again as his guilt was removed from him. Of course it's a powerful, powerful metaphor or parable that unpacks the amazing thing that happens when our guilt is removed the moment we believe in Jesus. Every parable of course has its limitations; as does this one since of course he was unjustly condemned to death and the guilt was removed when his innocence was proven through DNA evidence. You and I on the other hand through our rebellion against God have rightly been condemned to an eternal death separated from Him for the wages of sin is death and we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But back to what strikes me about this man's story, it's not simply that he was elated the moment the guilt and the punishment was removed from him, that's natural, you'd expect that, hey I think I'd be doing cartwheels around the prison cell. The thing that strikes me is that it's still impacting his life today. It happened in 1993, over twenty years ago and still today he says, 'I remember it as though it was yesterday. It's as clear as the vision before me now. I've been born twice and now I see the world fresh.' His second birth has impacted his whole life, his whole perspective. He is a changed man through that experience and I'm sure he'd tell anyone this story who was prepared to listen, I mean wouldn't you? So why then do you and I know so many Christians who don't seem at all excited about being born again? Why does so many Christians grumble and wander through life as though nothing's changed when once they were lost and now they're found? When once they were condemned to death, they were whether they realised it back then or not they were on death row. But now the guilt and the punishment has been lifted off them and they have freedom and eternal life through Jesus Christ. Why doesn't that change the perspective of so many Christians from that moment on for the rest of their lives? What's the matter with us people? There are so many people, people who believe in Jesus, people who call themselves Christians who are downcast, who aren't happy with their lot in life. Whose words are full of complaint, who are praying for a breakthrough when all along they've already received the biggest breakthrough they're ever going to get. They were once on death row but now they've had a second birth and still it hasn't changed their perspective on life. Can I ask you plainly and quietly but directly, are you one of those people or has your escape from the eternal death row been a completely life transforming experience? Does it still bring you joy and a fresh perspective today? So many people want a fresh new life and they think it comes from changing their circumstances and yet truly our externalities, our situation, our bank balance, our address, our mode of transport, our social status, none of those things are really where it's at. All of those, all the wrinkles and the bumps in them, all the things that we would rather change and have differently, they pale into significance for the man or the woman who once was on death row and was set free and born again. What I can't understand is why we trade in our diamonds for stones, why we shift our focus from this awesome reality, the death row reality of being born again a second time to all this other stuff? Why is it that for so many Christians their second birth which in the eternal scheme of things is far more significant than Kirk Bloodsworth’s escape, is less significant than his second birth is to him? We're smack bang in the middle of a series that I've called God’s Miracle Makeover For You and if you're in need of a miracle makeover I suggest this is the place to start. Open your Bible, John’s Gospel, the fourth Book in the New Testament, chapter 3 and read what Jesus says about your second birth. Meditate on it, pray over it, let the Holy Spirit use it in you and through you and my friend here's what's going to happen, let me tell you. All of a sudden a million small ailments in your life will completely lose their significance because you'll be seeing them with a fresh set of eyes, you'll be seeing them from God’s perspective.
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From Glory to Glory // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 3
09/23/2026
From Glory to Glory // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 3
All too often, you and I are waiting for a major breakthrough, a major miracle, a major blessing, when all along, mostly, God’s preferred way of helping us to grow, to change, to overcome, is quietly, gently, gradually, step by step. Why is that? You know when things aren't going the way I want them to go what I would really, really like for God to do is to open up the windows of heaven and pour out blessing after blessing and miracle after miracle all at once, all at the same time right now to set things right. That's my way, hey how simple is that? So why doesn't God get it? What's the matter with Him? You know when you put it that way we in a sense see how ridiculous that is and yet when we're between that rock and that hard place isn't that exactly what we want Him to do? Isn't our first thought, our first desire for an instant miracle, an instant fix? Somebody is giving you a hard time so you imagine a lightning bolt striking them down. Your finances are in a hole, debts mounting so you think about winning Lotto, that twenty million would go down just so well at the moment. I wonder whether God wants me to buy a lottery ticket. All those things point to our desire for an instant miracle and every now and then God does just that, He does it for His own reasons in His own time at His own pleasure and for His own glory, I mean hallelujah. But those instant miracles tend to be an exception. Yes there are times and places where God acts miraculously. Often they're places of great need and there's great faith involved. Often they're circumstances where God wants people to see His glory and His power so they'll believe in Him, that happens. But empirically from experience we realise that God’s most common way of working in our lives is through a series of small steps that transforms us over a lifetime rather than say five humongous miracles each seven or eight years apart right? There's a reason for that, it's because He's much, much more interested in developing our character and the depth of our relationship with Him than He is in providing us with quick fixes when we think we need them. Don't believe me, have a listen to this through the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 5, verses 3 to 5 he says this: And not only that but we also boast in our suffering knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope doesn't disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that's been given to us. Now that's what I call a chain reaction, suffering produces endurance and that forges a character of substance and as that character grows in-depth and breadth it focuses more on Jesus than the suffering. That produces real certain hope and that hope is the chamber into which God pours His Holy Spirit and His love and man there's a whole week or two of messages just in those two verses in Romans. But you see where God’s going with this right? He wants to transform us in a way that sets us free from all this rubbish, the sin, the stuff we've been carrying around and in a way that matures us so that we can really enjoy life. The life that He's given us even when circumstances are against us. The contrast in this passage is so stark between suffering on the one hand and God pouring His love and His Spirit into our hearts in the midst of as a direct consequence of the work that He does in us through that suffering. The reason a blacksmith will put metal into a fire before shaping it is because the fire makes the metal malleable in his hands. It's exactly the same with you and me. In our natural state we're often stiff and strong and unyielding but put us in the furnace of suffering and we become malleable, something God can work with for our own good and for His glory. See that's how maturity happens. Let me ask you, is there any such thing as instant maturity? Probably not. Sometimes something really significant happens and we do a lot of growing up in a very short period of time but to mature a good wine you put it down in the cellar, not for hours, not for days, not for even months but for years. In this world of reality television we're being conditioned to think about having instant makeovers. That's what cosmetic surgery is all about, that's what going to a beautician is about, that's why people have home renovations and garden makeovers and style makeovers, instant makeovers. NOW, I want it now. We're all looking for transformation, for something that will make a difference but the deepest, most powerful change is the really profound long-lasting changes in who we are happen little by little when we yield ourselves to the work of the masters hand. When we become malleable and pliable so that He can shape us and mould us into the most remarkable person He always knew that we could be. Have a listen to this, again God speaking through the Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 12 to 18: Since then we have such hope, we act with great boldness. Not like Moses who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside but their minds were hardened, indeed to this very day when they hear the reading of the old Covenant that same veil is still there since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed to this very day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds but when we turn to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom and all of us with unveiled faces seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror are being transformed in the same image from one degree of glory to the next, from glory to glory for this comes from the Lord who is spirit. See again here Paul picked up this terminology of people's minds being hardened. How often when things are going just fine and dandy are our minds