Christianityworks Official Podcast
There is such incredible power in God’s Word! Power to change. Power to make an impact in this world. That’s what Christianityworks is all about – in depth teaching straight out of God’s Word. Join Berni Dymet as he opens God's Word to discover what God has to say into your life, today.
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How the Blessing Flows // Blessed to Be a Blessing, Part 2
08/16/2026
How the Blessing Flows // Blessed to Be a Blessing, Part 2
You often hear people talking about how God’s blessing flows on their lives. But sometimes, we can take a narrow view of what God’s really up to. A Deep Truth of the Bible It’s great to be with you again today and this is the second message in a series that I have called "Blessed to be a Blessing". The society in which we live tells us it’s all about "you"; it’s all about "me". I buy the newspaper reasonably frequently and the one that I buy on Friday, once a month, has a glossy magazine inside it called, "Wish". It’s full of expensive watches and expensive holidays and expensive dining experiences and coffee and real estate and it’s so glossy; it’s so seductive. Sociologists talk of the phenomenon of "cocooning"; of wrapping ourselves in comfort. For so many people in the West, that’s what they are trying to do. To somehow ignore everything else that’s going on; to hide from all the problems in the world and imagine somehow, that we can be satisfied in the cocoon of luxury. There’s an airline that for a long time, had an advertising campaign for it’s business class and the by-line of the advertising campaign was, “It’s all about you”. And that’s it isn’t it? To cocoon ourselves in these luxury things and experiences and ignore the pain and the starvation and the sickness that’s going on in the rest of the world. There are billions of people in poverty today. There are billions of people who don’t have enough food and some of those people are listening today. I had feed-back recently from a listener in a Liberian refugee camp, in Sierra Leone and there, life is purely about survival – food, water, avoiding disease, keeping away from war. And when I am talking about God’s blessing, the one thing that I’m conscience of is the need to speak into both ends of that spectrum. A man who I really admire, who taught me a lot, a man called Barry Chant, was a great influence on me. He’s a lecturer at the Bible College I attended, and I have a great respect for this man. One of the ministry classes we were in, there were a small number of students and we were having a discussion and we were talking about the tendency in some parts of the church to preach what some people call a "prosperity doctrine" – to believe God for a bigger car and a bigger house. Now Barry has been ministering around the world for over fifty years and when we came to this, his face became very serious and he said this: If you are going to preach on God’s blessing and God’s prosperity, then what you say has to apply to the poor and to the rich. It has to work in the West and in the developing world and if it doesn’t, it's not God’s truth. You see, God doesn’t have favourites. Sure, God plants us in different places, in different circumstances but if we are going to talk about God’s blessing in this series "Blessed to be a Blessing", I am really conscience of the fact that what we say, what we uncover in God’s Word, has to apply to everybody. Now, that’s always really stuck with me and what I want is never to open my mouth and speak unless I’m speaking God‘s truth. Today we are going to look at two deep truths of the Bible – God’s Word, God’s very heart. We are going to talk about God’s blessing and particularly look at the story of Abraham. One of the things that strikes me about the Bible is that when God blesses people He expects them to take that blessing and bless other people. And that’s the first deep truth. It’s this: a blessing is only really a blessing if it flows in and out. Let me say that again: a blessing is only really a blessing when it not only flows into us from God, but it also flows out again. That’s the first truth. And the second is this: the birth of a blessing in our lives can often be very uncomfortable and painful, and so we often miss exactly what God is up to and what’s going on. I wanted to put those two truths right up front because that’s what we are going to be talking about today. I believe that God is a God of outrageous blessing but so often we don’t understand how He blesses and what He expects. We need good teaching on God’s blessing – Biblical, profound, truth. God’s blessing is God’s favour. It’s when He intervenes in our lives for the good – it can be Spiritual, it can be emotional, it can be physical healing, it can be in relationships and even material. I weep when people reduce the blessing of God just down to the next big, expensive car that they want to buy. I know some people will get upset with me saying that but it’s a matter of priority. God is a God of blessing but we are blessed in order to be a blessing. A blessing has to flow into us from God and out from us to others, otherwise it’s not a blessing at all. Let’s have a look at the story of Abraham and we clearly see how God works. We are going to Genesis, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1. If you have a Bible, grab it: "The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation,” – listen to this – “and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and in you all the peoples on the earth will be blessed." So Abram left as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran and set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there. Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh, at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land and the Lord appeared there to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So Abram built an alter there, to the Lord who appeared to him. From there he went toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an alter to the Lord and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev. See, there are a few aspects to this story. Firstly, God said, "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household. Leave everything you’re comfortable with and step out. And if you do that, I will bless you. I promise, I will make you a great nation. All the peoples on the earth will be blessed." The point of the blessing was not just that Abram would be blessed but that all the peoples on the earth would be blessed, through him. That’s huge! Ultimately Israel was blessed in that they received the Promised Land and you and I were blessed in that Jesus Christ was physically a descendant of Abram. Now this required a lot of obedience. This man was seventy five years old. Most of us are heavily into retirement aged seventy five – not that I know, I’m not quite there yet – but it was no obstacle to him. Abram was quite wealthy yet he set out into the unknown; he set out into God’s blessing and to be a blessing. I always admire this man because he had no Bible; it wasn’t written then. I don’t know how God talked to him, but somehow God did and Abram believed Him and he set out. He left his father’s house, his comfort, his people, recognition, his own country, his home on a promise from God. "Step out of your comfort zone, Abram, follow me to this land that I will show you." He didn’t even know where he was going, there were no planes, trains or automobiles or air conditioned business class. This was God’s promise: "I will bless you so that you will become a blessing to all the nations." Aged seventy five, he went on an uncertain journey on God’s promise. So what happens next? Stepping out into the Blessing Okay, today we are talking about God’s blessing and the two deep truths: firstly that a blessing has to flow. A blessing isn’t a blessing unless it flows into us from God and out from us to other people. And secondly, when God starts to birth a blessing in our lives, it’s not always comfortable and it’s not always convenient and it doesn’t always feel like a blessing. God’s promise to Abram was a huge blessing. Remember, Abram was seventy five years old; the greatest sadness of this man’s life was that he had no children. To the Hebrews, the two great signs of God’s blessing were lots of kids and lots of land. If you had those you were blessed, if you didn’t you weren’t. God not only called Abram out of his comfort zone but He promised him those two blessings. Firstly in Genesis, chapter 13 verse 14, it says this: The Lord said to Abram after Lot had departed from him, “Lift up you eyes from where you are and look north and south and east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if anyone could count the dust then your offspring could be counted. Go; walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I am giving it to you." And again in Genesis, chapter 15, verse 4: Then the word of the Lord came to him. “This man will not be your heir but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them,” then God said to Abram, “so shall your offspring be." The guy is seventy five; his wife Sarai is about the same age. These are huge, impossible promises: the land that God is promising him is inhabited by the Canaanites; they’ve been childless for all these years, and yet God calls Abram and Sarai out of their comfort zone into the absolutely impossible – He sends them on a long journey. When you read the story out of the next few chapters of Genesis (and I encourage you to do that) the two things that leap out are these: firstly it was an interminable journey – twenty five years! It went on and on and on and on. We are talking "God" and "blessing" and we think an hour, a day, a week at the most. Twenty five years! What was God thinking? Not even twenty five years in the comfort of their own home, but twenty five years of rough and rugged time on the road in tents, with all their animals and possessions and servants travelling with them. Imagine the organisation and the difficulties and the discomforts all for some vague, impossible promise of blessing. And the second thing that leaps out at you as you read the story of Abram and Sarai are their imperfections. They didn’t do this perfectly, they made lots of mistakes. Abram took Lot with him. God didn’t ask him to take Lot with him. They had to separate and Abram had to give land away and then he had to rescue Lot from captivity, putting God’s plan in risk again. And they doubted God over and over again. And then Abram and Sarai think, ‘Well, God’s not showing up so maybe we’ll give Him a hand.’ So Abram sleeps with a woman, a servant, Hagar and has Ishmael. They laughed at God’s promises. They said, “God, do you understand how old we are?” Twice Abraham lies about Sarah; says she is his sister not his wife and she ends up in some king’s harem. Abraham was not some super Christian, you know, who did everything perfectly – just a simple, ordinary human being with an extraordinary faith in an extraordinary God. After twenty five years God gave them a son and God told them to call this son Isaac, which means "he laughs". You see God had the last laugh, "he who laughs last, laughs best". And they were blessed to be a blessing. They were called out of their comfort zone into God’s promises – so called "blessings" – in order to be a blessing to all the nations. But all they saw for the first twenty five years was heartbreak and trial after trial on an interminable journey. You see how easy it is to make a mistake when God is birthing a blessing, to mistake that birth of a blessing for a curse? We go to God and ask Him to bless us and – listen to me, here’s a deep truth – often it gets a whole bunch worse before it gets better. In a relationship, if you pray for your husband or your wife or your children: "God bless them, improve our relationship, deal with that thing in them that I can’t deal with." The most likely thing that is going to start happening is that it will get worse. They’re going to start acting up and then we give up. When they start acting up, when it gets worst … praise God! When things take a turn for the worst after we’ve prayed for a blessing in that area, thank God, because God is up to something good. That’s His way. The birth of a blessing often is a difficult birth because that’s how we learn and grow and walk in faith. It’s a deep truth that the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we often miss out on exactly what God is up to and what’s going on. When someone taught me that, when I finally learnt that, it made a huge difference to my life. We need to stop putting our trust in circumstances we can see and put our trust in the God we can’t see. When God starts something He will finish it! Even though we bumble through it imperfectly, like Abraham and Sarah, even though we lose heart sometimes, even though we even laugh at God and say, "Look God, this is impossible", God wants us to learn this lesson today. It’s one of the things that He will use mightily and powerfully over the rest of our lives. God’s blessings so often involve change in people and in circumstances and in attitudes and when they start breaking forth, it feels risky and uncomfortable and uncertain and sometimes it even feel worse. When you are in that situation, I pray that the Holy Spirit will bring this back to you. God is a God of blessing and we will sometimes suffer incredibly as His blessings come to pass. It seems to be so often His way. Believing the Promise God is a God of blessing and I truly believe that He wants to bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. Abraham was the case in point. Right from the beginning, God promised that Abraham would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. At that time he had no idea what that meant. He spent twenty five years wandering after that promise. Finally, finally a miracle – a son, Isaac. But what about this other huge promise, that through Abraham God would bring blessing to every nation on earth? Well, let’s roll forward a little bit now, to the New Testament, about fifteen hundred years on and the writer of the Book of Hebrews says this – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it at chapter 11 and verse 8: By faith, Abraham, when called to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he didn’t know where he was going. By faith he made his home in this land, like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were his heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, who’s architect and builder, was God. Isn’t that beautiful? By faith, Abraham, even though he was past the age and Sarah, herself who was barren, was enabled to become a father because he considered Him faithful who had made that promise. And so, from this one man and he was as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the sea shore. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised but only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted they were aliens and strangers on the earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to return, instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for He has prepared a city for them. By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God said to him, “It will be through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead and, figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. See, this is a beautiful story! Abraham stepped out, he wandered for twenty five years, he finally had a son but he never saw the promises of blessings to all the nations. See what it says in Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 13: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” Now we are going to go back to those two profound truths of God’s blessing that I talked about at the beginning of the program. The first is this deep truth: a blessing is only a blessing if it flows in and out. That’s the first one. And the second is: the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we can miss exacting what God’s up to and what’s going on. Now the story of Abraham brings these two truths together. It was uncomfortable for twenty five years, but even more so, he never saw the major promise come to fruition. The promise from the beginning to Abraham was this: ‘I will make you into a great nation’ He never saw that. It didn’t happen until after he died. And again, ‘All the peoples will be blessed through you’. He never saw that. Abraham was blessed to be a blessing. He suffered for that blessing but never fully saw its fruition. Through Abraham, Israel received the Promised Land and through Abraham you and I receive Jesus Christ because Jesus was descended, physically, from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and so on. Jesus is the greatest blessing of God to all humanity and Abraham had no idea. He had to suffer those twenty five years so he could be part of that blessing but he never saw the end of it. God blessed him in order that God’s blessing could flow through him, down to the centuries, to you and me, here and now. And that is utterly amazing. Do you see how limiting it is when we want God just to bless us, and somehow we imagine that blessing stops with us? It’s not God’s plan. God’s blessing is only really a blessing when it flows down to us from Him and out from us to everybody else. He wants us to be the place where His flood tide of blessing brings life to the rest of the world. Look what Jesus said about exactly that: John chapter 7 verse 37: On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice (notice: He said this in a loud voice so everyone would hear) “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. See, there’s an "in" and an "out". Are you looking for something? Are you parched and needy and dry? Come to Jesus and drink; put your faith in Him. And whoever believes in Him, rivers of living water will flow out of them. It’s one of the greatest passages in the Bible. It’s powerful. It’s the crux of being a disciple. We are blessed to be a blessing! Rivers – Nile and Ganges and Murray and Mississippi and Amazon – rivers! Again Jesus said: Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure that you use, it would be measured to you. God blesses us so that we can be a blessing. Whether we are Abraham or just some little person living in this century – we are blessed to be a blessing! It is a double sided transaction. When we limit God’s blessing to just flowing in, that’s a very, very sad thing. You and I are blessed...
