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.

Leaving Your Comfort Zone // Living Your Dreams, Part 2 09/16/2025

Leaving Your Comfort Zone // Living Your Dreams, Part 2 Each one of us has some big dream for our lives – woven into our DNA by God. But most people realise that to live out that dream they’re going to have to leave their comfort zone. And that … that’s scary. We all have a dream, something that we really want to do. It’s not only something we’re good at, it’s not only something that really excites us. Sometimes we had the dream a long time ago and through the pressures of life we’ve forgotten them. But God weaves those dreams, His purposes, into our DNA. The things we’re really good at, that we really enjoy doing. We all have the dreams, but there’s something that stops us sometimes from living them. And that something is fear. Our big dream in life is scary because it’s about leaving the familiar. It’s about leaving our comfort zone. Leaving your comfort zone can be really scary. If you know someone who’s living out their dream, you know, someone in whom God has planted something and they’re out there living it and loving it, and you go and ask them and you say, “What were the early days like? What was it like at the beginning?” You’re likely to get an answer something like this: “Before I stepped out into my dream every time I thought about the dream it made me whistle. Every time I thought about the dream it made me soar like an eagle. But when I took my first step, all I felt was fear. And then I took a few extra steps and it didn’t feel like a dream any more and I started to focus on the things that really scared me.” But if we could go to the end of our life, a life lived with a dream in our hearts that we never pursued, how would we feel? How would we feel if we looked back on that life and said, “Man, I know God planted that dream in my life. Why didn’t I ever chase it? Why did I waste my life?” The words I am about to read you were written by an elderly woman looking back on her life and she says this: “If I had my life to live over I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax, I’d limber up, I’d be sillier than I’ve been this trip, I’d take fewer things seriously, I’d take more chances, I’d climb more mountains and swim more rivers, I’d eat more ice cream and less beans. I’d perhaps have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. “You see I’m one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. I’ve had my moments and if I had it to do all over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to do nothing else. Just moments one after the other instead of living so many years ahead of time. “I’ve been one of those people who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, hot water bottle, raincoat and parachute. If I had it to do again, I’d travel lighter next time. “I’d start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the autumn. I’d go to more dinners, I’d ride more merry-go-rounds, I’d pick more daisies.” Isn’t it interesting how someone can look back on their life and say, “I let the fear of chasing my dreams override that dream. And so I lived a very measured life, a very ordered life, but I have a sense that I didn’t live the life that God wanted me to live. What about you? Let me ask you really plainly and directly, but in love. Has God put a dream in your heart? Is there something eating away at you that you’ve always been too scared to try? Maybe it’s a career thing. Maybe it’s a vocation thing. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a ministry thing. But there’s a dream there that you’ve always wanted to find. But you’ve just been too scared to go. If you looked at the Lord straight in the eye and said, “Lord, what’s the dream that you have for my life? What would that be? What would that look like? Maybe your dream is to become a nurse. Maybe your dream is to travel overseas and minister to the poor. Maybe that dream is to be a tennis player. There are so many dreams and not all of them look spiritual. Not all of them look conventional. Joshua had a dream. After Moses died, his dream was to take God’s people into the Promised Land. Listen to what God said about him and listen especially to what God said about fear. This comes from the first chapter of Joshua’s dream. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord spoke to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses’ assistant saying, "My servant, Moses, is now dead. Now proceed across the Jordan, you and all the people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites. Every place the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you as I promised to Moses from the wilderness and the Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea in the west shall be your territory. No one shall be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you but be strong and courageous. For you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with the law that my servants commanded you. Don’t turn from right or to the left so that you may be successful wherever you go. I hereby command you, be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened or dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." How many times does God say to Joshua, “Be strong and courageous? Be strong and very courageous? Only I say again to you, be strong and courageous and do not fear?" Why do you think God had to tell him that? My hunch is Josh was afraid - because Joshua had to go and take this people across the Jordan, into the Promised Land and fight a whole bunch of other peoples to bring them into possession of the thing that God had promised them. But God said to Joshua, “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have already given to you.” Do you notice the tense? When you go, if this dream is God’s dream, it is already done for us. And when we walk out there sometimes, it looks really scary. Last year we bought a cat. This beautiful, little kitten, her name is “Dog”. Now you might say that’s a silly name for a cat. But that’s the name the cat had, so we call her “Dog”. And as she’s grown up (she’s almost a year old now) she plays in the house and she plays in our back yard. We live in a terrace house, that’s a very small block and a very small back yard and we leave the front door open all the time. But do you think that cat will go out that front door? Absolutely no way, because her territory in her mind, stops at the door. There is an invisible wall of fear between her and the front yard. She cannot bear to even go near that front door. It’s funny, isn’t it? She has this view in her head, in her little head, of what her territory is and she ain’t going beyond that view. How often are we like that with our comfort zones? How often are we afraid to step through that invisible wall of fear? In following the dream that God’s put on my heart, I’ve had to step through that invisible wall. What I discovered when I took that one step is I was still alive on the other side. If it’s God’s dream “No weapon formed against us will prosper or stand” and we know it’s God’s dream. As we dream dreams in our hearts, it burns so strongly. It might be hard to leave our comfort zones, but you know something? I think it’s harder to forsake our dreams. Sometimes we just don’t feel worthy but God says, “Take courage, take courage because I have gone before you. Take courage because it’s my dream too. Take courage because no one will be able to stand against you for all your life. “When you experience setbacks, when you’re afraid, when you’re alone, take courage, because I am with you in that dream.” My big dream was on the other side of that invisible wall of fear. So is your big dream. What’s holding you back from living God’s big dream-filled life? Is it fear? Are you like our kitten, afraid to step through the front door? We don’t have to be afraid. How many times does God say in the Bible, “Fear not?” How many times did God say to Joshua, “Don’t be afraid. My dream. I am with you. No one, no one will be able to stand against you.” /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37856490

Embracing Your Dreams // Living Your Dreams, Part 1 09/15/2025

Embracing Your Dreams // Living Your Dreams, Part 1 Each of us has a big dream for our lives. Sometimes it’s forgotten. Sometimes we’re afraid of it. And sometimes we’re just too busy for it. But that God-given dream is woven into our DNA. It’s great to have your company with us today. I want to begin by asking you three distinct questions. The first question is this: how many people do you know who are living out their dream? When they’ve discovered who they are and what they’re good at and what God made them for and they’re out there, living it and loving it. Second question: how many people do you know who get up every morning, go to a job that they hate, come home, have dinner, watch the box, go to bed, just to do it all again tomorrow? And the third question is: which one are you? A dreamer living out your dream or someone in a life that you just don’t like. Now that’s a very good question. It never ceases to amaze me how many people end up in the wrong job or the wrong career. But I guess, when you think about it, we tend to make those choices when we’re young. Often we make those choices when we’re teenagers or in our early twenties and it’s probably a time when we’re ill-equipped because we don’t have the maturity. We don’t have the level of understanding of ourselves to make those choices. If I look back, in my case, I had a choice of three basic careers when I left school. One was to do medicine and become a doctor. The other was to do computer science at the Royal Military College. And the other one was a career as a Lawyer and to do law at a particular university. I chose the middle one. The second one would have been fine too but, with the benefit of hindsight, I now look at the medicine choice and I think what an absolute disaster that would have been. I hate the sight of blood, the notion of cutting people up or listening to their ills and woes in the doctor’s surgery. I mean, I can’t imagine doing that. So we make those choices and sometimes they become like prison walls. We feel as though we‘re locked into them. Yet, when we are young, sometimes we had dreams. We had dreams about what we wanted to be and what we wanted to do, but we forget those dreams as we grow up. We grow up and the dream becomes lost, it becomes - oh, well, I could never do that. Funnily enough, when I was 11 or 12 I had a dream to become a minister. Now I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But that was my dream. I remember it lit up my life for a time because for a short time when I was young God had an impact on my life. I then grew up and went completely in an opposite direction for the next 25 years. Forgotten dreams, though, have a way of nagging us. They have a way of coming back. Somehow, even though they’re forgotten, they’re there. The great Australian poet, “Banjo” Paterson wrote an evocative and famous poem about a man who followed his dream and another man who didn’t. It’s a beautiful picture. The poem is called, “Clancy of the Overflow”. Now if you’re an Australian, you’ll know that poem really well. If not, have a listen. It paints a really beautiful picture, a beautiful contrast that we’re going to come back to between one man who wishes he’d followed his dream and another man who actually did. Here it is, “Clancy of the Overflow”: I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better knowledge, sent to where I’d met him on the Lachlan, years ago. He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him Just on spec, addressed as follows, “Clancy of the Overflow”. And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected, (And I think the same was written with a thumbnail dipped in tar). T’was his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it: “Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving and we don’t know where he are.” In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy Gone a-droving “down the Cooper” where Western drovers go; As the stock is slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing, For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know. And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars, And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars. I am sitting in my dingy, little office where a stingy ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall, And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all. And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle Of the tramways, the buses making hurry down the street, And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting, Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet. And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy, For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste. And I somehow rather fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy, Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go, While he faced the round eternal and the cash-book and the journal -- But I doubt he’d suit the office, Clancy, of the Overflow.* It’s a great poem, isn’t it? It’s beautiful. It’s this contrast of a man sitting in his nasty office that he obviously doesn’t enjoy, thinking about another man, Clancy of the Overflow, out there following his dreams. What’s your dream? You do have one? You know. Psalm 139 says this of God: It says, “He created our innermost being. He knit us together in our mother’s womb. We’re fearfully and wonderfully made. We weren’t hidden from Him when we were made in that secret place. When we were woven together in the depths of the earth. His eyes saw our unformed bodies and all the days were deigned for us were already written in His book of life before even one of them existed.” When we were being made in that secret place, God created our DNA. He created the things that we would be good at. I believe as we were born He planted dreams in our hearts. I was listening to one woman recently and she said, “Ah, Berni, I don’t have a dream. I just want to be a mum.” I thought, how sad. I said, “Don’t you understand that is your dream. What a fabulous dream to want to bring children in this world and nurture them and see them grow and see them become powerful Christians living their lives out for Christ.” Billy Graham had a mum. The apostle Paul had a mum. Jesus had a mum. So maybe your dream is to be a mother, a wife. Maybe your dream is to be a business man, maybe it’s to be a doctor or a minister or to be a tennis star or to work with the poor. We all have such different dreams. What’s the dream that God has woven into your DNA when you were in your mother’s womb? What’s the dream that you dream for your life when you were a child, when you were a teenager? Are you like Clancy? Do you see the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended? And at the night wondrous glory of the everlasting stars? Are you someone who is living out your dream or are you sitting in your dingy little office where a stingy ray of sunlight struggles feebly between the houses tall? Over these next couple of weeks, on A Different Perspective, we’re going to be looking at the subject of Living Your Dreams. Imagine getting to the end of life. Imagine being old and sitting and looking back at life and remembering a dream that God placed in our hearts when we were young and realising that we hadn’t lived it. Yet so many people go through life dissatisfied, doing things that they don’t enjoy, struggling with who they are and not living out their dream. There’s a wonderful book called, “The Dream Giver” written by David Kopp and Bruce Wilkinson. If you go to our website to this program, you will see a link so that you can purchase that book. It is about living your dreams. It is one of the best books I’ve ever read and we’ll be referring to that over the next couple of weeks. Whatever you do, stick with us because we are going to be talking about you and me living out the dreams that God has put in our hearts. What does it look like? What are some of the oppositions that we’re going to come across here on A Different Perspective. *"Clancy of the Overflow” by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37856465

Enough to Go Around // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 5 09/12/2025

Enough to Go Around // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 5 One of the greatest things in life is when you sow a good seed and one day you get to reap a good harvest. That’s probably why so many cultures have harvest festivals. But – what do we do with that harvest? What we get out of life depends pretty much on what we put into it. It's a self-evident piece of blindingly, glimpsingly obvious wisdom isn't it? That’s why this week we've been looking at the whole idea of sowing and reaping in our lives. We're confronted by a tough or a difficult situation and if, instead of running away or kicking and screaming, we actually sow some good seed into that place and nurture it and weather the storms, we'll end up reaping the most amazing harvest in time. It’s just a God thing really. The question is, what do we do with that harvest? I mean harvest time is a time for rejoicing; it's a time for reaping the reward. You go through a tough patch in your marriage and you decide to sow good seeds of kindness and love and encouragement even when its hard and you both come out the other side with a most amazing relationship. What a harvest, what a blessing. Well ok, now what? It's great to enjoy the harvest, we should do that but is there more? Is there something else that we can do with that harvest? I mean, can we spread it round? This week's been a great week, I've really enjoyed this week with you on A Different Perspective because we've been looking at reaping God's harvest in my life. You know when you get up on a lookout and you look out at the landscape and you see all the rolling hills and the fields and the cows and maybe the beach and the ocean and the factory down there belching out smog, you see the good and the bad and the ugly. And it's wonderful. And on one part of the landscape the sun can be shining and the other part can be bucketing down rain and our lives are a bit like that aren't they? Parts of our lives can be going so well and other parts, well you know, they're just not coming together and those bits that aren't coming together we can avoid them or run away or we can complain or we can sow a good seed into them. This week we've been looking at sowing and watering and weathering and waiting and harvesting and that whole thing takes time, it's not God’s plan for it to happen overnight. But good seed gives a good harvest, bad seed gives a bad harvest. And I know, when we look at that bit in our life that isn't going so well at the moment and we hear some joker on the radio say, "Go and sow some good seed into that." We can say, "Well that's easy for you to say buddy but you're not here in my little version of hell." I encourage you, if you have something bad going on in your life, something that's difficult, something you just can't get over, I encourage you to look at that and go, "What good seed, what kindness, what love, what mercy can I sow to that particular situation even though I don't feel like doing it." It's hard but we do that and we weather the storm and it's a God thing, we trust and we will reap in due time if we don't give up. It's tragic to see people giving up when they've done 95% of the hard work and they just lose faith. Bringing kids up is like that, you know, when they're teenagers, you can go through some difficult, difficult times and you think, "How am I ever going to get out of this, how are they ever going to grow up to be reasonable people." And I look at our boys, you know our boys are now 26 and 24 years old and we went through some tough times. We had a blended family and let me tell you, the Brady Bunch is a big con and it doesn't work. And some days Jacqui and I despaired and we thought, "How are we ever going to get through this?" And today, those difficult teenage boys are two of the most wonderful young men. We are so proud of them, they're doing so well and they're just delightful human beings. It is harvest time with those boys, you know it's just a fabulous, fabulous thing. Boy it can take some time though from being a difficult teenager to a well-balanced adult, that definitely doesn't happen overnight. The question is, "How do you spend a harvest like that?" We should enjoy some of it ourselves, that’s right and proper. The boys and Jacqui and I have put in a lot of effort into that relationship and for us now to have a great relationship, it's just fabulous and we do enjoy it but I wonder whether some of the harvest isn't for other people. There's a great little verse which when you first read it seems a bit simplistic but it's really deep. It's actually in the Old Testament Law, the book called Leviticus and it's Chapter 19, verse 9 if you'd like to have a look at it. This is what it says about harvesting, "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not ...” Now remember, sorry before we go into this, remember this is the Law, this is like a statute on the books, it is the Law: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip the vineyard bare or gather the fallen grapes on your vineyard floor. You shall leave them for the poor and the alien for I am the Lord your God. Isn't that an interesting Law to have? You think, 'well hang on, it's the farmer’s field, the farmer sowed it, the farmer paid for the seed, the farmer did the work, the farmer harvested, why shouldn't the farmer reap to the edges of his field? Why shouldn't the farmer be able to pick up all the grapes off the floor and use them all to make wine?' Well, God says, "Don't do this because I want you to leave some for the poor and for the alien for I am the Lord your God." In other words, don't consume the harvest all for yourself. Use some of it to bless others. Why? Because God's God. That’s the answer and that's God’s heart. We can say it's the farmers farm and the farmers harvest but actually it's God that gave the increase. If your finances are in a mess and you sowed some seed and you disciplined yourself and you're now debt free, enjoy that but maybe your kids need a hand to buy a house or maybe there is some poor people or maybe you need to give some money away to some friends. The pastors of our Church, Mark and Joy, husband and wife, they're the senior pastors. Early on in their marriage they had a tough time but they sowed seed and they harvested and they have a wonderful marriage. And we're just doing a marriage seminar at Church at the moment, on a Wednesday night. We're just getting together over 5 weeks to give some of it back. Somehow if we try and keep all of the blessing for ourselves it runs out. Yet if we give some of it away, not only does it go on and on and on, the blessing somehow gets richer. If God has blessed us, if we have been through some difficult times and we've sowed seed and we've been blessed by God's increase; you look back on that and just the fact you've been through that process is awesome and fantastic. But then to take some of that blessing and to give it someone else, either emotionally or physically or monetarily, the blessing rolls on. It keeps going. And you might say, "Hang on Berni, that’s tough. I sowed, I watered, I waited, I weathered – its my harvest." But it was God who gave the increase wasn't it? God is the God of harvest, why do we give some away? Because he wants us to. As we sow, so shall we reap. It can be a tough gig sometimes but sowing and reaping is God’s plan. What a plan! What a harvest! /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37856415

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 4 09/11/2025

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 4 We pretty much know that to reap a good harvest, we have to sow a good seed – but I’ll tell you sometimes it’s a long way between sowing and reaping – waiting, waiting, waiting…. I'm not a farmer but I've often imagined what it must be like, you know you spend the money, you buy the seed, you prepare the soil, you plant the seed and then you wait. So many things can go wrong, too much rain, not enough rain or it rains at the wrong time and pests and disease and fire and hail. Sometimes it can be a different one each year but eventually after some hard work, the investment and the wait; it's harvest time. When is harvest time? When the crop is ready and not a day before. It must take a really special person to wait that long. My hunch is that farmers have a really special heart, a heart weathered by disappointment and incredible patience and wonderful, wonderful times, harvest time. Harvest and time go together; harvests are essentially about two things, planting seeds and waiting. Planting seeds and time. And it doesn't matter how much we wish it would come earlier, doesn't matter how impatient we get, harvest only happens at harvest time, at the right time and I guess that’s why harvest time is such a special time for the farmer and I guess when we plant some good seed into the ground and eventually that harvest comes, well harvest time is a wonderful time. We want to get something out of life, a harvest, and so in different situations we know that if we want to get a harvest out of life, we need to plant some seed. God might put a dream into our heart to go and do something. It's not going to happen until we go and do it, until we put the effort in, until we put the sacrifice in. Sitting on the couch is not going to bring the dream into a reality we have to get up and do it and plant some good seed. It's a basic principle of life; you want to reap you got to sow. Patience hasn't always been my strong suit I'd have to say, you know I have drive, I like to get things done and I like to finish things off. That's good but we need patience along the way. This week on A Different Perspective we've been looking at the idea of sowing seed. You know when we look around at our lives and we see over this side of our lives things are going fantastically well and in this one area, or maybe there's two areas, well, things are not going so well. What do we do with those? Do we ignore them? Do we run away from them? Do we complain about them? Do we get angry with people? The best thing we can do, as we've seen on earlier programs this week, is to sow good seed into those places. When we're in a tough spot in life, in our finances, in our relationship, in our career, in health and we want to run away, Gods plan is that we should sow some good seed and we sow good seed in a difficult relationship, we sow kindness. In financial difficulties we sow giving, maybe giving to the poor. We sow a good seed and we wait and we nurture and we watch it grow and we weather the storms but it all takes time. The seeds, time and harvest. Sometimes planting those seeds is very difficult. In difficult times when someone’s not being nice to us we don't want to plant kindness into their lives, right? We just don't want to. But if we've got half a brain, we will because there's a Godly principle that says, "You plant good seed, you'll reap a good harvest." So it’s hard enough, we plant the seed, then, we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and nothing happens and we wait some more. Great, now that’s a good plan God, thank you so much for that plan but God's harvest rarely happened in an instant. Time is a process, it’s a journey. It allows us to mature and to grow and to believe and to heal and to grow and to learn and to mature and to heal. You know good cheese spends months in the cellar, curing. A good wine can spend years in the cellar maturing and it's like that with us, you know, when we're going through this time, this time between planting a seed and harvesting the results, it feels like we're in a cellar sometimes. No one really understands, no one can feel what we're feeling, we just have the frustration and the hurt and the fear sometimes. But time is the hardest bit of all and today, I want to encourage you, enjoy the time, keep sowing good seed, keep watering the ones you've sown. A mate of mine, Paul the Apostle, a couple of thousand years ago, he wrote this, "Don't grow tired of doing good because at the right time, you will reap the harvest if you don't give up." Why shouldn't we grow tired of doing good? Because at the right time, at harvest time, when the crop is ready, when God is ready then we will reap the harvest if we don't give up. It's so easy to miss out on the harvest. The marriage is rocky, we're busy and tired, she's pick, pick, picking and he's closing down and they're drifting apart, one of those two decides to sow a good seed. It doesn't get any better right away, in fact, maybe it gets worse and time goes on and it gets worse and they still argue and it hurts, "I sowed the seed, I watered it, God what are you doing?" Time goes on and on, we keep sowing, we keep watering and we keep sacrificing, we keep blessing and loving but it doesn't get any better. "God what are you doing?" Why is it like that? Because God has a plan. His plan of sowing and reaping involves time. That’s the plan. When you think about the farmer who prepares the field and sows and fertilises and weeds but actually the crop grows naturally out of that. He doesn't grow it, that’s Gods thing and a harvest, out of a couple who are having difficulties in their marriage and one of them decides to sow good seed into that relationship, the harvest is a rich marriage, the harvest is a soul mate, the harvest is intimacy and joy and love where once there was conflict and pain and void. Harvests are worth waiting for. Harvests are worth rejoicing over and when we get to that harvest, we thought we never would, and we get to that harvest we think, "Man, imagine if I'd stopped. Imagine if I'd lost interest. Imagine if I'd given up just because it took time. That’s why most cultures have harvest festivals; it is such a long wait. If you've ever watched soccer, I mean I love soccer but it can be a long wait until someone scores a goal, so when they do score a goal, man; everyone goes mad because they scored a goal. It’s like that with a harvest; don't give up. God's plan is that time should go by. God's plan is that in that time, when we feel like we are in the cellar like a bottle of wine, don't grow tired of doing good because at the right time we will reap the harvest if we don’t give up. God means for you to have a harvest time in your life, no matter where you are, no matter what you've done, no matter how bad the situation is, whether you're at the point of famine or sowing or waiting or waiting or waiting or waiting or reaping. The harvest is coming. Don't grow tired of doing good and you will reap a harvest at the right time if you don't give up. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37856405

