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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Time to Walk on the Glass Floor // Discover Your Destiny, Part 14
05/07/2026
Time to Walk on the Glass Floor // Discover Your Destiny, Part 14
Believing in Jesus is a step of faith. Plain and simple. Believing that He can and will make a difference to our lives – well that’s a step of faith too. And sometimes – it can be a huge step. Over these last few weeks we've been talking about being the “me” we were each meant to be, and do you know, we all want that. We all want to somehow grow into who we are meant to be and to realise our destiny. And maybe over these last few weeks you've been tuning in and out and something inside you is just shouting, “YES! YES! That's what I want.” But … There's always a but. “But surely God would never do this for me. Nothing's ever going to change in my life. Okay He raised Lazarus from the dead. Okay He raised Jesus from the dead. That was a couple of thousand years ago. Okay God can do anything He wants but you know something, I just don't think He'd do it for me.” That's the crutch, isn't it? It's amazing. People can believe in a whole bunch of things. We can believe that God could forgive us. We can believe that Jesus rose from the dead. We can believe that we have eternal life. In a sense they're all easy because they can seem a long way off. But when we look at the very real issues and problems of life sometimes they're really big and ugly. Believing that God can intervene and make things better well, because these problems and issues are so close and sometimes when they're so close they look so big and God feels so far away, believing that God can make a difference. That can be a lot harder. Believing that he can deal with those yucky bits inside us, that can be even harder. I was an incredibly tough, self-centred businessman. I used to eat wimps for breakfast, you know. So when it came to believing all those other things about God and Jesus and stuff I knew straight away there was some tough things for me to deal with. And on top of it all I was going through a marriage breakdown and divorce. You think, 'surely not Berni'. Absolutely, that's when I came to faith in Jesus twelve years ago. That's life, That's my reality. I was listening the other day just to a high-profile businessman who I know really well and he was talking about his life. He took a company from nine million to over half a billion in turn over a few years ago. Everyone looked at him and thought, 'what a super star, what a corporate hero this man is'. But in secret he had his head down over a toilet bowl and he was coughing up blood because that's what the pressure was doing to him on the inside and he almost lost his marriage. The crazy thing you and I do, we all are prone to it. We look at outward signs of success. God, God looks at our hearts. He looks at the stuff that's going on on the inside and I love that about Him. You know something, if he isn't in the business of fixing those things, whatever they are (and yours and mine are bound to be different mind you,) then what’s the point? I mean if God isn't going to make a difference, if it doesn't work, what's the point? You know something, when we're in the middle of those things it's so hard, it's so incredibly hard to believe that he could ever come along and make a difference. You know what I mean or is it just me? The apostle Paul was writing to the Ephesian Church and he was busting to help them with exactly that, this is what he wrote almost two thousand years ago. He writes: I pray also that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened so that you would know the hope to which God's called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Jesus when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms far above any rule on earth. You see, Paul's saying here as you get to know God better, my prayer for you is that you would know that the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, that very same power is the power that's at work in you and that's a promise of God. Paul said, “I want you to know the hope, the riches and the power that you have, the incomparably great power, that power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that's at work in you and me”. A few years back I went to Toronto, Canada and I visited the CN tower which is the tallest, man-made, free standing structure in the world and part way up at 342 metres there's an observation deck. Now the trick with this observation deck, it's enclosed but it has a glass floor. Now they tell you that the glass floor is five times stronger than a concrete floor. Ha ha! Well that's great but it still doesn't help. I mean I looked down at this glass floor and I was petrified and it took me such a long time to go out there. It's an awful feeling when you look down between your feet and you see the ground way below and these little specks flying around, they're birds but they feel like they're miles away. And I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of people who were really scared to walk out on that glass floor even though the engineers will tell you the glass floor was five times stronger than the concrete floor. But here it is. If you or I want to be the “me” we were meant to be we have to walk out onto God's promises and put our faith in Him. Just like that glass floor. And okay, it's unknown and it maybe an uncomfortable feeling, it maybe unnatural to trust God with our lives. You see, people want to believe in Jesus from a distance and that's not what He wants us to do. He wants us to put our faith in Him. To put our trust in Him. To trust Him with our lives because His plan is to give us life in all it's abundance, hope and riches and power. The apostle Paul again in Galatians, chapter 2, verse 20 writes this, he says: I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me. Now then, a lot of Christians know that passage particularly well but this next bit is the one that I want to point to. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Let me say that again, "The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." Pretty safe to believe in Jesus from a distance and then we grumble and say, “How come I'm not living the life he meant me to have? How come I'm not being the “me” I was meant to be? How come I have a sense that I'm missing out on my destiny?” The answer is because you don't become the “me” you were meant to be until you have that relationship with Jesus and you trust him with your life and when you live the life in the body by faith in the Son of God. When we take a hold of that life, the life that He promises us, we discover what it is to be the ‘me’ we were meant to be. And it's a step of faith. We have to step out and believe it before we can see it. That’s His plan and, I know, sometimes it's hard to do and sometimes we're afraid and sometimes we feel like we don't have enough faith but just take the step, just take the step and say, "Jesus, I'm going to trust you with my life, with every little bit. With that difficult teenage kid, with the relationship I'm having with my wife or my husband, with the problem I'm having at work. I want you in that space because I want to trust that part of my life with you." He wants you and me to be the person He made us to be; to live life with an active faith in Jesus Christ. When we take that step out, He steps in and He does things we could never do. He deals with things we can never deal with and the reason He does it that way is so that you and I can never boast, “It was me. Haw, haw look what I did, I did it." I didn't. He did.
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Dead or Alive // Discover Your Destiny, Part 13
05/06/2026
Dead or Alive // Discover Your Destiny, Part 13
When we make a change – a real change for the better in our lives, it involves in effect dying to the old things and living in the new things. But try as we will, sometimes we can still be wrapped up in the old. I don't know if you've ever watched one of those old black and white westerns on TV, I grew up with them. There were the baddies and the goodies and then there was that ubiquitous wanted poster, you know the one that said “Wanted. Dead or Alive." Now if we really want to live life to the full, to live out our destiny, to be the me we were meant to be then we have to figure out what we're alive to and what we're dead to because so often, things that look like they'll bring us life end up poisoning us and the things that we think are too much trouble, too hard, they're the ones that bring us life. It's true in sport, it's true in work, it's true in life itself. When I was age 36, about 12 years ago now, I knew I wasn't being the ‘me’ I was meant to be. I had a lot of potential but somehow never seemed to fulfil it, always it seemed to allude my grasp. I was running an Information Technology Consulting business and we had some really clever people, we were really good at what we did. But the business never quite seemed to blossom the way it should have. It did eventually after I gave my life to Jesus. In that process of change, letting go of my old ways and taking hold of the new ones, I had to figure out that I was going to be dead to some old things and alive to some new ones. I had to believe what God had to say about me and take hold of his new life that he'd given me. I had to die to some things. To sin. In Romans chapter 6, verse 2 it says: What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace might increase? By no means! We are dead to sin, how can we live in it any longer. The past. If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation, old things have passed away and look, everything is new. I had to die to myself and my selfishness. For we know that our old self was crucified with Jesus so that our sin might be done away with so that we're no longer slaves to sin because anyone who has died is freed from sin, to the law, the whole rule based attitude to religion. For sin shall not be a master because you aren't bound by the law anymore but you're walking in God’s grace. So my brothers you are dead to the law through the body of Christ and dead to be dead to the devil. Now I don't know whether you believe the devil exists, I do because Jesus did but I'm dead to him because God has rescued me from the dominion of darkness and brought me to the kingdom of light. We have to start believing what God has to say about all this stuff, about sin, about dying to the past, about dying to ourselves, about doing away with rule based religion, about dying to the devil. I had so much sin in my life, there was so much stuff there I didn't know where to begin. Self, I was so full of myself, an ego the size of a small planet and my past was full of so many hurts and mistakes. And I was so prone to sort of a dreary, legalistic, rule bound approach to religion. You know we have been transferred. Jesus paid a huge price. A great story told by Nicky Gumble who does the Alpha course. (If you've ever been involved, it's a great course to do.) And Nicky Gumble talks about the European footballers. You know when they get transferred from one team to another team a huge amount of money changes hands in transfer fees, millions of pounds are paid to transfer a footballer from one team to another team. But once the footballers gone to the new team, he plays for them. He wears their colours. He goes to their training sessions. If the old coach from the old team rang him up and said, "Where are you for training?" He would say, "Well, I've transferred to a new team. I go to the new team’s training now." When we make a change – a real change for the better in our lives, it involves in effect dying to the old things and living in the new things. But try as we will, sometimes we can still be wrapped up in the old. And it's the same thing what Jesus did for you and me on the cross. We've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. We don't play with the old team anymore. We don't train with the old team anymore. We don't wear it's colours anymore. We're on His team and He paid for all. He laid his life down so that you and I would be forgiven and have a clean start in the kingdom of light. Wondering why I can't be the me I'm meant to be? Wondering why it's not working for me? How come my life is not going where I want it to go? Well, are we dead to this old stuff? Have we said, “I'm on a new team; I'm playing for a new team. I'm not going to this old stuff anymore. I'm alive to some new things, I'm alive to Christ”? I've been crucified with Christ and it's no longer 'I live' but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20) I'm alive to the Holy Spirit because through Christ Jesus, the spirit of life, has set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8) I'm alive to God the Father. Jesus said: If anyone loves me they'll obey my commandments and my Dad and I will love them and we will come and make our home with them. (John 14) I'm alive to grace and truth. Jesus became a man and dwelt among us and we've seen his glory, the glory as of the only one of the Father full of grace and truth. We're alive to righteousness, peace and joy. The word isn't about food or drink or physical things, it's about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. It's like this, you know, if you have two dogs, a big black one, a Doberman and a small little white one, the question is, which one is going to grow up stronger? And the answer is, the one you end up feeding. You know it doesn't matter what area of life, if we want to achieve something we have to give some things up. It's normally about giving up short term gratification for longer term gain. When I was a kid growing up, my parents made me learn the piano. To tell you the truth a lot of the time when I was young I just hated having to go to practice, it drove me nuts. Today? Today I can sit down at the piano and make it sing and it brings me such enormous delight to sit down at the grand piano my Mum gave me and to play it and to worship God and to enjoy it. Whether it's dieting or exercise or saving or learning all of those things, good things cost us something. You want to lose weight you have to die to the chocolate bar and come alive to some healthy foods and exercise. You want to save up for a deposit for a house; you have to go without some things today that you'd like in order to have the money to pay the deposit on the house. You'd like to study and get a degree; you have to give up some money and some leisure time now to get there. You want to live an amazing life, an abundant life? You want to be the me you were meant to be? It's time to die to some things. There are some things in our lives that stop us from being the “me” we were meant to be. Maybe it's anger, maybe it's a sense of unforgiveness, maybe, maybe it's a nasty attitude, maybe it's a selfish attitude. I mean, there are so many things they're like, they're like grave clothes that we’re wrapped in. Jesus came to give us this new life but we're not living it because we've still got one foot in the grave. Maybe this isn't the message you wanted to hear today but deep in your heart you're going, “You know something, I think God might be talking to me today. I think God might be putting His finger on exactly what it is that's stopping me from being the me I was meant to be.” God has a plan, He designed you, He dreamt you up, He hand crafted you, you are His workmanship. He has a plan. He has a whole bunch of good things for you to walk into but it's not going to happen while we've got one foot in the grave.
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Living Life to the Full (2) // Discover Your Destiny, Part 12
05/05/2026
Living Life to the Full (2) // Discover Your Destiny, Part 12
It’s one thing to believe in Jesus and to believe in eternal life – but there are people walking around who believe that stuff, yet somehow they’re not quite living the life that He promised us for here and now. You know, I reckon if there is a God, I mean if God is God then he is going to want us to live life to the full. I mean outrageously, abundantly to the full. Not a two out of ten, not a seven out of ten, a minimum of ten out of ten and then some. That doesn't mean there won't be ups and downs, there always will be. But I don't know, my hunch is he'd want us to live a life of outrageous joy right here through the ups and the downs. But I know so many people, people who believe in Jesus and people who don't, who seem to be living a two or a five or a seven out of ten kind of life always with this nagging sense of destiny that there's something more for them but never really get in close to that. Me? I want to be the ‘me’ I was meant to be, how about you? And yet there's an amazing portrait of that kind of half-life, not really complete life, in the Bible. Yesterday we looked at the story of Lazarus, that he was dying, he was a good mate of Jesus, they came to tell Jesus “Lazarus is about to kick to bucket.” And Jesus waits a few days before he goes to Lazarus. And do you know what everyone says when he gets there? "Jesus, how come you didn't get here sooner? You could have healed him." I mean they'd seen Jesus do healing stuff. It's a bit like us, we look at Jesus sometimes and God and we look at the mess we have in life and we say, “God, how can you dish this up to me? Why didn't you come earlier? You could have made it better”. Jesus said to the people, “You know something, I'm glad I didn't get there because God is about to make a point and to do something you don't expect”. Everyone wanted Jesus to have fixed the problem before Lazarus died but Jesus said to his disciples, "Lazarus is dead and for your sake I'm glad I wasn't there so that you might believe. Come on, let’s go to him." So no-one could see it. Jesus was saying it to Martha, his sister. He said, "Your brother will rise again." And Martha said, "I know he'll rise in the resurrection on the last day." So she doesn't get it, she's happy to believe in "pie in the sky when you die" not "steak on the plate while you wait". Let's pick up the story and just read the story, if you have a Bible you can go to it, it's John chapter 11 and it begins at verse 38: Jesus was deeply moved when he came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. "Take away the stone" he said. "But Lord," said Martha the sister of Lazarus, "By this time there's a bad odour, I mean he's been dead for four days." And Jesus said, "Didn't I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God." I love that, "If you believed you would see the glory of God." So they took away the stone and then Jesus looked up and said, "Father I thank You that you heard me, I always knew that You would but I'm saying this for the benefit of the people around me, they might believe that You sent me." And when he said this Jesus said in a loud voice, "Lazarus come on out!" The dead man came out. His hands and feet were wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth was around his face and Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." Jesus was deeply moved. I mean, he loved Lazarus, He cared for him. He was a good mate. He wept for him. So it's not some publicity stunt but it's a tender encounter and people were thinking, 'well, what's Jesus doing? He can't do this I mean Lazarus is dead, Lazarus is on the nose'. I reckon we have to be careful about telling God what He can't do, about putting God in this little box. Imagining somehow that he could never bring Lazarus back to life, imagining somehow he could never really bring life back into us. You see all these people, Martha, Mary, the disciples, all the others, they'd seen Jesus do amazing miracles, they knew him. Yet they didn't believe that he could bring a man to life. But he did. But look at the picture of Lazarus when he walks out of the tomb. "Lazarus, come out" said Jesus. "The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face." You see, Lazarus was bound up in his grave clothes and this is a picture that looks like a lot of people that I know, living this half-life. On the one hand, Jesus has spoken a word of life into them, on the other they're still bound up in their grave clothes, bound up in the things of the past. When Lazarus walked out of that tomb, beneath those grave clothes he was living and breathing, there was colour in his cheeks but he couldn't go living the rest of his life in those grave clothes and the same is true for us. Some people have life from Jesus and yet they have one foot in the past, in that dead half-life that didn't work, one foot in Jesus’ new life kind of hoping things will work out and they never quite do it. You know something, there's a reason for that, you can't live your life wrapped in grave clothes. Let me say that again, you can't live your life wrapped in grave clothes. If we believe in Jesus we're like Lazarus, we have colour in our cheeks, he's breathed life into our souls yet people want to hang on to the things of the past, it just doesn't work. What sort of life do you think it would have been for Lazarus if he had continued on in those grave clothes? And anyway that wasn't Jesus' plan for him, look at what Jesus says. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." You like that last bit? "Let him go. Set him free; set him free to be the Lazarus I meant him to be.” Being the “me” I was meant to be is a “boots and all thing”. “Oh, you know Berni but I want to hang on to this compromise or that attitude, I still want to cheat or lie or be tight with my money or not serve other people and I want to be selfish because you know, all this Jesus stuff is not particularly convenient”. Great! Great, stay in your grave clothes but don't expect to be the me you were meant to be because you can't be. The alternative is to set our hearts like flint on being the “me” we were meant to be no matter the cost. You know there is a cost? There is a cost for a heroin addict to give up heroin, there is a cost for an alcoholic to give up alcohol, there is a cost for a smoker to give up smoking. The first step is admitting where we are and the second step is deciding, here and now, “you know something, that joker on the radio has a point, I have to do something. I can't live my life in these grave clothes anymore and you know our grave clothes are all different.” For some people, it might be lying and cheating, for other people it might be gossiping, for other people it might just be an attitude of selfishness. You look in the mirror and you know what it is. If you want to be the “me” you were meant to be, you’ve gotta do what Jesus said. Take off the grave clothes 'cause that's what sets you free. And Jesus is the one who does that. We can come to him and say, "Lord, I just heard this message and you know something? I've got some grave clothes happening in my life, I've got one foot back in that half-life and I recognise that and I don't know what to do about it and I want you to help me". That's the starting point. That invitation for Jesus is when he steps in and He starts taking control and He deals with the things we can't deal with. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions and sometimes we have to ditch some things to get on with life. The choice belongs to each one of us.
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Living Life to the Full (1) // Discover Your Destiny, Part 11
05/04/2026
Living Life to the Full (1) // Discover Your Destiny, Part 11
You know, it can sometimes be easier to believe in eternal life, than the fact that God wants to give us a rich, abundant life here and now. What do you think? It's great to be with you again this week and we continue on with a series that I've called, “Discover Your Destiny”. Can I ask you something? Are you really living life to the full? I mean really. So many people are struggling to discover their destiny and okay, maybe life's chugging along okay but we all have a sense that, well somehow I have a destiny, a life I'm supposed to live, a “me” I'm meant to be. Now I don't apologise for the fact that over the last couple of weeks we've been unpacking that from A Different Perspective, from God’s perspective. I just passionately believe that He so wants each one of us to discover when we have a relationship with Him, a real relationship you know, that all of a sudden we can be the “me” we were meant to be. To, in a sense, die to the old me and rise as a new one. Now I love how Jesus tackled that when his good friend Lazarus upped and died on him. It's a powerful story the story of Lazarus. It's about a real man who died and whom Jesus bought back to life again. Now there's something in that story, I always like to look at what Jesus did and say, "What does it tell me about Him? What does it tell me about God? What does it tell me about God’s attitude?" And it does tell us what he means for us here and now today. For me the story of Lazarus has had a powerful impact on my life, day to day. Now there are two parts to the story, we'll look at the first half today and the next one tomorrow on the program. So let’s have a bit of a read, if you have a Bible you can grab it. John, chapter 11 is where you'll find this story: Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Now this Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who previously poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sister sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love, Lazarus, is sick." When he heard this Jesus said, "The sickness won't end in death. No, it's for Gods glory so that Gods Son might be glorified through it." Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was for two more days then he said to his disciples, "Well okay, let’s get up and go to Judea." "But Jesus,” they said, "A short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you and yet you're going back." And Jesus answered, "Aren't there twelve hours of daylight in a day? A man who walks by day won't stumble for he sees the worlds light; it's when he walks by night that he stumbles for he has no light." After he said this he went on to tell them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep but I'm going there to wake him up again." Now his disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps he'll get better." Jesus had been speaking of his death but the disciples thought he meant that Lazarus was just asleep. So then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead and for your sake I'm glad I wasn't there so that you may believe but let us go to him." An interesting story, Lazarus a good mate of Jesus is dying. Jesus could have prevented it, he could have gone there and healed Lazarus, I mean that's why they sent for him, everyone had seen Jesus do this healing stuff but he didn't go because God was going to use this to make a point, a point I think at a couple of levels. The first level is purely to attest to who Jesus is, the power of Jesus because as we'll see tomorrow, ultimately Jesus brings Lazarus back to life again but I think there's a second point, a deeper point, a point that speaks to you and me, here and now. That God is in the business of bringing the dead back to life. The last couple of weeks we've dealt with an issue that, well so many of us don't really want to deal with head on – sin. I mean in our society sin is a four-letter word. The stuff in our lives we know is wrong that robs us of life itself. When I look back on my life as a wealthy, apparently successful businessman, on the outside people envied me, I seemed to have it all together, I seemed to have it all but on the inside I was dying, I was dead and empty and hollow just like a shell, truly. I described myself as a dead man walking. You know something, doesn't matter how much we deny it or try and put a respectable face to it or sell it as a feature of our freedom to do whatever we want. Sin does that to all of us, it makes us dead inside and that's how God sees us, that's how we are until we encounter this Jesus. At this point someone might be saying, 'come on Berni, what an old-fashioned point of view.' If you're in that camp I encourage you to do something, take a look, a good hard look at the way that you're living your life and ask yourself, am I being the me I was meant to be? God lets us go through this death that sin is, God lets us be that 'dead man walking' for a reason. It's the same as with Lazarus, Jesus waited for him to die before bringing him back to life again. God wanted to make a point that he is in the new life business and it's a miracle and he needed to make the point because sometimes we just don't get it, I didn't and nor did Lazarus' sisters. Let's take a look: On his arrival Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem and many Jews came to Mary and Martha to comfort them. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming she went out to meet him and Mary stayed at home. "Lord”, Martha said to him, "If you'd been here, if you'd only been here earlier Lazarus wouldn't have died”. And Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again”. And Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection on that last day”. Jesus said to her, "I'm the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? And she said, "Yes Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into the world." And after she had said this she went back and called her sister Mary. "The teacher Jesus is here”. She said, "He's asking for you”. When Mary heard this she quickly got up and went out to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered their village but was still in the place out where Martha and he had met. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house comforting her noticed how quickly she got up and went out they followed her thinking that she was going to the tomb to mourn there for Lazarus. When Mary reached Jesus and saw him she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if only you had been here my brother wouldn't have died." And when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along, also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. "Where have you laid him?" "Come and see Lord." And Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, "See Jesus loved Lazarus.” But some of them said, "Couldn't he who opened the eyes of the blind have come and kept this man from dying.” Nobody was expecting Jesus to come along and raise Lazarus from the dead, they were all regretting the fact that Jesus didn't get there earlier to heal him. They'd seen Jesus do healing stuff; they'd never seen Jesus bring a man back to life. The sisters knew Jesus, they'd seen the miracles, they couldn’t imagine how here and now, Jesus could bring their brother back to life and isn't that sometimes the way with us. We look at our lives and we see how dead things are inside and we look at God and say, "God, why didn't you show up earlier? Why did you let me marry this person? Why did you let this happen to my child? Why couldn't you have been there and stopped it from happening? And we can't imagine how God could breathe new life into that situation. We can believe he could have done something back there, we can believe that one day we will rise again and have eternal life but it can be so hard to believe that Jesus could come and bring a new life today. Let me ask you, what do you believe?