closed to the amazing transformation that God wants to bring to our lives? We all want transformation, our fixation on reality television tells us that that's true but we reject it when things are going well. A real paradox, it's like there’s a veil over our minds but when we turn to Jesus that veil is removed and we see things all of a sudden for what they really are and we discover that God’s perspective on things is so totally different to the way we've always thought. We truly are transformed by the renewing of our minds, changing the way we see things and thinking about things in Christ. That’s where the real transformation comes from, that's where this newness of life that Jesus promises us lies. All of a sudden we discover the freedom we were always looking for right there under our noses in Christ. Now here's the crunch, the really important bit, as we open our hearts and minds to Christ and travel through the furnace of trials and tribulations along the journey we experience transformation. From what? From glory to glory. All of us with unveiled faces seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory for this comes from the Lord who is spirit. Do you see, from one degree of glory to the next, step by step we're transformed by the Holy Spirit as we journey through the trials of life and this is deep lasting transformation. Our tendency is to fight it, we've been conditioned to expect instant easy makeovers but most times the miracle makeover that God has planned for you happens step by step from glory to glory as you're transformed back into His image so that more and more when people look at you what they see is Jesus. What a stunning picture. So here's what I'd like to leave with you today. The next time you're thinking to yourself, 'why is this taking so long? How come I keep making so many mistakes? Why doesn't God just do something now?' Remember He is doing something, step by step from glory to glory. It's time for you to enjoy that journey, to yield to His Spirit and to let His miracle makeover to happen along the way and as you look back over the changes in the months and the years to come you'll be astounded at how much you've changed, grown, matured, from glory to glory.
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A New Creation // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 2
09/22/2026
A New Creation // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 2
If only I could start over. If only I could be free of the hurts, of the consequences of the past. Have you ever thought that to yourself. Sure you have. We all have. Well, the great news is this: a fresh new start is entirely possible. That’s the whole point of Jesus coming to this earth. Mid life crisis are a well documented phenomenon. We laugh about them, you know the guy who's slightly podgy and hair on top is thinning and he has to go out sometime in his late 40's or early 50's and buy a racy convertible. Or the woman who looks in the mirror one day and doesn't like her life and her marriage and her job and her looks so she decides to kick up her heels and have some cosmetic surgery and sadly increasingly part of the whole mid-life crisis scenario is divorce. I totally believe that 99% of life is a grind. It doesn't matter how glamorous other people perceive your life to be most of it's a mundane grind. Of course that doesn't mean that we necessarily have to be dissatisfied with it it's just that most of life is mundane. I was listening to Hugh Jackman the famous Hollywood actor also an Aussie of course, being interviewed recently and he was talking about the sheer grinding hard work involved in shooting some of these action movies. Now we think Hollywood actor, wow, glamour, stardom, fame and sure there's that but for him a lot of the time it's just sheer hard work. That's what it's like for all of us. We do it over and over again without thinking too much about it and at some point what we want is a new start, a fresh start. Will someone please put me on a magic carpet and whisk me away of there somewhere, to some new reality without the cares, without the pressures, without all the tensions, without the sheer boredom of my present reality. Or we've made some serious blunders along the way which is what happened to me and we wish that we could somehow be absolved of their consequences rather than living out this hell on earth thing that we're travelling through. Whatever the reason we've all been there. I want a fresh start. Sometimes that manifests itself in a career change, a sea change, a long break, moving house, changing cities, changing countries. I've had three careers in my life, ten years in the military, seventeen years running my own IT consulting firm and now almost ten years doing what I'm doing here in the broadcasting area. Those transformations have been important for me but you know whilst they've been interesting and challenging and satisfying they don't actually meet the deep need way down inside somewhere to get this sense of 'yes this is the life I want to be living'. That sense of contentment and satisfaction. Our career, our relationships, where we live, what we look like, they're all great and they're all important but at the end of the day they aren't the things that make us truly happy and contented inside. They can add, they can detract but they're not the main thing. It's like last week, we were talking about signs and wonders and miracles that Jesus performed. Healing that paralytic man, the man born blind, I mean totally awesome stuff. And I imagine that if you were paralysed or blind and Jesus comes along and He heals you of that, well come on that's huge and yet can I tell you some of the most together, satisfied, dynamic people I know live life in a wheelchair or without their sight. These are inspiring people. See it seems to me the miracle's God’s done on their inside are much more powerful than a miracle He could do but hasn't yet on their outside. I have tinnitus, constant ringing in my ears. It's socially quite debilitating because the moment there's background noise I find it very hard to hear people and so you end up tuning out, it's just too hard. I also have glaucoma, under control now but eventually it could send me blind in my old age. Would I like God to heal those two things? Of course I would. He hasn't yet, He may one day or He may not but the greatest miracle of all that He has ever performed for me is the fresh start that He gave me when I first believed and this is what it is, have a listen, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 16 to 19: From now on therefore we regard no one from a human point of view even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old is passed away and see, everything has become new.’ ‘All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. It's this idea, well it's not just an idea, it's the pervading reality of my life that in Christ I am a new creation and all the old things have passed away, everything is new. Anyone who believes in Jesus is probably familiar with this passage, it seems easy to read it and go, 'well yeah, that's fine. New creation? Oh okay' and just move on but hang on a minute, a new creation. All the reality TV shows on the planet promise that, they're all about transformation, our looks, our home, our lives, our careers, they're all about pedalling false makeovers and here's the real makeover, the question is do you really care? Does that stir up a yearning in you that says, 'I want that, that's what I've been looking for all my life?' Can I tell you honestly? For most people it doesn't, here's why I know. A while back we aired a series of messages called Healthy Living To A Ripe Old Age and the free booklet that we produced for that series was My Top Three Secrets For Losing 25 Kilograms. The response to that was completely unprecedented; we'd never seen anything like it in almost ten years of producing this series of A Different Perspective. We printed over fifteen times the usual number of booklets and had ten times as many downloads of the e-booklet compared to average. In fact I'll bet you a pound to a penny that the free booklet for this series that I'll be telling you about a little bit later won't go anywhere near the response that we had to that weight loss booklet, I hope it does but going by past experiences it probably won't. Now is it a good thing for us to get our weight under control? Sure it is, I did, twenty-five kilograms, fifty-five pounds. I'm a lot healthier, I'll probably live a lot longer, I look a lot better, I feel a lot better, zippity doo da. And yet God comes along and tells us that in Christ we have a fresh start, we're completely new, the one thing that people are hungering for, that people go looking for in reality TV, in body makeovers, in beauty makeovers, in home renovations, in career changes, they're looking for transformation, for a new start, a new life free from all the hang ups, all the regrets, all the hurts and the failures of the past. The one thing that people really want and the only place you can get that is in Jesus. But do we respond? Do we run and leap and praise God because He's given us a new life? Hallelujah! Nah, come on, what would your life look like if you lift it on the basis of what Paul is saying here that it's actually true? If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away and look, everything has become new. Every time the past rears its ugly head in your emotions, in your feelings, in your thoughts, in your actions, you turn around and say, 'thank you Jesus that I am a new creation in you. Thank you that the old things have passed away and everything has become new' and you simply refuse to accept delivery from the hang-ups of the past. It's like looking at the world early in the morning, just as the sun is coming up after it's rained all night with this sense of freshness and newness and filling your lungs with the sweetness of this new creation. What would your life look like if you lived it as though this new creation thing was true? Well?