Weathering the Storm // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 3 09/10/2025

Weathering the Storm // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 3 Have you ever noticed – when you take a good decision to plant some good seed in difficult soil – all of a sudden, a dirty great storm whips up. Hey, I’m trying to do the right thing – God what’s going on? We all like sunshine and warm weather. You know when the weather forecaster comes on and says it's going to be cold and wet tomorrow, we go, "Augh yuck," but of course without the rain we'd all be dead. It's as simple as that, and sometimes it comes down in torrents, storms blow, the rain pelts down. Have you ever noticed the plants and the trees and the bushes in all that? They sway and bend in the wind and under the weight of the water. They've been incredibly engineered with a perfect structural tolerance for the forces of the weather. Only in the most extreme circumstances will a tree go over. There's a lesson in that. When we plant a seed, a good seed, into a difficult situation and that seed grows, the storms will definitely come. They're never much fun but they are a necessary part of life. So we plant the seed and it grows into this beautiful new thing, full of life and then a storm comes. And so we think, "God, what’s going on?" And he says, "Look at the trees, look at the plants; I've engineered them for the storms." Let’s unpack that just a bit today. Storms well, storms are a fact of life. I'm a great fan of sun, surf and sand. I love summer, I love the seafood, I love the shorts and the t-shirts and the thongs - I love summer but you know something, you know what makes it more fabulous for me? The other half of the year is fireplaces and pastas for lunch and stews and jumpers and warm clothes. That makes the sunny, hot days so much nicer, I enjoy them so much more because I know there's another part of the year that’s going to be cold and windy and stormy. As we survey the landscape that we call "our lives", as we look across this vast vista of life, we can see some bits that are sunny and warm and we can see some bits that are stormy and cold and all we want to do is get the most out of life, right? And so in different situations we know that if we want to get a harvest out of life, we need to plant some seed. God may put a dream in our heart to go and do something, its not going to happen until we go and do it, until we put the effort in, until we put the sacrifice in. Sitting on the couch is not going to bring the dream into a reality; we have to get up and do it and plant some good seed. It’s a basic principle of life - you want to reap, you've got to sow and depending on what sorts of seed we sow, we might reap a good harvest or a bad harvest. We go into a situation and we sow seeds of anger and resentment into a relationship, well its not rocket science to figure out what sort of harvest we're going to get. If we go into that same situation, that same relationship and we sow kindness and gentleness, what sort of a harvest are we going to get ultimately? It can be a very hard choice to sow a good seed into a bad situation; we've talked about this throughout the week on the program. We don't always feel like sowing a good seed in the face of adversity. When someone does something bad to us we want to react instead of respond. We want to rip their heads off instead of responding with love and maturity and kindness and sowing good seed in a place that was bad for us. So to sow that seed, to do good, is a tough choice. Let’s imagine we do it, I have someone in my life and they're being difficult, it’s been confrontational and I just make a decision. From now on I'm not going to react to them. From now on I'm going to bless them, I'm going to love them, I'm going to be good to them. I'm just going to sow good seed into that relationship. I guarantee you, when you and I make a decision like that, a storm will come. There was a guy called Job in the Old Testament, you can read about him. I remember when I first found that book in the Old Testament I thought 'Job' (employment), I wonder if that’s who they're talking about - I still read of it as Job. Anyway this guy is called Job and if you read the Book of Job, chapter 1, you'll see that Job was one good dude. He just obeyed God and was a good and Godly man. He did the right stuff and yet some horrible things fell on him. The devil came after him with an axe and he lost everything, his home, his family, his fortune, his health – EVERYTHING Job lost. In this book you can read about it, Job chapter 30, verse 22. He said, "God you've gone feral. What are you doing hounding me? You kind of lift me up in this gale and you toss me around in a storm." It can be a hard enough decision on its own to plant a good seed and it seems sometimes forever 'til that little sprout comes out of the ground. You know, you've been watering it and you've been nurturing it and you think, 'My, I've been good to this person, nothing is happening' and eventually something does, eventually you start seeing some good signs. I guarantee you a storm will come. Just starting to come good and this massive storm hits. Maybe that relationship takes a huge dive downhill. I find it really useful to see what God does with his trees and his plants in a storm. You know when it's blowing a gale outside and you look out the window and trees bend and shake and they even break off the odd branch before they go belly up. And the next day you go outside and yeah, there a few leaves on the ground and there might be a few branches on the ground but the tree's still standing. The tree is still there and the storms gone. Storms don't last forever. It’s very rare that a tree's destroyed, very, very rare. Storms go away. The disciples found that out when they were on the water in a storm, in a boat and they were scared. You can read about it in Matthew, chapter 8, towards the end, verses 24 to 26. And they were petrified and they said to Jesus, ‘Jesus, calm the storm.’ And he said, ‘What’s the matter with you? I'm Jesus.’ And he calmed the storm. We, when we're in the middle of a storm, it feels like it's going to last forever, doesn't it? All you can feel is the storm and the wind blowing and you think, "but ... I've been sowing good seed. Why is this happening?" Because it always happens 'cause that’s life. Storms are a part of life and you plant that seed and a little seedling comes out and it becomes a sapling, it becomes a tree, maybe it's an older tree, maybe you do really well and this trees been around for a while, it's going well, it is engineered to withstand the storm. The good seeds that we plant under God’s hand are engineered to weather the storm. And what I've noticed is, if it's a difficult relationship and we plant seeds of blessing into that relationship and we believe that God will give the increase, it almost always gets worse to start with. The enemy comes along and there's opposition. Today, together, let’s get God’s Word, his gentle, powerful, perfect Word into us. His plan is for us to weather the storm. God has engineered us that way. God has engineered our seeds and our dreams that way. Don't grow tired of doing the right thing because just at the right time we will see that harvest. It's funny how we can miss this stuff in life, something difficult happens and instead of running away we say, ‘No I'm going to plant a seed.’ And we plant the seed and it takes forever to grow up and we want to give up but we hang in there and the seed grows and all of a sudden a storm hits and we want to panic and we want to run away. You notice how the older trees have that weathered look, its part of their beauty, its part of why we look at an old tree and go, "Isn't it a gorgeous thing." Because it has weathered the storm. NEVER get tired of doing good. NEVER give up because God is the God of harvest. God is the God of blessing and he honours us when we go and plant good seed into a bad situation. God is the one that will give the increase and the harvest will come. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37856375

Watering the Dirt // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 2 09/09/2025

Watering the Dirt // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 2 Sometimes, when we go through a bit of a rough patch, instead of running away (which is always our first instinct) instead, we make a good choice and decide to plant a good seed in that place. But then for a while, it feels like nothing’s happening. Have you ever planted a seed into some dirt? There’s something that, well frankly, is unnerving about this simple transaction. You take the seed and invariably it costs you something, you put it into the dirt and you cover it up and it's gone. There's a little kid inside each of us who wants to sit there and say, "Ok, well. I planted you, I watered you, where are you?" Now we're patient, we give it thirty seconds, a minute maybe. "Come on, grow you little sucker." It's true isn't it? We expect instant results. When something in our lives isn't quite right sometimes we have the good sense to sow a good seed into that place. A broken relationship – we sow a small act of kindness, a boring job – we throw ourselves into a project with new vigour, a rebellious teenager – we do something that says, "I love you" and then we expect instant results but life’s not like that. When we plant that little seed in the dirt it disappears for a while and that "while" can seem so excruciatingly long can't it? And all we seem to be doing is watering the dirt and so we have a problem. We plant a seed and we wait. Let’s explore that time of waiting just a little bit more today. A seed is a simple little thing but it might look simple but it has a complex DNA soup inside and this dry, brown, little thing is a container of life, of potential, of reproduction. A seed doesn't look like much but every flower that will ever grow already exists in a seed somewhere. When we survey the landscape of our lives we so often see parts of our lives that are going so well. It's like being at a lookout and you look out and you see the valleys and the fields and the trees and way over on the left it can be sunny and you can look over on the right and there’s a storm happening over there and life can be like that. Some parts of our lives can be just fantastic but one or two areas of life might be, well a little less than what we expected, we might be missing out on something. Maybe we're in credit card debt and our finances are a mess or maybe, I don't know, something’s going wrong at home with the kids or the marriage relationship or maybe at work or maybe emotionally. Some relationship, some situation is not producing a healthy harvest and when that’s happening, got to tell ya, I don't know how you are but I don't feel like planting a good seed into that particular space. When I have a relationship with someone that's not working well the last thing I naturally feel like doing is planting a seed of blessing, of kindness. We don't want to do that, you know, when we've got problems with our finances and we're starting to sort them through and God says, "You know something? I want you to plant a seed of financial blessing over here into this ministry or into this person’s life." We don't want to do that but God, God wants us to plant seeds in faith even when the going is tough, in fact, especially when the going gets tough and especially when we don't feel like going and planting a seed. Now, lets say its our finances and lets say we decide to start disciplining ourselves with our finances and paying off the credit card debt because we just know we can't go on like this, we've prayed about it and that's what God’s calling us to do, let me ask you, the day that we decide that, the next day is the debt gone? Of course it's not, we don't end up debt free overnight, it takes time doesn't it? And it's like that when a farmer takes a seed and plants it into the ground. It's a tense time, farmers spend a huge amount of money on seeds and everything has to be just right and there's nothing else they can do. They plant the seed into the ground and they just have to believe that it's going to come out. When you and I sow a seed into a difficult situation, that waiting, you know you put the seed into the ground, it disappears, it's like it's gone, it's like almost it never happened. A seed in a sense, a physical seed is different because you know you planted the seed into the dirt. But when we plant an emotional seed or a spiritual seed, when we show someone some kindness or faithfulness or we do something to someone who is not nice to us, a week later, a day later it can seem like it's gone because they're back to their old behaviour again and having a go at us again. And we think, "oh well, that didn't work, did it? I knew this seed planting thing would never work." Yesterday we saw how Isaac, and you can read about it in God’s Word the Bible, in , sowed a seed in the midst of a famine. You and I can sow a seed into a difficult relationship, right now, sow that seed and nothing happens and we sow another seed and nothing happens and we sow another seed and nothing happens, we do it again and nothing happens. You know what we want to do? We want to give up, we just want to say, "this stupid seed sowing thing just isn't going to work, blah ... " and we walk away in disgust and we give up prematurely. But just a few centimetres under the surface that seed hasn't given up. I have this picture of a farmer planting all his seed in his fields and the seeds not coming up so he goes broke and he walks off his land and he's just driving down the dirt road with his family and they’re crying because they're leaving the farm forever and they just turn the corner. Just as they turn the corner, behind them, little green shoots are starting to come up through the ground. Wouldn't that be a tragedy? Wouldn't it be a tragedy to give up just before the little green shoots started appearing? We live in such an impatient world; we walk away before the shoots come forth. We plant, we nurture, we water and God gives it life. That difficult teenager, that marriage, that work situation, we sow good seeds into them in radical faith and we have a choice, at that point when we've sown the seed and we see nothing in return, before the little green shoot comes up out of the dirt, we can get impatient and walk away or we can water it and nurture it. Sometimes we sow that seed and we water it and we believe and we nurture it. And months and even years can go by and we see nothing or worse still, things get worse. But God sees them. You see, that's the amazing thing, when it's hidden, those hidden things, we can't see them in the natural. But God sees them just like that little seed of wheat that’s under the ground there that the farmer has planted. But the farmer can't make it grow, only God can make it grow and it grows naturally. When we plant good seed in soil it grows naturally and when we plant seeds into the lives of difficult people, we can't see it but it grows naturally. God is the one who that makes it grow even when you and I can't see it. That is such an exciting thing to understand. God sees, God blesses and under that surface in a dark place where we can't see the seed, it's putting up a little green shoot. Wait for it - it's happening. We can be so discouraged that we stop watering, we stop nurturing, we stop planting seed. We're going to talk tomorrow about the time it takes to get to the harvest but right now in that really initial point let me encourage you. If you are planting good seeds into difficult situations, into your finances, into your relationships, into your marriage, into your family, into your work, into your Church, wherever it is, if you are planting good seed do not expect the little green shoots to come up in thirty seconds or a minute or a half an hour or a day or even a week or even a month. It takes time. There's a reason why it takes time and we'll talk about it on the program later on this week. But while that time is happening there's something else growing - our faith. Believing that God will do it. It's a good prayer point, it's a good thing to pray, when we've planted a seed and I have to wait, ‘change my heart.’ It's happening, the seed is germinating, just wait for it, wait for it! /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37856355

Planting the Seed // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 1 09/08/2025

Planting the Seed // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 1 Sometimes when you’re going through a bad patch – all you want is for it to get better. But actually, sometimes, what we need to do is to plant a good seed while we’re waiting. Can I ask you, what do you want to get out of life? I mean when you stand back and survey the landscape called, “your life”, the highs and the lows, what are some of the things that you’d love to see there? Relationships, achievements, family, career, money, a promotion, holiday? We’re all different, but basically my hunch is that we kind of want the same sorts of things in life. We want health and happiness and fulfilment and a sense of belonging and a sense that we’re needed, hope, a future. They’re the main things aren’t they? In a sense we want a harvest out of life, sure we expect to put in, sometimes we put in too much, other times not enough. But we want to get something out of life. Hmmm … a harvest! Back to your life for a minute, your landscape, the things that you’re looking for - are they there? Are you reaping the harvest in your life that you’re really hoping for? And if not, why not? I love going to lookouts, you get up high on a mountain somewhere and you look out over the hills and the valleys below and the green fields. There’s one in particular I have in mind that I love going to, it’s got these beautiful rolling green fields and you can see the ocean and the beaches in the distance. And yet if you look a little bit further you can see some great factory belching smog out into the atmosphere, and you can look over to the left and the sun will be shining over here and over to the right there’s a storm going. It’s something really uplifting to look out at the good and the bad and the ugly, and it’s the same when we look at the landscape of life. When we stop and we get up on a vantage point and look across our lives, it’s like looking at this landscape from the lookout, all the bits and pieces. Life’s like that landscape, there’s the good and the bad and the ugly and in some parts of our lives there’s sunshine, fabulous! And you look in another part of your life and there’s storm clouds and thunder and lightning and rain. All the different parts of life, family and how we feel inside, our contentment and security and the friends we have and the work we do, all those bits. What do we want out of life? Peace, health, love, pretty basic things actually, and you look at that landscape and maybe in one or two areas those basic things can be missing. You know what I’m talking about. Maybe marriage is not everything it's cracked up to be; maybe work you’re so sick to death of it, it’s boring, the routine the humdrum; maybe inside you just feel a lostness or a downness that you don’t understand why. We go through these things, these are life, and they can happen right alongside, right in parallel with, right at the same time as the other good things. I can be having a fantastic relationship with my wife and not enjoying my work, or visa versa. Or both of those are fine but one of our kids is having some trouble at the moment. We want to have good harvests in our life, but sometimes right now, it’s not what we want it to be. And before we can have a harvest we need to plant a seed. There’s a great story, if you have a Bible you can read it later, you can go to Genesis Chapter 26, right at the beginning of the Bible. By the way if you don’t have one you can go to a website. is the website, and you can read all sorts of different translations of the Bible on-line, good website. Anyhow, you can read about it. It’s a story of Isaac who was Abraham’s son, Abraham was the father I guess, of the nation of Israel. And Isaac was living in a place where there was famine and drought and he made some mistakes in his life that were exactly the same mistakes that his Dad, Abraham, had made. Isn’t it the way sometimes, a chip off the old block? We pick up the good traits of Mum and Dad and we pick up, frankly, the bad ones too. And Isaac blew it! You know he hung his wife out to dry, which was what Abraham had done to Isaac’s Mum. And there’s a famine and there’s a drought in the land, and Isaac wants to run away. He said, "Ah I’ve had enough of this, let’s go somewhere like Egypt, which is much better than this place that God’s got me at the moment." But God said, "No actually I don’t want you to do that, I want you to stay because I’ve got a plan for you Isaac, and My plan is, even though there’s a drought going on, and even though you’ve made this huge blunder with your wife, I’m actually going to bless you in this place. Now that’s easy for God to say, you know God is there in air- conditioned comfort in heaven and we’re down here in the drought and in the famine and in the mess right? And we can sometimes hear God say it, sometimes you’ll hear it through listening to a voice like mine, sometimes you’ll hear it by just sitting down and spending some time quietly with God. And God says, "You know something I’m going to bless you, I know you can’t see it at the moment but I am going to bless you." And I’ve felt, I’ve thought, "You know God that’s really easy for you to say but I just can’t see it at the moment, you know, my place is a mess you know, I just can’t see this blessing." Isaac wanted to run away and give up but he stayed, and not only did he stay but right in the middle of the drought he sowed some seed. It said, "Isaac sowed seed in that land," that is in the land that God picked for him! And in the same year he reaped a hundred fold. A hundred fold! Things weren’t going well; when things don’t go well for us what do we want to do? A – Give up; B – run away; C – bully the people around us into submission; D – all of the above, right? We kind of don’t feel like sowing good seed when things are not going well. But if you want a harvest we have to sow seed. It’s a basic principle of life, it’s a God principle, whatever you sow you reap. You sow good things, you reap good things, you sow bad things, you reap bad things, it’s not rocket science. It’s not just in the Bible but its obvious to us all in life, I mean there might be a situation at work that you have with a colleague, I know that things can get really tense at work, I’ve experienced that, praise God I don’t experience it now, but I’ve been there. I’ve seen how people get feral at work and want to rip each other apart, and when there’s anger at work, if we sow anger what do you reckon we’re going to reap? Anger. On the other hand when there’s anger and tension at work what if you and I sow peace, what if you and I sow blessing, what if you and I sow kindness? What are we going to reap then? What if amidst the feralness of work we sow a seed of gentleness? What's the harvest going to look like then? Can it be any worse than what it would have been if we’d have sown anger? If there’s some part of our marriage that’s unhealthy how does it go when we sow criticism within the marriage? Come on wives, how does it go when you peck, peck, peck at your husband? Does he respond well? Does it do it for him? Does he become better when he gets hen-pecked? Not on your Nelly! He closes down, he pushes away. When there’s tension in a marriage what if we sow anger? Well, we’re going to get anger back. Now let me ask you, what if we sow unconditional love? What if we sow kindness and gentleness and intimacy? Sowing and reaping is blindingly, glimpsingly obvious, it’s one of God’s basic principles of life. There’s a time for sowing seed and there’s a time for harvesting. It’s at natural as night following the day. And when we look back at our lives, when we look back at the landscape of our lives the bits that aren’t working at the moment we just want there to be a harvest in there without there being a seed time. But harvest comes from planting seeds, and sometimes we have to plant seeds in a drought, in a famine. Yes it’s a big risk, yes we don’t always feel like it, but the God I know is a God of blessing. He lets us travel through stuff, he lets us wear the consequences but He is a God of abundant blessing. Not some sugar daddy but one that involves us in the blessing. That’s why He has seed time, it’s our bit, it’s our faith step. When we plant the seed in the middle of the famine, God comes along and says, "You know something, you obeyed me. You honoured me, I’m going to bless you." In the midst of the famine, Isaac planted seed in that land, and the same year he reaped a hundred fold. A hundred fold! /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37856335

Back to the Future // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 5 09/05/2025