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Becoming Who I Already Am // Discover Your Destiny, Part 10
05/01/2026
Becoming Who I Already Am // Discover Your Destiny, Part 10
I passionately believe that God has the most amazing plan for your life and mine. In His heart He conceived us and with His hands – He made us who we are. And He wants us to be the person He made us to be. Over these last couple of weeks on the program we’ve just been spending some time discovering your destiny. Survey after survey tells us that 75% of people don’t enjoy their work. I wonder how many of those are trying to do a job they just weren’t cut out to do, it’s just not them. And yet it’s not hard to see how different we each are. Some people are great working with children for instance. Me? That would drive me crazy – all that noise and running around. No. Not me. Other people are great with their hands – they seem to be able to turn all these pieces of wood into a house somehow – I wouldn’t know where to begin. Some people are great at sports and athletics – hmmm I love to stay fit, but I can’t throw and catch and kick all that well. It’s as plain as the nose on your face and mine that people are all made to be different. And what is such a tragedy – we’ve talked a little bit about this already so far this week – is people trying to do things that they’re just not cut out to do. A child at school who is great at creative writing – but terrible at mathematics. So – what do we do? We make them work harder at their mathematics, instead of encouraging them to go with the creative writing thing that we’re good at. Of course, we all have to do a few things that we’re not good at from time to time, but if we end up majoring in those things, it’s a disaster. When I left school I was accepted into a medicine degree – I would have made a terrible doctor, and a law degree – and same with being a lawyer because the law is all about detail and I’m not into detail. So – pardon me for saying so, but blind Freddie can see that we have all been made differently. I’m a fairly unemotional person – it’s not that I don’t care about people. I do, deeply, I’m just not an emotional person. I’m not into hugs and kisses from people the way others are. I don’t tend to feel other people’s pain, instead I want to do things that help them not feel the pain. That’s how I’m wired. And it took me a long time – a very long time – to get comfortable inside my skin, to get comfortable with who I am, and stop trying to be like other people are. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said – Be yourself, Everybody else is already taken. Pretty good thought that. Okay baby is born right, what does it grow up to be? It grows into who it already is, let me explain. A little baby gets born, it can’t even go to the toilet on its own, it can’t feed itself, it can’t protect itself – in fact it can’t do anything pretty much except eat, sleep, scream and dirty it’s nappy. So …is it any less a human being than you and me? Well, no of course not, this little bubs is just in an early stage of life and just like we all did, it goes through all stages. It begins to recognise and smile at its parents and the psyche develops and it grows an awareness and it crawls and walks and it becomes a toddler and it goes to school and becomes a teenager and then an adult, it’s a natural progression. What is it that influences who that little baby becomes when it grows up? Well two things, firstly its natural disposition, its abilities, who God made that child to be and secondly, the things that happen along the way. Now some of those things along the way are positive, some of those things like the good parents who love you and good teachers at school. Those things develop the child’s natural abilities, but some of the things that happen rob the person, rob the child, give it a wrong impression of itself. You see bad things will always happen to good people, they do, they always have and they always will. But if we know who we are and if we let God into our lives to be with us, to develop us, to care for us, to nurture us, those bad things instead of robbing us end up enhancing our characters. The negatives get turned into a positive. The problem is so many people never get with God’s plan for who they are. For years I tried to be all things to all people, I set myself up to be this and set myself up to be that because I thought it would make me look important and good. But it wasn’t until I got with God’s plan and started seeing myself the way he sees me that I really started being the me I was meant to be. God made me to be doing what I’m doing right now spending this time with you. I’m never as happy and as fulfilled as when I’m sitting here with you. A friend of mine, a Pastor, once said to me, “You know Berni, you should be more pastoral than that.” In other words, you should be around lots more people and you should do this and you should do that and you should be this. And I love people but think about it, much of what I do is I prepare these programs alone and then I come into a studio basically alone. Okay millions of people are listening around the world but they’re not in this room with me right now. If God made me to be someone who needed to be around a lot of people, don’t you think I’d get awfully lonely doing what I do? He didn’t so I don’t. Who are you? Who did God make you to be? Maybe you’re just one of those people who loves entertaining and having a house full of people over all the time. That’s a gift, go and be that person, go and grow into that, go and love it and enjoy it and be the person who God meant you to be. Maybe, maybe you’re a quiet, backroom kind of person who does things, book keeping or cleaning or cooking and you know, when you’re doing those things you feel so fulfilled, can I tell you something? Go for it, if that’s what God made you to be, don’t compare with other people, grow in that, develop that, be delighted with who God made you. When we compare ourselves with others, we aspire to be someone who we aren’t, who we were never made to be and come on – that’s just plain crazy. I’m excited about who God’s made me to be – and I focus on the things I’m really good at, try to grow in areas where I’m still a bit immature … and leave the stuff I’m not good at to other people – people who actually love doing those things because they’re good at them. It’s not really that complicated, is it? Eph 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good things that God prepared beforehand for us to walk into. That’s exactly what God’s Word says – do the things that God prepared for you – not the things that other people want you to do. God knows who we are, he made us and he made us to be the me we were meant to be. Right now in this instant, His heart and His eyes are on you and me and He knows who He made us to be and He is delighting in us. Wake up! It is time to stop trying to be someone else, it is time to stop trying to squeeze into the world’s mould, into a shape that doesn’t fit, into something that ultimately becomes a distressing straight jacket. He wants each one of us to be the person He meant us to be. I am so excited because God has a plan, he has a plan for me, he has a plan for you. And we only discover who we’re meant to be - it only happens when we get right up close to him, when we have a relationship with him through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.” And you know? You’re going to grow different fruit to me ‘cause that’s how Jesus made us. And if you want to grow the fruit that you were meant to grow in your life, you need to get right up close with Him. His word and His Spirit in a rich and dynamic relationship that’s so wondrous and so huge and so safe and secure and at the same time exciting, then and only then can we be the me we were meant to be. I’d like to encourage you just right now, look at your life, are you being the me God made you to be? Because if you’re not he wants to change that for you today. God wants you to get close to him so that you can live out the life he planned for you.
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Discovering My Gift // Discover Your Destiny, Part 9
04/30/2026
Discovering My Gift // Discover Your Destiny, Part 9
So many people compare themselves with others and come to the conclusion – Well, I’m not much good for anything. But each one of us has a gift. An ability. Something that’s just ….well, us! Now I don't know if you've ever lived in a house where someone's learning the violin but those first few years were diabolical – the screeching and the out of tune, and its all so loud. It was just awful. Now Corrie became a great pianist and violinist but the first few years were ugly let me tell you. And of course my clarinet playing was just fabulous right from the beginning!! The point is though when we first try something often we're not good at it. We have to persist for a while to discover whether it's our gig or not. But I wonder if that isn't why so many people are wandering around the world with this notion that they're not good at anything. I think we all have a sense of wanting to fulfil our destiny, doing the things we're meant to do, achieving the things we're meant to achieve and being the person we're meant to be. But the more I talk to people the more I discover how many aren't happy with who they are. These two weeks, ten programs are not some kind of systematic ten steps to happiness thing, just some stories and some anecdotes and things to stimulate our thinking, get us with Gods’ plan for who he made us to be. I spent a good many years of my life comparing myself with other people, here's how it goes. You look at all the people you know and you pick all their good points up, 'he's athletic and good looking, and she's really intelligent, and he's caring, and she's so perceptive about people, boy he's got such great hand-eye co-ordination, that couple over there everyone seems to like them. He is such a good cook, she has her house so tidy, they have such well behaved kids.' You see what's going on here, we construct some super human unreality which is a composite of the very best points of everyone we know and then when we don't live up to that, all of a sudden, 'Ah, I'm a failure'. Never mind that everybody we know is good a some things and not at others, never mind that each one of those people has weaknesses as well as strengths. We tend to construct an unrealistic image of who we should be and then we spend a lifetime, fuelled by the advertising industry - with all these images of success - we spend a lifetime trying to live up to something that no-one can ever be or live. I wonder if we did a stock take of our strengths and weaknesses maybe sit down with a few people who really know us well whether we would look at that and go, "That's not a bad plus and minus ledger, you know, okay there are some things here I'm not very good at but actually there's one or two things here, oh, that’s really my gig, that's my shtick, that's what I do." I mean my strengths are, I have a high IQ it's just the way God made me, I'm a communicator and a story teller and I tend to handle conflict pretty well. I mean I spent 20 years as an objective advisor, as a consultant. I tend to be outcome focused so I deliver things on time. So I've got some things on the positive side of my ledger but I've got weaknesses too like I'm not good at a whole bunch of administrative detail. I'm not as perceptive about other people as I could be, and in my rush to deliver an outcome I can have a tendency to roll over the top of people. I'm not someone to have lots and lots of people around me all the time; I tend to feel crowded. You see the picture? We're a bundle, a composite of assets and not liabilities, but things we may not be so good at. The thing that I've discovered is I need to play to my strengths and team up with people whose strengths plug the gaps of my weaknesses and vice versa. Not everyone else has my strengths, that's why I'm useful in a team. The Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter 12 wrote this he said: "By the grace given to me let me say this to you, don't think of yourself more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God's given you. Just as each one of us has a body with many members these members don't all have the same function and so in Jesus, we who are many form one body, each member belongs to the other. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us, if your gift is in prophesying, then do that in proportion with the faith that God has given you. If it's in serving then for goodness sake go and serve. If your gift is teaching go and teach. If your gift is encouragement go and encourage people, if it's contributing to the needs of others giving well for goodness sake give generously and if it's leadership then lead diligently and if it's showing mercy then go and do it cheerfully." Isn't that beautiful? I love this passage and I come back to it often because what it says here in God’s word, this is God talking to us, that's what I believe. It says 'look you can go and think of yourselves either too highly or too lowly'. There is nothing worse than when you see someone who aspires to doing something or being something and you look at them and think, 'it's just not them'. If you could see me I'm 5 foot 9.5 right, 174 cm if you think in metric. I may want to be a basketball player, I don't, but if I did I could never be a basketball player, you know why? I'm too short and it doesn't matter how much I hope I could be a great basketball player, when you're up against 6.5 to 7 foot basketball players you're just not going to cut the mustard. It is so sad to see people to aspire to something they just can't do. And one of the things I see a lot in what I do is a whole bunch of people aspire to be preachers because somehow they think, 'ooh, that's a really good up front thing to do.' Well actually it's a pretty hard gig and you should only do it if that's your calling and your gifting. Paul's saying here, "The body has many members; each one belongs to all the others." When we get comfortable with our strengths and our weaknesses, with who we are, it is such an exciting thing because you know what? We're not threatened anymore, we're not touchy anymore, we can relax. We can enjoy the things that we're good at and let other people do the things we're not good at. Now there are always going to be some things in our lives we have to do that we don't enjoy doing. For me in the ministry of Christianityworks there's the overall management, the finances and the administration and all those things that have to happen in order for these programs to come to you. Are those administrative things my first love? No, but I need to do them and one day we'll have someone else to run those for us, "But Berni what I really enjoy being is a mum. Just seeing my kids grow up, that’s all." As though that's not one of the most important things on the planet, “Well Berni, you know I'm only an accountant." WHAT! That's fabulous, I could never be an accountant. We need accountants. When we pick something up, a violin even and put it into God’s hands, when we're being the me we're meant to be it is just the most awesome thing and so many people spend their lives doing jobs, aspiring to things that they just aren't. I'm not saying set low standards, I'm not saying don't aim high, I'm someone who always aims high, always think big but you know I don't think big about being a basketball player. What I think big about is doing the things that God made me to do and when we persist and get good at them, it's so wonderful to be the ‘me’ we were meant to be. Not someone else’s 'me' but my ‘me’ and your ‘me’. ©
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Being Happy With Who I Am // Discover Your Destiny, Part 8
04/29/2026
Being Happy With Who I Am // Discover Your Destiny, Part 8
So many people aren’t happy with who they are. But – well, what if God is? What if God looks at you and is the most delighted Dad in the universe? And what if we saw ourselves the way He does? As I look around at people, big, small, black, white, young, old … what I see is an awful lot of people who aren’t happy with their lot in life. And as you talk to them, what it often comes down to is not that they’re not happy with their lot and the things that are going on –although that’s sometimes part of it – but something much deeper going on. Because more often than not, they’re not happy with who they are. Yesterday on the program we chatted about the fact, that often, that’s because we feel we don’t measure up to what the world expects of us but today, I’d like to go even deeper than that again. Let me ask you, forgetting everything that goes on around you, when you’re alone in a quiet room, completely alone, do you like who you are? Are you excited about who you are… your potential? Do you enjoy your own company? Or are you one of these people who can’t stand to see themselves in a photograph or in a mirror? Every now and then I think to myself, “it’s time to get right in your face about something”, and today’s one of those days. I mean, I don’t mean to shove anything down your throat, that’s never my intention but I don’t know, I just feel that today it’s time to really challenge you about how you see yourself. I’m someone who for many, many years, in fact the first 36 years of my life, appeared to be so confident on the outside. I have to tell you, everyone who ever met me thought to themselves, ‘this guy is so confident’. But on the inside, which after all is where we live and where we feel and where we laugh and where we cry, I wasn’t happy with who I was. People would never have guessed it, because in my confidence I used to roll over the top of them. I’m not talking about the things that we do but who we actually are. As a woman by the name of Joyce Meyer says, “It’s not our do that I’m talking about but our who.” I didn’t like my “who”, I didn’t like myself and you know the more I tried to pump myself up in my own eyes and in the eyes of others, somehow the lower I sank in my own estimation. Don’t get me wrong, I mean I’m blessed, I have a good IQ, I love communicating, I’m good at that … but, I don’t know, I just never liked myself and do you know when that changed? For me, it was the day, the very day that I gave myself over, my whole life, every hope and every dream, everything to Jesus Christ. From that moment onward on a bright sunny day on the 15th of October, 1995, under a gum tree outside a Church in my home town, age 36, I knew I was okay. Like I said – I’m not here to shove anything down your throat – I’m just telling you how it was for me. I’ve thought a lot about this and I thought why did it happen like that? It’s one of those things that changed in an instant for me, why? This is such a deep thing. My own self-image had been plaguing me for years and years. How could it change in an instant? So far as I can see, there’s only one answer because on that day I felt accepted and I felt loved in a whole new way, at a whole different level. Different people believe different things. That’s the way the world is. So – whatever you believe – let me ask you this? Does your belief system, does your faith – whatever that is – make you feel loved and accepted? Does it bring healing to that deep, nagging suspicion that you’re not good enough? Does it bring you into a place where you are truly happy and content with who you are? I never used to be able to look at myself in a photo without cringing. I recently had a photo shoot, something I have to do from time to time, to get some images to use on websites and in the back of my books, that sort of thing. And when the photos came back, I looked at them and I was really happy with what I saw. I’m never going to win a beauty competition, you understand. No modelling agency is ever going to call me to become a male model – that’s because I’m just a pretty ordinary looking kind of man. But as I looked at those photos, I smiled, because I realised that I now like myself. Sometimes I make mistakes – I don’t like that. So I get up and learn, and work on my weaknesses. But fundamentally, these days, I’m really happy with who I am … and indeed with who I’m not. I didn’t become Mr Perfect overnight and all my faults and all my failures and all my weaknesses didn’t disappear in an instant, it’s not how it works. It’s a process, you know I was this tough, hard-nosed, brutal businessman and when you’re that it takes time to develop compassion and to learn to forgive and to understand other people, that didn’t happen overnight but the thing that happened for me though, I knew God accepted me just as I was and that even though I could see all the things I’d done wrong, that I was completely forgiven. He came to me and said, “Now, that you have a new beginning let me help you to change.” That’s the thing, I thought if God sees me that way maybe it’s time for me to see me that way and still today there are some things that I’m really good at and others that I’m just not and I may never be. Some of the things that come naturally to you, I’ll never be able to do it’s unconditional love that brought me to a point with all my heart, I’m delighted to be who I am. I often say to my wife, Jacqui, “I’m so glad I’m me, I never want to be anyone else.” That is a gift from God because I never liked me before. Let me get in your face and ask you a question, is it time for you to ask yourself do I see myself the way God does? Do I love me in the right way, not proud and arrogant but in a humble delight in who he made me to be? Because how can you and I possibly ever be the me we were meant to be and live the life we were created to live, if we don’t like who we are. When we compare ourselves to other people and think – Wow, I wish I was like him, or I wish I was like her … we’re completely missing the point. Completely. I will never be a basketball player, because I’m too short. I will never be a surgeon, because I don’t have the skill in my hands. I will never be a pop star, because I can’t sing. But what I can be, is the best me that I can possibly be. And you know something – that’s just fine with me. And the reason it’s fine with me is that I was handcrafted by God and the love that He’s shown me is the unconditional love of Jesus … Jesus His one and only Son, who died so that I might be forgiven. We can’t truly be happy with who we are, until we know beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus died to pay for all our shortcomings and failings and because the price is fully paid, we can now stand before God completely forgiven, completely whole, completely loved. And if you’ve ever stood in that place – with your faith in Jesus … Jesus alone – you will know that the acceptance of God is what makes you whole. The love and acceptance of God – is what sets us free to see ourselves through His eyes. Lord God, you created our innermost being, you knit us together in our mother’s womb, we praise you ‘cause we are fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are so wonderful. We weren’t hidden from you when we were made in that secret place, when we were woven together in the depths of the earth; your eyes saw our unformed substance. All the days ordained for us, they were already written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Father, we just want to pray right now and say that we need to know how much you love us. We want to see ourselves through your eyes because as we put our faith in Jesus Christ dear God we believe that he died to pay for our sin on that cross and that he rose again and so we put our faith in him and we know that we are whole and clean and pure and perfect in your sight ‘cause that’s what Jesus purchased for us on the cross. Father, we pray that you would make each one of us so delighted with who we are because that’s what you chose us to be and Lord, we know we’re making mistakes and we know that we need your help in those mistakes but right now Father God, by the gift of the cross, would make us just so delighted with who you have made us to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen
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Don't Be Squeezed into the World's Mould // Discover Your Destiny, Part 7
04/28/2026
Don't Be Squeezed into the World's Mould // Discover Your Destiny, Part 7
Everyone and everything seems to want to tell us who we should be and how we should live. It’s like the world is trying to squeeze us into its mould. The problem is – we don’t fit. It never ceases to amaze me how the rest of the world wants to kind of squeeze us into its own mould. It tells us that we’ll only be happy if we buy this particular product. We’re only really right if we agree with the things that other people think. We’re only really valuable if we’re wealthy and attractive. We’ve only really succeeded if we have all those things that everybody else wants, but never really makes them happy. Have you ever tried to put on someone else’s prescription glasses? It just doesn’t work does it? In fact it can end up making you feel sick and dizzy, because those glasses weren’t made for you, they were made for someone else and that someone else is different to you. And have you ever tried on someone else’s clothes? You know someone else who is obviously quite a different shape to you. Well they’re not going to fit too well are they? Have you ever tried to do someone else’s job, I mean, someone who has quite different skills to you? Well we’re not going to be able to do too well at that are we? So why is it that the world wants to keep squeezing us into its mold, remaking us in its image instead of letting us, encouraging us to be who we are? Blind Freddy can see it just ain’t going to work. Last week and this week on the program we’re chatting about “Discovering Your Destiny”. And it’s pretty obvious that you and I are not going to fulfil our destinies, if we keep trying to dance to someone else’s tune. Pretty obvious isn’t it? So why is it that so many of us care so much about what other people think? Why is it that so many of us keep wanting to please others to the point where their expectations rob us of our identity and our destiny? When I was growing up, I always felt so different. I was never any good at sport, running and jumping and ball co-ordination, it’s just not me and yet I grew up in Australia which is a sports mad society where we idolise and worship our sports superstars. The teachers and the other kids made me feel like a complete failure. On top of that I have a very high IQ; I mean I’m academically very strong. Other kids may not have been, so they’d ridiculed me for being a geek. I was a veracious learner, I love learning. Imagine how the other kids reacted to that, particularly since I was no good at sport. Instead I was a musician, give me a piano and I can make it sing, I love playing but you couldn’t get any farther away from sport so that made things even worse. Now I can see what was going on – the world was trying to squeeze me into its mould, instead of encouraging me to be who I was meant to be. So I grew up with this really uncomfortable feeling that I just didn’t fit, I was different and you know we all like to fit in, we all like to be liked especially when we’re young. That’s my story and I’m sure you have your own story and my hunch is, to a greater or lesser degree, we all have this sense that somehow we don’t quite fit and when we don’t fit, the world tells us, ‘you’re no good, you don’t measure up. There must be something wrong with you,’ and we carry around this burden. Some people carry it round all their lives. Low self-esteem is going around in plague proportions and this is what it’s all about, “I don’t fit”. Have you ever asked yourself, what exactly you don’t fit into?’ Here it is – you don’t fit into someone else’s mould, into what other people say or think you should be, what perhaps you think you should be when you look at all those beautiful people whose whole persona seems to scream out at you, “you should be like me.” I don’t know what it is but we all want people to be like us, to have the same outlook, to agree with us, to behave in the same way. Wouldn’t life be a whole lot easier if we were all the same? You are it would – but imagine how boring this world would be if everyone was like me, or everyone was like you.. The Apostle Paul knew that a couple of thousand years ago. Here’s what he writes in the book of Romans Chapter 12 in the New Testament: Look, don’t go conforming to the pattern of this world. In other words don’t let the world squeeze you into it’s mould but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you’ll be able to know what God’s will is and agree with him, his good and pleasing and perfect will. People often want us to say and be and think and behave and live according to some set of standards or rules that they’ve come up with. Expectations that people have dreamt up and Paul says, ‘NO, don’t go there, don’t let the world stuff you into its mould because you are never going to fit – do you get it?” Last week and I’ll just like to read a small part of it again, we looked at Psalm 139. It says this: God you created my innermost being; you kind of knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are so wonderful. I wasn’t hidden from you when I was made in that secret place; when I was woven together in the depths of the earth; your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before even one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts O God. How vast is the sum of them. You and I weren’t made to be stuffed into someone else’s mould, particularly not the world’s mould, particularly not some of the bizarre, horrible things the world comes up with, this whole ‘do whatever you like and it doesn’t matter. You and I were made in a certain way, we’re unique, we’re different – that’s how it was always meant to be. And so I want to encourage you not to be afraid of being you – did you know that you’re the best you that there is on this planet. No one else can be you. Enjoy who you are, do the things that you’re good at – and when the world tells you you don’t quite fit in – it’s time to smile to yourself inwardly and whisper … that’s because I’m me. I’m being the me I was always meant to be. I’m living the life I was made to live. Pretty good thing that because who you are is God’s choice and that’s a wonderful thing. It’s His sovereign choice that he made you who you are and you know how silly it is for you and me to look at each other and compare ourselves. For me to look at a man who wrote to me from Tauranga in New Zealand – he makes furniture in his shed when I can’t even nail two pieces of wood together straight – and say, “I am worthless because I can’t make furniture.” Well he probably can’t do what I do either. I’d love to be able to make furniture but you know something, I just can’t. We need to come to a point in our lives where we stop pleasing other people, I don’t mean be belligerent, I don’t mean be a deliberate misfit … but stop dancing to other people’s tunes, to stop thinking that meeting their expectations is the most important thing. Stop living to please other people. You know it’s okay for that man to love building furniture in his back shed, it’s okay for you to love doing the things you do because you can and you enjoy them, it’s okay for us to want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps rather than being squeezed into the world’s mould I’m talking about a quiet contentment that says, “you know something, I know who God made me to be and I’m comfortable with that.” Are you trying to please the world? Are you trying to please a whole bunch of other people? Are you trying to live up to some image that someone else has created for you? Or do you want to please God? Do you want to have a life of pleasing Him? IF you let the world stuff you into the mold they made for you – know this – it’s never going to feel comfortable because you’re never going to be able to fit in it.