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Total Transformation // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 1
09/21/2026
Total Transformation // God's Miracle Makeover for You, Part 1
Everybody these days is looking for … transformation. A new life, a new start, a new way. That, when you think about is the desire that many of today’s reality TV shows pander to. But is transformation really possible, and if so – how and where do you get it? We've all watched them on television haven't we, the makeover shows. I remember when reality TV first became a phenomenon back in the 1990's and way back then it felt kind of bizarre. But these days it's the norm and we have reality makeover shows for just about anything and everything on television. There are body and beauty makeover shows where they take a plain Jane through a little plastic surgery, even dental surgery, a nip and a tuck here and there, some serious work on her hair and her make up and a style makeover on how she dresses and all of a sudden voila, there you have it, Miss Universe. There are some home makeover shows, renovation shows, surprise garden makeover shows, apartment makeover shows, even the current talent shows are all about makeovers. From the initial slightly dull boring guy that fronts up for the audition to the handsome buck all glammed up who sings his heart out in the grand final. This idea of makeovers has become the new vehicle for reality television to thrive and to become an incredible phenomenon that it's become. But the problem with reality television is that it's not real, in fact there's nothing much real about reality television at all, it's carefully stage-managed and contrived let me tell you. Look I've been on TV shoots. I remember doing a two and a half-minute spot that took eight hours to shoot. All that stuff that looks oh so spontaneous on television is carefully scripted, carefully choreographed, carefully constructed and we take this shot and that shot and we cut it and we try that again, all that stuff. To put it bluntly reality television is completely an illusion, it's a mirage, it's not real and through this medium producers are pedalling the concept of life transformation, its aspirational television. It's dangling the concept of total transformation under our noses and why do they do it? Because just as the age-old advertising adage that sex sells is true, advertisers have realised that they can piggy back their products off the back of this illusory seductive aspirational notion of total transformation. That's why people watch these programs because they scratch this deep itch, this deep desire for a transformed life. To be picked up on a magic carpet and whisked away to some new perfect idyllic reality. Just as cigarettes were the delivery platform for nicotine, to create an addict that will buy those deadly products, so the transformational message of reality TV is the delivery platform for whatever advertising message some company is prepared to pay for to get across to you during the program. So to sum up my little social commentary rant here reality television has made us addicts to the idea of transformation and yet no amount of reality television is actually going to deliver transformation to you and me. As much as they promise a miracle makeover, as much as women in particular are flocking to cosmetic surgeons, as much as people go on fitness kicks and crash diets, as much as we got out and buy new clothes or try this and try that, none of it, none of it delivers the transformation that we're really looking for. Today we're kicking off a series of messages that I've called God’s Miracle Makeover For You. Over this last couple of weeks we talked about the signs and wonders that Jesus performed and the deep powerful message each of those miracles have for you and for me and in fact last week we finished off the series on miracles, signs and wonders with what I called the greatest miracle of them all - the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not just as some historical fact although it is that but as a present reality for you and for me. Here again is how Paul the Apostle sums it up in Romans chapter 6 and verse 4: We were buried therefore by baptism into his death in order that just as Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. The greatest miracle of them all is the newness of life that Jesus brings. Real life, newness, real transformation and that's what we're talking about this week on the program because this newness of life, it's what’s available to each person who believes in Jesus. Problem is a whole bunch of people who do believe in Jesus aren't living the new life, they're stuck in the old life. They're wrapped as it were in the grave-clothes of the past just as Lazarus was when he walked out of that tomb after Jesus raised him from the dead. That's why you and I need a miracle makeover. You can't have this newness of life when you're wrapped up in your old grave-clothes right? That's why we need God’s miracle makeover, not in some shallow external sense but in a deep, emotional spiritual sense. Look looking your best is great, do you want to look your best? Sure you do, I do, mind you for me it's not an obsession as it is for some but I like to look good. And yet at the same time you and I both know that looking good only goes so far to making you feel good. It has some impact but it doesn't deal with the deeper issues that so often holds us back from this newness of life that Jesus promises. There’s a process of transformation that we can go through to ditch the hang-ups and the sins of the past so that we can actually experience this fresh new life that Jesus promises to bring. Theologians call this process sanctification, I don't much like that word, it feels to hoity toity for me. I prefer rehabilitation or restoration, being transformed little by little back into the image of our Creator and for most of us, certainly for me, that requires a series of not so minor miracles because there are things deep ingrained in our nature that we can't deal with on our own, things that only God can deal with. Chances are you have a bit of a handle on the things that are robbing you of this newness of life that Jesus came to bring you. With me it used to be anger and pride, that was my Achilles heel. Now you learn to live with it but you always realise it's robbing you of life. You have your own brand of let's call it sin, that's what it is, sin that's robbing you of your life and Jesus, my friend, Jesus came to set you free. Jesus came to give you an abundant life, Jesus came so that you could experience a newness of life that completely defies logic and understanding. So let me ask you, do you want that newness of life? Do you want His miracle makeover to be happening in your life? Again the Apostle Paul puts it this way in Romans chapter 12, verse 2: Don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God for you. We're so well adjusted to our culture, to the reality TV aspirations of transformations that we kind of run like a bunch of lemmings off that cliff only to realise it doesn't deliver what it promises. It's time to stop conforming, it's time to stop letting the world and its flawed thinking squeeze you into its mould. Listen, the only mould that you are ever going to fit into comfortably is the one God made for you. We're never going to fit into the worlds mould right? Paul’s saying, in fact God's saying to us here through Paul, come on stop trying to do that, it won't work, instead go for total transformation, have a deep change of mind here, stop chasing after all the worlds failed systems and thinking and lay hold of God’s good and acceptable and perfect will for you and that's where you're going to find transformation. There needs to be some new thinking here, there needs to be a change in focus from the world’s plan for your life which we know is going to fail, to God’s plan for your life. If transformation is what you're after, if a fresh start is what you're after this is where you find it and that's why we're going to be kicking off this brand new series this week called God’s Miracle Makeover For You.