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God's Plan from the Beginning // Blessed to Be a Blessing, Part 1
08/09/2026
God's Plan from the Beginning // Blessed to Be a Blessing, Part 1
If God is a God of blessing – then what about all the suffering we go through? And anyway, if God does bless, does that just mean a new car and a bigger house? Does God want to Bless Me? It is just great to be with you again this week and we are starting a new series that I’ve called "Blessed to be a Blessing". There’s some really important teaching going to happen over these next four weeks on the subject of God’s blessing. Why is that important? Because I see so much misunderstanding about God and His heart and where He stands on blessing us. There seems to be a couple of extreme positions on this whole subject of God’s blessing – two opposite ends of the spectrum, if you like. On the one end, it goes something like this. God wants to bless me, therefore, I should believe Him for the new Mercedes convertible, more money and a bigger house and a big diamond ring. In effect it kind of reduces God down to some sort of sugar daddy: it's all about me, I am at centre stage – I name it and I claim it. And you know something, lots of Christians believe that. Now the problem that I have with that end of the spectrum is that when I take that and I hold it in one hand and I hold the cross of Christ in the other – when I look at Jesus, this Jesus that gave up everything for me; this Jesus who was nailed to a cross, beaten and bruised and brutalised, not even with the clothes on His back – and I compare those two things, you know something, this end of the spectrum over here, jars with that, don’t you think? And it leads to some of the worst excesses – the tele-evangelists pressuring people for money and flying around in their private jets. Is that where that should end up? I mean is that what God’s blessing is all about? The other end of the spectrum is you have to be poor to serve God. Money is evil. In fact, we just had a phone call, just the other evening, in the middle of the night, someone responding to a program, saying, "money is evil". Well, no that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil”, but money itself isn’t evil. "People who are rich are evil." I was talking to a man in India recently. India by and large, is a country of extremes – there is the very rich and there’s a large, large number of very, very poor people. And this man was being very critical of a Christian leader who just happened to have a nice house in a nice area. He believed that it was wrong for him to have money. Then I looked at this end of the spectrum – you have to be a pauper to serve God. And then I go to the Bible and I read about Abraham, who was God’s chosen man; he was very wealthy. I read about King Solomon, he was very wealthy. Yet King Solomon was still God’s anointed leader over Israel. He was full of God’s wisdom. Do you see the problem? You go to either end of the spectrum and you take teaching about God’s blessing to the extreme and you know, I think you end up with the wrong answer. God is a God of balance and when we look at our lives, what we see is that we go through times of blessing, where there’s joy and everything seems to be going well and we all go through difficult times. You see the problem. At one end you can have people getting the extreme prosperity thing in their heads and we can end up thinking it’s all about us. It plays right into the hands of the world; it’s the me, me, me – the next plasma TV, the next car, the next big thing. If you don’t have that, obviously you don’t have enough faith. On the other hand, if you have this perception that you have to be poor to be a Christian, well if that were the case, who would ever fund the work of the Lord on this planet? God has always chosen to fund His work through His people. And then on top of the pure monitory thing, there’s the reality of tragedy and pain and suffering. I mean some of these things are indiscriminate – earthquakes, tsunamis, a young person who loves God dies of cancer, in a car crash or there’s divorce or there’s retrenchment or there’s all that stuff of life that we all experience some times. Are you with me? So what’s God’s plan? Does God want to bless me or not? Is it okay for me to ask for His blessing? Is it okay for me to expect His blessing, or is that presumptuous? This is an important question. It is in a sense where the ‘rubber’ of faith hits the ‘road’ of life. It’s when it comes to faith in God being active, right in the midst of life’s realities today, the things we all have to face. We get up in the morning, we pray, we look forward to the day … How do I pray, what do I give thanks for? That difficult situation that’s going be confronting me at work today, can I ask God to help me with that? Is God in all of that? That’s why we are doing this series "Blessed to be a Blessing". I’m a simple man. I open the Bible, I see what God’s Word says on a subject and you know God is largely a God of balance. I love to be empowered with God’s Word and hopefully as we share these next twenty, twenty five minutes together we will both be empowered by God’s Word. The problem with teaching on blessing is that you just can’t take one verse and say, "That’s it! See, God is a God who blesses; therefore I can ask Him for the next big car". You end up with an extreme position. Just as if you say, "You can’t have any money to serve Jesus. You have to sell everything you have, give it all away", because Jesus did say that to one young ruler. I’d like to look at God’s perspective; the whole thing. Is God a God who blesses? Well, let’s just start with what we mean by the word "bless"? It has a number of different meanings but the main connotation is God’s divine favour – God intervening to make something better or to give us something that will bring us joy or happiness, financial blessing, spiritual blessing, physical blessing, healing, anything and everything. God’s divine favour – His blessing becoming active in our lives. The question is, is God in the blessing business? The word "bless" or "blesses" or "blessed" or "blessing", appears three hundred and fifty eight times in the Bible. The first time you see it is in the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, verse 22. Let’s go there and have a bit of a look at what God’s up to. Genesis chapter 1 is the account of God’s creation. He creates the light out of darkness and the heavens and the earth and the oceans and the dry land and the plants. And the first time He creates a living creature, this is what He says: So God created the creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems. According to all their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind and God saw that is was good and God ... Listen to this: ... and God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas and let the birds increase on the earth’. The second time that the concept of ‘blessing’ happens in the Bible is in that same chapter, a few verses on, verse 26: Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image and in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female, He created them. God blessed them and said to them” – see, there it is again – “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ And then God said, ‘I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it, they will be yours for food and all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground; everything that has breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so. That’s creation! Let me ask you something – do you think God’s in the business of blessing us? If God Blesses why do we Suffer? So we’ve looked at God’s own account of His creation, Genesis chapter 1. The very first living creatures He creates, He blesses them. He says, "Go and multiply, increase in number and fill the earth." And He creates humanity, man and woman, and He hands the whole of that creation over to them. What an enormous blessing! You and I are joint owners in creation! Why? Because God created us in His own image and then He handed the whole thing over to us. Just stop and think about that for a minute. What a huge blessing! Right at the point of creation, God was in the blessing business. That’s profound! And His plan for us was to live in relationship with Him – Adam and Eve. Genesis, chapter 2, verse 15: The Lord God took the man and put him is the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it. A perfect plan of blessing and as you probably know, Adam and Eve rebelled. They did the one thing that God said, ‘don’t do’ and there were consequences. Rebellion against God always has consequences. To the woman He said, “I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing, with pain you will give birth. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” To Adam He said, “Because you listened to your wife and you ate from the tree about which I commanded you ‘you must not eat’, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you’ll eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken – for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Enter pain and suffering because humanity rebelled against God. And for the rest of the history of humanity, there are consequences. Now you might say to me, “Berni that is so insensitive. If there’s a still born baby, if tens of thousands are killed in a tsunami, if some young teenager is raped and murdered, how can you say that?” Here it is, God made us in His image but when who He is doesn’t suit us, we try and remake Him into our image. God is a God of blessing – that was His plan, that’s why He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But they rebelled and when that happens there is an interruption of blessing, there’s an interruption in the relationship with Him. Have a look at it. In Leviticus chapter 26 is a perfect summary of where God stands on this. It’s a summary of the old covenant; the relationship between God and Israel. And He lays out the relationship in this chapter. Let’s go there and begin at verse 1. He says: Don’t make idols or set up a sacred stone for yourselves, don’t place a carved stone in your land to bow down to it because I am the Lord your God. If you observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary, I am the Lord. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commandments, I will send rain in its season and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field will be full of fruit and your threshing will continue until grape harvest and grape harvest will continue until planting and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant you peace in the land and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid of them. I will remove savage beasts from the land and the sword will not pass through the country. You will pursue your enemies and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I will look on you with favour and make you fruitful and increase your numbers and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last years harvest when you have to make room for the new one. I’ll put my dwelling place among you and I won’t abhor you and I walk among you and be your God and you will be my people. I’m the Lord God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yolk and enabled you to walk with your heads high. But, but if your won’t listen to me and carry out all these commandments and if you reject me and my decrees and you abhor my laws and fail to carry out those commandments and so violate this covenant, then I will do this - I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease and fever will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies, those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee, even when there is no one pursuing you. See, God first and foremost is a God of blessing. He wants to be in relationship with His people and He is God – He gets to say this is how it is. And when Israel turned against Him, there were consequences. And you and I both have rebelled against God; we both have turned our backs on God at some point in our lives. I was talking to a man just the other day. He’s my own age, he’s a good friend of mine and he was talking about his three adult sons. This man had a dream to bless his sons. He’s an entrepreneur. He’s good at making money. He worked as a team with his sons; he wanted to build a business empire and to see them blessed and their children blessed. But one by one, they rejected him and his plans – they didn’t honour their father. They went their own way; they turned their backs on him. It sounds like a parable, doesn’t it? This is a true story – a friend of mine. And this is what my friend said to me, he said, “Berni, I really wanted to bless them, I wanted to give to them but now that they have rejected that, in their self-centered, selfish ways, I can’t bless them.” and it’s the greatest sadness of his life. That man is made in the image of God. What he said about his heart to bless his sons is exactly, exactly where God is coming from. God is a God of blessing, but when we reject Him, when humanity rejected Him, when you and I as individuals rejected Him, it interrupts the relationship. And it’s in that relationship that we are blessed – that’s God’s plan. So we’ve all done that. Can we still go to God and ask Him to bless us? Can I ask for God’s Blessing? I hope that as we have looked into God’s Word so far on the program, it’s had a profound impact on you. God’s heart is to bless us – it’s in His very nature. That’s what creation was all about. A huge abundant, indescribable blessing from Him to us. But when we reject Him, when we try to reconstruct God in our own image rather than accepting Him for who He is, we interrupt that blessing. It’s as simple as that. Now we have all done that, so can we still ask God for His blessing, for His favour, for His grace? Absolutely, because God is a God of forgiveness. I’d like to take you to a place, a prayer by a man called Jabez. Someone wrote a book about this a few years ago and it became very prominent, but this prayer is in the Old Testament. If you have a Bible, grab it. We are going to First Chronicles, chapter 4, verses 9 and 10. It‘s in the middle of nine chapters of genealogy, you know, so and so begat so and so who begat so and so who begat so and so - nine chapters - riveting! Smack bang in the middle of that God stops and tells us the story of this Jabez. Obviously He thought it was important enough to break this riveting flow of the genealogies. Good stuff, thank you Jesus. Here’s the prayer of Jabez: Jabez was honoured more than his brothers and his mother named his Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, saying, “O God, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory and that your hand might be with me and that you might keep me from hurt and from harm.” And God granted his request. Jabez gets called "You’re a pain" by his mother. Imagine if your mother or my mother named us that. Not a great start in life is it? Mustn’t have been for Jabez because Jabez cried out to God. He cried out to Him in desperation, out of his pain, out of his imperfect life. We don’t know much more about him but what we do know is that everybody has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and he rejected God in his life at some point, just the way that you and I have. And in his desperation he calls out to God. You might say, "Berni, how do you know that Jabez rebelled?” Let me ask you, if you’re a parent, what’s the first or the second or the third word that every child learns? "No!" Isn’t it? And God’s Word clearly teaches that we all have turned our backs on Him. So Jabez is a fallen man just like you and I are fallen human beings. What does Jabez ask God? “God, that you would bless me indeed.” Not just any sort of blessing an ‘indeed’ blessing; not