Back to the Future // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 5 One of the things that nobody ever really tells you when you’re a teenager, is that the tough lessons you learn now are going to be so important later on in life. Is that really true? There's a great film that was produced back in 1984 called, “The Karate Kid”. It's about a teenage boy who had just lost his father and who ends up studying karate under an older Japanese man called, Mr Miagi. And for the first few months, all Mr Miagi does is to get this young Daniel Laruso to do menial chores – polish the car, paint the fence, sand the deck and after months Daniel has had enough. He feels that he's been taken advantage of and has a go at Mr Miagi. But what he discovers, all of a sudden, is that the constant repetitious boring motions of polishing the car in round motions, wipe on/wipe off and the up and down motions of painting the fence, those things have drummed into him the very reflexes he needs for his karate moves not to mention the self discipline. I think that “The Karate Kid” is one of the movies that all families should watch together because it explains something important to the impatient teenager. The other day on the program we talked about that saying, "you can't put old head on young shoulders." In other words you can't expect a teenager to understand the bigger picture; they won't until they grow up. Well, in part that’s true, I mean I never really appreciated my parents until I had my own children but at the same time I don't think we talk enough about the future with our kids. All they've ever known is home and school and home and school and home and school. What they really want to know is, what is life going to like after school? How will it be? I had this idealised picture of this most amazing freedom and sure it was great finally to finish high school. But I could never have anticipated the struggles and the issues ahead of me probably because we never talked about that stuff. And like Daniel Laruso in The Karate Kid, I simply never appreciated that the boring mundane chores and boundaries that my parents put into my life were such an important learning foundation for growing up into an effective adult. When you look at our children, they are a wondrous creation, you watch them grow up and develop. You know the time I enjoy most is when they develop a sense of humour and you can banter with them and start talking to them more as adults than kids, that's a great time. It's amazing but parents know that there are things that they have to learn, discipline, self motivation, dealing with the routine and the humdrum and the pressures and the unfairness of life. So what parents do is we put things into place that causes them to learn those things. Problem is, as a teenager, I couldn't see that because no-one ever explained it to me and what teenagers do, because they don't understand, is they rebel. We looked at this passage the other day; it comes from Hebrews, chapter 5 listen to it: During the days of Jesus' life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could have saved Him from death and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was the Son He learned obedience from what He suffered and once made perfect He became the source of eternal salvation for all who believed. Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered. Obedience and suffering are linked, they always are and there's only one way to learn self discipline, it's the hard way and here's the thing, different parents use different approaches but they all have one thing in common. If we parents are doing our jobs properly we put certain non negotiable boundaries in place. In our home it looks something like this for our daughter Melissa who is 16 years old. Every night, no matter what, she cleans up the kitchen after dinner. Every week by midday on Saturday, no matter what, her room has to be cleaned top to bottom otherwise she loses her internet access for a week and that, I have to tell you, is devastating for a teenager. Another boundary is, she will not answer back or argue with me or with her mother. And when she moves from schooling into work in a few years time, she will pay board to cover some of her costs at home. Now there are others, about her social life and stuff, why do we do this? Because these are bottom lines and they are absolutely non negotiables and having some non negotiables in your life when you’re growing up as a teenager, is critical in the development of the teenager. If you don't have the boundaries the child will grow up without basic skills that he or she needs for adulthood. Is it fun for her to lose a week’s internet? Well, no it's not. Is it fun for her, every night, to have to clean up the kitchen? No it's not. But these are the things that teach our children the skills that they need later in life. If you're a teenager, because you actually can't see into the future, in a sense you have to accept this on trust. I mean, when you leave school it brings challenges and responsibilities and ultimately setting up your own home. You have to pay the rent, you have to pay the electricity bill, you have to pay the car registration, you have to front up to work on time every day. So these seemingly restrictive and mundane and boring and horrible things that parents do to ruin a teenager’s social life turn out to be amongst the most critical things in building a solid foundation for adulthood. This is God's idea. Listen to what He says in Hebrews, chapter 12: My son, do not make light of the Lords discipline and do not lose heart when He rebukes you because the Lord disciplines those whom He loves and He punishes everyone whom He accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father. If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. No discipline ... Listen to this bit: No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. This is God’s word, this is God’s wisdom. God’s talking about how He disciplines all of us but He also brings in the parents discipline of their children. This is God’s plan and none of us likes being disciplined, it's never fun but unless we learn through the discipline of our parents we are not going to be equipped to be effective adults and in turn parents ourselves. I want to encourage you in your family whether you're a parent or a child or a grandparent or a friend of people who have teenagers, where ever you fit in, to talk about this constantly. Without this discipline the boundaries and the chores and all that stuff, a child simply won't become an effective adult, it's just the way it is, it's the God thing. Parents naturally want to bless their children. If you're a teenager and if you're a child, if you want to walk in the blessing, the abundant blessing of your parents: Honour your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land that the Lord has given to you. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436905

The Marque of Maturity // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 4 09/04/2025

The Marque of Maturity // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 4 One of the things I did when I was a teenager is that I wanted to act like a child and yet, to be treated like an adult. So what are parents looking for in their teenagers as key indicators that they’re actually growing up? Can I ask you a question? How would you define maturity? I mean, you look at two people, similar ages, similar backgrounds and you think that one, well she definitely has it but that other one over there, he just needs to grow up. So what’s the difference between the two? What sets them apart? What makes one person mature and the other one immature? Interesting. We often think of maturity as a real issue amongst teenagers and to be sure, they're in a natural transition from the immaturity of childhood to the maturity of adulthood. What about amongst adults? Aren't they all mature? What sets a person apart as being mature? When we look at someone, what are we looking for as the indicators of maturity? This week on the program we're doing a little series that I've called, “How to get More out of your Parents”. The idea kind of spawned out of a situation when I was asked to speak to a gathering of high school students and I just wanted to talk about something that they'd be interested in rather boring their socks off. Now I operate on this basic premise that 99.9% of parents are hard wired to bless their children. We want to see them happy and healthy and well adjusted but there's this one thing that stops the flow of blessing from parents to children. It's like a cork in the line that completely blocks the blessing and that thing is rebellion. Rebellion is something that happens, well it happens at all ages, but it particularly happens in the teenage years. You know when teenagers kind of roll their eyes and ignore their parents and disobey their parents and that in the end robs the teenager of the blessing that the parents wanted to give them. I've been there as a parent, you make a silent decision, you take your teenage kids out for a meal, it's a nice meal and you get an attitude problem. You know, you get one of these moods from them and you sit there and think, "Well you know, the next time we got out for a nice meal I'm not bringing a teenager with attitude with us." So you wait until they're off doing something else and then you go out for dinner without them. Now without even knowing it, their failure to honour their parents has robbed them of blessing. It happens a thousand times a day in some households. That's because there's a natural order that God has put in place. We looked at it yesterday on the program. Honour your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land that the Lord has given you. It's the 5th commandment, you go to the Ten Commandments, the first four are about our relationship with God and that's fair enough, the very next one is: Honour your father and your mother ... And it comes before: Don't murder; don't commit adultery; don't lie; don't steal. Obviously God takes this as really important and the struggle for teenagers is that they want to be grown up, they so much want to be grown up. I remember I did. I wanted to shed this whole childhood thing once and for all and be done with it and be an adult and yet, you're not really, you don't have independence from your parents and it's so frustrating and so our natural reaction, as teenagers is to rebel and when we rebel, instead of setting us free our parents would close us down. When we rebelled it didn't have the desired affect, it actually made things worse and there’s this downward spiral. Why is that? Well because parents are looking for signs of maturity in their children before they'll remove some of the boundaries. Let me say that again, parents are looking for signs of maturity in their children before they'll remove some of the boundaries. You see it with young children; you don't let a young child use a sharp knife until you know that they're not going to hurt themselves with it. Now if you're a teenager, I'm going to share with you the top three signs, the marks of maturity, the things that your parents are looking for and to make it easier to remember they all begin with an "A". The three are acceptance, appreciation and anticipation. It's one thing to say you should honour your parents, bottom line is we all know that we should but the question is how do you honour your parents? Well if you're looking for some really practical advice on the "how" front here it is, this is my top three list of "hows" if you like. Let’s start with the 1st one: Acceptance. Acceptance just means that while we live under our parents roof we accept their authority over us, it's a heart decision, you flick a switch inside, “They are my parents; they've done everything from wipe my bottom to suffer my tantrums; they are the ones that God gave me and from now on my decision is, I am just going to accept their authority over my life. I know it won't always be easy, I know I won't always get it right but that's the decision.” And when they see the outworking of that decision they are going to be delighted with you, it will expand their hearts. It's an amazing thing to see your teenage child just accept the authority of the father and the mother, THAT is honouring your parents. Acceptance. Accepting that they have a Godly right and a role to have authority over you. The 2nd one: Appreciation. Parents do so much for their kids, they drive you here and there and everywhere and give you money for this and a lot of what they do is pretty thankless. They put dinner on the table every night, there's food in the fridge, we can all make a list of what our parents have done for us and it's longer than we can ever imagine. Now by and large they don't mind doing it all but what they hate is being taken for granted. What they want to see is just simply that you appreciate it. Next time, if you're a teenager, your Dad picks you up from a party at 11.00 pm on a Saturday night and it's bucketing rain, why don't you look him in the eye and say, "You know something Dad, I really appreciate this, thank you." Not some "tick in the box" mumble thank you, he wants to know that you appreciate it and he may never show it but I guarantee you his heart for you just grew by 50% inside. They just want to know that you really appreciate all the things they do for you. The 3rd one: Anticipation. This is the biggie and in growing up terms it's one of the hardest. It's looking around and seeing that your parents need a hand and just helping without being asked. You just get up from the table and instead of going back to your room to watch television, you start cleaning the kitchen or you see that the bin in the kitchen needs emptying so you just empty it without expecting to be noticed or thanked or anything else, you just pitch in and help and do it quietly. You anticipate other people’s needs and then you serve them. That I have to tell you if you're a teenager will blow your parents socks off. You know what my wife and I say to each other quietly when our 16 year old daughter does something like that? We sit back and say, "you know something, she is growing up." It's the surest sign of maturity when a teenager all of a sudden begins to do things for people in the home for their parents, for their brothers, for their sisters without being asked, without expecting a big "hoo ha" pat on the back. Just quietly pitching in and doing it. There are three things, acceptance, appreciation and anticipation, they are the marks of maturity. And when parents start seeing those things consistently in their teenage children’s lives, boundaries will start to come down because they know that their teenager is growing up and they know that their teenager can be trusted. Honour your father and your mother that you may live long in the land that the Lord has given you. When you do that the blessing just flows. You see you can't act like a child and expect to be treated like an adult. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436860

God's Plan for Honour // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 3 09/03/2025

God's Plan for Honour // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 3 It’s an amazing thing – but God places a very high premium on children honouring their parents. And that’s not always easy. I mean for starters – what does “honour” actually mean here in the 21st century, mm? I asked my 16 year old daughter Melissa, the other day what she thought the word “honour” means. She immediately responded, "It means obedience." "Mmm," I said, “That's part of it but not the whole lot." "What do you mean?" She asked, "Well," I said, "Your Mum and I honour you, don't we?" She hadn't quite thought of it that way. She looked around the room and said, "You're right, you do." Honour is a two way thing, parents honour their children by loving them and caring for them and doing things for them and driving them to where they want to go, providing for them. The list is as long as your arm and children are supposed to honour their parents but exactly what does that mean? We've all heard of the Ten Commandments I guess, it's an interesting list. Moses, in the Old Testament, (you can read about it in the book of Exodus) went up to Mount Sinai and received the Law, the Jewish Law from God. And the Jewish Law is the first five books of the Old Testament; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and there were 613 commandments and prohibitions in the Jewish Law. And I guess the Ten Commandments that Moses received up on Mount Sinai are kind of like an executive summary of all of those 613. You can read the Ten Commandments in Exodus, chapter 20. Now let’s just take a moment to go through the list. The first commandment is that: You shall have no other Gods before me. That’s fair enough. The second commandment says: Don't make any idols. The third one is: Don't use the Lords name in vain. And the fourth one is that: The 7th day, the Sabbath, is a day of rest, and you have to set that apart for the Lord. Now you think of those first 4 commandments and they're all about our relationship with God. They're about loving and honouring God and resting in Him. Those first 4 commandments define our relationship with Lord our God. Okay, what's the fifth commandment? The very next one is: Honour your Father and your Mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you. Isn't that amazing? The very first thing He does after defining our relationship with Him, the very first thing is to say, "Honour your Father and your Mother." And it's the only commandment with a blessing attached to it. "Honour your Father and Mother so that you may live long in the land that the Lord has given to you." Mmm! And this one comes immediately before the ones that we might consider to be the real biggies. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't be jealous of what your neighbour has. Do you think that God thinks this is important? There are 613 prohibitions and commandments in the Jewish Law. The executive summary is the Ten Commandments, the first 4 of those is about us and God, number five is about honouring your parents and there's a blessing attached. Mmm, I think God's got it very high on His priority list. Well, what does it actually mean to honour your parents? Let’s just unpack this commandment, this 5th commandment just a little bit. What does honour your parents actually mean? Well I guess there are 3 dimensions, firstly to prize them highly. If you read Proverbs, chapter 4 and verse 8 it uses this word honour, it says: Wisdom when sought above everything else and prized more highly than all else will bring honour to its seekers. You know, as kids often we, I know as a teenager I didn't prize my parents highly, I didn't value them and parents do so much for their children. When the kids, just kind of in their hearts, are grateful and value and prize them that brings honour to the parents. I just wish someone had told me that when I was a teenager. The second dimension is caring, showing affection for them. If you read psalm 91, verse 15: God's honouring of individuals is shown by His care in being with them and delivering them from trouble. You know something I never did as a teenager; I never actually showed affection to my parents. I never actually cared for them, I never actually looked and said, "You know something, my Mum is tired, I might make her a cup of tea." I know when my daughter, Melissa, sometimes she'll say, "Can I make you a cup of tea?" and I think that is SO nice that she sees that I'm tired and that she offers to make me a cup of tea. What is says is she cares about me and that brings honour to me as her father. And the third dimension is showing respect or fear or revering them. I mean, you know something; parents need to be respected by their children. I know I often didn't agree with the decisions my parents made. I often didn't want to do the things my parents told me to do but something that we so often fail to do, as teenagers and I know I did, was simply to show respect for the authority that my parents had in my home. Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1 says this: Obey your parents. But immediately and necessarily it qualifies that and says: In the Lord. In other words, parents are to be shown honour but nowhere is there word to rival, to be a substitute for God’s word. Isn't it so opposite of what teenagers want to do? The notion that they should prize their parents highly, the notion that they should care and show affection for them, the notion that they should show respect and fear or reverence for their parents is so against where society is going at the moment. "Oh, they don't know anything." I remember not even wanting to be seen in public with my parents. You remember what it was like growing up? Moving from this complete dependence on our parents to independence and its hard because we're trying to make our own way and we're trying to set up who we are and so often we want to rebel against our parents but it seems to me that there are two ways of growing up – the right way and the wrong way. The wrong way is using our growing independence, our desire for independence as an excuse to rebel against our parents. And the right way, the right way is to learn to honour them second only to God Himself. I'll take you back to the Ten Commandments. The first four are about our relationship with God, the very next one is that we should honour our father and our mother. I heard a Christian psychologist on the radio recently who was saying that it's natural for boys to hurt their mothers, it's part of growing up. They need to cut the umbilical cord and that's going to involve rebellion. Well I agree that boys need to separate from their mothers to become men, it's actually a very important stage of development but in doing that, they should always honour their mother. You know why? Because if a teenage boy doesn't learn to honour his mother, he will never know how to honour his wife. Some people never grow up; some people never learn to honour their mother and their father. When we learn to do that there are huge blessings in that. When we honour our parents, their natural desire is to bless us, that’s what they want to do and when we honour them the blessing flows naturally from parent to child as it's meant to do and when we honour them, God blesses us because it's the way that God set it up. When we honour our mother and our father the blessing just flows. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436835

Rebel Without a Cause // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 2 09/02/2025

Rebel Without a Cause // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 2 It seems par for the course that at some point, teenagers want to rebel. I know I did. So, why is that? What’s going on in their hearts when they get this urge to rebel? Now I remember when I was a teenager it was a time of anger and tension and conflict with my parents. You see, I knew that I knew everything and I knew that they knew nothing; I mean they were so old fashioned. They made me have my hair cut short when all my friends had long hair. They made me clean my room every Saturday morning, I mean come on! All my friends were allowed to have messy rooms. I had to learn the piano whether I liked it or not, I mean who did they think they were? Hm, does that sound familiar? I really remember those days; I remember slamming my door shut with anger in my heart and with tears in my eyes and my fists thumping the door. Through gritted teeth I swore I would never do that to my children what they did to me but you know something; years later I saw the wisdom of their ways. I just wish that someone could have explained to me, back then, what I know now. Well you know the saying, "you can't put an old head on young shoulders" and I guess to some extent that’s true but you know something, I think sometimes we as parents use that as a bit of a cop out too, where we kind of abdicate our role of teaching our kids to grow up because teaching them to grow up is just plain hard work. There's conflict and parents stop talking to their kids, they give up on them, they let them have a messy room, it's just all too hard you know, and you know what happens then? We stop talking and life becomes a series of flash points and blow ups and the relationship deteriorates to a point where there isn't one. I believe that young people today hunger for a sense of family and community and the whole conflict thing is something that we have to discuss and work through. Yesterday on the program, we looked at the whole process of growing up and when you stand back from that process, growing up really is about moving from complete dependence when we're little bubs, (you know, and we need our nappies changed and we need to be fed) to the ability to be independent of our parents and when we walk out that door for the last time or we go and make our own lives in this world, we have to have the skills and the abilities to do that. Growing up is moving from being incapable of looking after yourself to being capable of looking after yourself. It's a big deal, there's lots of things involved, just basic physical things, there's managing with money, there's working, there's dealing with our emotions, there's caring for other people, there's serving people. All that stuff is hard to learn and the way God planned it was for us to learn it in our families but somewhere along the way our children go from being little kids to being adults but as teenagers they're kind of in that "not quite yet" spot aren't they? Those teenage years are in between years and they're so hard. I mean it's natural for our kids to go from being little children to being teenagers and they develop and they learn and they become more independent and there comes a point when they know that they're not kids anymore and they kind of know that they're not adults yet but they really, really want to be. Yep, those in between years are really tough and they're typically years that involve quite a bit of conflict. I remember rebelling against my parents and my Father sat me down one day and he said, "Son, this is the way it is. As long as you live under my roof and you eat my food, you'll do what I say. If you don't like it”, He pointed at the door and he said, "there is the door." In effect he said, "I provide – I decide". I hated him for saying that, how dare he! But you know something as much as I hated it, he was right. Rebellion is when we want our own way. Rebellion isn't unique to childhood or teenage years, you see it in adults all the time because some people have never grown up, some people have never learned to accept authority, "I want it my way!" Well get a revelation, you can't always have it your way. And as a teenager I used to think, "when I'm an adult I won't have to put up with this." Well wrong, I mean when I left high school I went to train as an officer in the army, I became an army officer, I became a senior manager in a corporation, I owned my own business, I mean I had made it. Then I became a Christian, I went to a Bible College, we had to do chores there, can you believe it? I had to vacuum people’s carpets and clean the toilets. That was really, really good for my ego and now I'm a C.E.O. of this ministry called Christianityworks and I speak to millions of people each week through radio but even today, at age 48, I am subject to a Board of Directors. Godly men and women who exercise authority over me and you know something; that is the way it should be. Obedience is hard and there's only one way to learn obedience, the hard way. It hurts to be obedient, it hurts when you're a teenager and your parents tell you to do something and you don't want to do it. Jesus went through exactly the same thing. Hebrews, chapter 5: During the days of Jesus' life on earth he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could have saved Him from death and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Even though He was the Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and once made perfect He became the eternal source of salvation for all who obey Him. Do you get that? Jesus, the Son of God, learned obedience from what He suffered. Obedience is only obedience when we do something that we're told to do that we don't want to do. I mean, let's face it, if it's something we want to do that's not obedience. If a Dad goes to his teenage daughter and said, "Darling, let's go to the shop, I want to buy you an ipod." And she says, "Yeah, sure Dad, I'll come to the shop." That's not obedience. But if a father says to his son, "Son, clean up that mess in the kitchen that your sister made" what's the son’s reaction? "I didn't make that mess." That's hard! If you're a teenager listen to me, sometimes what your parents ask you to do doesn't seem fair, you know why? Because it isn't, it's not what you want to do, its inconvenient, especially cleaning up something that your brother or your sister did. And if you do it, if you obey your father and your mother, it's going to hurt like hell inside. Do it anyway, do it with a good heart. You know what happens when we do that? We grow up inside. People, as a teenager, people think growing up on the outside is growing up. You know you see young teenage girls at the shops with make up plastered on and low cut dresses and they think they look so grown up. No they don't, they look like young girls who are trying to look grown up. And you see boys swearing with their mates and acting tough, they think they look grown up. No they don't, they look like boys trying to look grown up. Look at the example of Jesus again; Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered. Growing up is about learning to lay your life down, it's hard. Growing up is learning to be obedient. When we are obedient to our parents, get this, it matures us like nothing else. It prepares us for life like nothing else. Part of Gods plan, that's why God gave us parents. When you're 35 and you're 40 and 50 we still have other people exercise authority over us. I know obedience hurts – do it anyway. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436820