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Breaking with the Power of the Past // Discover Your Destiny, Part 6
04/27/2026
Breaking with the Power of the Past // Discover Your Destiny, Part 6
Truth: We can’t change the past. We may well want to, but we can’t and yet, it’s amazing how many people are gripped by the hurts and failures from their past. Jesus came to set us free – maybe it’s time for you to break with the power of the past. The bad things that happened to us in the past have an incredible ability to destroy our lives. As I just said – it’s a two-part destruction, because those past ruin our today’s and rob us of our tomorrows. So we can’t enjoy today … and we can’t look forward to tomorrow. Do you see the tragedy of that? And the past is a funny thing, because it’s actually gone. We can never turn back time. We can never change what’s been done. We can never unsay something that we regret having said, or undo something we regret having done … so in one sense we have no control over the past. But here’s the scary thing - the things of the past end up controlling so many people. Stand back from that, think about that for a moment, and it just doesn’t make any sense that something that’s gone, something that can’t be redone or undone, should have such a devastating effect. But you see it over and over again in peoples’ lives. The mistakes our parents made can end up being imprinted on our characters. The abuse that some people have suffered, the rejection, the hurts, the ridicule … all those things can limit us by stunting our growth. And try we will, too often we just can’t shake them off and so … they end up ruining our today’s and robbing us of our tomorrows. Fortunately though, God has a plan, God wants us to be the person he meant us to be and HE wants us to live the lives that He always planned for us to live. We’re talking this week on the program about Discovering Your Destiny. Hmm – it’s easy to react by saying … "Well, yeah but what does that mean? I look at my life and any notion that there might be a God out there who wants to bless me and set me free and give me a great life – no, that’s crazy! That’s just no possible.” I’ve often shared my own stories on the program because I’m not speaking here out of some dry text book, I’m speaking out of a transformed life. I am being the me I was meant to be. I am living the life I was always meant to be living. But you know, it wasn’t always like that. Anyway, today I’d like to share someone else’s story, a woman who was caught in adultery with a man, a man who wasn’t her husband - at a time when that sort of thing carried some incredibly severe penalties in 1st century Israel. We fine her story in John’s Gospel, Chapter 8 if you’d like to have a read later. Here’s what it says: Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts; where all the people gathered around him and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought up a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The Law of Moses commands us to stone such a woman to death, now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus; Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away, one at a time, the older ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and said, “Woman, where are they? Has no one stayed to condemn you?” “No one sir.” She answered, “Then neither do I condemn you.” Jesus declared, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” This is one of the most powerful stories in the New Testament for me because Jesus is literally putting himself between this woman and the angry mob. They were doing this to trap Jesus because Roman law and Jewish law were in conflict. Jewish law said you should stone a woman to death. Roman law said you can only kill someone if the Roman Governor said you could. So whichever way Jesus answered, they thought they had him. If he answered, “Don’t stone her,” he was disobeying Moses’ Law, the Jewish law and if he said, “Do stone her,” then he was disobeying Roman law. Let’s put ourselves for a moment in the woman’s shoes. Adultery is a bit of an old-fashioned word these days; people seem to do as they please. Affairs are common, almost acceptable, but they still tear marriages apart, they still tear people’s lives apart, they still cause untold pain. So here’s this woman, caught in the deed, but where’s the man? Who knows? She was just the one who the religious leaders were trying to trap and accuse Jesus. And there must have been incredibly deep shame because this was in the first century, this was in a society where you got stoned to death for doing something like this. She knew she’d done wrong; so here she was in front of an angry mob, with something from her past that was certainly ruining her today and could well have robbed her of all her tomorrows. Stonings have a way of doing that I guess. But the bit ... the bit that I want you to notice here is Jesus’ reaction. He makes the point that we all have things in the past like that – every person in that crowd had them, and each one of us today still have them. That immediately took away their right to accuse her – one by one the angry mob disperses until it’s just the woman … and Jesus. And then he sets about giving her back her life. It’s as though with one fell swoop He saves her, He forgives her and He gives her not only her today back, but her whole future back. Friend we all … all of us … have things in our past that could take away our happiness for today and our hope for tomorrow, but the past is the past. It’s gone. And whatever hurts you’re carrying around with you – are as painful to you as the stones in the hands of the angry mob would have been to that woman. It’s time to let them go. It’s time to lay them down. It’s time to live for today and look forward to tomorrow. This seems like an absolutely impossible situation – this terrible position that this woman found herself in – through her own actions on this occasion. It would have seemed completely impossible to her, but right in the middle of her impossible, is God’s very own “everything is possible” – His name is Jesus. Jesus is setting her free to go and be the person she was meant to be, and live out the life she was meant to live. In our lives sometimes, the things of the past seem absolutely impossible to resolve. And people will come and condemn us and criticise us and the devil will come sit on our shoulders and condemn us and say, “See, you’re not good enough to be a Christian, you’re not good enough to believe in Jesus, you’re not good enough for this, that and the other.” We know the failures of our past and somehow they can grip us like an angry mob and we can think of God as a god of judgement and He is. But Jesus ended up going to the cross for her and for you and for me and he stands up and says, “You know something, I want to set you free from your past so that you can go on and be the person I meant you to be.” 2 Cor 5:17 says this: If anyone is in Christ Jesus they are a new creation. Old things have passed away and behold all things are new. On the cross of Christ the demands of God’s justice were met and that’s why Jesus Christ can come into your life and into my life and say, “You are set free from the power of the past.” He handcrafted you and me to be a person whom he meant to be, everything we are he planned before time began and so when our past comes along to condemn us, when the chains of our past want to lock up our hearts, Jesus comes and puts himself on that cross to set you and me free from the power of the past. Do you believe in Jesus? Then you are a new creation, the old things have passed away and behold all things are new.
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I Find Myself with a Dilemma // Discover Your Destiny, Part 5
04/24/2026
I Find Myself with a Dilemma // Discover Your Destiny, Part 5
I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking all those years ago. And in the same way, giving up other bad things in our lives can be hard. Do I or don’t I? And if I do – how do I give them up? I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking. I was sharing with a couple of builders who were smoking outside my house the other day. I used to smoke three packets a day, that's seventy five cigarettes every day, I mean I was so super addicted I'd be sitting at my desk and light up one cigarette before I'd finished the last one. What did it for me was when I was with someone when they died of lung cancer. I watched them breathe their last breath and when I walked out of that hospital room, just over thirty years ago now, I threw my packet of cigarettes in the bin and I haven't smoked one cigarette since that time. But it wasn't easy. It was a day by day proposition, a craving by craving proposition. Letting go of that habit actually took years and can I tell you there are still some days today when I feel I could smoke a cigarette but I figure I can go just one more day. Giving up bad things can be really, really hard. This week and in fact over the next few weeks we're going through a little series that I've called Discover Your Destiny. And over the week I guess we've looked at the fact that if indeed we're made in God’s image and if He actually does have the most amazing plan for our lives and yet when we follow our plans instead of His plans somehow it ends up being hollow and empty. Now I've heard people protest and say that's not the case, "I'm a happy atheist" for instance. But one by one we all eventually come to that conclusion that there's got to be something more. Am I really being the "me" I was meant to be? You know you have this sense of a destiny and somehow you're not quite living that destiny out yet. Yesterday we chatted about how when we go our own way, when we leave the me, me, me, anything goes philosophy we end up facing a dilemma. On the one hand we generally come to the conclusion that it's not working, I did it in my life, I'm a pretty smart guy, I'm also short so there's no pride in that. I just happen to be a very intelligent person and I had everything going for me but it wasn't working on the inside and we know when it's not working. So on the one side we want to go our own way and it's not working and on the other sometimes we believe in God, we want to have a relationship with Him, a relationship that's awesome and amazing and fulfilling and exciting and tender and wonderful but we know there are some things in life that He's going to want us to give up. With me it was my ego. It was huge. I'd speak at conferences all around the world in the IT industry and I was, frankly, full of myself and had an ego the size of a small planet. Then I read the bit in the Bible that says: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Gulp, looks like He wants me to do something with my pride. So there was a crunch time for me there, there always is, there's always one or two things. Often that's all there is that we really need to give up and there are inevitably things that are so important to us that we want to hang on to them for dear life or for grim death because they're bad for us, they poison our lives. When you have a strong pride addiction, a pride that dominates who you are, you can't have close relationships. Pride is always worrying about how other people see you and you never have any peace. Life's always a competition to be the best, it's one-upmanship, but I knew I had to give it up and it was just like giving up smoking. There were two parts. The first part was that deep down decision, throwing the pack of cigarettes in the bin. You see you can't be double minded, you can't have your cake and eat it too, you can't be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time. And the second part was actually living that out day after day. So what is it with you? What's the sin? I hope you don't mind me using that word but it will do, we all have a sense of what it means. What's the sin that's robbing you of your identity, the sin that's robbing you of your destiny and is it really worth it? Maybe it's anger. That's a powerful one. Some people are always angry with the world. Or maybe you're cheating on your wife or your husband. Perhaps you're being dishonest at work. Maybe you're selfish, only interested in yourself and not anyone else. Perhaps you have someone poor or needy close to you and you don't reach out to help them. Maybe you're busy playing politics, undermining people behind their back. Playing the game just so you can win instead of for the good of others. We don't have enough time in the day to go through them all but there's always something isn't there? And here's what I believe, in fact here's what I know, because I learned it the hard way: that something is going to rob you of your destiny, the amazing future God has planned for you. That's a tragedy. Can I ask you to think right now, what's the one thing, the one sin that's robbing you of your destiny? Just think and know it in your mind and look at it and turn it over and over, that one thing, your something. Now let me ask you two questions about it. Firstly are you proud of it or do you hide it? The chances are you hide it. That's what we inevitably do when we know what we're doing is wrong. And secondly what benefit is it to you? That very same question that the Apostle Paul asked in the New Testament, Romans chapter 6, verse 21: So what advantage do you actually get then from those things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. The key to letting that one thing, your something, your sin, go is realising it's just not good for you, it's not good for those whom you love and it's robbing you of your destiny. Your destiny to be who you were always meant to be; your destiny to have a powerful positive impact in this world, to leave behind a living legacy – a legacy that outlives you by generations, a legacy of good. Remember you can't be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time. You can't have your cake and eat it as well. You can't hang on to sin and fulfil your destiny, you just can't. Deciding to make the change, deciding to let go of your something – only you can decide that. I can encourage you but you have to decide. I can put things right before you but only you can decide to do something about it. See some people want God on their own terms, well you know I'm living with my girlfriend or my boyfriend, that's the way things are and if God wants me He just has to accept that. Well you know, it doesn't work that way. We can't remake God in our image, it's exactly the opposite, God said: Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the livestock, over everything on the earth. So God created us in his image, in the image of God he created us, male and female he created us. Letting go of sin is hard but when we live through that, every craving, every urge, every disappointment, just to try and honour God, just to be true to our identity, He blesses it because the sin thing robs us of life, life itself and when we finally put God at the top of the heap with all our hearts, with every fibre of our beings then doors open, our identity comes forward, our destiny is open to us. When we put our trust in Jesus alone we're embarking on a journey, it's not going to be easy, a journey that's going to have trials and temptations and some days we're going to make mistakes and fail, we have to get up again and brush ourselves off and keep on going. But you know something, when we commit to that journey with Jesus and when we understand that we have to work through the issues in our lives, failure by failure, craving by craving, temptation by temptation, day by day, week by week, month by month, all of a sudden what happens and this is what I experienced, this is what so many others have experienced. When we go through that after months and years you look back and you think, "You know something I'm the person that God meant me to be, this is the direction I meant to be headed in, my life's going the right way, I'm doing things I'm meant to do, this is my destiny." Are you being the person God meant you to be? Have you made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life?
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A Plan Just For Me // Discover Your Destiny, Part 4
04/23/2026
A Plan Just For Me // Discover Your Destiny, Part 4
Let’s say that God has a plan for each one of us. For our lives. Now – is that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe He has a good plan. But – what if we don’t like that plan? Does it become a straitjacket? Over the years something I've thought a lot about is whether the idea of that this God I happen to believe in has a plan for my life is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean on the one hand the idea that a good God could have a good plan for my life, sounds pretty good. On the other, well what if I don't like the plan? I mean what if I want to make some changes or go my own way? Is the whole idea of God having a plan for our lives an awesome thing or is it a crutch or worse still, is it a straight jacket? Well today on the program this is kind of what we're going to explore and take a look at it from a different perspective, maybe from God’s perspective and then it's up to each one of us to make up our own mind. Remember that old Frank Sinatra song "I Did It My Way"? There was a time in the 1970's I think that on every talent show on television some man and it was always a man would get up and sing it: I Did It My WayAnd now the end is near and so I face the final curtain, my friend I'll say it clear, I'll state my case of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that’s full, I've travelled each and every highway and more, much more than this I did it my way. Ha, I don't know about your experiences in life but I've got to tell you I tried doing it my way and as we talked earlier this week on the program what I discovered was it didn't work so well. You know what; I suspect that God actually designed it to be that way. The other day we took a look at Psalm 139 and we actually looked at the second half but I'd like to begin with the first half of that Psalm so have a listen. It says: Lord you've searched me and you know me really well. You know when I sit down and when I stand up. You know what I'm thinking from a long way off. You see my going in and lying down, you're familiar with all my ways but even before a word is on my tongue you know it completely Lord." You hem me in, behind me, before me. You've laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty to attain. Where can I go from your spirit, where can I flee from your presence? If I go to heaven you are there, if I make my bed in the depths you're there as well. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the farthest side of the sea even there your hand will guide me and your right hand will hold me fast." If I say 'surely the darkness will hide me and the light with become night around me' even the darkness won't be dark to you. The night will shine like the day because darkness is as light to you. That's profound. You know what David's saying here, (it's King David who wrote this Psalm) he's saying that God is on this journey with us. We can't flee, wrestle, fight and run, we can do what we like but He is on our journey with us. One of the things I wrestled with in the early days was Christian jargon. "Sin" was one of them, "repent" was another. I must have seen an old western movie, black and white, when I was a kid – I remember some fire and brimstone preacher on one of those covered wagons standing up and yelling, "Repent!" and I thought "Oh yuck". But as I come to grips with that concept this is what ended up meaning to me, admitting somehow that my way and my choices, as good as they seemed at the time, ended up being hollow. Admitting somehow that my way was empty. I remember buying this really expensive, I mean really expensive huge car years ago. It had everything, it had this beautiful burgundy duco, this lustre, it had a lovely shape that used to turn heads. It had four wheel steering. You know at low speed the front and the back wheels were turning in the opposite direction and you could pivot this car like on a pinhead. And the smell, ah the new car smell of leather, the look of the dashboard, it was awesome and you know I remember sitting inside this car which cost me a bomb and looking at it and smelling that new leather smell and somehow that thing that I wanted to be a real joy to me was empty and hollow and I had to come to grips that my way wasn't working for me. Repenting meant admitting that. Turning and saying, "You know something God, I'm done trying my way. I want to get with your plan. I know that there are some things that I'll have to give up, I know that." But you know there are actually very few things and they're really the rubbish things, the pride, the selfishness, the back-stabbing, the greed. It meant putting Him in the driver’s seat and when I started doing that day after day you know what happened, I'll tell you just how it happened. I had this growing sense that I was becoming the me I was meant to be, that I was living the life I was made to live because my frame wasn't hidden from Him when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. His eyes saw my unformed substance. All the days ordained for me were written in His book before even one of them came into being. And so now I can say, "how precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them." That turning point, coming to that decision, coming to that conclusion in life no matter where we're at, no matter what we say we believe, can be a very hard thing because it's just not a single turning point, it's then living that new decision out in life, living out the decision to have God as our Lord, as our number one, that can be hard. But if we're going to be the person God meant us to be that's where it's at and so tomorrow on the program we'll look at what it means actually to live that out. Some people believe in this God, others don't, that's okay, that’s the way things are but we know when we're headed down the wrong path, we know when our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviours are being destructive and robbing us of the destiny that lies ahead of each one of us. At some point, come on, at some point we need to wake up and say, enough is enough; this is not working for me anymore. It doesn't matter how hard I try, how much money I spend, how much I try and fill myself, it is not working, I can't keep living this way because if I do one day it will all be over and I'll have missed out on my destiny. So let me ask you, are you at that point in your life? Yesterday on the program we looked at the fact that we really are made in the image of God, we're made to have a relationship with Him. I think there's something inside each one of us that God would enliven to get us to reach out to Him. It's like a marriage in a sense, I mean I was made to have a wife; I'm just not one to be on my own. I enjoy my own space sure but I'm not one to be single. Now I'm married to Jacqui, she's the most wonderful wife and I enjoy my marriage but there's a cost to marriage. You have to lay things down; you have to be prepared to sacrifice certain things in order to have a great relationship, husband and wife. The Bible talks about becoming one flesh, that's great but the becoming bit, coming to grips in being a team rather than just someone on your own is sacrificial. Some days, you know, it hurts but somehow even though I'm an individual there's something that makes me complete in my soul through my marriage relationship with Jacqui my wife. It's how God made me and when it comes to God I don't think I can be the me that I was meant to be or live out the destiny for my life unless in the same way I have a close and dynamic relationship with Him. Lord knows I spent thirty-six long years trying. Money and recognition and career, had it all and I did it my way but there came a time when I had to admit that my way was empty, that I needed more, I needed Him and you know something, He knows that because He knows us. God is the only person or thing that I've ever discovered that makes me whole. Without Him there’s a massive cavernous God sized hole inside me somewhere and without Him I can't be the ‘me’ I was meant to be. Because I'm made in His image, I can't live out the days He planned for me because I'm certain; absolutely certain that He planned me to spend those days with Him. How about you?