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A Transformed Life // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 10
09/18/2026
A Transformed Life // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 10
Let me ask you a question that might be a bit confronting. What’s the point of believing in Jesus – after all, it’s not an easy road to choose? Is it just to get eternal life when we die? Or can we actually have a brand new life – a vibrant life, a blessed life … here and now? Is that the point … or not? Well, the end of another week. It’s amazing. In this last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about reaping a harvest. The harvest of righteousness. As I’ve said on a few occasions now in this series, I used to think that righteousness was a bunch of rules that I had to live by. Do this and God will smile on your life. Do that and … whack! He’ll punish me. That was my view of this word which, let face it, isn’t used so much these days. This word “righteousness”. But that’s not what God had in mind when He had the Apostle Paul write these words in his letter to the church at Philippi. Philippians chapter 1 beginning at verse 9: And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight. to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. It’s not about rules, it’s about love, you see. And that’s what I had to get out of my system. And to tell you the truth, my hunch is, even after a decade and a half of walking with Jesus, even after almost a decade on air teaching God’s Word as I’m doing now, my hunch is I’m still getting this misconception of a rule-based God out of my system. We all have to live by rules. The law for starters. Imagine if I hopped out of bed this morning and hopped in my car and decided, “Well, you know Berni I want to do something different today. They say a change is as good as a holiday. I think I’ll drive to work on the wrong side of the road today. Why not? After all it’s a free country. That’s what I’m going to do today.” So obviously we have to live by some rules. But by and large we don’t mind that so much. We get it 99 times out of 100 that in order to live in the society there have to be some boundaries that organise the place and make sure everyone’s kind of looked after and kept safe. But on the fringes of those rules, let’s be honest, there are some rough edges. This is the place where arguments happen. On the fringes, on the borders, in the disputed territories. I mean, disputes between neighbours, what are they about? The fence line, the noise. They’re about things either on the boundary or things that cross over the boundary that one party thinks are fine and the other one doesn’t. It’s the same at home or at work. Disputes happen when someone breaks some rules that we have in our heads whether they’re valid or not. The more we think about it, the more rules are a big deal in this world. The ones that are written down called “laws”, the ones that are unspoken but accepted, and then the ones that you and I carry round as our own personal set of rules. So isn’t it easy to imagine that God is a rule-bound God. After all that’s what the Old Testament is all about. The whole of the Old Testament is the story of God loving and engaging His chosen people, Israel, and their universal inability to keep His law – His rules given through Moses. The whole of the Old Testament screams out this whole rule-base things just doesn’t work. And there’s a reason for that. Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul writes. Romans chapter 7: Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only during that person’s lifetime? Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit. See, there it is. All the law does, all the rules really do is point out where we’re going wrong. But there’s no power in the law to change our heart. We work at it, we work at it, and we’re still not pure and whole and perfect the way God is. So the law holds us captive. But Jesus died and rose again and those of us who believe in Him die and rise again. We die to sin, we die to the law and we’re raised up into a new life. Born again. A life in the Spirit – the Holy Spirit. No longer under the burden of the law but a new life, a transformed life, living in love and forgiveness. Living as one with God because He puts His Holy Spirit inside of us. A new law in the Spirit. The law of life rather than the law of death. Now how is that possible? Because all my sins, past present and future have been paid for by Jesus on that Cross. Yours too. So when you and I fail God, as we do almost every day, no longer are we condemned under this old law. We go to God. We admit our mistakes. We turn away from them. We ask His forgiveness through Jesus and what He has done on the Cross. And then we get on with life, the new life, the life that Jesus purchased for us. The life the Holy Spirit gives us when He comes to dwell in us. We died to that whole rule-based thing. And now there’s a whole new life ahead of us. That’s the whole point. Not to mope around like nothing’s changed. Not to whinge and complain about things, not to live as though we’re still condemned men and women, but to live a new and vibrant life. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17: So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! Hello! Wake up! This is fantastic news. And the thing that changes now is our hearts. Once we’re condemned no more, once we’re free, once we’re enjoying Jesus and presence of His Spirit we want to do His will, we want to live out our righteousness. God’s way has become a whole bunch easier, because instead of pulling against them, we’re so delighted with this new life, we’re so delighted with our relationship with God through Jesus and the Spirit, we just want to it out. We want to give God the glory. We want to honour and obey Him. And that’s why we want to it His way. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul writes in His New Testament letter to the Philippians. Philippians chapter 2 verse 12: Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. We obey God, which we should do, not because we’re rule-bound, not because we’re dragged there kicking and screaming, but because He is at work in us enabling us both to will and to do what is His good pleasure. That’s huge! This is the gospel of grace and of love and of mercy all made possible by Jesus dying for you and me so that our sins could be forgiven, and rising again from the dead so that we can have a brand new life filled with the Holy Spirit – filled with the presence of God Himself. This Spirit of God whom God sends to live in each one of us. Each person who puts their faith in Jesus Christ and what He did on that Cross. Isn’t that Good News? And if it isn’t, well frankly I don’t know what is.