Just Grow Up // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 1 09/01/2025

Just Grow Up // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 1 Growing up isn’t easy. That whole journey from being a little baby to a well-adjusted young adult is tough. So – what’s growing up all about? What happens along the way? You know, I think that one of the hardest things in life is just growing up. You start of life as this helpless little baby; can’t do anything for yourself. And the somehow 20 or 25 years later you're supposed to be this well-balanced mature young adult capable of taking on the world. But along the way there are lots of growing pains. I don’t know how you found it, but for me I think growing up was hard. There are some truths about life that we can only learn one way, the hard way. In fact there’s an old Yiddish proverb that I think sums it up really well. “Every generation has to learn for itself the stove is hot.” Ain’t that just the truth? So that’s why this week on the program we are going to take a look at this whole question of growing up because it’s just not easy. I recently spoke at a gathering of students, high school students; it was the opening of the new senior campus. I was invited go and visit and speak for 20 minutes or a half an hour. Now, I remember when I was a student at high school we had hard wooden seats in the auditorium. And these events – you know, end of year award nights and speech nights and openings of buildings, all that stuff – you’d have to sit for what seemed like an eternity for hours and they’d always have a guest speaker. I don’t know how you remember high school, but for me it was always some old codger who just droned on for ever and ever and had nothing useful to say to me. It just bored my socks off. I used to sit there and think, “what is this guy doing here, where does he get off.” There were two things that I hungered to hear about. Firstly, something that would make my life better today whether it's at school, study, home, parents or growing up or the conflict and the pressures. Tell me something that will make my life better today. And secondly I used to think, I wonder what my life will be like after I finish school. Now when you are a teenager all you’ve ever know is going to school and you hunger for life after school. We used to have this little ditty. “No more pencils no more books no more teacher’s dirty looks.” What’s it going to be like when I finish school? What’s the freedom like, what’s the future like, the hopes and the dreams? Tell me about some of that stuff. So when I was preparing this message for the high school, I realised I was the old codger going to speak to the students. And I thought I’d better come up with something that really works for them So I did a little message called, “How to Get More Out of Your Parents”. Now I’m going to tell you, that grabbed a few people’s attention. The kids were really interested and a few parents wanted to have a listen too, to hear what this old codger was going to say. And it was a message about today and the future. So this week on A Different Perspective, I’ve called this five program series, “How to Get More Out of Your Parents”. And it’s for young and old. If you’re a teenager listen up if you’re a parent of a teenager hopefully there’s some stuff here that might kind of help. If you’re a grandparent you could be such a calming influence you know in the family of your children where there are teenagers as grandchildren. Maybe you just grew up in conflict with your parents and somehow there are unresolved issues inside. Will you stick with me over these next few programs this week and let us have a look at what it means to grow up? What actually goes on in the process of growing up? Let’s stand back for a minute today and say, what is growing up all about? We all begin life as this helpless baby, we’re born and if they just left us there naked, lying on the bench, we’d die. Someone had to wrap us up in warm clothes and wrap our hands away so we wouldn’t scratch our faces with our nails. And parents feed you and they protect you and they change your nappy and they carry you around. When we were born we couldn’t walk or talk or work or play or do anything much really. We started out life absolutely and completely helpless. Now that’s pretty much unique in the animal kingdom. Most other species the new born is up and about pretty quickly because it’s the only way they survive. Look at a calf or a foal, I mean they’re up and walking within just a few minutes of being born. A few days later they’re running around the field. But a human baby is totally dependant on its parents for everything. So what’s growing up all about? Well, when you think about it, the process of growing up is the process of moving from complete dependence to complete independence. I don’t like the fact that I began my life dirtying my nappies. But we all did. That’s how it all started for us. We started completely dependent. Yet by the time we leave home we’re supposed to be capable of looking after ourselves. You think of the progression. A little baby grows up into a toddler, maybe 2 or 3 years old. Well you still have to regulate when it sleeps, you regulate what the child watches on television. The Parents control a whole bunch of things in that child’s life because it doesn’t have the ability or the maturity or the knowledge to look after itself. But progressively parents let little things go because the child starts to grow up. I mean when the child first heads off to school. Now that’s a big step of independence because now the child spends several hours away from it’s parents. And progressively we let them use sharp knives. You don’t let a 2 or 3 year old use a sharp knife because it’s going to hurt itself. And we let them watch different Television shows. We let them do things differently on the internet and we let them stay up later at night and we let them make more choices about what they eat. And as the years go on the child progressively learns and grows and matures and moves from complete dependence to independence. That’s what growing up is all about. And all through this process parents are hard wired to bless their children. Well, you know the vast majority, 99% of parents want to bless their children and they really do. I mean I look at my daughter and she’s 16 and she’s just beautiful and I just want to bless the girl because she’s my daughter and I want to do that. But sometimes the child rebels. I did. I did it as a teenager and you did it as a teenager, we just rebel. And that rebellion against our parents it’s like a cork that blocks the flow of blessing. We are going to look at that more over the next few days. But part of growing up as the child becomes more independent and we as parents need to give that child room to become more independent. There’s this tension between control and independence, a tension that reaches its peak in the teenage years. A teenager is not really a child anymore but neither is he or she completely independent yet either. They still rely on their parents for food and for shelter and for money yet they want to be free. Growing up is the process of moving from complete dependence on our parents to a place where we’re mature enough and we’ve learned enough that we can be independent. We can make our own way in this world separate from parents. And in that process going from complete dependence to independence which after all is exactly what God’s plan was, there are bound to be some tensions. I wish someone had explained that to me when I was growing up. Just help me to stand back and understand exactly what it is that was going on. Tomorrow we’re going to unpack a bit this rebellion and tension that happens in that place. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436785

The Olive Trees Around the Table // Building a Godly Family, Part 15 08/29/2025

The Olive Trees Around the Table // Building a Godly Family, Part 15 Bringing up children can feel like such a thankless task some days. You invest, invest, sacrifice, invest some more – hoping that one day, it’ll all have a positive impact on them. Well, I want to share something with you about this investment thing that’ll just blow you away. We've been talking, these last 3 weeks, about Building a Godly Family. And today, today I want to share a story with you that blew me away. And my prayer is, it will blow you away too. It's all about fruit, well olives actually; the fruit of the investment of building a godly family. Now, you and I both know that whenever we invest in anything, what the word "investment" really means is "sacrifice now in order to reap the harvest later" because investing is about putting something we have in hand now; something we could use or spend in another way. And investing is about taking that thing and planting it somewhere else to reap a reward later. If we save for our retirement, we take money that we could blow on things that we'd love to enjoy today but we set it aside in some form of investment plan so that the seed grows into a tree that will feed us when we retire, right? Or if we decide to lose weight and get fit, we sacrifice today's "eat whatever you want" plan, we sacrifice that in order to reap the reward of a healthier body. We give up time that we'd rather spend watching television to exercise to reap the reward. And as it turns out, exactly the same principle applies when we invest the time and the effort and the emotional energy that's required to build a godly family. Now earlier this week you may have heard me talk about my friend Mark and his family who live in the United States of America. Let me tell you the story about Mark. Mark is a wonderful godly man; a man I respect tremendously. He has this outrageous sense of humour and laugh. I remember he and I were driving together through the chaotic traffic of India, the first time I'd ever driven in India and I thought I was going to die. I mean Mark was in the front seat, me in the back seat and amidst my sheer terror, in this traffic, all I remember is the outrageous laughter of this man. And yet, he's one of the godliest men I know. He and his wife have nine children, all home schooled. Not a perfect family by any means but a godly one. Nine kids! I find that hard to comprehend. Nine! And yet there is a calm delight in this man and his family and godliness that really catches your eye. You think how is that possible? So I've shared with you over the last few days some of the things that he said to me that were the most important in building a godly family. And today, I want to share Mark’s final take on this. And it comes out of Psalm 128, verse 3. Now Psalm 128 in written to the father of a family. It is a message written specifically to him. Have a listen. It's actually a very short psalm. Psalm 128. Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands. You shall be happy and it shall go well with you. You wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of you life. May you see your children's children. Peace upon Israel. To our 21st Century ears that take on family life, well it may seem a tad patriarchal but remember it was written to people who lived in a patriarchal society. So let’s go with it. The first verse says: Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. Everyone who fears the Lord – what we've been talking about over these last few weeks. Putting God first in everything, every part of our lives including the way we do family. And that brings blessing. The sort of blessing the psalmist talks about in verse 2: You'll eat the fruit of your labour. You'll be happy and all will go well for you. But now listen to verse 3. It sounds a bit patriarchal: Your wife will be a fruitful vine within your house. But it comes back to the Old Testament view and concept of blessing. Blessing equalled lots of children in your own land. It's pretty simple. So to the person reading this psalm when it was written, that's what verse 3 meant; the first part. But have a listen again to the second part of the verse: Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Olive shoots, these new shoots of plants that grow into mighty olive trees that bear one of the staples of the Eastern diet – olives, from which comes the precious commodity of olive oil. Now have a listen to what my friend Mark wrote about this particular verse. Here it is, word for word, from this father of nine children. I love this. God impacted us with the idea, out of our own family study of the Scriptures some time back. It comes out of Psalm 128, verse 3 which says that: Children will be like olive shoots around the table of the man who fears God”. When we learned that olive plants typically take sixteen to eighteen years of careful cultivation, pruning and watering and during that time they typically bear very little fruit until after the eighteenth year they bear abundant fruit for many, many years to come. That gave us a reason to persevere and not to be weary in doing good. That is an incredible truth from Scripture that has kept us going through some of the toughest times with our children. Don't you love how God packs so much into His Word. It's so full of practical truth. What an amazing picture, this picture of the olive tree. A man who fears God, a family that fears God can expect the children to be like olive shoots around the table. This fresh young shoot. You put all the effort, all the investment into that tree. For years it occupies a part of your orchard. It takes investment and work and it doesn't bear any fruit. But then, then one day, just as God had always planned long, long ago, that tree produces olives. I love olives. There's a cafe just down the road from us owned by a Greek man, Alex. And his olives are to die for. You get them with some toasted Turkish bread and a bit of Greek dip. Imagine, Alex's olives come from one of those trees. A tree somewhere that some farmer has nurtured and watered and pruned and cared for, for eighteen years without much fruit until finally, it bore this wonderful fruit. Do you see this beautiful picture? And just on top of this, the psalmist at the end of the psalm, helps us to realise that when we invest in our family and invest in our children and it goes on, day after day, week after week, year after year and it seems so hard. There is so much more at the end of this than just the olives of that first tree. There's much more, Psalm 128, verse 6. May you see your children's children. Peace upon Israel. The investment in these little olive shoots sitting around the table of the parents who fear God, who honour God. These parents who are prepared to invest tirelessly, day after day, is going to bear fruit in a little while; fruit that will last for GENERATIONS; your children's children. I look at my three: Simon who's almost 30; Michael in his late 20's; Melissa, our baby, who's just turned 18. And Jacqui and I are so proud of who they've become, so delighted in seeing the fruit growing in their lives; seeing them making their way in this world. Rising up to be the people who God made them to be. Truly, naturally, I'm just not into the 'little kid' thing. It's just not my gig. So for me, many days, it was a tough, long, hard road. But sitting at this end of it, the fruit, the fruit that this investment is now bearing is so sweet. It is so incredibly worth it. I want to encourage you today. That the investment of building a godly family is one that we will never, ever regret. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436770

Sharing in the Challenges // Building a Godly Family, Part 14 08/28/2025

Sharing in the Challenges // Building a Godly Family, Part 14 One of the greatest teachers of all is life itself. We learn so much just by living life. Now – here’s a thought. What if, I mean what if we shared some of the challenges and trials that we face, with our children? What if they were able to benefit from the things we’re learning? A good many years ago now, when I was in the Information Technology industry, I used to attend I guess 3 or 4 conferences each year; the sort of thing to do to learn and to make connections. And often, one of the things I'd notice about the speakers at these conferences is that many of them would get up and just rattle off a bunch of facts. And you'd think, 'Well, I kind of knew that already and in any case, I could have read that in a text book.' And then others would tell us about this IT project or that one and it seemed they always had such rose coloured glasses on. They'd tell us all the things that went well. The implication being that their organisation or their company had done such a great job.But anyone who's ever been involved in an IT project will know that it's not easy – technology, people, politics. It's actually quite complex changing an organisation and its business processes to fit with the new technology. And so I'd often walk away from these conferences thinking … well … wishing that someone had shared something with me that was for real. You know, lessons from the trenches, lessons born out of real life so that I could take something useful away: some insight, some experience that would make a difference back in my trench. You know what I'm talking about. And this is something we kind of finished up with on the program yesterday. If you've been with us over the last few weeks, you'll know that we've been talking about building a godly family. There is such incredible fruit that comes from that; something that doesn't just give us more peace at home; something that just doesn't benefit our children. But it's a blessing that will flow down generation to generation as each new generation picks up the Godly habits, the godly perspectives of the previous generation. So the things that you and I do, from this day forward in building a godly family where we live are going to leave a lasting godly legacy to so many generations to come. What an awesome thing! And we finished up yesterday talking about the fact that if we want our kids to be godly; if we want them to have a powerful, dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ; if we want them to know the peace and the joy that comes from that; if we want them to see their lives through God's eyes, then we're going to have to tell them about Jesus; to share the word of God with them. But you know what the temptation is? The temptation is to put a plastic positive spin on things just like those speakers at the IT conferences I was talking about earlier. We want our kids to get the best of God so we put a positive spin on things. We recite the facts. We preach at them thinking that somehow this is going to make a difference to their lives. Kids are pretty savvy these days. They can pick up the phoney baloney from a mile off. Whether they realise it or not, what they really want and what they really need is to be part of our lives, warts and all. That's when they feel valued and when they share in our insights and what we've learned, that's when the gospel message really has an impact. One of the reasons I love the apostle Paul is that the guy didn't pull any punches. Have a listen to what he writes to his friends in Corinth. It comes from 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 1 to 11: Therefore, he said, since it is by the mercy of God that we are engaged in His ministry, we do not lose heart. We've renounced the shameful things that one hides, we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. For we don't proclaim ourselves, we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for His sake. For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We have this treasure in clay jars so that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and doesn't come from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed. Perplexed but not driven to despair. Persecuted but not forsaken. Struck down but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be visible in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. Do you see what's happening here? Paul is writing to the Corinthian Church. Now he could be putting his best foot forward. He could be promoting his ministry. He could be telling people how wonderfully things are going. All the things we'd be tempted to do to build ourselves up in the eyes of others. But instead, what does he say? Well he tells them how it really is. "We do not lose heart." Well, you know, if he's saying we don't lose heart there's some stuff going down, right? And he's saying, "Look, we're out there preaching the gospel but the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers and we have this treasure in clay jars so that people don't think it's us, they know it's God. We're afflicted, we're not crushed. We're perplexed, we're not driven to despair. We're persecuted, we're not forsaken." Things are hard for Paul. Things are going tough but Paul is telling them, to the Corinthians, the way they really are; a realistic, practical view, from the trenches, view of the world; sharing with them the sorts of insights, the lessons that are really going to make a difference really going to have an impact because they're being mediated through the real life trials of this man whom they honour and respect. Think. They know this is Paul. They know what an amazing thing God’s done to him. And yet, Paul writes to them, "We're afflicted but not crushed. We're perplexed but we're not driven to despair. We're persecuted but we're not forsaken. We're struck down but we're not destroyed." Isn't that powerful? I wonder if we couldn't start sharing some of those things with our kids; sharing our faith through the things of life. Making sense out of the stuff they're going to encounter in their lives, the trials – the things that are going to be unfair at school and at work; the things that are going to happen to them along the way by sharing the fact that those same things have happened to us; those same things are happening to us. And we look at them through God's eyes and no, it didn't all come out perfectly. Everyone didn't all live happily ever after. But you know something – my God reigns. My faith is intact; my conscience is intact. I'd rather lose a battle and honour God in losing that than to win the battle and dishonour God to please myself. That's my story, that's how I see things. Now imagine if we started sharing those sorts of truths with them. Do you see the power in that? No-one can argue with your story. No-one can argue with my story because they're our stories. But as our children start to figure out that we're for real, that our faith’s for real, you know something, it's going to have an impact on them. It's a powerful way of sharing the word of God with them because instead of preaching at them, we're opening up the door and letting them into our world and letting them see our humanity and our frailty. And through the cracked clay jars, the glory of God is bound to shine out into their lives. So many of us have been brought up to shield our children from these things because that's just the way we did it when we were growing up. But look at the Bible, read it. Pick any chapter and read it. You know what oozes out of it? The glory of God through the "warts and all" telling of the story of peoples lives. That's what! Just like this bit here, from Paul, to the Corinthian Church. What an incredible legacy we can leave – not only in the hearts of our children but in their children and their children's children. When we let them become part of our godly lives – however imperfectly we may live them. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436750

Faith Comes By Hearing // Building a Godly Family, Part 13 08/27/2025

Faith Comes By Hearing // Building a Godly Family, Part 13 So many people want to build a godly family. To have a family that’s not necessarily perfect, there ain’t any of those, but one that’s full of peace and joy. A safe place for children to grow. But if we want our kids to grow up to be godly – one of the things we have to do, is actually talk to them about Jesus. Every time I look up at the stars and the moon at night, I'm utterly gobsmacked by what I see; this whole Milky Way thing. When you get away from the light and the smog of the city and see the sky clearly, it almost looks like a glowing cloud. Like countless specks of star dust strewn across this great dark blue/black firmament. And then, like clockwork, every morning this amazing ball of fire and light and warmth comes up over the horizon. That thing we call the sun. It never fails. Now, I'm wondering if you or I had never been taught anything about the cosmos, the earth, the solar system, the sun, the moon, the galaxy, the universe; if we knew absolutely nothing about any of those things, not even the simple stuff they taught us in grade school, what would we make of it? If we stood here on planet earth and watched this whole heavenly display go by, day after day, week after week, maybe we could tell the position of the stars changed overnight; that the sky looks slightly different across the seasons. What would we make of it all without the knowledge that science has given us? I wonder. Well actually we don't have to look too far because there were so many theories down through the ages – that the earth was flat; that the earth was at the centre and everything else revolved around it; that stars were like little holes in the firmament; this skin stretched up there in the sky. What happens is, we look at this incredible, cosmic light show that rolls past every day from our own miniscule perspective not realising how small we are; how narrow our view is. And we get a distorted picture of reality. We think the earth's the centre of the universe. We think we're the biggest, most important thing in the cosmos because that's all we can see and this whole light show revolves around us. Do you see what happens? It's exactly what's happened down through the ages. In fact when scientists started wanting to postulate that the earth was in fact round and not flat and that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way round. Well people wanted to burn these scientists as heretics. But once we got the facts we started to look at things completely differently. At least a trillion trillion stars in the known universe which, by definition, means there's a whole bunch out there, God only knows how much, that we don't know about. And our sun is just one of those. And even our galaxy of billions of stars is such a small pin prick on the map of the universe. That it's infinitesimally small even though it takes light at 186,000 miles per second or 5.88 trillion miles per year – it takes light over 100,000 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. Do you see how radically, I mean HOW RADICALLY the facts transform our understanding of reality? It is mind blowing stuff. Well what, if anything, does that have to do with the subject we've been talking about these last few weeks on the program, ‘Building A Godly Family’? As it turns out, a whole bunch. I mentioned yesterday on the program that I asked a good friend of mine, Mark, for some advice on building a godly family. Now Mark and his wife have nine children – nine! They live in the USA and he's one of the godliest men that I know. So I thought who better to turn to for some advice on how to build a godly family. My hunch is he's qualified. Now the question was, 'what are the three or four most important things that you've learned about building a Godly family?' Yesterday I shared with you what he had to say about setting a godly example. Ultimately our children will end up being like us and so how we live our lives will be the most important sermon we ever preach to them. Today I want to share one of the things he listed in his top three or four. Let me read to you what he wrote in his email. Have a listen. He said: Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. (That comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 10) What do I mean by this? That the written Word of God is absolutely central to everything we do in parenting and to birthing faith in the hearts of our children. My wife and I can talk, lecture, admonish, discipline, correct, nag, whatever until we're blue in the face and it will do not good at all unless the Spirit of God takes His own Word and does a work in the hearts of our children. Therefore, we believe we have to expose and challenge them with God’s Word as often as we can. In our home that's taken the form, over the years, of bedtime stories, scripture readings at the dinner table, family devotional times in the morning or evening or both where possible. Scripture memory, using real life experiences to show how God’s Word speaks into every situation. See, to someone who hasn't grown up in this sort of environment, it may seem a little bit odd, even a little bit old fashioned but it makes so much sense. We started out by talking about the different perspectives we can have on the great cosmic light show. Depending on whether or not we know the truth about what it is and how it works. If we know the truth we understand that the earth is just this tiny little speck of dust in a vast cosmic array. If we don't, we imagine somehow we're at the centre of the universe. We only learn the difference when we hear the truth, right? And it's exactly the same for us as people. If we don't know the truth about God – who He is, What He did for us through Jesus His Son, who we are when we believe in Jesus, how we can respond to this incredible love that Gods lavished upon us – unless we know this then we're going to live our lives in complete ignorance, completely from the wrong perspective. It's when we teach our children the Word of God that they develop a godly perspective; a perspective that bears so much fruit. It's exactly what God taught His people, Israel, just before they crossed into the Promised Land. This bit that I'm going to read comes from Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 to 9. He says: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words, that I am commanding you today, in your heart and recite them to your children and talk about them when you are home and when you're away and when you lie down and when you rise. And write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates. Mark, in his little thing that I read to you, quoted Paul. Let me share the whole thing. Romans chapter 10, verses 13 to 17: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved but how are they to call on the one in whom they have not believed. And how are they to believe in one of whom they have not heard. And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim to them. (Romans chapter 10, from verse 13 onwards) So in other words, if we want to build a godly family we have to tell them about God. And here's the amazing thing, I asked Mark’s children for their comments. I mean, I thought, you know, will the kids really wear this? What do those kids think? Well they said, "You know the things we really enjoy? Reading the Bible together; the creative teaching we get from mum and dad; family prayer time." These were some of the things the children themselves said they liked about living in a godly family. Go figure! If we want to have a godly family, we've got to talk about God; got to tell them about God; got to share the love and the faithfulness and the power and the grace of God with our children because unless we do we're not going to have a godly family. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436730