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The Perennial Pollution Problem // Discover Your Destiny, Part 3
04/22/2026
The Perennial Pollution Problem // Discover Your Destiny, Part 3
Have you noticed how just living life produces waste products. We breathe out Carbon dioxide. We perspire. We create rubbish. The same is true in life – and if we don’t take out that rubbish, it can kill us. I don't know if you've ever noticed but living an average normal everyday life creates dirt. I mean just eating and drinking and living, the most basic things, create waste products. Carbon dioxide that we breathe out with every breath, if we didn't get rid of that it would poison us. Perspiration of course and we excrete waste. If we kept all of those things inside us you know they'd kill us in a pretty short time. And then there's our home. If you don't tidy up along the way it becomes a mess. If you don't clean it each week it gets dirty and for no other reason than we've been living life in it. All good, all normal but life creates mess and dirt and waste products, it's inexorable. You have to wash out the shower or even the soap scum builds up so your shower becomes a mess. See on a global scale we call this pollution. It's a perennial problem; it's just the way it is. For so many years I listened to these Christians talk about sin as though, "ah come on, get out of here, get a life, I don't need this guilt trip that you Christians put me on, I don't need to go to confession or to be absolved or any of that stuff, I'm basically okay. I haven't killed anyone; I haven't robbed a bank, so just leave me alone." The notion of sin had no place in my reckoning. It was a dog eat dog world with plenty of dog to go around and I will tread on whomever I want to, to get where I'm going. That was kind of the attitude I had. I guess it's okay while life is going basically okay but you don't build many relationships and friendships that way and you know, as I was sharing on this program the other day I found out that there was no joy or satisfaction or contentment in living that sort of a life. Now in today's world pretty much anything goes, if it feels good do it. There was an article in my local paper recently on pornography. The pornography industry was trying to make pornographic videos more widely available to reduce their level of restriction and classification. See in this "anything goes" philosophy what people do in their own bedroom, well that's their problem but there are consequences, there are very clear consequences, that's what the research tells us when it comes to pornography and intimacy in marriages. And as a result many marriages are falling apart. When I spend things on me, me, me, that's great but there's no real satisfaction and you don't get any satisfaction until you give of yourself, of who you are, what you have. It's not until we give sacrificially to someone who needs what we have that we really get satisfaction in life and that's where we discover who we are and what life is all about. For many years I kidded myself. I kidded myself that I was okay but it didn't work. Just living my life created waste and mess and dirt and pollution and here's the rub, when we live the 'I am the centre of the universe' model we want everything to flow into us and that includes the waste and the mess and dirt, there's nothing there to clean us out. It stays inside and with everything flowing in it poisons our system and it ruins our lives. Do you get it? Maybe you've heard me talk on the program before about sin and you've thought, 'Why does he keep labouring this point?' I'll tell you why, because sin poisons our lives, it robs us, it means that instead of being the me I was meant to be I let cancer creep into my soul and rob me of being the person and living the life that God planned for me and the same is true for you. The word sin as it's used in the Bible literally means to miss the mark. A bit like an archer aiming at a target, his aim doesn't have to be off by much for him to miss the target all together. That's the idea of sin, it's missing the mark or as we might say these days, missing the point. Can you imagine getting to the end of your life, on your death bed, looking back and thinking to yourself, 'You know the way I lived my life, I didn't love people the way I should have loved them, I didn't serve people, I didn't make a real difference, I haven't left behind a lasting legacy of good, I think I've missed the point of life.' Can you even begin to imagine what a tragedy that would be? We're chatting this week about discovering who we were meant to be, our identity and laying hold of what our life was always meant to accomplish, our destiny. And we can't do those things if we miss the mark, if we miss the whole point of our lives, you just can't. You can't, I can't and if you were able to join me the other day you'll remember that we read something about what Gods plan for our lives is, our identity and our destiny God you created my inner most being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful and I know that full well because my frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in that secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes beheld my unformed substance. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before any of them came into being. Seems to me that we can either co-operate with that plan or we can run hard against it. And whatever we may call it, whatever word we may use for doing wrong things, whether the word is sin or something else, you and I know when we're swimming against the tide, you and I know when we're into things that are selfish and angry and dishonest and just plain wrong. Come on we do and if that's the way we want to live life then the last thing we're going to be doing is co operating with that plan. The last thing that we're going to be doing is discovering our destiny. The last thing we're going to be doing is being the person we were made to be and living the life we were meant to live. Does that make sense to you? I mean does that seem like a particularly wise way of spending your life, this one precious life that you've been given to live? The reason we're talking about this today is that the last thing I want for you and honestly the last thing God wants for any of us is to waste your life, to miss out on your destiny, to live as a square peg in a round hole because that's never particularly comfortable. And this thing sin, the wrong things in our life that's what robs us of our destiny, that's what robs us of our identity. I can't say it any plainer than this, that's just about the dumbest thing that we could possibly do with our lives. Because the problem is that you and I are very good at rationalising our sin away, at justifying it, at defending the indefensible. I was talking to a couple of smokers the other day, some builders out the front of my house. I used to smoke very heavily and as I talked to them about their smoking you know what their response was? "Oh yeah, we know it's wrong, we know it's stupid, we know it's going to make us sick but we just can't stop it." See we get addicted to this poison, we get addicted to the poison of sin. We know it's wrong we just can't stop it so we rationalise it, we brush it off, we resign ourselves to it so it doesn't matter. And when others challenge us about it, when others confront us with the consequences of our sin we say, come on get off the grass, it's none of your business what I do with my life. Well I guess it's not but if you and I want to live the life that God intended us to live, if you and I want to be the person that God made us to be you need to deal with this. Listen to me we need to deal with sin. When we come face to face with Jesus Christ we know in our hearts the things that are wrong. There was that woman, you can read about in John's Gospel chapter 9 if you have a Bible, caught in adultery and they dragged her out to stone her in front of Jesus and they were going to do just that because they wanted to trap Jesus, there was a legal issue which we won't go into now. But Jesus said, "Look if any of you is without sin let him be the first one to throw the stone." You know what happened? Those who heard began to go away. The old ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman. When we look at Jesus in the face we know the stuff that's wrong in our lives. Question is how do we fix it, how do we deal with that? That's what we're going to look at on the program tomorrow.
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Before Time Began // Discover Your Destiny, Part 2
04/21/2026
Before Time Began // Discover Your Destiny, Part 2
Most of us have a sense of destiny – something that we’re supposed to fulfil in our lives. But if I’m going to be the me I was meant to be, if you’re going to be the you that you were meant to be, then we have to know who we were meant to be in the first place. If you want to ask yourself the question, am I being the "me" I was meant to be, am I really fulfilling the destiny for my life, how would you answer? On a scale of one to ten how would you rate your life against that question? Well the problem is so many people can't answer it because they don't know who they were meant to be in the first place or where they’re meant to be headed. All they sometimes have is a nagging suspicion inside, a bit of an unsettling feeling that the answer is more a "no" than a "yes", more a one or two than an eight or nine out of ten. Am I being the "me" I was meant to be? Am I really fulfilling the destiny of my life? See they're really good questions. I don't know how to talk about this except at least in part from my own experience because discovering your destiny is a profound issue of life. I'd like to share with you today part of my journey and something that began to answer those questions for me. By global standards I was blessed, I grew up in a wealthy household, we had plenty of food, a roof over our head, I had a good education and one of my physical attributes, as well as being short, as well as having some grey hair, as well as being short sighted in one eye and long sighted in the other eye, is that I have a high IQ. So I did really well at school and I had the choice of doing anything that I wanted to do, medicine or law. Back then I was interested in these emerging things that they called computers. So I left high school and I went to the Royal Military college Duntroon, the officer-training academy for our army, a bit like England’s Sandhurst or the USA's WestPoint. Now I graduated with an IT degree and spent ten years in the military and after that had well paying jobs and I owned a consulting firm for seventeen years in the IT industry and I travelled around and spoke at international conferences and lived the high life. I basically had it handed to me on a silver platter. Okay it had its ups and downs, I had to work hard, I had to strive for things but by any standard I had it pretty good and I kind of enjoyed that stuff but all along I found that nothing ever really satisfied me. I was so concerned about being the best, I was so concerned about what other people thought of me that I couldn't enjoy my life, I couldn't relax. I was successful on the outside but inside I had a deep sense of inadequacy and failure and the feeling of being a fraud and that's how I lived my life, day by day for many years and believe you me it's not a lot of fun. Why is that? What's going on? I had this emerging sense that I wasn't being the me I was meant to be and that there was some destiny for my life that I hadn't yet stumbled across. Despite all the good things that were happening in my life I had this sort of vague distant belief in God I guess but even in my late thirties when I gave my life over to Him, when I became a Christian, there was still something, well it wasn't quite right. I look back on it now and I know there was something missing, things I didn't really understand. For me the starting point of being the ‘me’ I was meant to be was knowing where I'd come from and who I'm meant to be. So, so many people in the midst of their lives aren't really comfortable with who they are or where their life's going and so you don't have a real sense of security, you're more like a cork bobbing around in the stormy ocean. We're going to explore that today through Psalm 139 from the Old Testament of the Bible. I come back to it again and again and again in my own life because it reminds me of exactly who I am. What I love about this Psalm is that the writer starts in the middle of the dilemmas of life and works his way back to God to discover who he is and ultimately he comes to this point. Have a listen: God you created me in my inner most being. It was you that knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful; I know that full well because my frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in that secret place. When I was being woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed substance and all the days ordained for me were written down in your book of life before even one of them came into being. How precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake I'm still with you. There's something that really strikes me in there and this is one of those passages in the Bible that is beautiful and wondrous to me and as I said I keep coming back to it again and again. It's like my passport; it tells me who I am. We all started life in our mother's womb. A dark hidden place in the depths of the earth as it were and God created our inner most being, He knits us together in our mothers womb and we can praise Him because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I'm not sure what you believe and I'm not here, please understand this, to force any of my beliefs onto you. I just want to share with you how it was for me. After reading that Psalm I had this sense of "WOW! If God really made me who I am then who I am, my personality, my strengths, my limitations and my hair colour and my blue eyes and the way I think and react, all of those things are His choice." You know we have bits about ourselves in our lives that we like and we have other bits that we don't so much like. Some people say, "I wish I was smarter, I wish I was taller, I wish I was better looking." I wish I had blonde hair instead of that mousy brown colour mop on top of my head. You know what I mean. But when I wrap my heart around this Psalm I thought, wow not only has God made me who I am, each strand of my DNA according to the blue print of His great and mighty heart, He also planned every day of my life, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before any of them came into being. And see, that's my passport, that's my compass, that's given me my sense of identity and direction in life and hey, that's not such a bad thing. No wonder the psalmist goes on in wonder to say; How precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand. Our lives aren't about being some karma or some vague sense of chance or destiny, our lives have a plan and a purpose and a destiny and before any of our days ever existed every day ordained for you and me were written in God’s book, God’s blue print. It was written in our DNA, who we are and what would happen, the number of hairs on our head, every thought, every desire, every dream, every hope, every hurt, every experience. He knit us together in our mother’s womb and He set every day before us according to His plan. You and I are who we are because that's how He made us. You and I are living the lives we have because that's what He ordained for us. That's the profound and wonderful beauty as so many people spend so much of their lives not liking themselves when all along we are who God made us to be. In His infinite wisdom and mercy and creativity that's how He handcrafted us. He planned us, He knew us and He wrote down all the days of our lives before time began. Let me challenge you today; let me get right in your face with this. Are you prepared to live every minute of every day in this wonderful knowledge, in this wonderful truth? Sure we've all made mistakes, there are consequences, there are scars, there are broken relationships but fundamentally who we are is no surprise to God. What we're going through is no surprise to God and in the middle of that He wants to give us peace and rest and that's what we get when we accept who we are and where we are according to Gods plan. It's time to love who you are. That honours God, to thank Him and to praise Him: I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful and that I know full well.
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Lost Without a Passport // Discover Your Destiny, Part 1
04/20/2026
Lost Without a Passport // Discover Your Destiny, Part 1
Have you ever sat down and wondered – who am I? Where’s my life headed? Am I being the me that I was meant to be? Well, you’re not alone. We all ask those questions at some point. I remember once a few years back being in the airport in Christchurch, New Zealand. My international flight from Australia was late in getting in and I had to race to make the last domestic connection that night to my final destination Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. And in the rush I left my passport lying in one of those luggage trolleys at the international terminal, something I didn't realise until I was checking in at the domestic terminal on my next flight. Panic attack, can you imagine losing your passport while you're overseas? No passport no identity, no identity now what? How could I tell people I was me? I couldn't leave the country; I couldn't stay there. See it turns out that our identity is very important. Well I won't keep you in suspense the domestic and international terminal in Christchurch are about ten minutes walk apart so I raced down outside the domestic terminal but the taxi didn't want to take me because is was such a short fare. He said, "Catch the shuttle bus." Of course I didn't have time to do that so I paid him thirty dollars and we raced back and I went into the police station off to one side of the international terminal in Christchurch. Now there was a young police woman on duty that night so I explained my problem to her and she said, "Well yes, an Australian passport has just been handed in." And then she asks me, just get this, "Do you have any ID?" I couldn't believe it. I said "Yes", I was a bit stressed at this point, "it's my passport and there's a photo in the front." Oh yeah, it dawned on her. Anyway I received my passport and I just made my flight and all was well. I've never forgotten that. You know, you can't travel without your passport, it's the clear and tangible evidence of your identity. And in a very real sense the same is true in life. We need to know the answer to that important question, who exactly am I and where's my life headed? Other people need to know who we are; it's so basic, it's so fundamental. So many people though don't have a deep sense of who they are, it's a problem deep down somewhere and it's not something we talk about a lot but it's there. And as I talk to people I think it goes something like this. Often we live our lives just day to day without thinking too much, just go along and do the things we do and go to work or to school or we look after the children, whatever it is that you do but bubbling away deep down somewhere is a sense of, what's this all about? Why am I doing this? What's the point? The reality is we have just one life to live here on this earth. It's not a dress rehearsal, you can't hit the rewind button and play it again and change things, when today's gone it's gone and that's it. And every year, every week, every day, every moment that you and I have lived up to this point frankly is gone, we can never get them back. The only thing left in our time here on this earth is the time between right now and when we breathe our last breath. Hey it's a sobering thought and at the same time most people have some sort of sense of a destiny, whether or not they believe in Jesus or some God even, they believe in things that are meant to be. How often have you heard someone say, "Well that was just meant to be", or "If it's meant to be it will happen?" Whether it's karma or whether it's "que sera sera, whatever will be will be", we all have some sense of a future and a destiny to be fulfilled. It's as though some intelligent destiny or design that we just can't quite put our finger on is out there for us. I believe that that's there because each one of us, you and I and everybody have been made in the image of God - each one of us. And when we look at the time that we have left here on this earth in the context of some sort of destiny, a profound question of life emerges. Am I being the "me" I was meant to be? Am I living the life I was made to live? These are huge questions. It's not just about having things, it's about being. The turning point of my life was when I was reading a book and the author asked this question. Do you want to be or do you want to have? And I realised very clearly that I was one of those people who wanted to have and having isn't being. Having is about, I don't know, the next car, the next sound system, the next pair of shoes. But being is about a profound sense of joy and contentment, about being really happy with who we are and what we're doing and how we're living, the relationships that we're enjoying. When I realised that it was so incredibly unsettling for me because I tried to live it all my way, I tried to do that stuff my way but it turned out just empty. Let me ask you something, as you contemplate the remaining time that you have left here on planet earth, when you ask yourself the question am I being the me that I was meant to be, what's the answer? Yes or no? If your answers yes then you're talking about some profound sense of joy and peace and contentment, the sort of stuff I was talking about just before. But if the answer's no then probably there's this nagging sense that you're missing out on something, is this all there is? Surely there must be something more. You know in my experience most people, by far the majority of people live in the no category, they have a sense that they should be, that there is some destiny out there for their lives but they also have that nagging suspicion that they're not really living it out to the full. That's why we're kicking off a series of programs over the next few weeks that I've called Discover Your Destiny to, I don't know, to help us unscramble all of that and maybe get a solid foundation of life sorted out in our hearts, to get our lives on track, to live them out to the full, to realise our destiny. So that when we're on deaths door we can look back on our lives with a deep sense of satisfaction and say to ourselves, "You know what, I've lived it to the full. I became the me I was meant to be and now I'm ready for my eternity with God." The starting point of all that is an understanding of who we're meant to be. It’s knowing where we've come from and who we are. And what a tragedy it is for so many people to live their lives without knowing those things about themselves, without having a sense of what their lives are all about. Without having, in effect, a really good handle on their identity and their destiny. See we live in a world that wants to tell us who we are. We live in a world shaped by commerce and sales targets and advertising that tells us if you're this or if you're that, if you buy this or you buy that, hey then you're going to be happy, then you'll have a sense of who you are and where you're going. I lived out that life for a good many years, I mean I lived it out par excellence and so successful was that strategy that it drove me to the point of suicide. God’s take is completely different. God tells us that we are made in His image you and I. He tells us that not only did He make us who we are but He also made every day of our life to fit with who we are. More about that another day. Today all we've really done is to try and put our finger on the problem, that nagging thing that just doesn't seem to want to go away. That sense that many people have, that they're missing out on something, something that they just can't quite explain. Surely there must be more to life than this, this drudgery. Surely there has to be something that sets my heart on fire, that inspires me, that lets me be the me I was meant to be. Do you really know who you are? Who you were made to be? Who you were meant to be? Where your life is meant to be headed? Or is your life like a bit of a cork bobbing around on the ocean completely at the mercy of the elements – sunny one day, stormy the next but just drifting, drifting? Well I'm hoping you can join me each day over these coming weeks as we go on this journey to discover the ‘me’ that you were meant to be.