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The Power to Change // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 9
09/17/2026
The Power to Change // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 9
One of the things that many people end up concluding in life, is that they just don’t have the power to change. They can see some things wrong in themselves, they know what they are, they’ve tried to change … but somehow, they just don’t have the power. I have some good news for you today – God is that power, and He has already given that power to change to anyone who’s put their trust in Jesus His Son. We’ve been chatting these last few weeks about the incredible blessing that comes from the righteousness of God. The harvest of righteousness that God has planned for you and me. Here it is in a nutshell. God is righteous, pure, holy, perfect. And you and I, without putting too fine a point on it, we’re simply not. And that’s the bad news. No surprise to God, mind you. He always knew the moment He gave us a free will it would turn out that way. And so the bad news both in terms of the insidious impact of our sin in robbing us of life here and now, and in robbing us of an eternity with God. So bad is this news, that God sends Jesus His Son to die on the Cross to pay the price of our sin, so that whoever believes in this Jesus can be back in a right standing with God. When we believe in Jesus we actually become as righteous as God Himself. We become the righteousness of God. We’re forgiven. Hallelujah! That is good news. Not something that we have to work our way into, but a free gift from God. For by grace you have been saved by faith, and it’s not of your own doing, it is the gift of God. Not the result of works so that none may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9) But blind Freddy can see that being forgiven, having a right standing with God, is only part of the equation, it’s only the beginning. It’s like a prisoner set free at the end of his sentence. He steps out of the prison gate, and it’s a huge step, but it’s only the first one of the rest of his life of freedom. Freedom is something to be lived out. And so it is for anyone who’s taken that first step of believing in Jesus: believing that He died for us on that Cross; believing that He rose again from the dead to give us a new life; believing that He has placed His Holy Spirit inside us so that we can live that new life of freedom. Jesus said this, listen carefully. John chapter 8 beginning at verse 34: Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed’. And the Apostle Paul, some decades on restates it so that we won’t miss it. Galatians chapter 5 verse 1: For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. In other words the reason that you’ve been set free is in order to be free, to live out your freedom. God hasn’t set you free through this great and mighty act of love, the sacrifice of His Son, in order for you to submit again to the yoke of slavery which sin places on you. He set you free so that you can in fact be free from sin and its consequences. You and I both know, we chatted about this yesterday, that a prisoner who’s served His sentence steps out of that prison a free man. But he can return to his life of crime, and many of them do, and eventually he finds himself behind bars again. OR he can live out His new life of freedom as a free man without breaking the law for the rest of his days, and experience the freedom. I’ve never been incarcerated but I thought what a horrible thing that would be. Even just one night, let alone a year or two or ten or twenty, would be enough to convince anyone not to re-offend. But in fact many, many do and the majority of people of prison today are in fact re-offenders. It’s incredible, mad you might say. But think about this. It’s exactly what many a believer in Christ does. We believe. We take the first step of freedom but then we go back living the life that caused us to be under condemnation before, only to find that this new found freedom in Christ turns out not to be all that it was cracked up to be because we’re submitting back to the cruel yoke of slavery – sin. Now, in part that’s because sin is so deeply ingrained in our flesh. The Apostle Paul said this. Romans chapter 7 beginning at verse 15: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. And that’s a problem we all face. Man, this sin thing is so strong in me. I’m so weak. How am I ever going to live out this righteousness of God? How am I ever going to reap the harvest, the blessing, the fruit of righteousness? I just can’t do it. And therein lies the whole point. You and I can’t do it. We can’t do it on our own. We simply can’t. I can’t and you can’t. We need the blessing of God. We need the power of God to change. Question is: where do you get that? Will He give me the power? Will He give you the power? What would you say if I told you, we already have the power? Have a listen to this promise from God’s Word. 2 Peter chapter 1 beginning at verse 2: May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. Now, do you need something to be godly? I do. You do too. Well, God’s already given us that. Past tense. It’s a done deal. God has already given us everything needed for life. In other words He’s given us our lives back. Real life, abundant life because we’re now righteous through faith in Jesus. We have a right standing with God. And not just for life but for godliness. He’s given us everything we need to escape from the corruption of this world and become – wait for this – participants of the divine nature. To be one with God and to know God so deeply that the image of God to be so bright, so vibrant, so powerful in us. Get it? We already have everything that we need. Just like Jesus prayed for us in John chapter 17 that we would become one with Him the way that He and His Dad are One. We don’t have to work at that. The closer we get to Jesus the more we change. The more we love Him and experience Him the more our behaviour changes. And that’s why we stand firm. That’s why our lives change. 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 5: For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Friend, God has given you and me so much in Jesus. Wake up! Stop grumbling. Stop living under this deception that we can’t beat sin in our lives. It’s already been beaten on the Cross. We already have a new life through the empty tomb. We already have the power of the Spirit, the very same one who Jesus from the dead. Ready Ephesians chapter 1. We have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. Believe that. That’s God’s promise. The power to change.
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Free at Last // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 8
09/16/2026
Free at Last // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 8
Freedom is a funny concept. Down through the ages, it’s taken on different meanings. Back when Jesus was walking this earth, you mentioned freedom, and people thought about slaves being set free. So … what does freedom mean today? What’s it all about? Can you and I really, really be free? Now, I want to share something with you today. Yours truly, I have to tell you I’m not stupid. I may be short and slightly dumpy; I may have more than more grey hair than of the original colour; it may be that I can’t draw a picture for nuts; there are lots of things I can’t do and lots of things I’m not great at and lots of things I just ain’t. But God has blessed me with a pretty nimble mind, so I’m not stupid. Now the point of me telling you this isn’t to boast. The point is that even though I’m a bit of a bright spark, I spent the first 36 years of my life in slavery. And here’s the thing. I didn’t even realise. That’s the point. We can be smart as smart can be, we can be as clever as clever can be on the one hand, but completely miss the whole point of life on the other. Do you get it? I mean, I kind of realised something wasn’t quite right. I kind of realised I didn’t have the joy and the contentment in life that I was looking for in everything that I tried. I simply had no idea the reason for that was because I was a slave – a slave to self. A slave … to sin. Now this idea of slavery may seem a little odd, a little harsh. It may seem that I’m somewhat overstating the case when I say that I was a slave to sin. After all slavery is a brutal thing. Let’s just stop and think for a moment what it means to be a slave. A slave is someone who has no rights. His or her master can abuse them. They have to do what their master tells them. They have no freedoms. They can’t come and go as they please and if we look at slavery down through the ages slaves are the most oppressed of all people. Somehow, innately, we know that men and women and children were born to be free. It doesn’t mean we can do anything that we like. Obviously we need laws, but good laws not oppressive laws. So the human spirit is meant to be free all be it in the right and proper constraints of society. So when someone becomes a slave it’s just wrong. Interesting that the Bible which was written over a period of a couple of thousand years, the last book being completed late in the 1st century AD doesn’t take slavery on as an issue. Neither does it endorse slavery. It just kind of accepts it as a reality of life back then. Now I have some ideas as to why that is, but that’s for another time. Now, God’s Word does link sin with the concept of slavery over and over again in the New Testament especially. Let’s have a listen to what Jesus had to say on this. I’m reading from John chapter 8 beginning at verse 28: So Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realise that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.’ As he was saying these things, many believed in him. Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed’.” And this is really interesting exchange. I can really, really put myself in the shoes of the people who took umbrage with Jesus about this whole slavery thing. Jesus is explaining that in order for people to be saved and have a relationship with God they have to believe in Him. It’s radical. All the other messiahs out there – there were lots of people claiming to be the promised messiah around Jesus time – they all pointed at this or that or someone else but Jesus pointed to himself. By saying, ‘Believe in Me’, He was directly claiming to be God in the flesh. Outrageously radical which is one of the reasons the religious leaders had Him crucified. But it says here, verse 30, that many believed. But then the bit that people took umbrage with: Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’. Now, when someone talks to you and me about freedom the first thing that we think about probably isn’t slavery because most of us aren’t slaves although I have no doubt of the millions of people listening to this message around the globe today, some in fact will be slaves. But most of us aren’t. And so if someone comes and talks with us about freedom, slavery isn’t the first thing that jumps to mind. But it was back in the 1st century. The words about being made free intentionally point to freedom from slavery and that that’s how were taken too. And this is where the Jews who believed in Him had a problem. They said, "Look, hang on a minute, we’re descendants of Abraham and we’ve never been slaves. We’re legitimate Jews. There might be slaves in the other peoples households but we’re not slaves. What do you mean by saying to us that we’ll be made free?" They kind of found this offensive. They saw themselves as being free. And this is where Jesus hits them right between the eyes. He answered: Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed’. See friend, sin is slavery. It’s the yoke of oppression. It robs us of freedom and of life. You don’t have to think too much about it. You think of whatever sin you want – anger, back biting, grumbling – it ruins things, it robs us of life. When we’re wrapped up in our own selfish desires and our own selves and we’re trying to get the world to bow down to us rather than us love and serve those around us, we lose life. It loses it’s meaning. It becomes ugly and horrible. And Jesus came to set the captives free. That’s why this righteousness I so important. Righteousness is the opposite of sin. And as we saw yesterday on the program, righteousness is not just an attribute of God it’s something that God is prepared to give us as a free gift when we believe in Jesus His Son. We in fact become the righteousness of God. Now we’re going to live life either in sin or in righteousness. We are. It’s one or the other. And once we have a right standing with God, once we’ve become righteous before God because we’ve put our faith in Jesus paying for our sin and us being forgiven, we’re now meant to live out this righteousness. It’s like a criminal who’s served his time in prison and he’s released. He either continues his criminal ways, which many do, and end up behind bars again (which has always struck me as sheer lunacy, but it shows you the power that sin has over people’s lives) or following his release he mends his ways and lives out his new found freedom, his new life. He’s not in prison any more. He can live out his new life. The new man is set free. Well, you and I have been set free through faith in Jesus. And the question is, are we going to live out that freedom, are we going to live out that righteousness or are we going to return to our old ways and live in sin? Question is: how are we going to live as free people or as slaves?
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The Righteousness of God (Good News) // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 7
09/15/2026
The Righteousness of God (Good News) // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 7
The bad news about God – and there is some really bad news, is that He’s holy and perfect and righteous. And the reason that that’s bad news … is that we’re not. And our “not” has some serious consequences. So then what’s the good news? And there is some good news. Great news. Fantastic news! So how are you doing this fine day? The one thing that I know with frankly millions of people listening to this same message today in 160 countries around the globe, is that there’s going to be a myriad of different responses to that question. How are you doing this fine day? Some people are just on top of the world. Others are in the absolute depths of despair. And in between those two extremes there is every shade of grey under the sun. And wherever you are some good news would be sure to go down well. Some good news to shine some light into a dark place. Some good news to brighten just a mundane day. And even when we’re in the middle of a fantastic patch in life, some good news to put all that in perspective. Well, today is a good news day. Today on the program as we spend these few short minutes together, we’re not just going to share some good news, we’re going to roll around in it, revel in it, delight in it, because the good news that I’m talking about isn’t some cliché, it’s not some bit of religious spin. This good news is meant to make a difference in our lives. A real difference, in fact a world of difference, an eternal difference. I previously said on this program that when it comes to God there’s both good news and bad news. We are in the middle of a series that I’ve called “Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness” because when we live out the goodness and the holiness and the wonderfulness of God (is there such a word? Well let’s use it) the righteousness of God, there’s a huge harvest of blessing in that. Not necessarily the sort of blessing that the world tells us we should. You know, the whole ‘healthy, wealthy and wise’ myth. But a depth of reward, a joy, a peace, as we live out the righteousness of God in our own lives. The bad news is that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and wages of that sin is death. The bad news is that God is righteous and we’re not and no matter how hard we work at it, no matter how hard we labour at it, we will always fall short of the glory and the righteousness and the wondrous perfection of God. And whilst at first that might seem a tad unreasonable, just because we’re not as good as God, it seems harsh. It’s that bad news that makes the good news so absolutely, incredibly, wonderfully fantastic. The Apostle Paul has this fantastic knack for hitting the nail right on the head, for boiling big things, huge things, seemingly complex things, down into a sentence or two that people like you and me can actually get our hearts and minds around. Have a listen to this. Romans chapter 6 verse 23: For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. There they are. The two sides to the coin. The bad news and the good news. And remember when we talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that word "gospel" literally means, "good news", "glad tidings", we’re talking about the good news of Jesus. And if I were writing a Bible dictionary trying to define the Greek word that’s used in the New Testament for "gospel", I think I’d define it as meaning absolutely mind-blowingly, fantastic news. Now if you are Christian and you’ve sat in the pew for a good many years each Sunday, maybe this good news has lost a little bit of it’s lustre. You hear something so often, over and over and over again, well after a while it becomes mundane and passé, just the way things are. Have to tell you. It’s happened to me from time to time too. But here’s the thing. I wonder how many people really, I mean really understand the enormity of this fantastic news about Jesus. What’s going on here when God does this amazing thing in the face of such terrible news. "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord". The bad news, the bad part of the equation of Grace is shockingly terrible news. And if you’re someone who has never put their trust in Jesus, if you’re someone who’s never accepted Jesus as your Lord and your Saviour, wrap your mind around this because it’s meant to be shocking. Luke Chapter 16 verses 19-26. This is Jesus talking: There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ Go on. Go ahead and be shocked. Come to grips with it. Jesus isn’t mincing words. He knows about hell and He’s painting a vivid picture. But it’s this picture that makes the good news so great. Because when we believe in Jesus we become as righteous as God Himself. Let me say that again. When we believe in Jesus we become as righteous as God Himself and the horrible penalty is lifted. See, this is the bit I didn’t understand at first. It took me a while to get it. Christians talked about the fact that Jesus’ death on the Cross bought me a ticket into heaven if I believed. But no one explained to me why. I needed to know why. The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I get the first bit, but the second bit – why? Well 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 says this: For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin (that’s Jesus) so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. If we think of God as a God of justice then the penalty for our sin has to be paid. Someone has to pay. But out of His love and out of His mercy God came up with this crazy plan that He Himself, Jesus, should pay. So Jesus became a man, was nailed to a cross, He took the sins of the world, you and me and everyone else, on His shoulders. He in effect became sin – why? – so that you and I might become the righteousness of God; stand before God completely free from sin because the price has been paid. And how do we lay hold of this incredible blessing? The freedom of forgiveness? Eternal life? How do we get it? How do we become as righteous as God Himself? Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 & 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast. So how do we lay hold of it? By working hard? NO. God’s grace in Jesus is activated towards us through faith. We obtain the righteousness of God, in fact we become the righteousness of God by believing in Jesus. It’s that simple and that is why it isn’t just good news, it’s not even just great news, it’s mind-blowingly fantastic news because all is forgiven. The anger and the wrath and the punishment of God on us is removed and we now have a new life to live. A life that goes on from now and for all eternity.