just an ordinary blessing of God, “I really, really, God, want you to bless me.” Secondly he asks God to enlarge his territory. In the Old Testament, land was very important, in terms of blessing. I mean, land is somewhere we live. If you have a house in the suburbs, you might take that for granted. If you happen to live in a Liberian refugee camp in Sierra Leon, where you are listening to this program, you won’t be taking land for granted. Jabez asks God to enlarge his territory. Thirdly that God’s hand might be with him. What a great blessing that is! And fourthly, that God would keep him from hurt and harm. And listen to what it says, (Jabez is a person just like you and me) listen to what it says next. It says, “And God granted his request.” This man put his faith in God and he asked God for a blessing. Once I discovered this prayer, I started praying it regularly, with my own twist. I said, “God, that you would bless me indeed today. I want to see your presence; I want you to be with me. God, that you would increase my borders and my territory. That more and more people would listen to these programs.” You know, I started praying that two years ago when these programs were being listened to by a few people on a few stations and now they are listened to by hundreds of thousands, even millions of people in over eighty countries around the world. God answers those prayers. “God that you would send your hand with me that doors would open for the work that we do and that you would keep me from evil that I wouldn’t cause any pain.” It is just the Lord laid on my heart. The point is we can ask God for blessing. God is a God of great blessing and blessing happens in relationship with Him. When we reject God – listen to me – when we reject God it breaks the blessing. Just like that friend of mine that I was talking about with his sons. God wants to bless you … God wants to bless me and there’s a purpose; there’s a reason for His blessing. It’s not just for us but as we will see over the next few weeks on the program, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others. But right from the beginning, right from the first creature that He created on this earth, He wanted to bless them. And when he created humanity, He wanted to bless them. And when He had a relationship with His people, Israel, He wanted to bless them. And we all turned our backs on Him and so God then gave us the greatest blessing that there could possibly be – He opened the door to a relationship with Him through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. God is a God of blessing. Yes, we go through ups and downs in our lives, and we’re going to have a look at some of those things over the next few weeks, but when I open the Bible I see a God who...
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Three Ways to Overcome Fear // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 4
08/02/2026
Three Ways to Overcome Fear // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 4
It may come as a surprise, but in this world of stress and anxiety God doesn’t want us to be afraid. But how is that supposed to work? Do Not Worry About Anything Well, here we are – this is the last message in a series of four programmes that I have called “Do Not Be Afraid.” So many people spend so much time being afraid in their lives. Either it’s a crisis or just an ongoing nagging, ongoing sense that something bad is going to happen – a negativity; a pessimism, always thinking the worst. Always imaging the worst outcome – always expecting the worst. So often through the Bible, God says to His people “Do not be afraid.” He doesn’t want us living in fear; He doesn’t want us worrying, and so many of us do. Okay, we might have a brave face; we might have a cool, calm exterior but inside, a lot of people are torn apart; shaken to the core by fear and worry. Well, today we are going to finish up this series by looking at three very practical things that we can do to overcome that. I’m talking about living a life that, by and large, is free from fear and worry. Scary things will still come along at us in life – it’s about living through those things with a calm delight and a resolve, with a deep knowledge that God is in this place with us. The first thing I want to share with you is this: our mind matters! What we do with our thoughts really matters. Back in 1953 a man by the name of Norman Vincent Peale wrote a classic book – it’s called “The Power of Positive Thinking” and for a long time I pooh-hooed that idea. "It’s not about 'positive thinking'"; I said to myself, "it’s about trusting in God." And even when I started reading his book fairly recently, I was sceptical but what he expounds in that book is exactly what God talks about in the Bible. Basically what he says is that: our mind matters. Let me take you to a passage that I often go to myself – it’s written by the Apostle Paul in prison, on death row in a Roman prison, writing to his friends, the Philippians. Listen to what this man Paul writes from his dank prison cell. If you have a Bible, grab it – we are going to Philippians chapter 4 today – beginning at verse 6: Do not worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you. I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed you were concerned for me but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I’m referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need for I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Let me start with just the first couple of verses – let’s look at them again. Do not worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. How do we not worry? You see, in my experience, worry is just something that happens. I have wanted to turn the worry tap off many a time but this stream of worrying thoughts keeps flooding into my mind. Now, I am as strong willed and disciplined a person as you’ll find anywhere. When I set my mind to achieving something, I invariably do – I have all my life. But you know something? What I have discovered is that I am powerless to turn off the worry tap. It’s horrifying because when you worry it grips your whole life – you’re waking and you’re sleeping. Have you ever noticed that – you toss and turn at night and you can’t sleep? It is believing in these two verses that have enabled me to end the worry in my life! Can I say that again? It is believing in these two verses in the Bible that has enabled me to end the worry in my life. And you know something? When you stop worrying, you have peace! That’s exactly what Paul tells us; that’s exactly what God wants to tell you and me today: Do not worry about anything but in everything … How do I stop worrying – not by turning the tap off by myself but by replacing it with something else – with the “but in everything … ” “Do not worry about anything but in everything … ” So what’s the "but"; what’s the thing that we should replace the worrying with? All that time and energy we spend worrying, what do I do with it? I transfer it to something else – to what else? “Do not worry about anything but in everything ...” - that means "everything" – “in everything” that is causing me to worry, “by prayer and supplication” – what does that mean? Praying and entreating God – asking Him, seeking Him – so instead of wasting all that time and energy on worrying, spend it on praying and asking God. Imagine how different life would be if every time a worrying thought came to haunt the deepest recesses of our mind, we said "Hang on a minute – stop. I am not going to think on that. I am not going to dwell and brood and worry, but instead, in everything I am going to pray." How….how do we pray? – with thanksgiving – "God I thank You that I am in this place. I thank You that I have the opportunity to trust in You. I thank You that unless You show up, I’m in trouble. Now Lord, here’s my problem, will You help me? Thank You!" If every time we go to worry we did that, here’s what the Bible