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Receiving God's Word // Power Unlimited, Part 10
04/17/2026
Receiving God's Word // Power Unlimited, Part 10
God wants to unleash power, power unlimited in your life. And one of the ways that He does that is when you hear His Word preached and take it into your heart. There’s power, real power, power unlimited right there in God’s Word. If you spend anytime with me here on the program one of the things you will know is that I’m really passionate about God and what He has to say. Not in a religious sort of a way but in a Jesus sort of way. The thing that really strikes me about Jesus when you read about Him, is how plain and matter of fact He was about sharing with people who God is and what His plans are. Over these last couple of weeks on the program we’ve been looking at what it means to lay hold of God’s power unlimited, God’s resurrection power that’s available to you, as you open His Word the Bible and listen to what He has to say. The Bible is God speaking to us and He means to challenge us and stretch us and encourage us and bless us through His Word. One of the ways that many people get God’s Word into them is by listening to people speak. Radio programs like this or on television and of course, if you attend a Church. But how can preaching and teaching be a part of really getting God’s Word into us? Over these last twenty years or so, the time that I’ve been a Christian, I’ve seen two things. On the one hand I have been so blessed by some really good teaching and on the other hand I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff too. In my very first Church, a little Baptist Church, our pastor’s name was Phil Littlejohn. Now Phil was a gifted teacher, he just had this ability to open God’s Word and speak God stuff into my heart. I learned later this is a real gifting, different people have different gifts and abilities given to them by God and teaching is one of them. Jesus had that, I mean time and time again when He opened His mouth people were amazed because He spoke with a plainness and a power and an authority that they hadn’t heard before. And you know something, He didn’t always tell them things they wanted to hear. “Love your enemy.” “Take up your cross and follow me.” “Lose your life for my sake and you’ll gain your life.” It’s not exactly good marketing, I mean the spin merchants would not have let Him get up and speak like that today. I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at how Jesus preached. It’s real, it’s powerful. It’s balanced on the one hand and radical on the other and it sort of, well, it cuts through all the selfish rubbish we go on with, right to the heart of what God wants to talk about. And my prayer is that when I discharge my gifting to teach in my own way, I’ll always try to teach like He did. But you know I’ve also sat in Churches over the years and listened to preachers drone on with dry and theoretical, completely cerebral stuff, that’s not relevant to my life. On more than one occasion I’ve walked out after church and two hours later I ask myself “Do I remember what he talked about?” And the answer is, “No, not really.” Or you listen to other speakers and there are lots of words and they’re very entertaining and they make people laugh and they tickle their ears with great stories and things they want to hear and they yell and people slap them on the back afterwards, ‘praise the Lord’ but I’ve been to some of those too and well, I felt like I’d been at the Lord’s table to be fed but I left hungry and empty. The flip side of that is that with some other preachers, I can remember years later what they were talking about, years later in difficult circumstances God seems to bring into my heart the words they spoke to me. Preaching and teaching is one of the ways that God gets His Word into us. You see it right through the Bible; He uses men and women to speak to others, to teach them. I mean the Samaritan woman at the well; she went and told people about Jesus. Paul and Peter and all the other guys that went out preaching. The question is, how do you get the most out of that? How does preaching and teaching play a part in us reading our Bible and unlocking the power unlimited that God has for us? Well, here are just some of my observations. I see people come into a Church on a Sunday and listen to the preacher and they don’t take any notes and they don’t bring their Bible and they don’t follow what the preacher’s saying in their Bible. I take my Bible with me, I open my Bible and I read what the preacher is talking about. People can speak all the words that they like, everything that they say, they can crack jokes and have great stories – the most important thing is God’s Word, the most important thing is what God is saying. And secondly I take some notes. I mean you can’t even get through kindergarten on a half an hour a week without taking notes. You know, if we take God seriously, if we want to follow Jesus and really take that seriously, you know something, we’ve got to take learning seriously. Do you know what a disciple is? A disciple is literally “a learner”, that’s what the word disciple means, to be a learner. And thirdly, the thing I do when I’ve listened to some really good preaching, is I spend some time afterwards in God’s Word reading it for myself. Sometimes it’s not until you get home and you pray it through and you spend some time in that passage and maybe looking at some other related ones, that God really drops it into your spirit. I mean, years ago I heard a preacher teaching on a profound passage: 1 Peter 5:6-7: Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that He may exalt you in due time. Cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you. Now I’ve learnt so much from what God taught me through that preacher in this passage but I’ve learned just as much and maybe even more from pondering and praying over this scripture and looking at other related passages. Learning in my heart – that’s when I humble myself, when I get off my little tin pot throne and just walk each day faithfully with God. He’s the one who later opens the doors; He’s the one that’s got an eternity ready for me. I’ve looked at this whole thing of preaching, and listened to some incredibly sermons and some dreadful ones too, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two types of preaching; dead and alive. Dead preaching is full of words, it’s boring and dry or maybe it’s hyped up and frothy and bubbly but at the end of the day, there’s no eternal food there because God’s Word is not being preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s only God’s Word by the power of the Spirit that can change us. I can’t change you, I can’t say things in my own strength that will change your life, but if I’m speaking God’s stuff, if the Holy Spirit somehow takes God’s stuff and puts it into your heart, that’s when change happens and only God can do that. This is how the Apostle Paul put it: 1 Cor 2:1-5: When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God Can I encourage you to be discerning as to what you listen to? Go and listen to the preachers who are proclaiming God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.. Go and have a read about how Jesus preached in the Gospels Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, the first four books of the New Testament. It’s edgy and profound and real and dealing with the hard issues, and find yourself some preachers like that. Not ones that just entertain and tickle your ears with things you want to hear. The ones that open up God’s Word and say, “Well, what’s God saying to us today?” and then take what they said home, open your Bible there where they left off and go and lay hold of God’s power unlimited for you, for your life.
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Getting Practical - Useful Resources // Power Unlimited, Part 9
04/16/2026
Getting Practical - Useful Resources // Power Unlimited, Part 9
So many people, when they open their Bibles, run into a significant problem. They don’t quite understand what’s going on – that’s certainly the problem I used to run into. It’s not that I’m stupid, it’s just that a lot of it didn’t make all that much sense to me. So if you find yourself in that boat from time to time, stick with me, because today, we’re going to make your Bible a whole bunch more accessible to you. I have to tell you, that thing they call the Bible was a real problem for me. I mean, first coming to grips with the fact that it is what it says that it is, the Word of God but then, just getting into it. It’s made up of 66 separate books written over about 1,500 years in different times, in different places and different cultures. So there are words and names and places and concepts and ways of thinking … well, we’re not always familiar with them. We’re continuing in our series ‘Power Unlimited’ – because that’s what God’s Word brings into our lives so today, we’re going to get down and really practical on just how to get into the Bible because unless we do, we’re going to miss out on much of the power that God wants to pour into our lives. Over the years I’ve discovered a few very simple helps or resources that have made such a difference in making sense of God’s Word. You see, it turns out there’s a whole bunch of people much smarter than me who have done some great research and put the information together in such easy usable ways and all their work makes getting into God’s Word, the Bible, so much easier for the likes of you and me. Today I just want to share some of those resources with you. I remember twenty or so years ago, just after I became a Christian, I started attending a tiny little Baptist Church in the southern suburbs of Sydney. A little place called Oyster Bay. Our pastor, Phil, was a passionate and gifted Bible teacher and that man has had a huge impact on my life. Now as well as Sunday services, the Church used to have these little home Bible studies and we’d meet one night a week in someone’s house. In our small group, five of us would gather together. And at the time, the particular little home fellowship that I’d joined, was studying the Old Testament book of Hosea. So we’d lob in there each Wednesday evening, we’d have a cup of tea and some fellowship and then we’d sit down and do a Bible study together. And right through that book, over and over and over again, Hosea talks about Ephraim – that word is mentioned 29 times by Hosea. So I remember asking these people, most of them had been Christians for a good many years, “Okay, who or what is this Ephraim thing?” I mean, Hosea kept talking about it and so it seemed to be quite central to what he was saying. But you know something, no-one could tell me who or what Ephraim was. Now it turns out the Ephraim was one of the tribes of Israel, Ephraim was one of Joseph’s sons and there’s a whole history around this tribe and how they rebelled against God, but we didn’t know that in that Bible study so a lot of what God was saying to us, through this amazing, powerful book of Hosea, well it was frankly lost on us. And that sort of thing happens a lot more than you might think. Consider the story of the Good Samaritan. It loses its whole meaning if we don’t understand the Samaritans and who they were and what the Jews thought of them. Now when Jesus told that story to the assembled masses they all knew the Samaritan story but we don’t, it’s not natural to us. And there are names and places and concepts and ways of thinking in the Bible that are foreign to us, because we’re separated from them by time and culture. It might have made sense to the people back then but not to us now. And unless we understand those things, we miss out on the richness, on the gravity, on the power of what God is trying to say to us. I remember coming to grips with the Jewish system of blood sacrifice in the Old Testament. Now I kind of think about blood sacrifice and it’s pretty ghastly to me here and now, but it’s something I really had to understand to understand what Jesus did for me on the Cross. So I decided I was going to find out, not just skim the surface, not read through a story and have them talk about Ephraim or Samaria or all these other things I didn’t know about and miss out on what God was trying to say to me through the story. Now these accounts were written such a long time ago and God has preserved them and kept them accurate for us here and now but there is indeed a gap of culture and time in history that we have to bridge to understand completely what’s happening in what’s been written. I mean after all if the Bible is God’s Word and if God is speaking to us through it, I decided I needed to know what He was saying. And surprisingly, that’s not as difficult as I thought it would be. Right now, I’m going to talk about a handful of really simple resources that made absolutely the world of difference. The first one was my Bible, a simple English translation, not the King James with the ‘thees’ and ‘thou arts’, there are so many good contemporary language translations available to you and me today. The New International Version or the NIV as it’s called, is really popular. I happen to use the New Revised Standard Version (the NRSV). There’s a translation called The Message which is really in here and now language. The Contemporary English Version (CEV). The New English Translation (NET). Which one is the best one? The one you’re going to read. You can get a thing called A Study Bible, it’s got not just the words of the Bible, but it’s also got a huge amount of resources packed into it. It explains the meanings of different words, there are notes and maps and cross references. They’re really good, they don’t cost a whole bunch more than a Bible with just the Bible words. So if you want to do more than just skim across the surface, it’s really good to have one of those – a Study Bible. Check them out. One of the most helpful features in a Study Bible is a summary of each book: who wrote it, when, to whom and why because context is so important isn’t it? Before I read Ephesians I read four or five paragraphs in my Study Bible which explain the context and all of a sudden the book of Ephesians made a whole bunch more sense to me. A Study Bible is a really worthwhile investment and it’s not much more than an ordinary Bible. You can get one from a Christian bookshop or you can buy one online. I happen to have an electronic one these days on my tablet device. The second resource is my Bible dictionary. Now I happen to purchase a Bible dictionary called the Holman Bible Dictionary, years ago – it’s just one, single volume. You can get Bible dictionaries that are 25 volumes, mine is just one volume and it has pictures. So when I was reading and it talked about the Temple in the Bible, I could go to my Bible dictionary and look at it and see a picture and plans and explaining the different parts. So I’m able to read a few paragraphs in just a few minutes, and I’m there, I understand what the writers saying about the Temple, about the Holy of Holies, wow! When the Bible talks about Ephraim I look it up, half a column, three minutes, I know who or what Ephraim is. The story of the Good Samaritan; who were the Samaritans? What was their relationship to the Jews? Ah! That’s what Jesus meant by the story of the Good Samaritan. And lastly, the third resource was a Bible timeline. It’s one of these things you can fold out and it’s about four pages wide that show the chronology of the Bible. You read about King David, when was he king? Who was King before him? Who was King after him? What else was going on? Which prophets were writing when David was alive? And all of a sudden you put the whole Bible thing in time sequence, that’s huge. And just to top things off, let me tell you about two stunning websites. The first is biblegateway.com () where you can compare different Bible translations. The second is studylight.org (), it has Bible dictionaries online, the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words, and so many more great resources. All free. So let me ask you? Do you take Jesus seriously? If you do then we need to take the Bible seriously. And for just a small investment on your part in just a few simple resources, they pay such huge dividends in hearing and understanding what God is saying to us today through His Word.
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About the Bible Old and New // Power Unlimited, Part 8
04/15/2026
About the Bible Old and New // Power Unlimited, Part 8
God’s Word is packed full of power … power unlimited … to transform your life. But one of the biggest problems people have with the Bible is understanding it. Making sense of it. Knowing where it comes from, and where what they’re reading today fits into the big picture. Well, I think it’s time we did something about that. We’ve all heard of those word association tests that psychologists use. You know, they say ‘black’, you say ‘white’; they say ‘rabbit’ and you say ‘carrot’; day/night; God/mmm love; devil/mmm evil; Bible/hmm … Bible? How do you respond to that? Stuffy, old, irrelevant? Well, different people will have some different views but actually in Australia where I live, the Bible is one of the least trusted of all historical documents. Over the last week and a bit on the program/ over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been talking about the incredible power that we unlock, when we read the Bible. But this thing that we call “the Bible”, it’s a big book, it’s massive and it can be daunting. So today I thought it might be useful just to have a look to see what this Bible is exactly. I want to share with you a secret, it’s sad but true. I never read a book cover to cover until I was in my early twenties. I managed to get through school and university and did pretty well I might add, without ever reading a book from beginning to end. I remember at university, in first year English, we studied the book Wuthering Heights which absolutely bored me to tears, I’m sorry and I never opened the book once. There are companies that publish crib notes, you know the summary of the book and a summary of what’s in it and a summary of what some of the critics say, so I just quickly read those, crib notes, wrote essays and did, by and large, reasonably well. And I never, ever liked libraries either. You know how libraries have this kind of dusty, dank smell; all of them are the same. Every library on the planet has the same smell. I thought about it for a while, I thought ‘Berni, why don’t you like libraries? Why did it take you so long to read books?’ The answer I guess has two parts. Firstly, libraries for me always felt really big and inaccessible. They have tens of thousands of books and in the old days when I was at university, they had card systems for accessing, for finding things, I mean these days they have computers. The old card systems had what they call the Dewey Classification system and finding anything just took so incredibly long. And secondly, when you did find the stuff, there was always so much of it, there was so much time involved to, I don’t know, look through all those books and research them. I mean, some people are natural book worms, well I’m not. I still frankly don’t like libraries. I’m sorry if you’re a librarian, I just don’t like libraries. I haven’t darkened the doorstep of one since I finished my last degree quite a few years ago now. You know something; I think for a lot of people the Bible is exactly like that. It feels big and inaccessible. There are many, many people who wouldn’t mind having a read but, for goodness sakes, where do you start? Well today let’s break it down a bit, let’s make it a bit more accessible. I remember when I started Bible College only a few months after becoming a Christian, everyone took for granted that we knew about the Bible. The reality was, I didn’t and my hunch is, I wasn’t alone. Let’s unpack it a bit, let’s demystify it a bit. All of a sudden you know it becomes a whole bunch more accessible. The thing that we call the Bible is made up of 66 different books written by different people over somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 years. That’s the kind of period over which the Bible was written. And it wasn’t just written by different people but at different times and the last book was written, well almost 2,000 years ago. There are essentially two parts to the Bible, this was complete news to me when I first opened it, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and when I started at Bible College I didn’t know which one was which. The Old Testament, well the Old Testament is God’s story and the story of how He interacted with and engaged with His chosen people, the Israelites. The Old Testament is written completely B.C., before Christ, before Jesus came to be on earth with us here. What Christians call the Old Testament is in fact exactly the same as the Jewish Hebrew scriptures, Jews still use those same scriptures today, Christians call it the Old Testament. It’s written mostly in the original language of Hebrew, the language of the Jews. Now there’s small parts of books like Daniel which is written in a language called Aramaic which is the language that Jesus actually spoke but by and large, the Old Testament was originally written in the language of Hebrew. And what we have today, the thing that we call the Old Testament is an English translation of that. Now there are lots of funny name books, Deuteronomy and Judges and Chronicles and there’s Ezekiel, there are 39 separate books and there are kind of 4 main parts of the Old Testament. The first 5 books, Genesis to Deuteronomy, are the Jewish or Hebrew Law, the Torah. And then you go Joshua through Ezra and Nehemiah and that’s kind of the history of what God did and how His people responded. And then after that are the wisdom books, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Lamentations. And the rest of the books in the Old Testament are written by men called Prophets. Men whom God called to call His people back to Him. That’s the Old Testament, it’s a story of God engaging with Gods people. And the New Testament is 27 books. Now, it was mostly written in the language of Greek. The first 4 books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are gospel accounts, they’re the historical account of Jesus’ life and His ministry. And the next book, the book of Acts is the story of the first 20 or so years of the Church after Jesus rose again to be with His Father. Then there’s a whole bunch of letters called Epistles from people like Peter and John and Paul, written to Churches that they were involved in or in some cases, to individuals. This may be old hat to some, but I know to many, just a simple understanding of the basic structure of the Bible is going to be a real help. I know that when I was a new Christian, no one ever bothered to explain it to me – I wish they had. Now some people might be saying to themselves, that’s all well and good, but how accurate is the Bible. Because before the printing press was ever invented by Gutenberg in 1450, the Bible – there’s this massive thing, the Old Testament and New Testament – was transcribed over and over by hand by people called Scribes who copied them by hand. It’s hard to imagine. But these days, there’s a science called Textual Criticism. It studies whether any errors crept into the Bible as it was copied through all these generations manuscripts. And what it tells us, is that having studied thousands of manuscripts, the levels of accuracy are remarkable. I mean it’s a science, people have done it. There are very, very few words or sentences where there is any doubt what was originally written. And blessedly these days, this thing called the Bible has been translated into easy to read, contemporary versions. No more thee’s and thou’s – great, modern day, accurate, easy to understand translations. And did you know that in the Bible, over half of the 66 books, over half, you can read in half and hour or less. Now look, in a few minutes we can’t hope to do anything but scrape the surface. Today we’ve just talked about some basic factual stuff. No-one really taught me this stuff. I remember becoming a Christian and going and sitting in a Church and people just teach from the Bible which is wonderful but no-one ever explained to me that it was 66 books written by a whole bunch of people over different periods of time. That some of it was stories and history and some of it was letters and some of it was poetry. But when you simplify and demystify all that stuff, it turns out that it’s just a wonderful book. And with the many contemporary translations, it’s much, much easier to read than I ever thought. As I started to read the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament, I was completely blown away by this amazing Jesus. Who would have thought … the Bible.
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Laying Hold of Power // Power Unlimited, Part 7
04/14/2026
Laying Hold of Power // Power Unlimited, Part 7
So, we’ve been chatting on the program recently about laying hold of the unlimited power that God wants to give those who love Him. Great … but come on, how do you actually lay hold of that power? Well … the answer may not be what you think. A few years ago now, I had the opportunity to speak with a group of high school students at the opening of their college and senior campus. The subject of my presentation was this: ‘How to Get More out of Your Parents’. I just remember that when I was at high school, speakers at those functions were so boring. I wanted to grab their attention and it certainly did that. A few of the parents, I have to tell you, were listening pretty closely as well but the heart of the presentation was this. Our parents, at least the greatest majority of them, are hard wired to bless us, but one of the things teenagers do, I know I did, is rebel against them and that stops the flow of parental blessing dead in its tracks. I shared some insights with these young men and women about how, in a very practical way, they can respond to their parents’ love at the same time as growing up, to get that relationship and that blessing flowing again. You could see some lights going on as they came to grips with how to respond to their parents. It turns out, our relationship with God is no different. Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been working our way through a series of messages called “Power Unlimited”. Over the last twenty or so years I’ve spent a lot of time studying God’s Word, the 66 different books in the Bible and so I’ve had the chance to mull it all over. And whilst I know I’ve really just scratched the surface, the more I think about it, the Bible appears to me to be about 4 things. Who God is, God’s will and purpose for us, who you and I are in his heart and fourthly, the thing I want to talk about today is, how we can respond to God. And as it turns out, that’s the key to laying hold of the unlimited power that He has for us. Now some people think that all the Bible has to offer, is a bunch of rules and regulations. But as I’ve read my way through the Bible, what I’ve discovered is that, how we can respond to God isn’t the main thing, it kind of drops out of all the other three; it’s a natural consequence of who God is, His will and purpose, who I am and as we get our hearts around those things, well for me at least, my heart just wanted to explode and respond to Him. We’re going to unpack this last one today because you know something; it’s not a rules and regulations thing. I don’t stay faithful to my wife because I have to, I do, but that’s not why I stay faithful to her. I stay faithful to her because I want to; it’s my response to her love and to our promise to one another. Not a difficult thing to do at all, because she loves me and one of the ways that I respond to that love is through my faithfulness to her. It’s the same deal with God but you know something, it’s not good enough to know that we ought to respond or even that we want to respond, we need to know how to respond. So often in marriages the husband wants to show love to the wife and the wife wants to show love to the husband, but they’re actually two very different people and they don’t know how. A lot of marriages fall apart simply because people don’t know how to love one another. We were talking about teenagers earlier; nobody ever explained to me what was going on when I was growing up. You know, we start with a total dependence on our parents, we’re a baby, we have breast milk, we’re in nappies and progressively we grow to be independent of them. It’s a natural thing to grow up and become an adult and to be independent of your parents. Jesus quoted the Old Testament, he said: Matthew 19:5 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they’ll become one flesh. In those teenage years, we’re kind of almost adults but not really, we’re still dependant on our parents financially. We’re still under their authority and discipline; we still live in their home. Those awkward in–between years are times when a lot of people rebel against their parents in all sorts of ways. You know the teenage roll of the eyes, ‘I know it all and what would my parents know’. We continually do things parents ask us not to and we yet do them anyway. We leave the empty coke can on the sink or the underwear on the floor in the bathroom, whatever it is that a teenager does that drives their parents nuts, it’s almost like if they know that it drives their parents nuts, they’ll do it more. I did that. We establish a pattern of behaviour that’s rebellious and so you get into a rut that you don’t know how to get out of. In the short time we spent together, these young people and I, I just gave them some practical advice on how to honour their parents so that the blessing will flow to them. You know something; I think it’s the same in our relationship with God. It’s the little things we do or we don’t do. The way we think, the way we behave, the way we hold onto things and the pride and the selfishness. We can understand God’s love, perhaps we even understand what Jesus did on the cross for us but unless we know how to respond to that, we may not respond properly. And sometimes we know but we just can’t bring ourselves to respond. The Apostle John explained how to love God: 1 John 5:3 This is love for God, to obey His commandments and His commands aren’t burdensome because everyone born of God overcomes the world.” Here’s what a regular pattern of Bible reading and prayer has done for me: it’s changed me progressively. Just when I’m going through a tough time in a relationship I read something like this, 1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love but perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears isn’t made perfect in love, we love because God first loved us. If anyone says ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, he’s a liar because anyone who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he hasn’t seen and he has given us this command, “Whoever loves God must also love his brother. You know, when you’re going through a tough relationship and you want to rip someone’s head off, you pick up your Bible and you read that, you go ‘God’s speaking to me about how I should respond to His love.’ Just when I’m struggling with this or that, I turn the next page and He speaks to me right into that struggle, right into that need, right into that ‘I want to go my way’ and God says, ‘but if you want to respond to my love, this is my way. It’s a much narrower path, it’s a much more difficult path, but these are my ways and my ways are not always your ways, my thoughts are not always your thoughts’. His quiet, still voice speaks into our heart with a power and gentleness and calls us in His direction, not our own and for me it’s always been that God’s spoken to me in a way that my heart just wants to receive what He says. In a way that nobody else could speak and He does that through His Word, the Bible. He speaks in a way that changes me, that fills me and equips me and prepares me and encourages me. When I read God’s word I’m not just a better preacher, I’m a better husband, I’m a better father, I’m a better work colleague. God teaches me how to respond. Now I have to tell you, this is still very much a work in progress and others no doubt are much further down the track than I am but that’s not the point. Like a surgeon He’s taking out the cancers, the cancers of sin, reconstructing, repairing, healing, encouraging. That’s what happens when we go to Him and listen to what He has to say. He teaches us and shows us how to respond when we spend time in His Word – He just does! That’s why there is such incredible power in the living Word of the living God.