A Godly Example // Building a Godly Family, Part 12 08/26/2025

A Godly Example // Building a Godly Family, Part 12 We parents try to do all the things we can to help our children to grow up. We advise. We admonish. We even end up preaching at them sometimes. But it’s not what we say, it’s what we do, how we live – what they see our life to be, that has the greatest impact in shaping them as they grow up. I don't know how things are in your neck of the woods but one of the really hot topics around where I live is binge drinking amongst teenagers. Now I know that different people have different views on whether drinking of alcohol is a godly thing to do or not, wherever you sit on that issue. However you understand what God’s Word says about the responsible use of alcohol. Blind Freddy can see that the abuse of alcohol is so incredibly destructive. I was listening to a Doctor, the head of the emergency ward at our local hospital; they were interviewing him on the radio recently. Some huge percentages of people are admitted to the emergency ward each week are there because of alcohol. I think, from memory, he was saying that something like 80% of the young people, the under 30's, that front up there every weekend are there because of something alcohol related – violence, injury, illness. Pretty scary, and it begs the question, how does that happen? Where do young people get this from? How do you go from being this beautiful little baby in your mother’s arms and your parents and your grandparents are gooing and gaaing over you? How do you go from that to being a drunken, violent teenager vomiting in the gutter? It's worth thinking about. To combat this teenage binge drinking thing, they've been running an ad on television – a bunch of Australian men in a backyard drinking beer over a barbeque and one of the dad's sends his young son to the fridge to get him another bottle of beer to drink. And the punch line of this ad is about making the point that our children are taking in our habits. They're watching us. They're taking it all in. They're picking up things that rub off from us. You know something that makes a lot of sense. Whether it's drinking or child abuse or whatever negative, destructive thing you'd like to mention. The imprinting from parent to child is incredibly powerful. I mean parents are right up there. They're the authority figures and when you're growing up, the only reality that matters is your own reality. You grow up in that family and that's all you know. That's it, whether it's anger, violence, alcohol abuse, whatever it is, if that's a powerful part of your reality growing up, it's going to leave its imprint on your life. Now our DNA determines who we naturally are but our personalities, our characters, our views of ourselves and others, our morals, our values, our patterns of behaviour. All of those things are hugely shaped by our environment, by the people around us, by our circumstances. Gods plan is for you and for me is to have a loving family. Not just our nuclear family but our wider family. In the New Testament in the book called Titus in chapter 2, have a listen to what it says: Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent and sound in faith in love and endurance. And likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in their behaviour. Not to be slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to teach what is good so that they may encourage the younger women to love their husbands and to love their children. To be self controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands so that the word of God may not be discredited. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self controlled. Show yourself, in all respects, a model of good works and in your teaching show integrity, gravity and sound speech that cannot be censured, then any opponent shall be put to shame having nothing evil to say of us. You see what's going on here? Paul is writing to Titus and he's saying, 'look, you older men, you older women set the example so that the younger men and the younger women learn from you’. And so that needs to be handed down from the older men and women to the younger men and women and from the younger men and women down to their children. Because so much of our behaviour comes from the behaviour we learn and model from the older people in our lives, both as children and as adults. That's why mentorship is so important. You may have heard me talk about a man, Graham, who was my business partner for 20 years. Now Graham's almost 20 years my senior and he taught me so many things. I watched his behaviour. He was so good and decent and affective in so many ways. I learned to become more than I could be by watching him and learning from him. Like a life's apprentice. We've been talking over the last few weeks about building a godly family. And today I want to get really down to earth and practical. I believe, I truly believe, that the most important thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. So let me say that again. The most important and powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. Let me ask you, are you an older man or woman? Now, in some societies they respect their elders. Others, like mine, I'm not sure we're that good as we should be. Anything old is out of date. It's beyond it's use by date. Old is old fashioned. We take old people and stick them in nursing homes. I generalise but as a society and mine doesn't value old people as much as it should. But whatever society you live in, if you are an older person you can be such a godly influence on your family because you've been around. You know some things. You should have the godly wisdom that comes from a life long faith in and walk with Jesus. You're not involved anymore, by and large, in the daily cut and thrust and pressures of bringing up the kids. What a godly influence you can be on your grandchildren; the gentle yet powerful faith; the glow, the radiance of God that shines out through your eyes and comes out of your mouth. And you parents, what an incredibly godly influence you can be on one another and on your children by just the way you live and talk and behave to other people; husband and wife, by your behaviour, by your countenance, by your attitudes and deeds and encouragement. How you can support one another. Let's say one of you is behaving badly. You're under pressure, you're tired. And the other one, instead of arguing and fighting, draws alongside and in love steers things down a different path. And then, see then what the kids see, instead of seeing a father and mother arguing and pulling in different directions, they see them trusting in God, supporting one another. What sort of a lifelong imprint do we think that is going to leave on our children? Now, each of us has bad habits. Sin, anger, selfishness, low self-esteem, pride, dishonesty, whatever it is, those things are going to be handed down to our children unless we deal with them; unless we sacrifice them to God; unless we let Him into that space to change us. And the fruit of that change, the fruit will be unto our children and their children and their children's children to a thousand generations. When the simple daily habits of our lives are godly, Christ-honouring and humble, this is going to be a powerful blessing. Now a friend of mine, Mark, has 9 children. He lives in the USA. I asked him to tell me what some of the most important things were in raising a Godly family. Listen to what he says. He quotes Luke chapter 6, verse 40: Everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. And he says, "While not usually thought of as a verse on parenting, the implications here are clear. We can't hope to produce something in our children that we ourselves don't possess. Our children, after all of our teaching – creative or not, intentional or not, verbal or not – our children will be like us. So, watch your own heart for it is the well spring of life and don't forget that first things must be dealt with first, including keeping our marriage the priority in our family." That's from a father of nine children. You know something, I think them’s pretty wise words, don't you? /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436720

Distractions // Building a Godly Family, Part 11 08/25/2025

Distractions // Building a Godly Family, Part 11 With all the entertainment options and gizmos available to us these days, there are so many distractions. Things that stop us from interacting and doing the things that we need to do to build a godly family. I remember with great delight the days that I used to come home from school in my younger years. I was allowed to watch an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half of TV. It was a great big hulking black and white model that sat in the corner of our lounge room. I used to watch Gilligan's Island and Mighty Mouse, and later on Batman. Our time in front of this tube was strictly limited by our parents. They didn't want us getting square eyes. And then it was out to play with the other kids in the neighbourhood, and then in to do our homework. Help with setting the table, cooking the dinner and certainly helping with clearing up and washing the dishes. It was those times, washing the dishes and drying them up, that my sister and I used to sing songs. When it came to being a family it seemed that there were fewer distractions back then. Oh sure, my parents had to work hard and they had busy lives but there wasn't any internet. There weren't dozens of cable TV channels. We only had one TV set not three or four as many homes do today. There were just fewer distractions … distractions from, well, I guess from being a family. Things were never perfect but there seemed to be much more time to interact. More time to do things. I hope you won't mind indulging in my little bit of nostalgia. Maybe looking at it through rose coloured glasses you think. Maybe each time and each age and each generation has it's challenges in being a family. But today's entertainment options are so prolific. I mean, cable TV with more shows and programs than you could ever watch and a lot of it, I have to tell you, is rubbish. The internet … and so many people spend hours and hours in front of the internet; mobile phones with their SMS and texting and now there's the unlimited talk plan so you can fry your brain even longer; and so many movies. Lot's of them. I remember when I was a kid there were two or three movies on at any one time. Now there's dozens of movies on at any one time down at the picture theatre. And of course we all have cars. We can go anywhere, do anything anytime. Run the kids here, run the kids there. The world is kind of a whole bunch different. And I'm not suggesting we wind back the clock. You can never do that. I'm simply making the point that we live in a different world these days. A world where there's so many distractions; so many seemingly very good things, entertaining things; razza matazy things; glitzy, attractive things. After a hard day at work or at school all we want to do is we each want to retreat into our virtual cocoons to be entertained. To have 'stuff' dished up to us. And then of course there's take away food, there's the microwave oven, the dishwasher; a lot of the menial things that people used to do together as a family; times to talk and to laugh and to share and to get to know each other. They're disappearing. There are more bedrooms, bigger houses, more living areas. We're more isolated than we ever used to be. Not everywhere but in much of the world, this is what people aspire to. And you stand back from that and you have to come to the conclusion that families are under incredible pressure. We're talking this week, on the program, again about building a godly family. Well this whole pressure of distractions is something we need to think about because, by definition a family is a unit, a team. A group that functions and grows and develops by virtue of the fact that the younger and the older members of the family communicate and interact in their lives. Ever thought about that? A family is the closest interaction in life because we share the basics of living. Eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning. This kind of place where people should be loved should be nurtured and should be protected. And along comes all these distractions, pretty things. They start to drive wedges between the members of the family because they rob us of time – time together, time to be a family, time to talk and to listen. I'm someone who really needs to hear this too. I don't know about you but as I said last week on the program I'm very happy with my own company. It's the easiest thing in the world for me to retreat into the bedroom and watch a re-run of one of my favourite TV series. Or skip meals and work through. So many families don't even have a meal together anymore. Not even once a week. Why? Because there are so many options. Meals have ceased to be times of table fellowship and they're all about shoving food down the hole and getting going with the next thing. God though places a high premium on our families. And again, as we saw last week and we'll be looking again in more detail next week, the Ten Commandments. Of those the first four are about God and us and the very next one, the fifth one, is: Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus chapter 20, verse 12) And wives and husbands, in Ephesians chapter 5 God says: Wives be subject to your husbands. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. God places a massive premium on the family because family was His idea in the first place. I mean Adam/Eve. From there came the beautiful gift of oneness and intimacy. And then out of that beautiful, intimate embrace came the gift of children. Ever figured out this plan, how beautiful it is for bringing children into the world. And there you have it, you see, there you have the plan, the plan for family; God’s plan for those who are made in His image to live in community and family. So many people hear that and they listen to that and they feel so ashamed. They feel so inadequate. "Well maybe that is God’s plan but look at the mess my family's in.' Well you're not the only one. I mean Adam and Eve had two children, Cain and Abel, and they had the same problem. One son murders the other one. I mean talk about a dysfunctional family. Here is the first family and they were so dysfunctional because dysfunction happens when we turn our backs on God. And that's exactly what Adam and Eve did. And yes, we do have a whole bunch of distractions these days. And distractions bring dysfunction. Let me say that again. They drive little wedges into the family. So distractions bring dysfunction. And the whole point of a wedge, if you pardon the pun, is you start with the pointy end and you drive it in deeper and deeper and it pulls two people apart more and more. That's what happens. Just think about it. I don't know what your family looks like but we do have more than one television in the house. And it's very easy for everybody to go into a different room and watch a different television and just have a quick meal and barely say a word to one another. The temptation is there. Now, there's a simple solution. There's something we can do right now, today, this very minute. We can start figuring out some clever creative ways of spending time together despite the distractions. We can talk with our kids in the car when we're running them somewhere. We can actually turn the TV off over dinner. We can start an interesting conversation over food. We can share something that happened in our day. We can plan some family things that involve the kids and their friends too so their friends go home and say ‘wow that was cool'. Something that's fun; an alternative to TV. There are so many creative things that we can do. You know something, we can make them fun. We can bake biscuits with the kids on a wet, cold, rainy Sunday afternoon. We can involve them in cooking the soup in chopping up and peeling the veggies. We can inject, we CAN inject some old fashioned fun into the mix. Okay, they might complain to start with but as we develop these new habits, as we get to know something new, you know what, these kids are going to look back on those simple pleasures in years to come. And that's what’s going to stick in their memory when we just spend the time. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436700

Children and Honour // Building a Godly Family, Part 10 08/22/2025

Children and Honour // Building a Godly Family, Part 10 Honour is not something that gets talked about a lot these days. But Commandment number 5 out of the top ten is to honour your father and mother. And it turns out that there’s a very good reason why it’s right up there at number 5. It's funny how the way we think; the things that we think are important. They change over time. If you got a 15 year old down with a 45 year old and a 60 year old and a 90 year old and got them together and asked them what things are really important my hunch is we'd get quite different responses from each of them – the values of my parents generation, people who've been through World War 2 and their parents who'd been through the Great Depression. Well those generation’s values are quite different to those of my own, the baby boomers, for whom the term the ‘me' generation was invented. I mean my grandfather on my father’s side (who's now long gone) he was born in the 1800's and he lived in a house in Romania (a place where it gets bitterly cold in winter) with animal skins instead of glass for windows. And there's one core value though. One that we don't hear people talk much about anymore, that's so important when it comes to building a godly family. That value is honour. It's something that today’s generations don't talk too much about. Oh we know that we want other people to honour us. But honour, as it turns out, is a two way street and without it we simply can't have a godly family. And in fact, God thinks it's so important that in the Ten Commandments, the first four are about God and us and the very next one, the fifth Commandment is about honour in the family. It’s pretty amazing that whole Ten Commandments thing when you think about it. Let's have a quick look. The first commandment, Exodus chapter 20, verse 2: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other Gods before me. That's the first Commandment. Put God first. The second Commandment: You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that's in the earth beneath or that's in the water or under the earth. You will not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject Me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. So there it is, the second one. The first one was honour God. The second one is you don't get to worship anything other than God. The third Commandment: You will not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. For the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses His name. So, it's again about honouring God and the fourth Commandment, Exodus chapter 20, verse 8: Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work but on the seventh day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God, you will not do any work. So again it's about our relationship with God and setting time aside for Him, to rest in Him. There are the first four Commandments. What are they all about in a nutshell, the executive summary? Well Jesus summarised it pretty well when some young lawyer asked Him, 'What's the greatest Commandment of all?' Remember what He said. Luke chapter 10, verse 27. He answered: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first and the greatest Commandment. You see, this whole "first four Commandments" thing is about honouring God, first and foremost, above all other things. That's the executive summary, nothing more important than that. Now, I'm wondering if you or I were God, what would we have put down as the next commandment? Well, if it were me, I think 'don't murder' would be number 5. I mean what can be more important than that. Don't steal. Don't commit adultery. Mmm, I think those should have come next but number 5 probably "don't murder". So, what does God choose as Commandment number 5? Here it is: Honour your father and your mother so that your days maybe long in the land of the Lord your God is giving to you. See, this 'honour your father and mother' comes ahead of murder, ahead of adultery, ahead of stealing, lying and jealousy. Honour your mum and your dad. I don't think I would have even had that one in the top 10 – maybe in the top 20 but probably not in the top 10. Yet where does God put it? Number 5, the very next Commandment after He's given four commandments about us honouring Him first and foremost. Not only that, it's the very first commandment to which there is a blessing attached. You honour your father and mother, and here's the blessing, so that you may live a long time in the land that God has given you. You know what that's about? Israel was, one day, going to go and possess the Promised Land. They were going to have to take it by force and all the nations they took it off would try and get it back. And all the other nations around them would try to defeat them. But the blessing attached to honouring your father and mother is this – that there would be peace. Ain't there a message in that for a few families? I mean, how many families are a mess because the children have never been taught to honour their parents? I know young adult children in their 20's who live with their parents who don't pay board, who drain on parents finances in their old age. Who leave a mess behind and they cause pain. Why? Because these children needed to be taught to honour their father and their mother. That's why. Have a listen to how the psalmist puts it. Psalm 37 beginning at verse 25. He says: I have been young and now I'm old. Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending and their children become a blessing. Do you see the link between what happens to children when we are righteous? They become a blessing. Now, let me warn you here. Teaching our children to honour their parents is plain hard work. It's ongoing. It's incessant. Why? Because we're all born to sin, all of us. Think about it. What's the first or the second word that each young child learns to say? No. We are all naturally rebellious. And that's why God calls us, first and foremost, to honour Him, and secondly, for us to honour our parents. Honour, respect, revere, listen to, obey, speak well of – that's what honour means. Parents, listen to me. In this day of consumerism we've been conned into thinking that unless we pander to our children’s every whim and desire and race here to do this for them and make their lunches and clean up after them, unless we do that we're not being good parents. We rationalise it. We think we're so busy at work, "I need to do things for them in other ways." Listen, the very worst thing that we can do to our children is to fail to teach them to honour their mother and father. The very worst thing, because if we fail in that, we fail to give them one of the most important elements of maturity that they will need in their adult life: the ability not to be first’; the ability to be subject to authority; the ability to serve others, to put others before themselves. Do you get it? In our home there are some bottom lines. I mean our kids are basically grown up now but there were some basic rules. You do not go out unless your bedroom is tidy. No exceptions. You speak with respect to your mother. No, she is not your personal slave. You say thank you when your mother or your father play taxi driver for you and pick you up on Friday night late at night. You say thank you directly, straight away as you're getting out of the car and loud enough for us to hear. See, this isn't about ego. It's not about being mean. It's about one simple thing. The best thing I can do is to teach my boys to honour their mother because if they don't learn to honour her, they will never honour a wife. And the same is true of my daughter with a husband. Unless children are taught to honour their father and their mother, there will be, listen to me, there will be no godliness in the household. There will be no peace. There can't be. And the time to start is here and now. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436670