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The Righteousness of God (Bad News) // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 6
09/14/2026
The Righteousness of God (Bad News) // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 6
One of the things about God is that He’s perfect. Pure, holy, righteousness. They’re all words used to describe God. And whilst ultimately there’s a huge amount of Good News around that – the Good News doesn’t make sense … until we come to grips with the bad news. And let me tell you, there’s some really bad news there. It’s Monday again, back to work for most of us. And depending on whether or not you enjoy your job, that’s either good news or its bad news. The statistics tell us that two thirds of people don’t enjoy their job. Isn’t that a tragedy. So for two thirds of people, every chance that you’re one of them that’s bad news. Now you and I would rather have good news than bad news. I would and I’m sure you would too. And so when it comes to thinking about God, well that has to be good news, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. That word ‘gospel’ literally means, not ‘truth’ as many of us think it does, although it is the truth. No, the word ‘gospel’ means good news, glad tidings. That’s why the angel who spoke to the shepherds that night of Jesus’ birth said to them, Luke chapter 2 verses 10 & 11: Don’t be afraid, for see I’m bringing you good news of great joy for all people. To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord. There it is! Good news! Hallelujah! But sad to say, before we talk about the good news, which is what we are going to be talking about tomorrow on the program, first today, we need to talk about the bad news. How many times have we heard that line, "Well, there’s the good news and the bad news, which one do you want to hear first?" And inevitably there are two sides to each coin. And if all I ever did on this program was talk about the good news side of God then I simply wouldn’t be doing my job, because as much as sometimes I’d rather ignore bad news, there is a side of God which quite frankly is bad news for the likes thee and me. At least at first glance that’s how it seems. And yet the reality is that without the bad news, the good news wouldn’t be all that good. It’s when we come to understand the bad news, that the good news becomes absolutely fantastic news. So that’s why we’re kicking off today with the bad news. So, what’s Berni rabbiting on about? Good news? Bad news? Well, last week we kicked off a series called Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness. It’s about the righteousness of God, it’s about the blessing that flows in our lives when you and I live out that righteousness. We kind of touch on this a little bit fleetingly last week, but we’re going to pick up on it today and really understand it. Because understanding the bad news about the righteousness of God is critical in: a) making a decision whether we want to accept Jesus as our saviour or not and b) living out his righteousness and experiencing the harvest, the blessing of that. So, what’s the bad news? Well the bad news is that God is righteous. What’s this "righteousness" all about? Well God is completely and absolutely and utterly free from the scourge of humanity which is sin. There is nothing wrong with God. There is nothing impure or unholy or deficient or horrible about God. God is 1000% righteous from beginning to end; from eternity to eternity. And the only reason that’s bad news is that you and I, we aren’t. You and I know that we aren’t righteous, we know that about ourselves. We are nothing like that. We’re often selfish and proud and angry and rude and … the list goes on and on, doesn’t it? And whilst perhaps you’ve been walking with God for a while now and perhaps a lot’s changed in your life, there’s still some of that muck around, isn’t there? It’s like that classic little prayer that goes something like this: Dear Lord,So far today, I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped, haven’t lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or over indulgent. I’m very thankful for that. But, in a few minutes, God, I’m going to get out of bed. And from then on, I’m probably going to need a lot more help. So, as the Apostle Paul writes, “We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Romans chapter 2 verse 23. And the consequence of that sin is this Romans chapter 6 verse 23: The wages of sin is death. Now that may seem just a little bit harsh until we get back to the bad news. God is righteous and we are not. There’s nothing in God that is wrong and so His standard, quite simply is perfection. As I was coming to grips with that early on in my walk with Jesus, the question I had to resolve in my mind was, well, isn’t that just a tad unreasonable. When I was a child, I made mistakes, I wronged my parents, in fact I did it over and over and over again. But they didn’t take me out the back and shoot me. Sure, from time to time I was punished. Maybe they felt like shooting me, but they didn’t kick me out of the house or anything drastic like that. They suffered through my immaturities as parents are meant to do for their children so that the kids can grow up and mature and become responsible adults. That’s what parents do. So if God is God the Father, what’s with this ‘the wages of sin is death’ thing. I mean, that’s unreasonable isn’t it? The original Greek word used in the New Testament for this word ‘righteousness’ has it’s roots in the concept and the notion of justice. God is a just God. There are no favourites. There is no partiality. See, often times when a criminal is handed a light sentence for by the courts for something we consider should have attracted a much harsher penalty, well, you and incensed. Why? Is it because we’re mean? No. It’s because one of the things that God has handed on to us because we’re made in His image, He’s handed on to us His sense of justice. It’s part of who we are. It’s part of our DNA and so God is a just God. I mean, you’d be something of a disaster if God wasn’t just, wouldn’t you? This is where the bad news is. Break the law, get caught, you pay the penalty. It’s bad news. The law in the country is good news, but for the person who has broken the law it’s bad news. And the case of God because He is pure and just and holy and completely righteous, that standard is way, way, way beyond anything that any human being can attain. Now, this is no mistake. God planned it that way. God knew that ultimately we’d rebel against Him. God knew that. It wasn’t a surprise to Him when Adam and Eve munched on that apple. It wasn’t a surprise to Him when you and I first sinned. I haven’t lived a perfect life and nor have you. The only one who has is Jesus, God’s own Son. And so the bad news is that you and I fall short of that glory of God and there is an eternal penalty for our rebellion. There’s a price to pay. Hebrews chapter 10 verses 26,27,31. Have a listen: For if we wilfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. No namby pamby about, "It will be right, I’m not that bad. I’ll be fine. If there is a God then one day I’ll stand before Him." If we continue falling short of God then there is, “… a fearful prospect of judgement and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”. So there it is. That’s the bad news. And it’s very, very bad news. Eternity after all is a very long time. “For the wages of sin is death”. But that’s only half the verse, and it’s only half the story. Here’s the full story: For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) And that’s the good news we’re going to talk about tomorrow on the program.