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WARNING: The Countercultural Christ // Power Unlimited, Part 6
04/13/2026
WARNING: The Countercultural Christ // Power Unlimited, Part 6
They say that following Jesus isn’t easy. And not just “they”. In fact Jesus said that following Jesus wouldn’t be easy. Because following Jesus means swimming against the tide of popular opinion. Following Jesus means, all too often … in fact most of the time … going in the opposite direction. That’s why we need power … power unlimited … to follow Jesus. Last week on the program, we were chatting about the unlimited power that’s available to you and me through God’s Word. It seems like a bit of a crazy notion, this idea that you can find incredible power, unlimited power in a book. But the Bible, well … the Bible isn’t just a book. It’s the living Word of the living God and when God speaks, amazing things happen. This is what the Bible says about the Bible – two key verses that change everything about how we look at God’s Word: Hebrews 4:12: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 2 Tim 3:16-17: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. It never ceases to amaze me how people who call themselves Christians think that they can live their lives in peace and joy and power and service … by never, ever opening the Bible. By never, ever drinking in the living, active Word of God that helps us discern the intentions of our hearts. Because let’s face it, it’s in our heart that we deceive ourselves. It’s in our heart that we conceive sin and give birth to it. And so we do need teaching, we do need reproof and correction and training in righteousness in order to be proficient and equipped for every good work. What I’ve discovered in my life is that there are fundamental flaws and weaknesses in my personality, that, try as I might, I am powerless to change. And yet, when I let God’s Word wash through my heart, when I allow the Holy Spirit to write God’s Word on my heart, He does things that I could never do, He unleashes power … power unlimited … to do the things I cannot do. That’s what happens when we listen to God through His Word. Because God calls into existence the things that do not yet exist (Romans 4:17). Think about it, how did God create the universe? God said “Let there be light and there was light.” (Genesis 1:4) God said “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters. (Gen 1:6) God said “Let dry land appear” and it was so (Gen 1:9) God said … God said … God said … and so the universe was created. In other words God spoke the whole universe, the trillions of stars, the great lights, all the creatures and plants on the earth … God said … and it was so. That’s the power of God’s Word. And if that isn’t power unlimited, I don’t know what is. But … there always seems to be a “but” doesn’t there? … but you and I, all too often, we want that power for all the wrong reasons. We want it to make our lives better, rather than to empower us to sacrifice our lives for Christ’s sake. We want it to get ahead, to overcome this, to get that … rather than to take our Cross and follow Jesus. I said at the beginning of the program that Jesus said that following Him would be hard. Here it is: Matthew 16:24-26: Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life. Let me ask you plainly, quietly but very honestly: Why do you want God’s power, God’s unlimited power, in your life? Is it in order to change the difficult circumstances, the difficult people the things out there, the things around you that are causing you grief? Or is it in order that God would change you, to empower you, to enable you to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth? Is it that the Holy Spirit would give you the power to take up your Cross and lay down your life, to potentially lose it all, for Christ’s sake? This whole series of messages Power Unlimited, comes with a warning. Don’t try this at home, unless you’re prepared to lose it all because this wild, untamed, Jesus, is radically counter-cultural and He’s calling His followers to a radical, counter-cultural life. A life that could cost you, will cost you, everything. Have a listen to these couple of encounters that Jesus had with the religious establishment. It’s worth taking a few moments to see how Jesus upset the prevailing culture of His day: Matthew 12:1-8: At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. Do you get it? This is what got Him killed. This is why they crucified Him … because He shone light where there was darkness; because He brought truth where there were lies … and that upset people. Have you noticed how vitriolic people, society, culture becomes when you stand up for the rights of the unborn child, or when you speak with love of the wonder of God’s plan for marriage to be a sublime union between one man and one woman, or when you pull back from the filthy jokes that people tell at work? Have you noticed that? Or have you noticed about the “dangerous religious teachings” in schools that people talk about these days in the news … when it was Christians who are responsible for taking education far and wide across this globe, founding schools, founding hospitals, caring for the needy. Have you noticed? Jesus isn’t calling you to an easy life my friend, make no mistake about it. You follow Jesus and you are going to upset people, and they will come against you like nothing else on earth. And what you’re going to need the power for, is to make it through in love, to continue shining the light of God’s love into this earth, despite the opposition, the persecution, the difficult people, the difficult circumstances. As Adrian Pass wrote: You’re going to need the joy to bear the pain and sorrow. And yet, when we get God’s Word into us, the promise of Jesus, the Son of God Himself, is this: John 15:7-8: If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. Did you get that? If the Word of God abides in you, dwells in you, has say in you, and if you abide in Jesus – you can ask for whatever you wish – whatever – and it will be done for you. There it is. Power unlimited. But not to do the things that you want, because once God’s Word abides in you, you’ll be asking for the things that He wants. Let your will be done on this earth … as it is in heaven. Power unlimited.
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Who Am I Really? // Power Unlimited, Part 5
04/10/2026
Who Am I Really? // Power Unlimited, Part 5
One of the most perplexing questions that each of us faces in life at some point, is: Who am I? What was I made to do? All too often we go looking for the answers in all the wrong places, and the image that we build of ourselves, the understanding that we have of who we are, becomes twisted and distorted. That one thing has ruined … is ruining … many a life. One of the things that many people ponder in life is this question, “Who am I?” We have so many pictures and images of who we should be thrust under our noses each day … and yet none of them ring true, so we end up feeling a bit like refugees, lost. The media and the advertisers, they want to define success for us. They want to tell us what it means to be open-minded. They want to tell us what we should aspire to. They want to tell us what a happy, well adjusted family looks like, and what beauty looks like and what we have to achieve, who we have to be, what we have to look like, to be successful. They tell us if we don’t look like this, we haven’t made it, but we will if we buy their product and I don’t know about you, but I can get so lost in that maze because my life never quite looks like those images of success that they wave under my nose. And we compare ourselves with other people, people who look successful and so often we come to the conclusion that we aren’t. And so that question, “Who am I?” rattles around in that empty, hollow void inside. Who am I? Have you ever been to one of those fairs, you know where they have Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds and amusements and sideshows? And in side-show alley, they have those distorted mirrors. You know, you walk in front of one and you look all tall and skinny or short and fat or all wobbly and wavy. They’re good fun for a little while, about a minute or two. But imagine, imagine if our mirrors at home were like that, all distorted … not good. I remember when I was working as an IT consultant one of the clients I used to work for, the front door of their offices had this glass that was a perfect distortion of me. It just made me look a bit slimmer and a bit taller, you know I could have stood in front of that door all day and looked at myself. We’d like to have a mirror like that at home, wouldn’t we? Or would we? My hunch is, whenever we get a distorted image of ourselves, of who we are, that’s not a good thing even if we happen to like the distorted image better than the real one. For example, the distorted image that society puts up that you can be whoever you want to be, it’s all up to you, it’s all out there, just go and be whoever you want to be. I’m 5 foot, 9 inches or 174 cm tall, so it doesn’t matter how much I want to be a basketball player, I’m never going to be a basketball player. In fact there are some things in life that I am decidedly not good at. If I try to be those things, it would be a bad fit. Maybe that’s why so many people aren’t happy, because they’re trying to do jobs or be someone that they’re quite simply not cut out to be. Aspiring to something that we’re never going to be any good at is one of the worst things that we can do in the world. I wonder if that’s why there are so many people, who literally hate their jobs. I was looking at a recent ‘job satisfaction’ survey on the internet. Have a listen to these stats: 45% of workers say that they’re either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. You know what that means? That means that 55%, or over half, aren’t. Of those 45% who said they were happy, less than half again, in fact only 20% said that they felt really passionate about their jobs. That means that 80% of people don’t feel passionate about their jobs and 33%, fully a third believed they’d reached a dead end in their careers, there was no hope for a future. 21% were eager to change careers. I think that these statistics are a tragedy. The vast majority of people aren’t passionate about what they do every day. So many people aren’t enjoying their lives. But …. let’s look at the flipside of that coin. There’s a whole bunch of people wandering around in life, believing with every fibre of their being, that they’re worthless. ‘Oh, I’m only a stay at home mum. I’m only a clerk. I’m not as smart or as good looking or as talented or as successful or as wealthy or whatever as the next person.’ So many people and advertisers and product manufacturers and self styled guru’s out there want to tell us who we should be and how we get there and if we aren’t we need to get onto their program. Amidst all of that, here’s a question, who am I? Who are you? In the cosmos, in the scheme of things, how do you define your worth and who you actually are? And if you’re living your life that way, then you are living a powerless life. A life that will, ultimately, count for nothing. In a very real sense, that was the life that I was living, until I discovered what God said about me. How God sees me. What His view of me from Heaven’s balcony looks like. And that’s something that you find in the Bible over and over again. I want to set you a challenge today, to read Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 – only a few pages – and to write down all the things that just those three chapters say about you. Let me just give you the first few: You are a saint, grace and peace are yours, you are already blessed with every spiritual blessing, you were chosen before the creation of the world, predestined, adopted into God’s family, redeemed, forgiven, God’s grace is being lavished on you, wisdom and understanding are yours, God’s will is made known to you … and we haven’t even arrived yet, at the tenth verse of the first chapter. Do you get it? The Bible presents a radically different view of who you are. The Bible tells you who God says you are. So instead of believing the distorted images that the world reflects back at you, you can see, a crystal clear, accurate representation of who you are. As one of my Bible College lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, often used to say – you and I need to ditch our self image, and develop a faith image, by discovering and believing what God says about you. Because when you know who you really are, who you are in Christ, you will have laid hold of the power to be who God made you to be. It’s a power that will completely and utterly and radically transform your life. You see God is no other pedlar of good philosophies or belief systems; He’s not some distorted mirror of low self–esteem or unrealistic stereotypes. If God is truly God, if God made you and me, how does He see us? The answer to that question tells us who we really are. And not knowing who we are is like trying to navigate your place from A to B, with an inaccurate map. Blind Freddy can see that that’s no way to live life. I come back again, to the many people I speak to about the problems that they’re experiencing in life. When I ask them … how often do you read your Bible, they invariably tell me, in a low voice, with obvious embarrassment … Well, not very often. Okay then, so when was the last time you opened your Bible and spent just five minutes listening to what God wants to tell you? The answer? For many it’s months and even years ago. Who am I? If that’s a question that you want the answer to, a question let me say that you want the right answer to, if you want an accurate map for your life, then the only place that you’re going to find it is in God’s Word. Because when we come to His word, the Bible with questions like “Who am I?”, His Spirit breathes those truths into our hearts. I can’t do that for you, only you can do that with Him, only He can do that for you and that stuff is the stuff that’s in the Bible because all of us who are led by God’s spirit are children of God. So let me take you back to that challenge. Open your Bible, go to Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 in the New Testament. Read them. And write down everything that you find in those few sort pages that tell you who you are. I found thirty statements about my identity. Let’s see how many you can find. Right them down, ponder them, believe them … and tell me then if you don’t find power unlimited to live your life.
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What are His Plans and Purposes for Me? // Power Unlimited, Part 4
04/09/2026
What are His Plans and Purposes for Me? // Power Unlimited, Part 4
Many people, many Christians even, let me say, live directionless, rudderless lives. Their lives don’t seem to be heading anywhere in particular. And at some point, as we realise that life is slipping by ever so quickly, that shocks us into realising that before long, this life will be over … and for what? You know one of the most common things that we all experience at some point or other in our lives, is this dilemma, this crisis if you will, of, well where is my life headed? I think it’s because somehow we’re hardwired to have hope for the future, to be able to look forward to a good future, to have a sense of significance, to make our mark in this world. Where is my life headed? … can become a question of quite some desperation. And for our lives to be headed in the right direction we need a few things to come together. The way we live, the things that we can control, and the things that go on around us, the ones we can’t control. That’s not easy. It’s almost an impossible juggling act. But … what if God has a plan? What if He has a purpose in the things that we’ve been travelling through? What if there’s meaning behind it all, and He does want to do amazing things and He does want to be involved in the choices we make today? What if? Wouldn’t you want to tap into that? I mean, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want Him to speak those plans and purposes gently into your heart and let them make a difference for you, here and now? Just think … what a powerful way that would be to live. Yesterday we saw that the biggest thing that we can get out of the Bible is discovering God Himself, who He is, what He’s like, how does He react to different situations and things? To me that is the greatest prize of them all, God Himself, getting to know Him, having a wonderful, rich relationship that just gets deeper and deeper as time goes by. Today I want to look at the second thing that I think the Bible is about, God’s plans and God’s purposes, both the big picture and specifically for you and me. The big picture is so important. What’s Gods big plan? What’s He up to? A friend and colleague of mine, Dr Graham Pratt, he and I were speaking a few years ago at an IT conference in Singapore. We were talking over coffee about some technology thing and he said to me, “Berni, context is so important, in fact in understanding something, context is almost everything.” I’ll never forget it, it’s a pearl of wisdom. We want to know where our lives are headed, my life, my little piece of the puzzle, right? If we want to do that we need to understand the big picture; God’s great plan as well as His specific plans and purposes for our lives. You know, when I read the Bible, the stories and the things that happened a long time ago, somehow God’s plan for my life becomes so crystal clear. For me, life was just a ‘here and now’ thing. It was about wealth and career. In reality, it was empty, hollow, directionless. Where was it headed? What was the point? But when I encountered Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, when I started listening to Him by reading the Bible, I began to get a handle on God’s big picture. A big picture that’s best summed up in something that God says over and over again: I will be your God and you will be my people. (Exodus 6:7) From the beginning to the end of the Bible, you see God saying that and explaining it and sending Jesus so that it could happen. They’re not just words on a page. This is the very heartbeat of God to call us back to Himself, to call us back home, here and now and for all eternity, despite our rebellion, despite the fact that we rejected Him, despite all our mistakes; to give us a new life, an eternal life that’s not about rules and regulations but a relationship with Him. And right through the whole Bible you see Him engaging with people and drawing them closer, people just like you and me, people in their weaknesses and their failures and yet He loves them and touches them and reaches out to them. Okay, we see His anger too sometimes, you see God getting angry and yet despite that He still reaches out to people from in the midst of His anger and that’s where we discover His grace and we see Jesus dying on a cross for you and me. As we read those stories over and over again, His heartbeat touches ours, His desire touches us, His grace wraps itself around us and through us. I’ve only just started to wrap my heart around that as I’ve spent twenty odd years listening to Him, hearing His words and His stories and His heartbeat in the pages of that wondrous book – the Bible. You know, you open the Bible and you read the story of Jesus dying on the cross and crying out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46) And from the pages of that book we hear God crying out to you and me, here and now; “Don’t you realise how much I love you”. And you know, as well as this big picture of God’s engagement of all humanity and His plans for humanity as a whole, the thing that, for me, so often leaps off the pages of His word are His specific plans for me. Sometimes we think that ‘Well, you know, God’s stopped talking. God had the prophets in the Old Testament and He had Jesus in the New Testament and He had some Apostles in the New Testament … but that was back then. Today though, here and now God’s stopped talking’. But when we’re travelling through times that are uncertain, when we want to give up, when we’re in a relationship or in a thing we thought God had called us into but now we’re not sure, we need God to speak. I cannot tell you the number of times, in the early days, that I wanted to give up on this ministry of Christianityworks that I’m involved in. I can’t begin to tell you. It all looked so impossible, it all looked so hopeless. How could this guy from the IT industry ever do this thing called ‘sharing Gods love with people through the media’? It was incongruous but as I look back on it now, that regular habit of spending time in Gods word, day after day, is how He touched me and whispered in my heart ‘just keep going’. That’s what happens, you read God’s word and you discover power … power unlimited … power to keep going with God’s plan for your life. That’s what happens. Just when I was rock bottom I remember one time, reading this: My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2,3) Another time, just when I was wondering whether or not to step out in faith by growing the ministry into Africa when we clearly didn’t have the resources to do so, I opened up to the next chapter and read about Peter stepping out of the boat. He didn’t wait for the storm to stop. No, he stepped out in the middle of the storm and walked on the water towards Jesus. Just when I was feeling so incredibly inadequate one tome, I read about how Peter and all the other disciples deserted Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. And yet Jesus still went on to use them to start this thing He called “the church”. The Bible is full of this stuff and somehow God, through His Spirit, takes those stories and connects them with our lives and in our hearts we just know that God is speaking to us. There have been so many times when just when I needed a gentle touch from God … then I read about how He healed the leper or the blind person or the lame man. The Bible is full of God’s promises and plans and purposes. And when we establish a regular habit of just spending some time in there with Him, His Spirit writes His promises and plans and purposes on our hearts with indelible ink, in a way that no person, no man or woman, no situation, no trial can ever rub them off. God Himself brings His word to life and that changes everything. So often I wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t established a regular habit of reading Gods word. You know, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.