promises us – now listen to it very carefully – to this promise … a promise that is going to change your life: “Do not worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your request be known to God” – here comes the promise, “and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your minds in Christ Jesus.” There it is! And you know something? That is exactly what happens! Try it, just for a few days, every time you start to worry about something, go to God, do the ‘but’ thing and here’s what happens – He turns the worry tap off. No amount of strength or resolve or anything else is going to turn that worrying tap off, only God and it’s an amazing peace; it’s an incredible peace. The storm can still be raging, in fact, circumstances can be getting worse, but you have been praying and entreating and thanking God instead of worrying. And you think to yourself, "I can’t explain this but I have a peace – how, why, how can this be?" That’s why Paul calls it “a peace that surpasses all understanding” – God turned the worry tap off. He did what you and I can’t do: and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. The worry can’t get in – there is where the rubber hits the road. My Mind Matters Okay, let’s look at another practical thing that we can do to eradicate that fear and worry from our lives. See, it’s more than just having faith – I mean faith is great but there are some practical things that we need to do to participate in God’s plan for us not to worry and not to be afraid. Back with the Apostle Paul, in that dungeon again, on death row – if anyone had a reason it was the old Paul. We are going to have a look at what he wrote to his friends in Philippi about this whole subject of not being afraid. Pick it up in Philippians chapter 4, beginning at verse 8. He said: Finally beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. Now I want to start with the second bit of this first. And here is the reason for that: because what Paul is telling us is that he has discovered how to have God’s peace; how not to be afraid; how not to spend worrying. See, this is not some theory lesson. This is a guy on death row explaining how to have peace. “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you.” So Paul is saying, "You know my life; you know how often it’s been threatened; you know how often people have rioted when I got up to speak and they wanted to harm me and kill me. You know that, you have seen me in action and you have seen how I have coped with the pressures and the threats. You want to have peace? You want to live a life free from fear and worry? Then do the things that you have seen in me and the things that I am telling you now and you will have peace too - God’s peace." I think that is fantastic because what we are about to have a look at is a proven thing – it works in the direst of circumstances. Doesn’t that excite you? You know, there is not one of us who doesn’t have some reason to worry – not one of us, who isn’t going through some storm right now. And just in case there is the odd person who isn’t, just recognise that it is because you are between storms – the last one has blown out and the next one hasn’t swept in yet. So what is the practical guidance that Paul gives us in this passage about how to dispense with fear and worry? Let’s take a look: Philippians chapter 4, verse 8: Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure and pleasing and commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. You know what he is saying here? What we do with our mind matters! That’s what Norman Vincent Peale wrote in his book in 1953, “The Power of Positive Thinking”. And as I have said before, I used to be very sceptical about this – faith isn’t just positive thinking … positive thinking has a self-help connotation to me – like I can think my way out of problems without God. All I have to do is think positive but that’s not what he meant and that’s not what Paul means here. Paul is setting out a simple truth – we only have so much brain-band with each day; so much time that we can spend thinking; so many hours to think. Some of our time we spend sleeping, some we spend doing things that require our complete attention so we don’t have time to think about anything else. We spend time "veged" out in front of the TV I guess, not really thinking about much at all. And then there is the rest of the time when we have time to think and we can think good thoughts or bad thoughts, encouraging thoughts or discouraging thoughts. We can think thoughts that look at our situation, which may be difficult; which may be scary; which may be whatever and what we ‘think’ is going to influence how we see things and how we "feel" them. The human brain – get this – has about seventy thousand thoughts a day! Busy little thing, isn’t it? And what Paul is say here is: "Look, spend your brain time; your think time, thinking good thoughts – true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent; things worthy of praise – think about these things." You know something? That makes a lot of sense to me and it’s something we have to teach ourselves. Here’s how it works for me: a negative thought comes into my mind "You know, that guy just doesn’t get it. He’s never going to get it. He just drives me nuts." Maybe he doesn’t get it; maybe he has some issues, but I have decided something – if I think that way it’s going to influence how I treat the guy. So when one of those thought comes floating in, I boot it out! It’s not some unrealistic thing where I sweep things under the carpet, but I replace the bad thought with a good one. "How can I care for him today? How can I support him today? God you love him just as much as You love me, show me Father how I can build him up; how I can develop him; how I can grow him?" That makes sense and it’s a discipline and the more we do it; the more we get into the habit of recognising a bad thought when it comes in and booting it out and replacing it with a good thought – God thoughts – here is what happens: our whole outlook starts to change. God honours that and where things were once a threat, He gives us the solution. Where things once scared us, He gives us faith and peace and all of a sudden we find ourselves in a habit of resting our minds in good things and all good things come from God and more good things come from that – peace is one of them; joy is another. Whatever is true, honourable, pure, just, pleasing, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise, think about those things! A Word in Time As we come to the end of our series, “Do Not Be Afraid,” I want to share with you the most important thing that I know about banishing fear and worry from our lives. It is the most important thing; the most effective thing and it comes from the last part of this passage in Philippians chapter 4 that we have been looking at today on the programme. The Apostle Paul is on death row; he is teaching us how to banish fear from our lives, from the most dire circumstances you and I could ever imagine and here’s what he says – beginning at Philippians 4, verse 10: I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me. Indeed you were concerned for me but had no opportunity to show it.” Remember, he is writing to his friends at Philippi, he is in his dungeon and he says: “Not that I referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little; I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry; of having plenty and of being in need, for I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Paul was an itinerant minister who travelled across most of the known world. A good part of his time he spent in jail and he is writing to his friends here about his physical needs. Obviously they provided for him and sent him money and resources when he has been in need and he is saying, “Thank you” – that’s a good thing. I love how much of God’s Word is about real, practical things in people’s lives but he takes even