When Two Becomes One // Building a Godly Family, Part 9 08/21/2025

When Two Becomes One // Building a Godly Family, Part 9 They say that what marriage is all about is two becoming one. It’s a great theory but, well, as I heard someone say once, it’s the “becoming” that’s the problem. That’s where the hard work really is. Well, over this last week-and-a-half, on the program, we've been talking about building a Godly family and this week in particular, about realising the enormous blessing that comes from having a peaceful home. Its great stuff isn't it? And yet, for many, it seems so impossible, this notion that our family, our dysfunctional family, with all its bumps and wrinkles and imperfect family members, could ever possibly be godly and peaceful. But it's not impossible. It’s God’s plan for our families and the peace comes from the fact that we start living our lives the way God always intended. A scripture that we've looked at over the last few days is the one from the book Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 32, beginning at verse 17: The affect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness, quiet and trust forever. My people, says God, will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places. Righteousness, living our lives right, has consequences. There's blessing attached to living our lives that way. And that blessing is quietness, trust forever, peaceful habitation, secure dwellings and quiet resting places. We sow what we reap. And I have to tell you, nowhere is that more important than in a relationship between a husband and a wife because it's that relationship that sets the course for family life. I once heard someone say something about marriage that made me smile. There's a passage in the book of Genesis that Jesus quotes many years later that goes like this. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh. This person said that that's all well and good but it's the 'becoming' that's the hard bit. Anyone who's been married for any length of time will know that that's the truth. The 'becoming' is the hard bit. We all go into marriage somehow imagining that it's going to be sweetness and light, the proverbial bed of roses. Just to discover that the 'becoming one flesh' can be so hard. Because while we know that marriage is a partnership, honestly, in our hearts, our vision of partnership is that "she'll do everything my way. She'll want to watch the sport on TV with me. But, oh goodness, she better never make me spend interminable hours in women’s clothes shops and shoe shops." Or the other way round if you happen to be a woman. But it's not like that. It requires both husband and wife to lay down their lives for one another because if they want to hang on to their own lives they're going to lose their married life. But if they let go of their own lives, they'll discover this amazing new life together. Does that sound vaguely familiar to you? And this is where God’s wisdom comes in. If we want to build a godly family then the foundations have to be rock solid. Husband and wife, each individually, have to have a great relationship with Jesus. They individually have to be walking close with Him and living a godly life. That's the strong foundation in the ground. And on that foundation they can then build a godly marriage together. And on that foundation, of a rock solid godly marriage, they can build a godly family. I mean the kids and the family as a whole, what chance at godliness and peace do they have at learning those things in family, if mum and dad aren't godly and living out a godly marriage? The answer is zippitydoda. None. Absolutely zilch. And here it comes, here's the godly approach to marriage. We looked at part of it yesterday on the program. Maybe it feels a bit old fashioned. Maybe it's not quite the sort of language that we'd use today but let me tell you something from experience, it works. Have a listen, a careful listen. 1 Peter chapter 3, beginning at verse 1: Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that if any of them do not believe in the Word they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives when they see the purity and the reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornments such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewellery and fine clothes. Instead it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way that holy women of the past, who put their hope in God, used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands. Like Sarah who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs, with you, of gracious gift of life so that nothing may hinder your prayers. Finally, all of you live in harmony with one another. Be sympathetic. Love each other as brothers. Be compassionate and humble. Don't repay evil with evil or insult with insult but with blessing because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. Whoever would love life and seek good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn away from evil and do good. He must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. There is some brilliant advice in here and, as I said, we may not use the same language today. The first one is: Wives, submit to your husbands. But later on, Peter writes in chapter 3, verse 7, he writes: Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives. Do you see the thing? This is two sides of the one coin. This is actually talking about mutual submission in different ways. I just can't run off as a husband and do all the things I want to do anymore. I have to submit to my wife. I have to be considerate of her and nurture her and value her and cherish her. But also the wives have to acknowledge the leadership role that the husband has. So there's mutual submission. Wives submit to your husbands. Husbands honour, value and respect your wives. And then next it says watch what you say. Look if you were to have ... ... long life and seek good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from deceitful speech. Be careful what you say in your marriage because words hurt. And then seek peace and pursue it. This is not rocket science. But we're so selfish. So hell bent on getting our own ways, we ignore God. Instead of fearing Him by living according to what He says and reaping the blessing. We somehow think we know better. Well get a revelation – we don't! Husbands and wives be mutually submissive to one another. Figure out what that looks like, what it means in your marriage. Wifey dear, hen pecking your husband ain't going to work. Hubby, you ignore her much longer and you're going to lose her. Zip up your lip and don't spit out angry words. And as hard as it is, as much as it may hurt, "Seek peace and pursue it." Deliberately turn away from the things you know are wrong. From the things you know are robbing your marriage of peace. And here's the consequences stated plain and simple for all to see and hear. 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 12: For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Righteousness, living our lives sensibly according to God’s Word, bringing that into our marriages. People, that's where the peace is in our marriage. I'm a simple guy. I don't remember long lists but this one, even I can remember. And you know something, the more I think about it the more it's a no-brainer. It's so easy to carry on about all small stupid things that ruin our marriages and don't matter and in doing that we rob our home of peace. You want peace? You have to seek it and pursue it. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436620

Wife and Mother // Building a Godly Family, Part 8 08/20/2025

Wife and Mother // Building a Godly Family, Part 8 We think of men being the stronger sex and the Bible even talks about women as being the weaker sex. But some of the strongest people I know are women – and you women, your particular brand of strength can be such an amazing blessing to your families. You know, so often we look at men and there's something about their physical size and brute strength, their ability to go out and crash through problems. It's easy to make the mistake and think that it's the man who's the strongest force in marriage and in a family. Well maybe that's true. But you know something, there's another 'tour de force' in the home. It may not be quite as obvious but it's there. And it's to be found in the wife and the mother. So many of the women I know, and I'm sure you're the same, they work so tirelessly to bring up children and to nurture them, to keep the family together. And it's their strength that's so easily missed. The fact that it is missed, that women so often, are undervalued in the family I think is one of the reasons that so many women decide to call it quits and pull up stakes from their marriages in their middle years. The reality is that most divorces are initiated these days by women rather than men because there's a sense that they lose their own identities in their families. They feel under-valued and misunderstood and eventually something has to give. It's sad but true. I want to have a chat today about turning this negative into a positive; about valuing the role of the wife and the mother in a way that brings great blessing to our families because wives/mothers, you have an amazing role to play in building a Godly family. Yesterday we talked about the man – he husband, the father. What an incredible asset his strength is in building a godly family and bringing about peace in the home. Today it's time to talk about the wife, the mother and the incredible asset she can be to being the glue that binds the family into a working unit; the one who makes the home a nurturing environment. In a sense the natural call of a man is to go out and bring money and food into the home. And the natural call of the woman is to use that to provide the home; to make the home a home. Now it's not quite as neatly polarised as that anymore these days. Wives and mothers also go out to work in many cultures. But in terms of the call on our hearts, it is very true that the man’s focus is on the hunting and gathering thing, if you like, and the woman’s focus is on building the home. The problem is and this is what I was alluding to at the beginning of the program that so often the woman feels used and abused. And on top of that, these days in many places and cultures, as I said, she's expected to go out and earn an income as well. Little wonder she feels used and abused. I mean, in Australia many women work but they also do the lion’s share of the housework rather than their men. As though that's any surprise to us. So often the Christian or the Biblical view of male/female relationships can seem kind of old fashioned. We are, after all, living in the 21st century, are we not? How can we be talking about wives obeying their husbands and women being the weaker sex? What an outdated view of things! And yet, you know, the more I delve into what the Bible has to say about men and women – male/female relationships; husbands and wives – the more I realise that, whilst maybe we wouldn't use quite the same language if we were writing it today, what God has to say about families and husbands and wives – when you dig beneath the language that offends our 21st century sensibilities and go to the heart of what's being said – it's as true today as it was way back when it was written. Have a listen to this. It comes from the New Testament, 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 7: Husbands, in the same way show consideration for your wives in your life together. Paying honour to the woman as the weaker sex since they too are also heirs to the gracious gift of life, so that nothing may hinder your prayers. The "weaker sex" thing makes me smile. Women after all are the ones who have the babies. And the very thought of having a baby is enough to send me into a cold sweat. I mean I go weak at the knees at the thought of what it must be like for a woman to give birth. And then the Bible calls them the weaker sex. Isn't it a bit chauvinistic do you think? Hmm, well actually what the original Greek language that sits behind our English translation says is that they are the "weaker vessel". This is how I picture it. You know those great big metal aluminium cans that they have when they milk cows. Have you ever seen them on television? Or maybe you live in a rural setting. That's what the man’s like, this big, strong, knockabout strength, kind of robustness about him. And on the other side, you have a beautiful, exquisite vase, infinitely more beautiful, small and delicate and valuable, sitting on the mantelpiece. See men, they play football and all those sorts of games that crunch their bones together. It's not really a girl thing is it? Women, on the other hand, are delicate. They're much more emotional creatures, for the most part, than we men are. And what Peter's writing here, to the blokes, is this, "Just because you appear stronger on the outside; just because you've got it in your heads that you're bigger, better, stronger; (and this was particularly relevant in the male dominated, patriarchal society that he was writing in) just because you've got this macho picture in your head, don't you, for one minute, even begin to think that you are somehow better or more valuable in God’s sight. In fact, you had better honour her." You know what that means? Firstly and foremostly, to value her and then to pay deference and reverence to her. This is very strong language and there's a sting in the end of this sage bit of advice to us men. Have another listen. 1 Peter Chapter 3 verse 7: Husbands, in the same way show consideration for your wives in your life together. Paying honour to the woman as the weaker sex since they too are also heirs of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing may hinder your prayers. Look at that last bit, the sting in the tail. Look at how seriously God takes this. "You'd better do this", says God, "so that nothing may hinder your prayers." People, women play such an amazing role in building a Godly family and bringing about peace in the home. But to those of you who are women, I want you to hear how seriously God takes you. How much He cares for you. How much He doesn't mince His words when He is standing up for you. It is time for some women in this world, the sort that when they're asked what they do they say, "Oh, I'm only a housewife". It is time for you to stand up and to realise how precious you are in God’s sight. It is time for you to know how seriously He takes you and it is time for you to realise how incredibly, incredibly important your gentleness and your commitment to your children and your commitment to your husband and your home really is in building a godly home. See, in my heart, I think of my wife, Jacqui, as the pillar of our family. She's the one that binds us all together. While I'm out there being the hunter and gatherer, she is binding the family together so that when I come home, there is in fact a family to provide for and to protect and to be with. The wife and the mother, you are so much a part of God’s plan for building godly homes. Please. Please, please, please do us all a favour. Don't ever forget that even when the rest of us maybe don't say thank you quite often enough. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436615

Husband and Father // Building a Godly Family, Part 7 08/19/2025

Husband and Father // Building a Godly Family, Part 7 We men are a funny breed – we have the whole provider and protector thing going on inside us. And you know something, if we know how to live that out in a godly way, we can be such a blessing to our families. We men are a funny breed. There's something deep inside us that makes us the protectors and providers for our families. Most men, not all but most men are programmed, hard wired, to provide and protect. Yet these days, women so often work and bring an income into the house and that's great but it tends to be the man, the husband, the father who carries the burden of protection and provision for his family around in his heart. That's why, when things are financially tough, so many men take it personally. I was talking to a good friend of mine recently who had been counselling many of his friends in the financial services industry; men who had lost so much of their wealth through the financial crisis. Many of them were contemplating suicide. Why is that I asked him? And he said, "Well, here's the strange thing. By any global standard you'd have to say these men are still very wealthy. But through the loss they feel like such failures." It's kind of how we are as men. And even though we men can so often get things wrong and become all dominating and reclusive and uncommunicative and even down right abusive, you know there's something special about the way that God’s made us. There's something inside us that wants to lead and that … that thing is a real asset to our families. It's such a blessing to have a godly family. You know what comes from a godly family? A peaceful home and that is such a blessing, an incredible blessing – to walk in the front door, shut the door and know that we have, on this side of that door, peace. I love this passage from the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament. The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness - quietness and trust forever. My people (says God) will abide in peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places. (Isaiah chapter 32, verses 17 & 18) Now, I don't know about you but I want that: peaceful habitation, secure dwelling, quiet resting place. And funnily enough that fits so well with the thing that we men have hard wired inside us somewhere, to be the protector and the provider. Because if we really thought about it that's the sort of home we'd like to provide for our families. I certainly would. And that snug fit, that kind of 'hand in glove' thing that's happening here between God’s promise of the peaceful home and the man’s desire to provide and protect, you know what that tells me? It tells me that we men, husbands and fathers, we have a big role to play in bringing that blessing of peace to pass. That's something I'd like to unpack today on the program because if the truth be known, there is more than one man listening today, for whom it's time to step up to the plate and be a man. To be the man God made him to be in his family: to protect, to provide, to bring peace and blessing to our homes. There's this notion these days of the man being the head of the household is not particularly popular. It's not politically correct. But the reality is that the man’s protector/provider kind of strength fits him well for that role. Not to dominate people, not to abuse his power but to be a godly leader of the home. And here's the key, it's in that adjective "godly". An ungodly husband and father can be such a destructive force in the home because he's so strong. His anger is so fierce. It's part of who he is as a man. A father can be destructive. Have a listen to this bit of Godly advice from the apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 4. He says: Fathers, do not (do not) provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. You see the two sides of the coin there? The strength that he has can let dad bring his kids up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. It's a great strength but it can be misused to provoke his children to anger. Godly strength wrongly applied becomes a harsh reality. And where there is harsh judgement and treatment from an ungodly man in the home, there can be no peace. The other mistake we make, in the 21st century context, is the mistake of abdication. Many a father and husband walks away from his role as the leader of the home. And that's sad. Because as a godly leader he can bring such an incredible peace and stability and safety and order in the chaotic thing we sometimes call family. The three most common reasons why we men sometimes abdicate are these. Firstly – we're just plain exhausted. We're working long hours to pay the mortgage and we just can't be bothered. We've got nothing left. Secondly – it's not politically correct anymore for him to exercise leadership. We mistake equality between men and women. We get it all wrong. We think, somehow, it means that our roles in the home are the same. Well they're not because we're different and God planned it that way. And the template that men have in their heads of the relationship between their fathers and mothers doesn't seem to work so well anymore. So it's not politically correct so they don't exercise leadership. And thirdly – kids have been taught to disrespect their parents. I don't know if you live in a place in the world where you can watch the TV program The Simpsons, but the father, Homer, is a stupid old slob who never gets things right. Society is teaching our children to defy their parents and so many a man will abdicate. And on top of all that, he's so busy, he's too busy to have a close walk with God. He himself isn't godly. You know, if I don't spend time with God I am not going to be godly. So if you're a man, listen up. And if you're a woman, listen up too because this is important about your man. Men, God has made us in a certain way, strong with that protector/provider instinct for a purpose. And the greatest thing that we can do for our families, the greatest thing, is to get close to God. To start praying and reading the Bible and getting so close to God that we can hear His heart beat. It's a strong, beautiful beat, a constant rhythm of a Father's heart. And the closer we get to God, the more we rediscover who God made us to be. Actually, being a leader and loving and cherishing our wives and nurturing our children, it comes kind of naturally. It comes naturally to cherish our wives. It comes naturally to instruct our children, to nurture them, to discipline them and to protect our families from things that will upset their peace. The problem is so many men have slipped into bad habits because they're tired, because society has told them that godly ways aren't trendy anymore. Maybe they're not trendy but if we surveyed woman and asked them if they wanted their husbands to step up to the plate and take on the mantle of leadership, godly leadership in the home. You know what answer we'd get, a resounding, "oh yes please!" It's great for us men to be passionate about our work but something my wife's been teaching me is that I have to have something left for my family too. Not the leftovers, not the dregs but something of my best. So, if you're a man, if some of this rings true for you, if it's striking a bit closer to home today than you wished it was, here is my encouragement to you today. You my friend are God’s gift to your wife and your children. He expects you to lead. He expects you to protect and to provide. And when we've figured out what that means in our particular families, what we discover is that who we are brings peace to our homes and that … that is such a great blessing. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436590

The Blessing of a Peaceful Home // Building a Godly Family, Part 6 08/18/2025

The Blessing of a Peaceful Home // Building a Godly Family, Part 6 Peace is one of those things – well, who doesn’t want peace in their lives. Freedom from conflict. But imagine, imagine what a blessing it must be, to have peace at home. A family that thrives on peace instead of being lost in conflict. If God offered you anything you wanted in this world, anything at all, what would you ask for? Tough question. It takes a bit of thinking about: a new car, a bigger house, health, a long life. There are so many things to choose from. What would you choose? Can I tell you something? After the basic provisions of enough air to breath and water to drink and food to eat and a roof over my head, you know what's right up there for me. Peace, just being able to live my life in peace. Back in the Old Testament in 1 Kings Chapter 22, verse 17, it says this: Then Micah said, "I saw all of Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep that have no shepherd." And the Lord said, "These have no master. Let each one go home in peace." There's something about, about being able to go home in peace. And you see that's God’s heart for His people. He looks at Israel, they’re scattered everywhere, they have no leadership. And God says, "You know what I want, I want for each one of them to go home in peace. To kind of walk in the front door, close it behind you. Be in this sanctuary called "home" and to be able to withdraw from the world with our families and have peace." In fact, my hunch is if you and I did a survey and a peaceful home was one of the things on that list, many people would choose that as what they want, because there is such a blessing in a peaceful home. Many a home is torn by strife, discord, disrespect, dissention; and many a family is disintegrating. What if, what if we could have a peaceful home? What a blessing that would be. When I look around this world, you know, many homes are far from being peaceful. They're a long way from that. Depending on where you live either the divorce rate is running at almost one in two marriages. Or, if divorce isn't quite the cultural norm, many a so-called families are little more than two waring adults and a bunch of angry, ill disciplined children. There's no peace in those places. You can't have peace when people aren't living a peaceful life. There's an interesting statement in the beginning of the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Now this is a wisdom book. It's wisdom literature. Have a listen to what it says. Proverbs Chapter 1, verse 7: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and only fools despise wisdom and instruction. When it comes to peace I had an interesting email from a rebel fighter in a war torn part of Africa last year. He listened to a program of ours on the radio about the fear of God. Have a listen to what he said: Recently I was attending a peace conference. While I was in my hotel room I turned on the radio. As I was listening to your program I realised that without the fear of God in our hearts, there will be no peace. No peace at all. These 8 minutes were enough to take me to a turning point in my life as well as in my peace effort in this region. I left that room as a changed man. I've been on the battlefield for 13 years now. I don't know how many people have died because of my gun but what I know is that I decided to lay down my arms. What an amazing testimony! But do you get it? Peace comes when we fear God. That's what the Bible says and that's what this man discovered. This man who killed goodness knows how many other people. Peace comes when we decide to do it Gods way. Peace comes when we lay down our guns, stop shooting because deep in our hearts we've experienced the fear of God: a right fear, a good fear when we decide to start living our lives His way, the right way. There's a name for that, it's called righteousness. And that righteousness has a real impact on our home lives. Have a listen to how the prophet Isaiah puts it. Again in the Old Testament, Isaiah Chapter 32, verses 17 and 18: The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness – quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places. Wow, what an incredible blessing – peaceful habitation; secure dwelling places; quiet resting places. Where does it come from? It is the affect of righteousness. What an incredible blessing! Let me ask you something. Is that something you want for your life? When you walk through the front door, close it, shut out the rest of the world out there, is that the sort of home, the sort of family that you want to have? I believe that it is time for us to start building a Godly home, to take seriously our responsibility to play our part in making our homes Godly. Now, it's not going to be perfect because imperfect people have an imperfect home. Sure. But you know something, as we start to get the fear of God happening in our hearts. As we start to honour God and to live our lives His way, something happens. It's a bit like that rebel fighter. In just 8 minutes peace broke out in his heart. Now in our families it may not happen over night. It may take months, even years to sort through some of the messes we've created. Now, we can't change the past. We can't undo those mistakes. But we can change from this moment forward. What a blessing a peaceful home is. And I've lived in both, house of conflict and a house of peace. Let me tell you, peace is so much better. There is a price to pay. I can't always have my own way. But you know something, it's good. That's something I had to learn and I'm still learning. I'm absolutely determined to do the best I can to make the home that I live in peaceful. Not just for me but for my beautiful wife Jacqui and my daughter, Melissa. They're entitled to peace too you know. Now, there are going to be times where the three of us rub each other the wrong way. But over the coming few weeks on the program, we're going to be taking a look at some really practical things that we can do to have a godly family. I was talking recently to a real estate agent who was selling a house for a couple that had been separated. Every week they had the sales meeting to do an update on how the sale of the house was going. And he was telling me how difficult those meetings were. He said you could cut through the air with a knife with the tension. These two detested each other. They couldn't see eye to eye on anything. Why is that? How did that happen? How did things get so low? I'll tell you how. It's the inevitable outcome if we live in our families for ourselves, selfishly. What I can get out of it. It starts not long after a couple is married. Tiny cracks appear. Battles start. They turn into raging wars. And it tears our families apart. Life wasn't meant to be lived that way. We were not meant to live in a war zone. And part of what needs to happen in our homes is that each one of us needs to bring ourselves under the authority of God Himself. Godly people have the opportunity to build a godly home. It's not a slam dunk by the way. It's no certainty but at least we have the opportunity. Ungodly people have no show. Let me ask you again. What do you want? Do you want what the prophet Isaiah was talking about? The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness – quietness and trust forever. My people (says God) will abide in a peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places. Is that what you want? Or do you want a home of discord and dissention? My hunch is we need to deliberately choose peace. And then, then when we've decided on peace, we need to set about building a peaceful home, a godly family. Okay, there is going to be a cost. It can be, it will be hard work. But the blessing is so worth it. What do you think? /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436580