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Who Exactly is God? // Power Unlimited, Part 3
04/08/2026
Who Exactly is God? // Power Unlimited, Part 3
God is so profoundly different to anyone or anything that this world has to offer. His ways are so different to our ways, and unless and until we have a personal encounter with the risen Christ, unless and until we encounter Jesus in our own, personal experience, our lives simply cannot be transformed. Who or what is God? Well you go out and ask different people and what you discover is that they have a picture of God in their heads that doesn’t always have a whole bunch to do with who God actually is. It’s almost like we reconstruct Him in our own image, to suit ourselves, to suit our own agendas, but let me ask you something, if God is God wouldn’t it be worthwhile kind of figuring out exactly who He is? IF God has the power, is the power, to transform our lives, shouldn’t we get to know Him? I mean, who is He really and how do you and I relate to Him? What if God is awesome and powerful and loving and kind and we spend the rest of our lives missing out on all that because we never really went after Him to discover who He really is? So how do we discover who God really is? This week on the program we’re setting about laying hold of God’s power to completely and utterly transform our lives. And the place that we discover that power, the place that God the Holy Spirit has made available for us to lay hold of that power – is His Word, the Bible. I mean reading the Bible was something I would never have done in a million years. What do you think I am, some wacky fundamentalist? But you know something, reading the Bible for myself has completely and utterly transformed my life. It didn’t stunt me, it opened me up. It didn’t narrow my mind; it opened me up to the wonder and the possibilities of life with God, to the power that God wants to unleash in my life. Over the last twenty or so years I guess I’ve spent a lot of time in that Book, in fact its 66 different books. I’ve had the chance to study and to learn and to think and to mull it all over and truly, in those twenty odd years I’ve really only scratched the surface. But the more I think about it, the Bible is basically about four things: Who God is, what He’s like and how He reacts to things. What God’s will and purposes are, what His plan is. Where my life is headed. It’s about who I am, made in His image but how does He see me? Who did He make me to be? And … how I can respond to God. Some people think this last one, number four, is all that the Bible has to offer; just rules and regulations … but you know, as you read it for yourself, how to respond to God is quite simply not the main thing, it just kind of drops out at the end, it’s the natural consequence of the first three. Those four things again are: who God is, what His will and purposes are, who you and I are in His eyes and how we can respond. That’s what the Bible contains, it’s real and it’s practical, it’s about life, it’s awesome and it’s exciting and it contains power … power unlimited to transform you, to transform your life, to heal you, to bless you, to empower you. Today I just want to look at the first one of those; who God is. I mean if God is God, shouldn’t we figure out who He is? Who He says He is? Where better to do that, to search Him out, than that great love letter that He’s written to you and to me, the Bible. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When I first laid eyes on my wife Jacqui, when I first saw her from a distance, I was speaking at a Church and she was sitting in that congregation. As far as I was concerned, she was just another face in the crowd and had I never sought her out, I would never have come to know her and to have a relationship with her. So, I did seek her out and she responded to that. In a sense, picking up the Bible is seeking God out, it’s the same thing, He responds. It’s not a dead book written by men thousands of years ago. It’s the living, active word of God and His promise is that when we pick it up, the Holy Spirit, God Himself, will bring it to life in our hearts. God promised that He would pour His Spirit out on all flesh and that He would write His words onto our heart. By far, the greatest reason for reading the Bible, is to encounter God Himself, to discover who He is, and how He sees things; what He’s like and what He’s up to. You see, it’s easy to read this story or that in the Bible and say, “Well that was a story about King David” or “That one over there, that’s the story about Moses or Peter or Paul”. But so often in the pages of this great and mighty book, the great unseen player is God Himself and as I read every story, every verse, I keep asking myself, “What does this tell me about God Himself? What’s He up to in this story?” Let’s take just one example, it’s a short story. God makes a promise to this man called Abram who is childless. You know, Abram’s an old man, his wife Sarai is an old woman, they’re childless and yet God has called them to go from their home on this huge journey. God’s promised them children, a multitude of children, but it’s never happened. It’s gone on for years and years and years. Abraham’s out of his comfort zone, he’s on this long, uncomfortable journey and he’s frustrated and this is what happens. After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6) It’s really easy to read this story and imagine that it’s a story all about Abram. But the real question that we should be asking is What does this short little story, tell us about God? Here’s Abram. He’s frustrated, he’s waiting for a breakthrough that’s not coming. He’s trying to believe in God, but it’s hard. I wonder if that sounds at all familiar to you? And it’s going on for years and years and years and he and his wife are old and it’s just absolutely impossible. But along comes God and He does this kind of gentle and kind and wondrous and patient thing with Abraham, He takes him outside to gaze up into this beautiful masterpiece called the Milky Way. Have you ever looked up at the stars away from the smog and the lights of a big city at night? It’s incredible how many stars are up there and in the middle of Abram’s frustration, God says ‘Abram, look … look at this! This is how many descendants you’re going to have. My promise will actually happen”. And if you read the rest of this story, Abraham ultimately has a son, with his wife Sarah, called Isaac. He never saw all these offspring happen, he never saw the rest of the promise fulfilled in his life time, but here is this good and gracious and powerful God who takes a man in the middle of his frustration and just speaks lovingly to him. It’s a story about God do you get it? It’s a story about how God treats those who He loves when they’re at the end of their tether. the Bible is full of those stories. You pick it up and you read them and wow, you discover who God really is. Do you see the power in that? Do you see how know God, and how in our small, limited way, coming to understand Him can make such a powerful difference to us, when we’re lost and frustrated and clinging onto a promise … but only just? People often say to me, “Berni, you seem to be so enthusiastic about God.” Can I tell you why? Because over the last couple of decades I’ve discovered Him in the pages of the Bible and discovered what He says about Himself there and those things have ended up being etched onto my heart, so that I can experience Him in my life. I can’t help but be enthusiastic and you know, I can’t help but wonder, where would my life be? Where would I be, if I hadn’t laid hold of this power … power unlimited in the living Word of God?
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The Power to Change // Power Unlimited, Part 2
04/07/2026
The Power to Change // Power Unlimited, Part 2
The Bible tells us (Ephesians Chapter 1) That God has already made His incredible great power, His resurrection power, available to each and every person who believes in Jesus. So today, were going to take a look at what happens, when we lay hold of that power. As you can imagine, I speak with a lot of people. People who respond to this radio program, people I meet in my travels, people who’ve hear me speak and want to know how to apply it to their lives. And most people, come to me with a problem. This is working in my life … and I just don’t know why. That isn’t working in my life … and I don’t know what to do about it. I want to follow Jesus … but Satan keeps on winning as he tempts me with this sin or that sin. Over and over again, I hear the same thing, the same question, the same problem, the same frustration in people’s voices. Why isn’t my life all that Jesus promised it would be?! It’s a question that plagues many a Christ follower. It causes many to fall by the wayside. It causes many people to live a life that falls so far short of all that it could be in Christ. To my way of thinking, this is one of the greatest tragedies playing itself out in the Kingdom of God today. And just like many of the lifestyle and diet related illnesses that are killing people across the globe, this is a sickness that is completely avoidable. Here is what I see happening in God’s Kingdom, amongst God’s people. The societies in which we live are moving further and further away from God. Look at the United States. A country of religious freedom, founded by the pilgrims, who came to the land to have the freedom to worship God. A nation who, on its dollar bill, has the words “In God we trust”. And now, a country, where it’s illegal to pray at school, illegal for an officer in the military to share his faith or a Bible with a soldier, a country where four in ten unborn children are ‘terminated’ – that’s a genocide of around 1.2 million children each year. I’m not just picking on the US of A … it’s happening right around the globe. Societies founded on Christian love, as they become more secular, are shifting further and further away from God. And they’re behaving as though this is progress. It’s progress to allow one man to marry another man, or a woman to marry another woman. It’s progress to allow a woman to choose whether or not to kill her unborn child. It’s progress for women not to respect their husbands and men not to cherish their wives. And anybody who stands in the way of this so-called ‘progress’ is a narrow-minded, conservative bigot. And these sweeping changes are sweeping many a Christian along them. Christians en masse are forsaking a life based on God’s Word, for a life based on the world’s ways. And not just individual Christians, but preachers, Bible teachers, churches and denominations. And then we wonder why things aren’t going so well for us in our lives. Really?! Back to the Bible International based in Lincoln Nebraska, is a ministry that I have been closely involved with now for a good many years. They in fact founded the ministry of Christianityworks that I now lead here in Australia, way back in 1957. Part of Back to the Bible is the Centre for Bible Engagement, which has conducted extensive research around the world on the impact in the lives of men and woman, who are engaged with God’s Word on a regular basis. Remember, the Bible itself says that there is incredible power to defeat Satan, in God’s Word: … our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17) The only offensive weapon in our spiritual armour given to us by God is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. All the other parts of the armour are defensive, which is good, but you don’t win a battle by going on the defence. You have to go on the offence, you have to attack the enemy to defeat him. And the one tool, the one weapon that God has given us to do that, is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. So the Centre for Bible Engagement researched the spiritual lives of more than 100,000 people 21 countries, ranging from ages of eight to 80 years. They began with this question: What is it, of all the things that Christians do, that is the most powerful predictor of spiritual growth? When you think about it, Christians do a lot of things to express their faith. They go to church, they pray, the listen to sermons, they attend home groups, they give, they serve … and many more things. The Centre of Bible Engagement’s research project wanted to find out which ones of those had the most impact in the life of a Christian. That’s not a bad question to ask through a large, scientifically constituted, statistically valid, international research project. That’s not a bad question to ask, for anyone who wants to lay hold the super-abundant life that Jesus promised (John 10:10) to give us. The conclusions of this research was as follows (and I quote from their report): The findings consistently show that engaging in the Bible four or more days a week is the single most powerful predictor of spiritual growth – and they defined spiritual growth as becoming less of the person I was before I committed my life to Jesus and more like Christ in my thoughts, words and deeds. In fact, I know Arnie Cole, the President of Back to the Bible pretty well. His background is as a professional researcher and statistician. And he said to me that statistically speaking, the correlation between engaging with God’s Word, the Bible four times a week or more and spiritual growth, is stronger than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Just think about that. What powerful evidence of the importance of receiving, reflecting on and responding to God’s Word having a powerful impact in changing our lives. Making the changes that we ourselves have been powerless to change. Let me come back to the Apostle Paul’s reflection on this whole question of the power to change: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24) The answer is that only God can give us the power to change, the resurrection power to be able to live the born-again, new, super-abundant life that Jesus came to give us. What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4) Do you see? God’s plan is for you to walk in the newness of life, the resurrection life made available to you through the Cross and the Empty tomb. And the power to live that life is something that you will find in the Word of God, as the Spirit of God breathes His Word into your heart: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (1 Tim 3:16-17) That’s where you’ll find the power to change – power unlimited. In God’s Word. So … you have to ask yourself, why do so many Christians ignore their Bibles?!
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Resurrection Power // Power Unlimited, Part 1
04/06/2026
Resurrection Power // Power Unlimited, Part 1
Too many Christians, in fact, way too many Christians, are living lives that fall so far short of the life that Jesus promised. When Jesus promised power, they instead end up living a powerless life. I wonder if you know anyone like that. I wonder if this scenario sounds at all familiar to you. At some stage, way back when, you decided to believe in Jesus. Perhaps you, like me, can remember the day that you took that step. Or maybe like many people I know, you can’t remember a time when you didn’t believe in Jesus. So you’ve believed … and believed … and believed … and somehow life doesn’t seem to get any better. You seem to have the same challenges, successes, failures … whatever, as all the other people you know who don’t believe in Jesus. In fact, often times, they seem to be living a better life than you are and on top of that, they’re not wracked by guilt the way you are, because by not believing in Jesus, they don’t have to worry about the idea of temptation, or falling short of God’s ideals, or any of that stuff. Does that sounded all familiar? Sadly, it’s de rigour for many a Christian. Most Christians in fact. The Christian life doesn’t seem all it’s cracked up to be. Wasn’t it Jesus who said: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10) So where is that abundant life (the original Greek word used there actually means super-abundant!) Where is this super-abundant life that Jesus promised us? Why is everything so difficult? Why is it that I’m not filled with the joy and the excitement that I first felt when I gave my life to Jesus? Can I tell you, I speak to a lot of people, all around the world, who come to me with basically that scenario; basically that same story. Here it is in a nutshell: I know that my life isn’t what it’s meant to be in Christ. I know that. But I don’t know why. I don’t know what to do about it. And that’s why today we’re kicking off a brand new series of messages called ‘Power Unlimited’. Because the thing that’s lacking in the lives of these people – perhaps in your life too – is the power to live the life that Jesus promised us. The devil comes along and whispers in our ear You’re not good enough for God. And actually He’s right. That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul says of himself (and remember God called him to write almost half of the books of the New Testament). For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. (Romans 7:14-21) So Paul, as it turns out, has exactly the same problem that you and I have. But happily, he doesn’t give up, because the old Paul, God bless him, also has the answer. The only answer that has the power to make a difference: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24) You see I have some very good news for you today. Listen carefully so you don’t miss it: God has already placed within you all the power that you need, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus died and rose again to give you. God has already made the resurrection power, the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead, available to you, here and now, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus came to give you. I know, I know … you don’t believe me. Good, you shouldn’t believe me, it’s not within my purview to grant you that power. But will you believe what God says in the Bible: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:17-22) Do you see? Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is that they would discover the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe … the very same power that raised Christ from the dead. Each year we celebrate Easter, the death on the Cross (which receives most of the focus) and the resurrection (which frankly, we don’t focus on as much). But this resurrection is the evidence of the immeasurably great power that is available to you and me, so that we can live a new life. The life that Jesus promised. As Bible teacher Casey Treat once said … we need to stop praying for power, and start praying with power, the power that we already have. One of my Bible college lecturers from years ago, Dr Barry Chant, once said that if he were to transliterate the original Greek words used there for immeasurably great power, it would sound something like this: hyperballistic, megathonic, dynamic power! Do you get it? Do you realise the immeasurable greatness of God’s power that He has placed at your disposal to live your life for Christ? Hello, wake-up! And the purpose of this power, the whole point of this power, is to enable us to live the new life, the born–again life, the resurrection life, the super-abundant life, that Jesus came to give us. Yet so many Christians, most Christians, fail to live that life for one reason and one reason alone. Because they don’t lay hold of that power. We live on a spiritual battlefield. The Apostle Paul puts it this way: … our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17) No I’m an old soldier from way back. And I can tell you that as I look at each of the elements of that spiritual armour that Paul lists there, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes, the shield the helmet, each of them those is a defensive piece of armour. Defence is important to protect yourself, but you don’t win a war by defending. To win, you have to attack. And the only offensive weapon in that list is … what? The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God! That’s the only attack weapon in the spiritual armoury that God has given you. And the truth is that most Christians leave it in its scabbard. They leave the sword of the Spirit at home, and then they wonder why the devil keeps on winning! And that … that’s something we’re going to talk a lot more about over the coming days.
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Then They Nailed Him to the Cross // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 5
04/03/2026
Then They Nailed Him to the Cross // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 5
We race through Easter. A long weekend, chance for a break. Maybe a trip to church … but then again, perhaps not. And to do that, we have to shield our eyes. We have to avoid looking at the cross. Because when you do, when you turn your eyes to Calvary, let me tell you, it’s something you just can’t ignore. Then Pilate took Jesus and had Him flogged and the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on His head and they dressed Him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to Him saying, 'Hail, king of the Jews', and striking Him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, 'Look I'm bringing Him out to let you know I find no case against Him'. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, 'Here, here is the man'. When the Chief Priests and the police saw Him they shouted, 'Crucify Him, crucify Him'. Pilate said to them, 'Take Him yourselves and crucify Him. I find no case against Him'. The Jews answered, 'We have a law and according to that law He ought to die because He has claimed to be the Son of God.’ Now when Pilate heard this he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters and again asked Jesus, 'Where are you from?' But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore said to Him, 'Do you refuse to speak to me? Don't you know I have the power to release you and the power to crucify you?' And Jesus answered him, 'You have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.’ From then on Pilate tried to release Him but the Jews cried out, 'If you release this man you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor'. When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, 'Here is your king'. They cried out, 'Away with Him, away with Him. Crucify Him'. Pilate asked them, 'Shall I crucify your king?' The Chief Priests answered, 'We have no king but the emperor' and he handed Him over to be crucified. So they took Jesus and carrying a cross by Himself He went out to what is known as The Place of the Skull which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified Him and with Him two others. One on either side with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put it on the cross, it read 'Jesus of Nazareth king of the Jews'. Many of the Jews read this inscription because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Then the Chief Priests of the Jews said to Pilate, 'Do not write “the king of the Jews” but “this man said, I am the king of the Jews”.’ Pilate answered, 'I have written what I have written.' When the soldiers had crucified Jesus they took His clothes, divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took His tunic. Now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, 'Lets not tear it but cast lots for it to see who will get it'. This was to fulfil what the Scriptures says, "They divided my clothes among them and for my clothing they cast lots." And that is what the soldiers did. Meanwhile standing near the cross of Jesus were His mother and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene." When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loves standing beside her, he said to His mother, 'Woman, here is your son'. Then He said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother'. And from that hour the disciple took her in his own home. After this when Jesus knew that all was finished He said, in order to fulfil the Scripture, ‘I'm thirsty’. A jar full of sour wine was standing there so they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to His mouth. When Jesus had received the wine He said, 'It is finished'. Then He bowed His head and gave up His Spirit. Since it was the day of preparation the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath especially because that Sabbath was a great day of solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with Him but when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead they didn't break His legs. Instead one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and at once blood and water came out. He who saw this has testified so that you may believe. His testimony is true and he knows that he tells the truth. These things occurred so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, "None of His bones shall be broken." And again another passage of Scripture says, "They will look on the one whom they have pierced." After these things Joseph of Arimathea who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission so he came and removed the body. Nicodemus, who had come at first to Jesus by night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where He was crucified and in that garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid and so because it was the Jewish day of preparation the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. It's an amazing story. And I thought that on this day, the day that we call Good Friday, there was nothing to share with you, no words that I could possibly say that could come anywhere close to the power of this account. This Jesus, this Son of God who came to earth and became a man. Who grew up a Jew, who loved the loveless. He healed the sick, He blessed those who were cursed in this world, He taught those who didn't understand, He liberated those who were captive. Arrested, beaten, tried and found guilty. This Jesus who came for the people in that crowd, the people who just days had shouted Hosanna in the Highest as He rode into Jerusalem on that colt, the foal of a donkey. The people who now, whipped up by the religious leaders, bayed for His blood. These people are the ones that had Him crucified. Common, ordinary people. People in fact just like you and me. And there He died, bloodied and beaten, the death that I deserve for my sin. The death that you deserve for yours. He died that we might live again. He died to give us a new life, a life where for all eternity we might be with Him where He is and behold His glory. For this reason Jesus came, to die for my sin and for yours that we may have access once again to God the Father. To give you and me a new life. My slate wiped clean, completely clean. Forgiven by God. To give you a new life, your slate wiped clean, completely forgiven by God. But what a terrible price He had to pay this Jesus who knew no sin. In fact He became sin on that cross so that you and I might have a right standing with God. Greater love has no one than this, that He lay down His life for His friends. You are my friends, said Jesus, if you do what I command. Friend, this story of Easter is simple and powerful and profound. May you be blessed, may you be blessed richly as you drink in His blood red message of Easter. They don't call it the good news for nothing.
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Betrayal Arrest Trial // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 4
04/02/2026
Betrayal Arrest Trial // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 4
Judas Iscariot would have to be one of the most infamous men in all of history. The friend of Jesus who betrayed Him. The man who betrayed the Son of God. Have you ever wondered – what made him do it? What if I told you that the trigger, the straw that broke the camel’s back, was a love of money?! All of us have experienced some time in our lives the betrayal of a friend. It's a terrible thing and in fact it is quite possibly the worst thing we could ever experience. When a trust is broken. When there's an infidelity or a betrayal where there should have been faithfulness and trust. Where there's hate where there once was love. Where there's strife where once there was peace. These are the most painful of all pains. The greater the love, the greater the trust that once was, the deeper and darker the betrayal. As I speak these words no doubt your mind turns to a betrayal in your life. Your heart remembers the darkness and the depth of the loss. That's because betrayal was never meant to be. And so when we talk about Jesus betrayal by Judas Iscariot, this man whom Jesus took to be one of His closest disciples, then this is the thing of which we speak. It's not just a story as familiar as it may be, it's a real human and spiritual drama based on betrayal and desertion. And as it turns out Judas wasn't the only one of the disciples who betrayed Jesus. When push came to shove they all fled, they all left Him completely alone in His hour of need. Jesus didn't just die on that cross, he was betrayed and He was deserted by His closest friends. Turns out He suffered in a whole bunch of different ways, in ways that we sometimes gloss over and miss and ignore. Betrayal is something that begins in the heart and that is exactly what happened with Judas Iscariot. Interestingly the thing that seemed to trigger it was money. Have a listen, John chapter 12 beginning at verse 1: Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus whom He'd raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for Him. Martha served and Lazarus was one of those at the table with Him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard and anointed Jesus feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume but Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, the one who was about to betray Him said, 'Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?' He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it. So there they were just six days before the Passover, less than a week before Jesus was arrested and tried, that money was playing merry hell in Judas' heart. Am I drawing too long a bow here? Well I don't think so particularly when you look at a similar thing that happened also in Bethany just four days later. Matthew chapter 26 beginning at verse 1: When Jesus had finished saying all these things He said to His disciples, 'You know that after two days the Passover is coming and the Son of man will be handed over to be crucified?’ Then the Chief Priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the High Priest who was called Caiaphas and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill Him. But they said, 'Not during the festival or there may be a riot among the people'. Now while Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper a woman came to Him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it they were angry and they said, 'Why waste this for this ointment could have been sold for a large sum and the money given to the poor'. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, 'Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world what she had done will be told in remembrance of her.’ Then one of the twelve who was called Judas Iscariot went to the Chief Priests and said, 'What will you give me if I betray Him to you?' They paid him thirty pieces of silver and from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus. So there it was. It was Judas' love of money that caused him to go out after the thirty pieces of silver and sell out the Son of God. It is the sin that triggered the crucifixion of Jesus, the love of money. And it wasn't long before the wheels were set in motion. John chapter 18 beginning at verse 1: After Jesus had spoken these words He went out with His disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden which He and His disciples entered. Now Judas who betrayed Him also knew the place because Jesus often met there with His disciples. So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the Chief Priests and the Pharisee's and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to Him, came forward and asked them, 'Who are you looking for?' They answered, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' Jesus replied, 'I am he.' Judas who betrayed Him was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, 'I am he', they stepped back and they fell to the ground. Again He asked them, 'Whom are you looking for?' And they said, 'Jesus of Nazareth'. Jesus answered them, 'I told you I am he, so if you are looking for me let these other men go.’ So the soldiers, their officer and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound Him. And of course Jesus was tried several times and unjustly eventually condemned to death. Judas suffered a lot as a result of this and actually he had a change of heart, we read in Matthew chapter 27 beginning at verse 3: When Judas His betrayer saw that Jesus was condemned he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the Chief Priests and to the elders. He said, 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.' But they said, 'What is that to us? See to it yourself.' So throwing down the pieces of silver in the Temple he departed and he went and hanged himself. Do you see how normal, everyday, human sin and frailty were involved in the arrest and the crucifixion of Jesus? How the lure of treasures of this world placed in Judas' heart and fanned by satan himself were at play here. You and I, we're so quick to cut ourselves some slack, to rationalise and justify our own sin and sweep it under the carpet. And yet it was your sin and mine that Jesus went to the cross to pay for. And one of the most common of all sins friend is this love of money. The delight in the riches of this world which rises up and sets itself above God in our hearts and our lives. That's what happened to Judas. He saw all this money being poured out on Jesus by way of these perfumes, he wanted that money, he wanted money and so he went and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Friend, sin is as insidious as it is dangerous. It is all the sort of sin that God views so gravely that He sent His Son to die for it so that you and I might be forgiven. We can fool ourselves sure but only for so long. At some point we come to the painful realisation that Judas Iscariot came to. That it just ain't worth it. That setting up other gods above the one true God is just about the dumbest thing that you and I could ever do in our lives. And maybe, just maybe right now as we're heading towards Easter you and I have the opportunity to ask ourselves, are we in that position? Is there something in our lives that we're setting up above God? Are we, in anyway shape or form, like Judas? Because no sin is small sin, it starts as a seed, it festers, it grows and before we know it its fully blown sin which leads to death. Judas discovered that, when we do that it has the most dire of consequences. Let me ask you to examine your heart, is there something that you are placing above God because if there is it's time to let it go?