this opportunity from his dungeon to teach them something. And I believe that God is taking the opportunity to teach us something. Here it is: For I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have a little; I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry; of having plenty and of being in need for I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Paul is saying, "You know something, it doesn’t matter what circumstances I am facing – good or bad, plenty or little, full or hungry – I have learned … learned in practice; in my experience, I have learned the secret ... the secret of getting through any and all circumstances and that secret is this ..." Philippians chapter 4, verse 13, that: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. It doesn’t matter what the world throws at me because God is the one who strengthens me. And when I am hanging close with Him; when I am relying on Him, He comes through – He does the things that I can’t do – He saves me, He encourages me. "And I have been through this so many times", says Paul, "riots, so many times people have tried to hurt me; so many times people have criticised me, misunderstood me and rejected me because I was telling them about Jesus over and over and over and over and over again." Paul has learned this truth: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. And you know why this is so important? Because whenever I feel a sense of despair, I come back to this one Scripture. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or hurt or rejected or alone or distressed or afraid, I stop; I clear my mind and I say this Scripture verse: Philippians chapter 4, verse 13: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. This is the Word of God! And so I have a number of Scriptures, some that I have memorised, some I have got on my mobile phone. Another one of them is Mark chapter 11, verses 22 to 24: Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and be thrown into the sea,” and if you do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you have said will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. I have memorised that Scripture passage, can I tell you? I don’t find it easy to memorise Scripture passages – that one and a few others I have memorised and I go to them again and again and again and again. Those I can’t remember, I look at them on my mobile phone. You may not have a mobile phone – write them down on little cards, stick them in your pocket. God’s Word changes our hearts and when we are struggling; when we are going through the hard stuff, we need access to God’s Word. This is absolutely the most important thing that I know about living a life that’s free from fear and worry. The more I do that, the more I find myself able to do all things that God calls me to do, through Him who strengthens me. I want to challenge you today. God’s Word is not something to be trifled with. God’s Word is not something we leave in a cupboard or on our shelves and then we wonder why our lives are full of fear and anxiety and stress. God’s Word brings peace. God’s Word convinces us of the truth of what God is saying: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. You can do all things through Him who strengthens you – through plenty or through little, through hunger or through fullness. The most important thing that I know about dealing with fear is to fill your heart and your mind with the Word of God because it has healing power. It will build your faith; it changes your outlook; it is the stuff of healing and transformation. God and grab some Scripture verses that really speak powerfully to you – put them on some cards or in your mobile phone or memorise them and go to them again and again and again – every day. When you get up in the morning; when you have a break during the day to get away from the madness, just to pause; when you go to bed at night. I tell you something, you will learn what Paul learned through the school of hard knocks that you can do all things through Him who strengthens you. You know, I challenge you today. You do this for just a couple of weeks; two or three weeks, and fear will be banished from your life because your perspective changes; you start to see things through God’s Word and all of a sudden you start to live it by faith and your faith grows. It’s not rocket science – this is so practical, anyone can do this. You can do all things through Him who strengthens you
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Be Still and Know That I am God // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 3
07/26/2026
Be Still and Know That I am God // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 3
Life is full of turmoil and often, often that turmoil breads fear in our hearts. And instead of stopping, we just kind of – go with the fear. Well it’s time to stop and know that God is God. Our Refuge and Strength This week is the third message in a series of programmes that I have called “Do Not Be Afraid”. Fear is an incredibly powerful force – for two reasons. Firstly it is a natural response when something happens to threaten us or our loved ones or our possessions, fear grips us. In a sense, it’s a human response. But the more we go through that; the more we experience fear, the more – for many people – they learn the habit of fear. In other words, fear becomes more and more the normal response. There is an alternative of course; to learn how to deal with fear; to master fear with each new experience. But most people instead of growing through fearful experiences, actually, they go down and down and down into a bondage of fear and life is full of fear and worry. So many people spend so much of their lives worrying about this, that or the other. Do you think I am over estimating, do you? Do you think I am overstating the problem perhaps? Recently, during the global economic crisis, it was interesting to watch how it was reported – even the TV reporters and the newspaper reporters were fearful. You could see it in their faces on TV – you could hear it in voices on the radio – you could see it in the headlines on the front page of the newspaper – "THE WORST GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS IN DECADES". "BANKS ON THE BRINK". "GOVERNMENTS SHORE UP BANKS". Sure, it was international; the banks were at risk, but here in Australia at least, we were blessed by a very solid banking system, but if you listen to the media and the government and the banks, oh, it was terrible and they needed to be propped up. And the more they reported fearfully, the more fearful we all became and the worse the world economy became. See, fear is a downward spiral; fear is about a loss of confidence. On the TV news, one well known crisis counselling service reported a dramatic increase in the numbers of people experiencing not only stress, but in fact, mental illness through the fear of losing their homes – up from just a handful each year to several hundred per week. Now we generally don’t cope well with fear. When we are afraid we start thinking irrationally. Fear truly grips us – we see all the fearful things and let our imaginations run away with those and we forget to take stock of our assets – the things that we actually have; the things that are on our side. And so what these four programmes are about, in this series “Do Not Be Afraid”, is kind of giving us an opportunity by looking at what God says in His Word, an opportunity to relearn our response to fear. So what we have to do, instead of resorting to panic, resting in the sovereignty of God. And so today, I just want to look at one Psalm, Psalm 46 which is all about that very thing. Let’s read just the first few verses together: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change; though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam; though the mountains tremble with its tumult. That’s a good start! God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble. And