Setting the Course // Building a Godly Family, Part 5 08/15/2025

Setting the Course // Building a Godly Family, Part 5 This week on A Different Perspective, we’ve been chatting about building a godly family. Well, at some point – the talk has to turn into action, otherwise nothing’s ever going to happen. The question is – are you ready? Well, are you? This week we've been talking about building a godly family on the program. The whole gist of it has been this – it doesn't matter how dysfunctional a family ours is at the moment, all it takes is one member of that family to turn back to God. To honour God and God can and will make some awesome and mighty changes. It will probably take time. Maybe longer than you or I would prefer. But God’s timing is perfect. He's a God of grace. His heart is to bless our family to a thousand generations. All He's looking for is one Godly man, one Godly woman, one Godly child to take a stand and say, "enough of this! It is time for me to build a Godly family." 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 20, in the message translation says this: God’s way is not a matter of mere talk, it's an empowered life. That's why the ministry I'm involved in is called Christianityworks, because actually, it does. Christianity does work. So today, today we're going to chat about making that happen, an empowered life that sets about building a godly family. You know what I've noticed, we can talk about a lot of stuff but most times nothing changes unless we actually do something. It's true at work. It's true at home. I mean how often have I been in a meeting at work and people talk about this and that and a whole bunch of stuff – We'll do this; we'll do that – but then, after the meeting everyone goes back to their work and their office. No-one does anything and guess what, nothing happens. I mean, nothing changes. We're talking this week and again over the next few weeks, about building a godly family and it's important because our families, truly, our families really matter to us. These are people we love. These are the people who, most often, we live with. And yet, because we come home tired and we need a rest and we ignore things like, like the badly behaved child for example. We actually don't invest anything in building up the family. There's a great proverb, Proverbs chapter 29, verse 17, says this: Discipline your children and they will give you rest. They will give delight to your heart. Now you and I have seen this down at the local supermarket. There's a mother with a young child, a seven year old kid, and this kid is just grinding her down with bad behaviour. But, well, she's tired. She's too tired and exhausted to do anything about it. So she lets this kid run riot. He causes her grief. He causes everybody else grief too. Why does that happen? I'll tell you why, probably because dad is too tired when he comes home at night to discipline the child. So this kid walks all over his mother. She's exhausted and he's only seven. I mean, wait 'til the little terror becomes a teenager. I mean, just wait. There is fruit in building a godly family, tremendous fruit. "Discipline your children" says the proverb. What do you get? Peace and a delighted heart. You sow what you reap. The problem is the sowing is such hard work sometimes. And reaping seems such a long way off doesn't it? Let me tell you something. We've been talking about building this godly family but it ain't going to happen unless we step out in faith and start making it happen. Sure, it's about God blessing our efforts but if He's got nothing to bless then He's got nothing to bless. I mean, imagine I'm 20 kilos overweight (40 pounds) and I decide I want to be trim and taught and terrific. Now I pray and pray and pray and pray and believe and believe and believe and believe that God will give me a breakthrough. But I keep eating and drinking the same old rubbish. I don't exercise. Let me ask you, is God going to zap me out of the sky while I'm lazing on the sofa and miraculously remove my excess weight? Well, He could and with God I'd never rule anything out but I've never quite seen it happen that way, have you? Why would we think it's any different in building a godly family? We behave our families into a bad place by what we say, what we do, what we fail to do, what we fail to say. We behave ourselves into that bad place. And yes, we should pray but God expects us to start behaving ourselves out of that place. He's going to bless that but we have to do our part. So, do you want a godly family; a family where each family member is living out a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ; where each one is actually living that out into their lives; where the husband and the wife have a warm, intimate relationship; where the kids are honouring their parents; where each family member respects and honours and understands one another; where there's real blessing, Gods blessing, flowing out of our families into the lives of others? Is that the sort of family that we really, really want? Well if it is, we're going to have to decide that it is what we want and plan it and start doing it and start living it. We're going to have to decide that some changes have to be made, and you know, changes are never easy. This easy, comfortable, lollipop type of existence has to change. Discipline is painful. Kids don't like discipline much. They don't like being told, "No, you can't watch television because you have to study. No, you have to clean up after yourself. No, you have to dry the dishes." They don't like that. It takes strength, it takes perseverance but it pays dividends. So let me ask you, how much do you want to have a Godly family? And if the answer is, "YES, YES, I do!" then some tough decisions have to be made. If you're family is one with a husband and wife, then it's up to both of you. If it's a single parent family, it's just up to you to think and talk and dream and decide what's important; to set priorities; to figure out how to do this; what steps to take first and so on. Mum, Dad, you are the leaders and I happen to believe that, ultimately dad, you're responsible for the spiritual growth and nourishment and development of your family. The buck stops with you Dad. This isn't a sexist thing. So many women would give their eye teeth to see their husbands step up to the plate and take on that leadership role. So many kids would love to have parents who are interested in them, who spend time and effort setting boundaries, enforcing those boundaries, nurturing them within those boundaries. I have to tell you, as a person I'm naturally an isolationist. I prefer my own company, oft times to the company of others. I really enjoy retreating to my own space after a hard day at the office. So for me, given who I am, getting involved with the family and the kids and listening to what happened to them at school and at work, it's not a natural gig but, we have to start somewhere. You can't build a godly family if there's no relationship and there's no interaction. We're going to talk about how some of that happens later on in the next few weeks. In fact, one of the godliest family's I know, there are some friends of mine who live in Lincoln, Nebraska. Just between Lincoln and Omaha. Mum, Dad and 9 children. They've given me some of their pointers, both the parents and the kids. So we're going to have some fun and look at that. But right now we have to decide, each one of us, do we actually want to have a godly family? Well, do we? And if we do, what are we going to do about it? Maybe that's something that you can pray about and think about and talk about over the weekend. We're going to talk about it some more next week on the program – this whole thing of building a godly family. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436565

Breaking with the Past // Building a Godly Family, Part 4 08/14/2025

Breaking with the Past // Building a Godly Family, Part 4 The first thing a doctor tends to ask us when we visit is about our family history. And just the way that physical things get handed down to us genetically, so do emotional, behavioural and spiritual things. Question is, what can we do about them? One of the things that brings so much dysfunction into families is, well … things from the past; things that have been handed down genetically, emotionally and spiritually. It seems such an incredible paradox to me that the people who are most likely to sexually abuse a child are those who were themselves, abused when they were young. Doesn't that seem totally against the way it should be? Wouldn't you think that someone who was abused as a child, well the last thing they'd want to do would be inflict that on their own children? And yet, what happens is this powerful kind of template or imprinting. Our parents hand so many things down to us: their genes, their strengths, their weaknesses. People say that I look like my Dad, I even walk like him. But it wasn't until I saw myself on a TV interview, I was shocked to realise that even my mannerisms were so much like my father's. Pretty scary! And so alcohol addiction, bad temper, a tendency to whinge and complain, all sorts of things end up being handed down from generation to generation. Dysfunctional families are much more likely to produce children that grow up to have their own dysfunctional families. Where does it end? Well, I have a simple answer for that. It ends today. Here and now, this very minute. That's when it ends. Let me explain. See it's so easy to blame our parents for things, for the bad things happening; if abuse happened when you were a child. You had a father with a bad temper or your parents smoked, whatever, and then they handed those things down to you. I don't know about your parents but mine, I had good parents. Neither of them would ever have claimed to have been perfect. I mean, who is? But they worked hard to provide for myself and my sister. I'm sure they'd look back on their lives and see the mistakes and their weaknesses but I think we need to get this all into perspective. It's so easy to blame the past, to blame our upbringing, to blame our parents. Things get handed down from generation to generation. Some of them are good. Others aren't. When you go see your Doctor, one of the very first things he tends to ask you is about your family history. Do you have a family history of high blood pressure or diabetes or heart disease or mental health issues or breast cancer? Family history has a lot to do with our physical well being. My father had Type 2 diabetes. It took his life in the end. My mother has high blood pressure, and so I can just sit here and not exercise and eat whatever I want and then complain about the fact that they gave me diabetes or high blood pressure. Or, or I can do something about it. I can get off my backside and go and exercise and eat properly. There are clear alternatives. I mean most sicknesses – diabetes, cancer, there are things we can do in our lifestyle to mitigate them happening in our lives. And it's the same with emotional and spiritual things that get handed down to us. Maybe, I don't know, maybe you had parents who were into the occult. Maybe you had parents who fought like cat and dog. Maybe you had parents who got divorced. Maybe you had parents who knew about God but simply never honoured God with their lives. And some of that stuff gets dumped down into who you are. Well, we have two choices. We can sit here and complain about it or we can go and do something about it. Have a listen to what happens when we put other things before God; when we accept that as the way of living that's been handed down from our parents and from their parents. Deuteronomy chapter 5, verse 8: You shall not make for yourself an idol (That's something that you worship other than God) whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that's on the earth beneath or that's in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject Me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. That's pretty straight forward. When parents turn away from God and chase after other things and put those things first, it's going to have an impact to the third and the fourth generation. That's obvious, we've seen it. A child brought up by an alcoholic father is going to suffer from the consequences of that, in all likelihood, into their adulthood. And there's every chance that the impact will passed down to their children as well. Not rocket science. We've seen that but look at the alternative that God talks about. He talks about, "Showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." Now, what's a thousand generations? Well, a new generation roughly every 25 years. That's 25 thousand years. I mean only a fraction of that has passed away since this passage in Deuteronomy is written a few thousand years before Christ. Do you get it? God’s blessing to us and our families when we honour Him is massive. The flow on affect in our families is massive. And I've seen that in so many godly families, this dynasty of blessing that flows down from generation to generation. Maybe, maybe there are things in your past, emotional, spiritual, behavioural, that are still impacting your life. Today is the day that we can choose to break the chain; today is the day that we can choose to break free from the power of the past. The prophet Nehemiah saw God’s people suffering. Listen to the prayer he prayed: O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments: let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel confessing the sins of the people of Israel which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned. We have offended you deeply failing to keep the commandments, the statutes and the ordinances that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses? "If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples but if you return to me and you keep my commandments and do them, though you are outcast or under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them back to a place in which I have chosen to establish my name. (Nehemiah chapter 1, verses 5 to 9) It is such a simple prayer. It's a prayer saying, "God, I have sinned. My family has sinned. We've sinned down through the generations. Right now, here and now, we take a stand and we turn away from that. Because we know that you are a God who forgives. We've all sinned but you will forgive and you will bring back". And he says, "This is what breaks the power of the past." God’s people, at this point, were living out in exile because of their sin and Nehemiah prays a prayer that gets forgiveness happening that brings Gods people back. The apostle Paul puts it this way, in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17: If anyone is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and behold, all things are new. It may take you back to some of the things that maybe have been handed down to you – addictions, anger, bad behaviour, whatever it is – we can receive freedom from those things simply by praying and believing. God will work out His answer to our prayers, in our lives, in His good time. Meanwhile, we can take stock of those things and decide to start doing something about them, not in our own fancy strength but through a relationship with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God who transforms us from the inside out. It is time … it is time to end the cycle of sin that's been handed down from generation to generation. The buck stops here with you and me. How about it? /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436520

The Ideal Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 3 08/13/2025

The Ideal Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 3 Let me ask you something – if you could set about building a Godly Family – what would that look like? I mean how would you know when you’d arrived? A Godly family. Man – wouldn’t that be amazing. I'm excited because this week we're kicking off a few weeks looking at what it means to build a Godly family. That's why I'm so excited. Because I've been praying, praying that of the millions of people that will listen to these programs this week, God will transform countless families. Think about it, the family is God’s smallest, fighting formation. In the battle of life, He uses the family to protect and to nurture, to teach and to mature one another. Over the last couple of days we've been chatting about the realities of family life. Today, so often, we can be so dysfunctional in our family relationships. But that's nothing new. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, they had exactly the same problem. It's what happens when we turn our backs on God. Husband blames wife, brother turns on brother. Look back over the history of our families, past and present and we can probably point to quite a number of dysfunctions; the rifts, the strife; the relationship breakdowns; the tensions. But truly I believe that when we get back into a relationship with the Lord our God one of the things that He wants to do is to restore those family relationships; to make our families the blessing He always intended them to be. The problem I have is convincing people that this is, in fact, the case. "Look at the mess I'm in", is so often the attitude I encounter. "God couldn't possibly, possibly set things right in my family." Well, maybe some of the things we're reaping, from the mistakes in the past, are here to stay. Divorce is divorce – that's it. But I'm an optimist and I'll tell you why. Because God is all about hope and that hope is meant to shine a light in every nook and cranny, every dark crevasse, every hurt and loss and pain that we try not to think about. God’s light of hope shines there. Have a listen to what Paul writes in Romans chapter 5: Since we are justified by our faith, we have peace with God through Jesus. Through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. Not only that but we also boast in our suffering because we know that suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character. Character produces hope and that hope doesn't disappoint us because Gods love has been poured into our hearts through His Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For a while we were still weak but at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans chapter 5, verses 1 to 8). There are a few things in that. Let me just pull three of them out. The first thing is he talks about the fact that, when we believe in Jesus, we have peace with God through Jesus. And that's why we can stand in the grace in which we now stand. That's the effect of putting our faith in Jesus. Peace and Gods grace. But then he goes on and says, "well, it's great, we've got peace and grace but you know something, we're also going to suffer. And that's okay because suffering gives us endurance. Endurance builds our characters. And once our character's been built, we can look beyond all suffering and all whinging and complaining and we can see that God has given us hope. Hope because He's written His love on our hearts by His very Spirit." And all of that, all of that is based on sacrifice. God proves His love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. How often do we want to grumble about family? "Agh, they're so difficult, it's also tense, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, suffering." Paul says, "No, no, no. Boast in your suffering because something good is going on here; because through it God is refining us and building us and leading us into a place of real hope." Let me tell you something. God loves to refine us through suffering. He deals with some of the worst things in us through suffering – selfishness, deceit, pride – but only when we co-operate with Him. That's why Paul says that he boasts instead of grumbles, because God's up to something good. God put us in family for reasons and look at the end of this passage, it's all based on sacrifice. We're going to talk a lot more on this 'sacrifice' thing over coming weeks in family, because it's important. But right now, I just want to paint a picture in our hearts. If you were going to build a godly family, get over all this suffering, all this pain, all this whinging. Let's just get our eyes focused on the end game. If you were going to build a godly family, I mean a family that, I don't know, is a blessing; a family that sticks together; a family that learns; a family that knows how to give and to take and to bless. What would it look like? I don't know. It's hard sometimes because we look at our families and think, 'augh, it could never happen.' I'm going to tell you. God wants us to build a godly family. Well here's my picture of what a godly family looks like for me. I'm going to ask you to invest some time over this next day or so to figure out what does a godly family look like for you? The first thing in my godly family is that each person, in that family, is living out a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ; growing in their knowledge and their love for Jesus. That's the first and foremost thing. If you want a godly family the people have to be godly and the first and greatest commandment is to: Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. So if you want a godly family, people have to be close to Jesus. The second thing is that each person, in my godly family, is actually living out that relationship. Okay, we're all different but each one is living out the love that they have for Jesus in how they treat others. It's the second commandment. It's similar to the first. Love your neighbour as yourself. The third thing is very family specific. That mum and dad, husband and wife have a close and intimate relationship; a strong, loving, leadership team; the wife honours her husband; the husband cherishes his wife. The fourth thing is that the parents are honoured. Have you noticed, in the Ten Commandments, the first four commandments are about us and God? The very next commandment, the fifth commandment is: Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord, your God, has given to you. (Exodus chapter 20, verse 12) Now, if I had been God, my hunch is I wouldn't have even put in a commandment about loving your parents. God does, and it's important that children learn to love and to honour their parents. So that's the fourth thing in my godly family. This family is one where the children know what it is to honour their parents. The fifth thing is that each person develops an understanding of the differences between one another – the different roles, the different personality types – and learns to cherish those differences. And finally, the sixth thing is that this Godly family is a family from which blessing flows outwards. whether it's hospitality or providing a safe port in a storm for one of our teenage daughter’s friends going through a tough time. Whatever it is, that blessing flows out through the family. That's what a Godly family looks like for me. And I guess, in a sense, those are things we're going to be looking at over the next few weeks. Here's my question though – if you were to build a Godly family, what would it look like for you? Because unless we know what we're shooting for how do we know which direction to set off in? How do we know when we've arrived? /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436500

The Dysfunctional Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 2 08/12/2025

The Dysfunctional Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 2 It’s easy to look around at other people’s families and think “Boy – how come I didn’t get a normal family like them.” Truth is though, that no family’s perfect. And no matter how dysfunctional your family might be, God has a plan. We don't have to look very far to see that, in society today, families are becoming more and more dysfunctional. It doesn't matter where we live, how wealthy, how poor. In the wealthy west, you know, teenagers have less and less contact with their parents. They use the internet and cable TV and their friends to tell them who they are and how they should dress. In poorer nations, well actually I think that people in poorer nations do much better than in the west. Families are a matter of survival for many. But even there, I mean kids get AIDS. They're sold into slavery. They're orphans. All sorts of bad things happen there too. But here's the thing. We know that there are a lot of dysfunctional families out there but somehow we imagine that, well, there's this perfect family out there. In fact, the perfect family is the norm and the dysfunction we see in our own families, well we must be the only ones. It's our fault. We've botched it. You know, we're just stuck with this. The teenager who doesn't respect his parents; the adults in our extended families, they've been feuding and haven't talked for ages because eight years ago they argued over the distribution of assets from their parents will. No, no, it's just my family that's a mess. And that's the thing, it's the hand I've been dealt and there's nothing, nothing I can do about it. That's it! What's the point? Well if that's sort of thoughts been rattling around in your head, then today, today I have some great news for you. It's true, isn't it? Family is sometimes like living out a guerrilla war. It's so 'in your face'. Every time you come home, every time you walk to the door the whole 'family' thing greets you. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that every family is a basket case. Hopefully yours isn't. But sometimes we're so close to it. Sometimes the pressure is so constant, it can feel like it is a basket case because we get things all out of perspective. You know, the young mother with a baby that's teething and she's up half the night. And the parents, you know, they're so different, they feel their lives are heading in different directions. And the teenage son who's being the rebel, talks down to his parents and treats his mother like a servant. The grandparents, the grandparents who visit and all they ever seem to do is to judge and to criticize and to tell you what you're doing wrong with your kids. And in the middle of this, this constant family relationship tension, you get the feeling like, "Oh God, what is going on here? I mean, I love You, I honour you but why is it like this? Why can't I have a normal family like the people next door?" And you know, for me, one of the things that make it worse. There's this minister I knew once. He seemed to have the perfect family. His young adult children, they were so well adjusted. He'd been brought up by Godly parents and he spoke about family from a position, well it seemed to me, a position of almost having that perfect family we all desire. And then you compare your own family to that and you think, "boy, I've made a mess. What's the matter with me? There's no hope for my family." Well let me tell you this. I'm not talking about the whole family thing from that place I can tell you. I haven't been a perfect husband or a perfect father. In fact, before I gave my life over to Jesus a decade and a half ago, I made some huge blunders that changed the very course of my life. And since then God's been teaching me a new way. I'm still learning. So I'm at a certain place in my journey; you're at a certain place in your journey so let's just get over this comparing and judging nonsense. There's only one issue – where do we take our families from here? And I, for one, what I'm about is building a Godly family because there is such a reward in that; such a harvest, and not just one day in the future but along the way, now – the joy of investing and sacrificing to make a difference in the lives of those whom we love. We're going to talk more about that whole 'sacrifice' thing over these coming weeks but today, today I just want to give us some comfort that God knows all about dysfunctional families. Let me take you to the very first human family, Adam, Eve, their two sons Cain and Abel. Now maybe you know the story of Adam and Eve pretty well. You know, they were in the Garden of Eden, it was all wonderful. They ate that apple off the tree, they sinned, God kicked them out and they had a couple of sons. I want to show you something about this family. The interactions between the people that might really make you sit up and take a look. We often hear people talking about the "Adam and Eve" story and the snake and all that stuff from a theological perspective. That's great but what about from a family perspective? Okay. Adam and Eve, they've sinned. They ate from that one tree God told them not to. God comes looking for them. They're hiding in the garden, that's clever isn't it? And God brings Adam to account. He says: Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" And the man said, "The woman who you gave me, she gave me the fruit and I ate it." Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" And the woman said, "The serpent, the serpent tricked me and then I ate." And the Lord said to the serpent, "Because you have done this cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures. Upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel. (Genesis chapter 3, verses 11 to 15) There it is. See Adam rebels against God and Eve rebels against God. Okay, they can blame the serpent and maybe the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on, but they were the ones that rebelled against God. And the very first thing that Adam does is he blames Eve. And the very first thing she does is to blame the serpent. See, they've gone from perfect harmony to dysfunction. God tells them that that is going to be the norm from now on and amongst their children to. Have a listen to the rest of it: The two sons, Cain and Abel: Abel kept sheep and Cain tilled the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel, for his part, brought the firstborn of his flock. They were fat portions and the Lord had regard for Abel and his offspring but for Cain and his offspring, he had no regard. And so Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. But the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well sin is lurking at the door, its desire is for you but you must master it." Cain said to his brother, "Let’s go out into the field." And when they were out there in the field Cain rose up against his brother, Abel, and killed him. (Genesis chapter 4) Here we have it, the very first family. They rebel against God; husband turns on wife; brother kills brother. It’s the absolute natural state of a family that turns against God. But listen to the good news because God is one who forgives. Deuteronomy chapter 5, verse 8. He said: You won't put anything ahead of me. No idols don't make any idols, don't worship them because I am a jealous God and I will punish children for the sin of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. In other words, when we put God at the head of our families, He will show us His steadfast, unwavering love. Not just to us but to a thousand generations. You know what that means? It doesn't matter how bad things have become in our families, when we honour God, He in turn will honour us. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436465