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The Prayer of Jesus // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 3
04/01/2026
The Prayer of Jesus // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 3
You discover a lot about someone when you see how they react under pressure. That’s when you see the real man or the real woman. And one of the things that Jesus does just before He’s to be crucified is that He prays. Question is – who or what does He pray for? Now that’s an interesting question, because the answer tells us an awful lot about Jesus. Prayer is something that most of us, well we don't have time for, right? I mean life's busy, we're under pressure and so we're just flat out getting through life. The idea of spending twenty minutes or half an hour or maybe even an hour praying each day, well I guess that's nice, maybe it's good for the minister to pray every day, I mean after all it's what we pay him for but me, I'm just under too much pressure, I don't have time. And you know when we're in a difficult place if we do pray then the things that we're praying fervently about are the things that are putting us under pressure. If it's a financial thing we pray for that. If it's our children we pray for them. Whatever's affecting our little world that's where the focus of our prayer is. Imploring God, make a difference, fix this up. Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, we should take our problems and our pressures to God, we should lay them at His feet and ask Him for His help, all good. That's why when Jesus prays just before He's about to be handed over and crucified, that's why this pray completely blows me out of the water. John chapter 17. The theologians call it the "high priestly" prayer. Bit much for me. Here is Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of man, praying to His Father in heaven just before He's about to be nailed to that cross. What do we imagine He's praying about? Who or what is He praying for? I know who I'd be praying for I have to tell you if I were in His shoes. So let's go and have a listen, it's rather a long prayer but it's a beautiful one and it's worth eavesdropping to see who or what He prayed for. Come on, let's have a listen and carefully, who's He actually praying for? After Jesus had spoken these words He looked up to heaven and said, 'Father, the hours come, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you. Since you have given Him authority over all people to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. I have made your name known to those whom you gave to me from the beginning from the world. They were yours and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you for the words that you gave to me I have given to them and they have received them and they know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me. I'm asking you on their behalf, I'm not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me because they're yours. All mine are yours and yours are mine and I have been glorified in them. And now I'm no longer in the world but they are in the world and I'm coming to you. Holy Father protect them in your name that you have given me so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. But now I'm coming to you and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I've given them your word and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world just as I do not belong to the world. I'm not asking you to take them out of the world but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. So they do not belong to the world just as I don't belong to the world. Sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth as you have sent me into the world so I have sent them into the world and for their sakes I sanctify myself so that they also may be sanctified in the truth. I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word that they may be all one. As you Father are in me and I am in you may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them so that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, they may be completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also whom you have given to me may be with me where I am to see my glory which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father the world doesn't know you but I know you and these know you that you have sent me. I made your name known to them. I will make it known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.’ So, a long prayer but who's He praying for? Well for His disciples and not just for His disciples back then but actually for us here and now. Very specifically, did you pick that up? Let's have another look, verse 20: I ask not just on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may also be one. Well we've believed in Jesus through the word of the disciples so Jesus is praying for us quite specifically here. Jesus is praying for you and for me. Friend I love doing what I do. I love being part of bringing the word of God to you and I'm so blessed in the knowledge that from time to time in different people's lives God uses the foolishness I preach to transform them. Truly I've dedicated my life to that BUT I have to be honest here, I am struggling to imagine myself on death row about to be nailed to a cross praying for you instead of me. Do you get my point? Maybe the Spirit of God will fill me in a way where I could do that but I have to be honest here I'm thinking I'd probably be praying about saving my own skin. And yet here Jesus, just before He's about to suffer the most gruesome death, is praying for you and for me. And what's He praying? That God would protect us from the evil one so that you and I could be one just as Jesus and the Father are one. You discover what's in a man's heart when you see how he reacts under pressure. The real man, the real woman comes out when we're under pressure. And here we discover the real Jesus. Jesus is so passionate about you and me, so passionate about making us one with Him and with the Father, so passionate about uniting us in His body the Church as one that He would lay down His life to achieve that passion. Just stop and think about that for a moment, let it sink in. If someone said, "Would the real Jesus please stand up?", well here in John chapter 17 in this beautiful prayer, this is where we discover the real Jesus, the heart of God beating. Glory for Him isn't about being on a throne, being glorified is about being nailed to a cross so that you and I could be part of His glory. Do you see how sad it is when we just breeze through Easter as though it's just another holiday or maybe a religious festival? I've heard the story so many times, I mean I know how it ends but do you see the tragedy of that? Of missing the heart of God, of missing what Jesus is all about in coming to be a man to suffer and to die and to rise again. Because there's a point to it all. That we are invited to a completely new life, a life based on the sacrifice of Jesus that includes being one with God with an intimacy that we could never have imagined. Just in the same way as Jesus and the Father are one. It includes a unity and a fellowship and a family of God’s people being one with them. It includes beholding the glory of God for all eternity, being with Jesus where He is forever. That's why Jesus went to the cross. That's why we celebrate Easter. That's why sailing through as though it's just another holiday is such a tragedy.
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Joy and Peace are Yours // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 2
03/31/2026
Joy and Peace are Yours // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 2
Back in those few days leading up to that very first Easter, the Disciples were afraid. Petrified in fact. There was a plot afoot to assassinate Jesus. That was bad enough. But were they in the firing line too? Were they going to die too? And into that little mess, Jesus spoke to them about joy and peace. The days leading up to that first Good Friday, which incidentally at the time must have felt anything but good, they were frightening days. Not for Jesus. Of course His impending crucifixion weighed heavily upon Him but He didn't seem to be afraid since He knew where He was going and what He had to do. But His disciples, they were very definitely afraid. Why? Not just because they felt the plot to assassinate Jesus, not just because they were aware of the under currents and the plotting and the scheming and the conniving that was afoot to rob them of this amazing Jesus but because their lives were under threat too. I mean they were His disciples, they were widely recognised as being the inner circle of Rabbi Jesus followers. That's why Peter ended up denying Jesus three times because he feared for his own life. So while on these days leading up to Easter you and I may well be looking forward to a long weekend and a rest and having just a bit extra chocolate that frankly our waistlines and cholesterol levels just don't need, these disciples of Jesus were living in fear. Fear not just of losing Jesus but fear of losing their own lives, fear of their whole belief system collapsing. Everything they'd dedicated their lives to these last three and a half years and fear for their own skin. No, that Friday looked anything but good and it's into this reality, this fearful reality that Jesus speaks these words to His disciples. John chapter 16 beginning at verse 16: 'A little while and you won't see me any longer and again a little while and you will see me.’ Then some of His disciples said to one another, 'What does He mean by saying "In a little while you'll see me no longer and again in a while you'll see me, because I'm going away to the Father?"’ They said, 'What does He mean by this “a little while”? We do not know what He's talking about.’ Jesus knew they wanted to ask Him so He said to them, 'Are you discussing amongst yourselves what I meant when I said “A little while and you'll no longer see me and again in a little while you'll see me?” Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn but the world will rejoice and you will have pain but your pain will turn to joy.' When a woman's in labour she has pain because her hour has come but when her child is born she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you. On that day you'll be asking nothing of me. Very truly I tell you if you ask anything of the Father in my name He will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive so that your joy may be made complete. I've said these things to you in figures of speech but the hour's coming when I'll no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name and I do not say to you that I'll ask the Father on your behalf for the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me and believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into this world. Again I am leaving the world and going to the Father.' His disciples said, 'Yes now you're speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech. Now we know that you know all things and do not need to have anyone question you. By this we believe that you came from God'. Jesus answered them, 'Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come when you'll be scattered, each one to his home and you will leave me alone yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution but take courage I have conquered the world. Now as I put myself in the shoes of these disciples, this rag tag group of fishermen and tax collectors, uneducated yokels by and large who had fallen for Jesus, I have to say what Jesus just said to us, its frightening and confusing, it just doesn't make sense. For a little while and then I'll be gone and then you'll see me again and then I'll speak plainly instead of in riddles and you're going to suffer pain but your pain will turn to joy. I mean give me a break Jesus, I would have been saying, can you please, please tell me exactly what you mean. So are you saying the forces of darkness that are plotting against you, they're going to win? Is that what you're saying? And if it is so what about all your miracles? What about all the amazing things that you told us and taught us, is this how it's all going to end? Are we just going to be left behind? And how can you come back again from all of that? Do you think in this fearful confusing time, isn't that what you and I would be thinking and wanting to ask Jesus? Why are you promising me pain? Why are you doing this if you're the Messiah? I left everything to follow you and now it's all falling in a screaming heap and what about me? What's going to happen to me? Am I going to die too or do I just go back to the fishing boat and forget the last three and half years of sacrifice? The hour is coming, indeed it has come when you'll be scattered, each one to his home and you will leave me alone. Yet I'm not alone because the Father is with me. Why is He telling me this stuff? Why is He doing this? Jesus? I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. For in this world you will face persecution but take courage for I have overcome the world. Jesus was telling them things just the way they were. And I love that about Him. He's never one to sweep things under the carpet or to coat them in sugar or to hoodwink us with some false reality that we're all floating around like angels on cloud nine. Jesus came to do something tough and brutal. So seriously does God take our sin, yours and mine, so big a deal is it to Him that our sin separates us from Him for all eternity. So great is His love for us and His desire for us to spend from now until the rest of eternity in His presence that He sends us His one and only Son to be brutally nailed to a cross for thee and for me. That's how big a deal my sin and your sin is for God lest we should ever be inclined to think we can just sweep our little sins under the carpet. And He speaks into their fear with words of confidence in His Father and with words of peace. For in this world we will all have tribulation, we will be persecuted, the going will get tough, it will be difficult and fearful and confusing and unpredictable. That word there for persecution, the Greek, is the word Thlipsis which means literally to be put under pressure like grapes in a wine press, to have the juice, the life squeezed out of you. That's what He's talking about. And I know you're going to travel through all of this and I know it isn't going to make sense and I know you're going to be afraid but as you're in this place remember my words because I'm coming back for you. I haven't left you alone. You won't be orphaned. I'm telling you the truth, the way things are, in this world you will be under pressure but take courage, be strong, gird up the loins of your heart for I have overcome the world. Jesus has won. He defeated sin on the cross. He defeated death in the empty tomb and He has said these things and done these things so that in the middle of our fear and our pain and our tribulation we might have peace. Shalom. A complete peace and trust and confidence in Jesus.
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A Foot Bath // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 1
03/30/2026
A Foot Bath // The Week Leading Up to Easter, Part 1
Just before He was betrayed, Jesus got down and washed the dirty, smelly feet of His disciples. Have you ever wondered how you’d react if He knocked on your front door tonight and offered to wash your feet? I’m not sure I’d be that keen to let Him do that … but as it turns out, that’s exactly what He came to do! An amazing week coming up this week. Not just here on the program but in life generally as we head towards Easter. Here we are on the Monday before that Friday where we celebrate, oh maybe celebrate isn't quite an apt choice of words here, when we remember that Jesus was nailed to that cross. We call it Good Friday but back then it didn't look too good, it didn't feel too good and those days and weeks leading up to that fateful day, a day on which the whole of the history of humanity pivots. They were tense and dangerous days and for the disciples it was quite a frightening time. And so today and over the coming days we're again going to spend some time just travelling alongside the disciples, seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard and hopefully feeling what they felt. Why? Well that's simple. Because I for one am sick of kind of just zooming through Easter as though it's just a long weekend and a religious celebration, a time for some extra chocolate which truly I just don't need. No this Easter thing is huge, I mean it's huge and my hunch is that as we walk beside the disciples, as we're going to do by recounting the Apostle John's account of events through the Gospel, my hunch is that Gods Spirit will touch our hearts with a fresh revelation and what it is that our mighty God was up to. And today we're going to take a look at this thing that Jesus did of washing His disciples feet, what was that all about? John chapter 13 beginning at verse 1: Now before the festival of the Passover Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart from this world and to go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world He loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Him. And during the supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off His outer robe and tied a towel around Himself. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciple’s feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around Him. He came to Simon Peter who said to Him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" And Jesus answered, "You do not know what I'm doing but later you will understand". Peter said to Him, "You'll never wash my feet" and Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share in me". So Simon Peter said to Him, 'Lord, not just my feet but also my hands and my head'. Jesus said to him, 'One who has bathed does not need to wash except for the feet but is entirely clean and you are clean though not all of you', for He knew who was about to betray Him and for this reason He said, 'Not all of you are clean.' After He'd washed their feet and He put His robe back on again and He returned to the table He said to them, 'Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord and you are right for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly I tell you servants are not greater than their masters nor are messengers greater than the one who have sent them. If you know these things you are blessed if you do them. I'm not speaking of all of you, I know whom I have chosen but it is to fulfil the Scriptures that "The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me." I tell you this now before it occurs so that when it does occur you may believe that I am He. Very truly I tell you whoever receives one whom I send receives me and whoever receives me receives the one who has sent me. So there's Jesus, the Son of God, He washes the feet of His disciples on that night as they celebrated the Passover meal together in the upper room and literally just hours before He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was a difficult time, a dangerous time. I suspect the disciples had never celebrated the Passover quite in this way, with this dark cloud of danger and betrayal and fear and death hanging over them. The thing we can so often forget is that they knew there were plots afoot to kill Jesus and they simple couldn't imagine that happening after having seen Him do all the things He'd done. The miracles, the acts of kindness and after having heard all that He had to say, the wisdom and the truth and the love in His words. But that wasn't all, they were afraid for their own lives too. Would they be arrested? Would they be tried and crucified too? So they eat the meal, roast lamb with the bitter herbs and unleavened bread and they drink the wine and then Jesus gives them a foot bath. Now think about this, the Son of God girds up His loins, gets a bowl and a bath and washes their grubby smelly feet. And they were really grubby and smelly. These people had been walking out their on the roads with animal excrement and dust and dirt wearing just sandals. Who knows how long and how dirty their toenails were. I mean let’s get real here right? This wasn't some nice clean safe sanitised religious ritual. This was a grubby, dirty, smelly thing that Jesus was doing, washing their feet and He, the Son of the living God. Do you see how low He was prepared to bow? Do you see how humble He was? And He didn't just wash the feet of those disciples who loved Him, He washed the feet of that one disciple, Judas Iscariot, who had already plotted to betray Him and sell Him out to the authorities. Judas the assassin who'd taken thirty pieces of silver for the life of Jesus. Jesus washed his feet too. And Peter had the reaction that I think I would have had. Peter said to Jesus, "You will never wash my feet". In other words, it's just not right. You're the Lord, you're the Messiah, you're the Son of God, what are you doing washing my feet? It's not right. This reaction, it was a reaction against grace so Jesus answered him; Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. So Peter being Peter gets this quickly and dives in boots and all and says, "well Lord, not just my feet but my hands and my head". No Jesus was right, they didn't understand what He was up to but this act of complete servitude, complete humility, complete stepping down off the throne of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and washing their feet was a symbolic act. It was acting out the grace of the cross which was about to come. It was explaining in a way that one day they would understand looking back on it, what the cross was all about. Jesus became a nothing and a nobody. Jesus bowing His life down at our feet in order that we might be saved. And the whole point of grace is that it's not right, it's not just, it's completely wrong, it's completely the wrong way round that Jesus should have to suffer on that cross and to die for my sin and my rebellion and yours. On that cross He died my death, the death that I deserve and yours. Completely unfair, completely the wrong way round and we could protest, we could say that's unjust but no doubt He would answer: Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. Unless we accept what He's done for us, He who knew no sin becoming sin so that we might be completely right with God, unless we accept that and trust in that and believe in that with all that we are then quite simply we will have no share in Jesus.
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Leave It To God // How to Deal with Anger, Part 5
03/27/2026
Leave It To God // How to Deal with Anger, Part 5
Anger is an interesting thing – it comes from our sense of justice. Even God gets angry. Problem is, sometimes our sense of justice can be a little distorted. So when we experience anger – what can we do with it? Anger is one of those basic facts of life and in many respects it's a natural reaction to a whole range of situations. Sometimes we think that anger in and of itself is wrong, well that's not so. See, God gets angry so either God is a sinner or anger itself is not a sin. Hmm, makes you think doesn't it? I passionately believe that Jesus Christ came and died for my sins and yours and that He was and is utterly perfect. A perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. And yet when He went to the temple in Jerusalem and saw that they had turned it into a bizarre He was angry, He made a whip and turned over the tables and drove the traders out of the temple with that whip. Of course God is a loving God but God is also a god of anger and ultimately, of punishment. So is anger right or wrong in our lives and what do we do with that anger? Well, well let’s take a look at the anatomy of anger today. Basically it goes something like this: I've been wronged by someone, I therefore feel angry, they owe me some recompense so I'm going to respond in anger to obtain vengeance. That's kind of the cycle and in a sense, anger comes out of our sense of justice. Of course, as we've seen on the program this week we can have quite a distorted sense of justice sometimes. We can be touchy or selfish and throw tantrums and so even though actually sometimes we haven't been wronged, people just fall short of our expectations or, or we're being selfish and we feel wronged and then anger, justice and vengeance take hold in our hearts. Sometimes people do things that are clearly wrong and we're angry, okay how do we respond? The other day on the program we read this passage from the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 26. It says: Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil. In other words, sometimes we get angry, God knows that. The question is whether we dwell on it and let it fester over night and tomorrow and the next day and over and over and over and in doing so, whether we make room for the devil to distort our sense of justice and then this root of bitterness takes hold in our lives OR whether, like God, we're “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." See, anger itself isn't a sin, God is angry with those who turn their backs on Him. You see that over and over and over again throughout the Bible. Let me read you just one example of God's anger, this is about Israel, Gods chosen people and it comes from the book of Judges chapter 2, verse 12: Israel forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt. They followed and they worshipped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook Him and they served Baal and the other gods. In His anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to the raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them just as He had sworn to them. They were in great distress. See, this is God's response to His people forsaking Him but it's a right response. God never gets angry without just cause and this anger of God against Israel comes from God's sense of justice. He had a relationship with Israel, they were His people, He was their God and He said: I'm a jealous God; you will have no other Gods before Me. You will worship me and me alone. And of course Israel turns away from God and does these horrible things and they experience Gods anger and yet the wonder of God is that He's slow to anger and ready to forgive. You know ultimately, when you and I harden our hearts against Him and our ways against Him, like Israel we will experience His anger. So how do we make sense of all of this? God gets angry but we shouldn't? Remember anger has its roots in our sense of justice. That much we get from God because we're made in His image. And of course, as I said, God never gets angry without just cause. The problem is, we can't say the same thing about us. Our justice gyroscope is so often out of balance and then, when we do experience anger we want to wallow in it and work it over and over in our heads and seek revenge and in doing that we make room for the devil. Anger is a natural reaction and in some cases it's the right reaction the problem is, when you or I are the injured party our sense of justice is questionable at best and whacky at worst. So what do we do? How do we handle it when we feel that we've been wronged and we want revenge? We want recompense, we want justice to be done, how do we handle that? Well, God tells us in Romans chapter 12 beginning at verse 17 have a listen, he says: Don't repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what’s right in the eyes of everybody. If its possible, as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. Don't take revenge my friends but leave room for Gods wrath for it is written, "It is mine to avenge and I will repay,” says the Lord. To the contrary: If your enemy is hungry feed him, if he's thirsty give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. In other words leave the "justice" thing to God, leave the satisfaction, the recompense, the vengeance as God puts it, to God because His sense of justice is so much better than ours and in any case who knows what He's up to in that person's life? Only He does. When someone hurts us our initial reaction may well be anger, the same anger that God feels when He sees injustice. The thing that's wrong is for us to repay that evil with another evil, 2 wrongs maketh not a right and God’s saying here, "Don't take revenge but leave room for Gods wrath." Leave room for God to act because Gods justice is so much better than ours, instead bless your enemy. If they're hungry feed them, if they're thirsty give them something to drink, show them grace. Now we may never see the justice but then that's why Jesus died for you and me, that was so unjust but on that cross justice meets love and its called grace. Grace has been shown to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on that cross, a grace He now calls us to show to others. Yes, you and I will experience anger from time to time but we're not to repay evil with evil, leave that bit to God. Forgive, forget, live life to the full and bless people, even the people that hurt us, with the grace that God has shown to us. You know something, I don't think that's too bad a plan, what do you think?
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