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The Harvest of Righteousness // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 5
09/11/2026
The Harvest of Righteousness // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 5
Those of us who live in the city – well, it’s easy for us not to understand the importance of a harvest. Harvest time is when farmers reap the benefits of all their hard work. Harvest time is a relief, a blessing, a provision and a celebration. That’s why when God talks about the harvest of righteousness, it’s a big deal. I remember when I was in my last year of high school, quite a few years ago now, I travelled to a country town to teach the clarinet at a music camp during the school holidays. I had the opportunity to stay for a week on a farm. Now this was a large property and they farmed sheep – thousands of them. Now it was quite an experience for a young lad like me. I was a city boy. I spent all my life growing up in an industrial city so I never really thought too much about where everything comes from. Milk came out of bottles, eggs came out of cartons and meat came from the butcher shop and so on. You don’t really think so much about it. So spending this week on the sheep farm was just the most amazing experience. We had the opportunity to help dip the sheep. You had to pick them up and throw them down this shoot so they ended up in a trough full of sheep dip. It was absolutely backbreaking work. And for a lad who had never thought too much about where lamb chops came from (other than the butcher shop) it was a real eye opener. Farming is hard work. Ever since then I’ve had a great respect for farmers. Not only is it hard work, but pretty much they only get their income once or twice a year. And that happens when they take what they’ve grown, whether it be a crop like wheat, or sheep or cattle for slaughter or wool for clothing, it’s when they take their produce to market. It happens at harvest time. But of course there are many things that can interrupt the harvest: drought, flood, fire, a plague of locusts, diseases in animals. And even if there’s a bumper crop as a result of the abundance the prices at market are depressed so the farmers get less for what they grew. So it’s a tough life. And that week on the sheep farm has given me a deep and abiding respect for farmers and their families. But there’s something else, another lasting legacy that this week on the farm as a young lad has left with me, and that’s an appreciation of the tough reality of farming on the one hand and the sense of jubilation of the successful harvest on the other. See, we city slickers hear the word "harvest" and it really doesn’t sink in. It doesn’t mean too much, it just kind of washes by. But harvest time, it’s the culmination of all the farmer’s work; it’s the time of reaping the reward. A successful harvest brings great joy and a sense of accomplishment and relief and safety and provision, not just for the family and the farmer’s family but for the whole community. That’s what a harvest. That’s what a harvest mean to people who live and work on farms. So when the Bible talks about "harvest" that’s the sense of what’s going on. And remember, back in the 1st century there was no welfare or government assistance or anything else. If the harvest failed people starved and it’s still like that in many parts of the world today. So suffice to say, what I’m trying to get across here is the fact that the harvest is a big deal, it’s a huge deal. If you life in a rural area you already know that. But it’s not something that’s necessarily that obvious to us city dwellers. So when the Apostle Paul writes to his dear friends in Philippi about the harvest of righteousness he’s saying something big. Have a listen. Philippians chapter 1 beginning at verse 9: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” Interesting that he begins his point about a harvest of righteousness with a four letter word – LOVE. His prayer for his dear friends in Philippi was that their love would overflow more and more, because it’s in this flood of God’s love that works it’s way out in our love for one another that we gain knowledge and develop the insight to know what is God’s best. And living out His best isn’t always the easiest thing to do as we’ve seen over the course of this week. Living out God’s best requires sacrifice. It hurts a lot at times. But when our heart is soaked in God’s love, when our lives are about overflowing more and more of the sacrificial love of Jesus in that place with that humility, with that surrender and sacrifice, we gain the knowledge of God and the insights of God which transform us back into His image which help us live out the righteousness we already have, the right standing we have with Him because of our faith in Jesus who died to pay for our sin and rose again to give us a brand new life, an abundant life. And that friends, that that’s the thing. The love of God at work in us that produces … what? … it produces the harvest – big word that – the harvest of righteousness which comes to us through Jesus and brings glory and praise and honour to God. When Jesus was asked what’s the most important commandment of all: He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself’. (Luke 10:27) Love is the most important thing of all. As Paul wrote some years on: Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:10) We’ve been kind of conditioned to believe that love’s about romance and feeling good. And sure those are a couple of the aspects of love. But that’s not the sort of love that both these passages talk about. The original Greek word for love here is "agape" which means "unconditional love, faithful love that never ever fails"; the sort of love that costs us a lot but appears to deliver very little at the time. It’s the sort of love – and it doesn’t matter how talented or gifted we are – if we don’t have this sort of love then in God’s eyes we’re nothing but a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. Gifts and abilities and talents without this sacrificial unconditional love are completely worthless. You can read this in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. I know in my own life there have been times that, well … they’ve been trying and testing and people have been difficult and unhelpful and hurtful, those times and those places, they never felt good. And yet it’s in those times and those places that the Word of God has done its greatest work in me. I thank God that early on in my walk he established in me a pattern of regular Bible reading because it’s in those difficult periods that His Word has done His greatest and mightiest works in my heart. And it’s still like that today. Friends, in the most difficult times of our lives we can experience a harvest of righteousness or as is written in the book of Hebrews, the peaceful fruit of righteousness because as we persist in doing good, in honouring God, in living out the relationship and right standing – the righteousness purchased for us by Jesus as He took our punishment for our sin on His cross – as we live that out we discover God Himself. Jesus said: Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8) And that my friend is exactly what happens. God draws us ever nearer to Himself through the righteousness that He has imparted to us through Jesus and the righteousness that He now brings to life in new lives in Christ. The righteousness we live out as little by little he restores us back into His image through the trials of life. That’s the harvest – God Himself! And like every harvest, it’s a big deal.
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