Family Matters // Building a Godly Family, Part 1 08/11/2025

Family Matters // Building a Godly Family, Part 1 You know something – that old saying that blood is thicker than water, it’s true. There’s a special bond between members of a family. Our family really does matter. And that – that’s why it’s time to start looking at what it means to build a godly family. It's great. Here we are; a new week. And today we're going to start a discussion, you and I, about something completely different. Something that, well if you're a regular with us here on A Different Perspective, something we haven't talked about in quite a while. And yet it's something that impacts almost all of us. In fact, I think it impacts all of us, because one way or another we're all part of a family. And so this week and in fact, over the next few weeks on the program, we're going to be taking a look at what it means to build a Godly family. Tell you why! Recently here, at the ministry of Christianityworks, we asked our friends and supporters to write into us and share their prayer requests. I for one love praying with people. And here's what struck me. At least 80% of the prayer requests we received. And I have to tell you, there were a lot of them. At least 80% were people asking for us to pray for their families: for my son, my wife, my daughter, my husband, my aunty, my cousins. You know something we actually care about our families. As difficult and as strife-torn as many families are, blood is thicker than water. And our families really matter. So it kind of makes sense to me to spend some time talking about what it means to build a godly family. What do you think? Each of us, you know, we can look at our families, the good, the bad and the ugly. Kind of strange thing, families. We all imagine that out there somewhere is a perfect family. You know, mum, dad, 2.4 well adjusted children. And that perfect family is living out a perfect life, in fact, not just one of them but lots of them; thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of them. All these perfect families out there, I mean look at them, they all look so, well, perfect. But not me, no not my family. Mine's a blended family; mine's a dysfunctional family. There're arguments and there's strife and people are pulling in different directions; people who haven't talked to each other for years. There're parents who drive their children nuts. There're children who just don't get it. They go off and they do their own thing and they leave their parents shaking their heads. You get what I'm saying, right? It feels like sometimes it's just our family that's in a mess. And everyone else has got it together. You know why? It's those happy ads on television. When they're selling the four wheel drive there's always 2 or 3 happy, smiling, well adjusted children sitting in the back seat. When they're selling the breakfast cereal, the ad where the sun's shining in through the kitchen window and mum's pouring fresh orange juice while the kids are sitting there smiling, eating their healthy cereal. Oh, give me a break! Now we're going to talk about dysfunctional families later in this week. But right now, let me make this point. It's not just you. It's not just me that has families that have tensions and issues. 99.9% of people have those sorts of families to one degree or another. And those who don't, I've got to tell you, are just kidding themselves. It varies of course. Not everyone’s kid is doing drugs. Not every husband is beating his wife. But there is no such thing as the perfect family out there, there just isn't. So let's stop carrying around this burden that we've plonked on our heads that somehow "my family doesn't measure up". It's not about measuring up. In my book it's about what can I do from this moment onwards to build a Godly family? What seeds can I sow? What plants can I water so that the fruit of a Godly family will grow for all to enjoy? I think that's what it's about because our families matter. Let me ask you this – how much does your family matter to you? Just stop and sit and think for a moment. Chew it over. How much does my family mean to me? I don't know what your family looks like. Maybe some of them aren't with us anymore. Maybe, maybe some of them you haven't seen for a while. Maybe you live alone and the whole "family" thing is distant. Maybe you never knew your mother or your father or both. But it doesn't matter who we are or where we're at. What our family looks like. How we were brought up. Somehow we're all part of a family. And my hunch is that it was God’s plan for it to be that way. It's more than a hunch. God is three persons in one: God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit living in perfect community. Not sure if you've ever quite thought of it this way but there we have it. The very first family – God Himself. And He says, this God who creates man, He says to Adam. Have a listen to what God says: It is not good that a man shall be alone so I will make him a helper as a partner. Comes from Genesis chapter 2, verse 18. And right throughout the Old Testament, what you see is that Gods blessing for the Israelites is about having two things, their own land and lots of children. It's about this sense of place and sense of family. We know that family's are meant to be a blessing. It's a God thing. Right from the beginning, God isn't just one person, He's "three". He doesn't create one man alone; He creates a man and a woman so that they can have a family. In fact the very first four words of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible – Genesis, starts this way. In the beginning God ... And the word for God is 'Elohim' which literally means "Gods", plural. Family really matters to God. And I know that, for some people, just hearing that is going to hurt. It's going to hurt an awful lot. Almost half of all marriages, in the wealthy west, end in divorce. I have friends who have lost loved ones in the ravages of war. Every day 25-30,000 children die of poverty and starvation, disease and AIDs. So thinking about family for some, depending on your particular situation and circumstances, well it can really hurt. But the reason it hurts so much. The reason divorce is such a scourge. And losing someone we love causes such tears and tears our insides out. The reason that is, is because family matters. We want our family's to stay intact. We want our kids to grow up strong and healthy. And have a listen to what the Psalmist writes in Psalm 37, beginning at verse 25: I've been young and now I'm old yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread. They are giving liberally and lending and their children are becoming a blessing. See, that's God's perfect plan for our families. The righteous are those who honour God and God wants to bless us. God wants to bless us by making our children a blessing. He wants for us to live a good life and for us to be a blessing to our children and for them to go on and be a blessing to others. It's a story that's written in our very DNA. It's a story that plays itself out in our hopes and dreams. But it's a plot that's, so easily, we lose in the business of a consumer-orientated, entertainment-orientated, credit-card orientated world in which we live. Let me ask you again, out of everything in your life – everything you have, every hope, every dream, every possession, every desire, out of everything – how much does your family matter? My hunch is that, for most of us, the answer is an awful lot. Family matters an awful lot, doesn't it? And if it does, if it really does then surely, surely we need to invest in this thing, these relationships, these people who matter more to us than any other people on this earth. That's what we're going to be talking about in these coming days and weeks, making that investment – How to build a Godly family because there is so much blessing in that, so much. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37436440

Make Music in Your Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 10 08/08/2025

Make Music in Your Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 10 Music has this ability to – well, to lift our spirits. To move us on the inside. In a way that nothing else can. And so when we make music in our hearts – music for God – there’s a healing that comes out of that overflow. There’s something special about music. We each like different things. For me it’s Beethoven, Chopin, The Little River Band. Funny thing music. I mean I listen to one of my favourite songs and, well without the music the lyrics would still probably make a pretty good poem but it wouldn’t be the same, would it? There’s something about music that moves us. Music is something that touches the soul. Music is something that touches us so deep in our hearts. When you stand back and think about it, well it’s kind of weird. It doesn’t make sense but there you go. Music affects us in ways that we can’t explain. And that’s why I love this particular verse written by the apostle Paul almost 2,000 years ago. Have a listen: Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:19). It’s one thing for someone else’s music to move us, to rock us to the core. But that’s not what Paul’s talking about here. He’s not talking about receiving music. He’s talking about giving music. Singing and making music in your heart to the Lord. Now that’s something quite different. Over these last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about the fact that God wants to heal our hearts. The heart is that place deep inside where we live and laugh and cry and experience things. People can have hard hearts or soft hearts. Divided hearts or committed hearts. Our hearts can be proud and arrogant or humble and contrite. And the point, I guess, of what we’ve been talking about over these last few weeks is the fact that our hearts need healing. Because when they’re sick, it robs us of life. It stunts our growth and that’s why God wants to heal our hearts. Even when we’ve turned our backs on Him, especially then. When we’re hurting. When we’re living through the consequences of our rebellion. Jesus, quoting Isaiah, said this: For this people’s heart has become calloused. They hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn and I would heal them. And what happens when our hearts are healed is this. Instead of being needy all the time. Instead of always needing people to help us and support us. Instead of being mostly a taker, we become mostly a giver. There’s an overflow. There’s an abundance. There’s more than enough to share with others whose hearts, in turn, need healing. And nowhere is this more evident than when we’re making music in our hearts to God. I wonder if that isn’t what worship is all about. See, these Christians, they go to church, mostly on Sundays and sing songs and worship God. But I know from my own experience and maybe you’ve been in this place too, that it’s entirely possible to stand there, to sing the song and have your mind wandering. “Oh I wonder who’s going to win the football match this afternoon.” You know what I’m talking about. There’s no worship happening there. The mind’s not even engaged yet alone the heart. But when our hearts have been healed by God we just want to make music. We just have to. Because when the Spirit of God gets a hold of our hearts and heals them and brings forgiveness and repentance, that turning back to God that we were talking about the other day. When we love God and we seek Him and serve Him with all our hearts. When that’s what’s happening on the inside, let me tell you, we just want to make music to God in our hearts. Can I ask you something today? Can I implore you? Don’t settle for a life of anything less. This is God’s plan for you and for me so that even when we’re going through the most severe trial, we can close our eyes and just know that we are full of the Spirit of God Himself. That we are loved. That we are safe and that my friend is where the joy of the Lord comes from. That’s what makes us want to make music to the Lord, our God, in our hearts. There was a time when David, before he became king of Israel, was being hunted down like an animal by the current king, Saul. Saul wanted to kill David and so David, this day, was hiding in a cave. Later he writes a psalm about that experience. Listen carefully, it’s so beautiful. Psalm 57: Be merciful to me O God, be merciful to me. For in You my soul takes refuge. In the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge until the destroying storms pass by. I cry to God most high, to God who fulfils His purposes for me. He will send from heaven and save me. He will put to shame those who trample on me. God will send forth His steadfast love and His faithfulness. I lie down among the lions that greedily devour human prey. Their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues are sharp swords, be exalted O God above the heavens. Let Your glory be over all the earth. They set a net for my steps, my soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my path but they have fallen into it themselves. My heart is steadfast O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody. Awake my soul. Awake O harp and lyre. I will awake the dawn. I will give thanks to you O Lord among the peoples. I will sing praises to You among the nations. For Your steadfast love is as high as the heavens. Your faithfulness extends to the clouds. I love this! Here is David, he is hiding and cowering in a cave. People are after him, he is in fear for his life. This is the darkest hour, his life is threatened. He’s lying amongst the lions and yet listen to what he’s saying. Psalm 57:7: My heart is steadfast O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody. How can he want to sing? How can he want to make melody? Because his heart is steadfast. It is healed. It is resting in God. He is safe amidst the danger and the threat. And he just can’t help himself. He wants to sing. Does that mean we should expect to be on cloud nine? No. Some days are going to be tough. Some days are going to be like hiding in the cave fearing for our lives. But on those days I want to deliberately encourage you today to make music in your heart to God. God wants to have us healed. He wants a heart in us that is steadfast and abundantly overflowing with the joy of the Lord. And you know what I’ve discovered? On those bad days when sometimes the very last thing that I feel like doing is worshipping God, I worship Him anyway. Because in this strange kind of way, in a way that I can’t quite explain, worshipping God, making music to Him in my heart brings healing and peace and joy. My friend, listen to me. God wants to heal your heart. Lay it out before Him. Seek Him with all your heart. Love Him with all your heart. Serve Him with all your heart. And He will, I promise you, He will come and heal it. It may take time, it often does. But little by little, that sickness inside us He calls sin goes away and it’s replaced by health, a vitality, a passion, a desire to sacrifice and serve the Lord our God. And it’s like He gives us a new heart or it’s like He revives our heart. And when He does that, no matter what comes, we end up in our own way saying what David said: My heart is steadfast O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody. You just can’t help it. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37020165

An Undivided Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 9 08/07/2025

An Undivided Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 9 Have you ever been half hearted about something? We all have – and the thing is, when we’re half hearted, there’s one thing for certain, we’re never going to succeed. Part of us puling this way, part of us pulling the other way. Tears us apart. But God, God is into healing our hearts. You know one of the things that I give thanks to God for is that I’m not indecisive. Well, at least I don’t think I am but maybe, I don’t know. What do you think? You get the point. It’s okay for us not to be sure about some things in life. I was speaking with a man just the other day. Faithful man of God. Put in charge of a ministry. And once he took over he discovered that the organisation was massively in debt. And as I listened to him share his story with me. Would they have to close the doors in the next couple of weeks? Or would God perform miracles they needed? I really felt for him. Sometimes in the circumstances of life we’re not quite sure how things are going to turn out. Is this going to go this way or that? Is God going to show up with a miracle or not? They are normal issues with life that we deal with. But there’s something else that can go on in our hearts, an indecisiveness of a much deeper sort. An indecisiveness so deep that it tears us apart. And that condition is known as a “divided heart”. A heart torn between God and all the other things in life that we can chase down. A heart torn between a deep desire to give our all to Him and the intensely human desire to chase after the gratification this world peddles. Imagine for a moment a football team where the players can’t agree which end of the field they’re defending and which end they’re attacking. Half the team thinks it’s one way and the other half thinks it’s the other way. You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that they’re probably not going to be the most affective and cohesive team on the field that day. And they’re probably not going to win the game. It’s blindingly obvious, isn’t it? Yet how many people live their lives like that? Let me get right in your face with this today. I’m not going to “mamby pamby” around because while Gods passionate desire is to heal our hearts, there’s often little He can do when our hearts are divided. Now there’s a principle that Jesus spoke of on this very subject. It was in a different context but the principle nevertheless stands. They all saw the amazing miracles that Jesus was doing and so some of the religious leaders accused Him of being the devil. They were saying that He was demonised and all these amazing displays of power were being, well, powered not by heaven but by hell. Jesus answered His critics this way: Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If satan drives out satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? It makes perfect sense doesn’t it? It’s the football team analogy. If a kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. It’s blindingly, obvious. And if our heart is divided, if our desires are pulling in two different directions, let me ask you something. How much peace are we going to have in our lives? How much power are we going to have in our lives? How affective are we going to be in pouring the love and the grace of God out into this lost and hurting world? Well again you don’t have to be Einstein to figure that out. One of the things that really shocked me when I started scratching around in the Bible was how often this phrase appeared: With all your heart. Have a listen to just a few. Deuteronomy 4:29: But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and with all your soul. Deuteronomy 6:5: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 10:12: And now O Israel what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart? Deuteronomy 11:13: So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul. Over and over again, it’s in the same context. Being committed to God, loving Him and seeking Him with all our hearts. There are so many people who want the benefits of believing in Jesus but haven’t thrown their hearts into it. There are so many people who want the peace and the joy of knowing Jesus. Who want the power for things to change in their lives for the glory of God. But their house is divided. Their kingdom is divided. Their heart is divided. God is not looking for part of us. God is not looking for some half-hearted commitment. Last time I checked there were no Biblical dispensations for honouring and serving and obeying him like, “Well Berni, if it suits you. If it doesn’t cost you anything. If it’s not too inconvenient. If it’s safe and you won’t lose anything.” And yet sometimes we behave as though those dispensations are there. So many Christians, people who love Jesus. Who believe in Jesus. They do it half-heartedly. Have a listen to what James writes about the getting of wisdom: If any of you lacks wisdom he should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to him but when he asks he must believe and not doubt because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed with the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord, he is a double minded man unstable in all he does. (James 1:5-8). God doesn’t want part of us. He wants all of us. God doesn’t want us to be half-hearted or double minded, tossed around. He wants ALL of us. He’s calling us today to love Him, to serve Him, to seek Him out with all our hearts. Every last little bit. Every last ounce of what we have left. That’s how much He wants us. Let me ask you something, are you in or are you out? Because there are no half measures for God. There is no lukewarm. There are no comfort qualifiers on this commitment. How do I know if I’m committed? Well, here are a few questions that I use from time to time in my own life as a litmus test: Am I prepared to stand completely alone for Jesus in this world? Am I prepared to lose everything to follow Him? Is there anything that I would not give up in order to serve Him? They’re telling questions my friend. They are important questions because the one who is double minded, half-hearted, lukewarm, shouldn’t expect to live in a place where he or she receives the joy of the Lord and the power of salvation. Yes God wants to heal our hearts but in order for Him to do that we have to hand the whole heart over to Him so that He can heal the whole thing. Have you ever done that? Have you ever asked God to help you with that? Here is a prayer that King David prayed along those very lines: Teach me Your way oh Lord and I will walk in Your truth. Give me an undivided heart that I may fear Your name. I will praise You oh Lord my God with all my heart. I will glorify Your name forever. For great is Your love towards me. You have delivered me from the depths of the grave. (Psalm 86, verses 11 to 13). What a mighty prayer. And Gods promise is to give us an undivided heart. Ezekiel 11:19: I will give them an undivided heart and a new spirit in them. I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37020115

The Heart of God // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 8 08/06/2025

The Heart of God // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 8 You know something – if I were God, and you should be sincerely thankful that I’m not, but if I were, there are a few people on this earth who would discover what wrath was all about. But fortunately for you, I’m not. And in fact, what really shocked me was to discover that God has this amazing heart – this amazing desire to heal those who once hated Him. I don’t know if you remember that old Frank Sinatra song, “I Did It My Way”. But that could well be the bi-line for the way that I decided to live my life. I grew up in a home where we went to church. I had plenty of opportunity in my teenage years to give my life over to God. I kind of did. But as I grew up and realised there was money to be made in the world out there. I decided there was only one way to live my life – my way. And in part it was good. I got a great education. School. University. Post Graduate. I had a great series of jobs. I was earning a lot of money. I had my own company. All the “me” things that we’re supposed to have. All the symbols of luxury and comfort and success. But the greatest contradiction in life, for me, is that those things didn’t make me happy. And the more they didn’t, the harder I tried and the less they did. In fact it felt like bitter poison, all the success. At least that’s the label I wanted to use – success. But it didn’t fit and there’s a reason it didn’t fit. I discovered that reason in the words of Moses. Written thousands of years ago but they are as true today as they were then. Have a listen. It comes from Deuteronomy 29:18: Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God, to go and worship the God’s of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that produces such a bitter poison. Bitter poison indeed. Today we’re going to start looking at how God changes our hearts. Let me share with you again that wonderful prayer that Jesus prayed just before they crucified Him. He was in the Garden of Gethsemane and He prayed this for you and me. Father, I desire that those also whom You have given me may be with me wherever I am. To see my glory which You have given me because You loved me before the foundation of the world. See, He went to the cross so that we could be with Him where He is to receive His glory. That’s how much He wants to have a heart connection with us. And for that to happen, our heart has to change. And when our hearts turned away and how often it strays, we need to turn back to Him. Problem is it’s so hard to do that in our own strength. Our hearts become hard and obstinate. And we think to ourselves, “how can I change my life so that I’m not like that anymore?” But here’s the good news. We don’t have to do the changing. God’s going to do that. All we have to do is to take the first step. The turning around. The step of turning back to God. And when we do that God hears us, God sees us, God acts for us. Have a listen, 2 Kings 22:19: Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and this people. That they would become accursed and laid waste and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence I have heard you declares the Lord. See God honours that first step. God will take that first step that we make towards Him and He will rejoice in it. He will forgive us when we humble ourselves before Him. When we say, “Lord, I’ve just heard you calling me. Everything I was doing, I was wrong. I turned my heart against You. I tried to do it my way and I’m sorry.” You know what they call that? Theologians call that “repentance”. It’s turning back to God. And you know why I’m sharing this with you today? Because I believe that God is calling some people to turn back to Him today. To repent. Do you hear Him calling? Why don’t you pray this prayer with me right now in your heart? Father God, I’ve just heard you today. Your word is so clear in my heart, clear as a bell. I know it’s You. I know it’s true and I can’t heal my heart on my own but I can let You move me by Your word and right here and right now I want to fess up and say I was wrong. I’m sorry. My heart aches with pain. That’s what I mean. And this day, this moment I turn back to You. I know I’m forgiven through the sacrifice Jesus made for me on the cross. Come oh God and heal my heart. In Jesus name I pray. That prayer my friend, if you’ve just prayed it with me, is a powerful prayer. It’s a prayer which God heard. It’s a prayer that God will honour in the mightiest ways in the days and weeks and months and years ahead. You will look back to the moment when you prayed this prayer and see how the mighty hand of God began to work in your life. Because from this moment on God is going to move in your heart. See this is one of the things that I didn’t expect. I expected this mighty, wonderful God would require me to become mighty and wonderful. But that’s not the case. Time and time again we see how God moves people’s hearts. King David understood that when he prayed in Psalm 51, verse 10: Create in me a pure heart oh God and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Did David go to God and say, “God, I stuffed up. God, I committed adultery, I murdered a man and I just know that I have to clean up my act. I just know that I have to work hard to improve the way I live and I promise you God, I’m going to do better from now on, I’m going to try harder?” No. If you read the first bit of Psalm 51, the first thing he does is he goes to God, he confesses that sin. He committed adultery, he murders a man and he prays a prayer of repentance much like the one that you and I just prayed. But David knows that’s not enough. David knows he has to change. So instead of promising God that he’d change, he asks God for the one thing that is going to change him. A change of heart: God create in me a pure heart. Renew a steadfast spirit within me. David asks God to do it by His spirit because David knows he’s not strong enough to do it on his own. He needs the power of God to change his heart. And so that’s exactly what he asks God for. Listen to what another psalmist writes. Psalm 73, verse 26: My flesh and my heart fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. My friend, God wants to change our hearts. He has the power to do it. His spirit in us is the power to change. There are so many people trying to turn their lives around. There are so many people working hard, trying harder to please God. Listen to me. It doesn’t work. The “work harder” strategy is going to fail because only God has the power to change. And for those who feel weak and powerless, let me share with you these words from the apostle Paul. A man, who through the struggles and trials of his life, had discovered an amazing truth about God’s power. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 18: I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know the hope to which you’ve been called. The riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for us who believe. In other words, Paul is saying, “I pray you would come to know the incomparably great power that you already have because you believe.” The same power that rose Jesus from the dead. That power, you already have it and that’s the power to change. That power is the power for you for your new life. Cast yourself on that power, let God change your heart. /episode/index/show/32d04db5-1dff-4476-bc65-2e28e83b1760/id/37020095

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