really it’s only in time of trouble that we are afraid. It’s only in those disastrous times that we are gripped with fear and doom and gloom; when the world is against us; when people are against us; when the economy is against us. And now look at the picture that the Psalmist paints – I want you to understand something about the Hebrew culture which is the culture that the Psalmist was writing into – they love picture language, and this language evokes real emotion. Psalm 46, verses 2 and 3: Though the earth should change; though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam; though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Ever been in an earthquake? I have, just a small one, actually it was some years ago now when my wife Jacqui and I were on our honeymoon on the South Island of New Zealand – one of the most beautiful and picturesque places on the planet – truly – and we were staying at a Bed and Breakfast on a sheep farm. We were having breakfast in this old country kitchen with a few other couples in this beautiful place – big old blue and white plates on display on the sideboard and the bacon and eggs was cooking away and you looked out the window and there were green fields and white sheep and snow capped mountains in the background. It was all good – life couldn’t have been better – we didn’t have a care in the world. Then all of a sudden the ground shook – man did it shake – there was this immediate sense of panic. And that’s the picture the Psalmist is painting here: Though the earth should change; the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; the waters roar and foam; the mountains tremble with tumult. See, the Hebrews; they weren’t a seafaring nation. The notion of foaming waters and mountains falling into the ocean was absolutely horrific to them. And it’s when our life gets shaken to the core like that that fear grips us. It’s not until then that we have a deep need to hear God’s Word in our hearts – “Do not be afraid.” When we look like losing our homes in a financial crisis, we are shaken to the core. When a loved one is dying, we are shaken to the core. When we discover that the child we love is addicted to drugs or injured in an accident or ... or whatever it is – when the mountains collapse into the roaring, foaming sea and the earth beneath our very feet shakes, then … then we need something – then we need an antidote to our fear. Listen to these few verses again. Listen, let the words sink in: “There is a river”, verse 4, Psalm 46: There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of that city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in uproar, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice and the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. See, this is the solution to the problem – God is our refuge; God is our strength; God is our very present help in time of trouble. In other words, He is right here … right here when we need Him – no "ifs", no "buts" – right here. The problem is we can find that so hard to believe – it’s so counter intuitive – it’s so impossible. How can God possibly … possibly make a difference in the middle of my fear? Well! Gladness in the City of God In the days when this Psalm was written, nations often invaded other nations – it’s just the way it was. And of course, little has changed in this world. There are still somewhere between forty and fifty wars raging in this world today – here and now. I just had an email from one of our staff in Africa who is having difficulties getting the programme CDs through to a couple of new stations who want to air them, because of the fighting that is going on around in those areas. Back when this Psalm was written, what the people did was they fortified their cities. They built walls around them to protect them from invading armies. They built defences and towers so the cities were safe. And they were often sited strategically on hilltops or with natural obstacles around to make them much harder to attack. In fact those walls were often so strong that they were impenetrable and so armies who wanted to attack them would lay siege to them. Sieges could last weeks, months, years – the idea was to starve them out of that impenetrable citadel. We read about one such siege – if you have a Bible, open it at Second Kings in the Old Testament, chapter 6, verse 25. Let’s just read about a siege for a moment. As the siege continued, famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver and one forth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver. Now as the King of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, “Help, my lord King!” He said, “No! Let the Lord help you. How can I help you - from the threshing floor or from the wine press?” But then the King asked her, “What is your complaint?” She answered, “This woman said to me, “Give up your son; we will eat him today and we will eat my son tomorrow.” So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, “Give up your son and we will eat him,” but she has hidden her son.” When the King heard the words of the woman, he tore at his clothes. Desperate stuff, isn’t it? Can you imagine mothers eating their children and the King has no hope? And you see, when there is an army ready to strike you down; when we feel like we are under siege, as these people of Samaria were in their citadel, it’s not enough to have a safe place to flee. We need to have food and water and joy and peace in that place. You see these Samarians were under siege – they were in a safe place but they were dying of starvation – they had no hope, no joy, no peace. So many people in fear – they retreat to what they think is a safe place; they think it is – they cut other people off, they withdraw, they build defences, they close off the rest of the world and yet this is such a miserable, fearful place. People live for years under siege of fear like that and it ruins their lives. So come the next four verses of this Psalm. We looked at them earlier; we are going to look at them again now. They tell us about a place of refuge and strength that is quite different. Have a listen again. Psalm 46, beginning at verse 4 – remember the Psalmist just talked about the mountains falling into the sea and the seas foaming and this fearful thing happening. Have a listen to his answer again. But … There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God; the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of that city and it shall not be moved. God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice, and the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. See, this city … this citadel, is not just safe but it is glad: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.” A citadel, God’s protection but also God’s blessing in that place. Rivers of holy water – something Jesus talked about in John chapter 7, verse 38, the Holy Spirit flowing into us and out of us. Here, God talks about His River, of His Spirit and His joy and His peace flowing into our place of refuge when we take refuge in Him. It’s not only safe but glad because God Himself is in the midst of that city; in the midst of this place and it shall not be moved. It is rock solid! Psalm 46, verse 1 says: God is our refuge and our strength; a very present help in trouble. You know something? The worst time when we are afraid is night time – have you ever noticed that - the sleepless nights – tossing and turning and things churning around in our minds and descending into this dark pit of fear, deeper, deeper into the abyss of fear? And that’s why, here in verse 5: God will help when the morning dawns. You know that sick feeling of fear in our stomachs; when we are petrified of what will happen to us? This isn’t just for fruit cakes or losers or people who will never succeed – this is for all of us – we all go through times of fear and God wants us to hear His Words: “Do not be afraid”. There is such a sharp contrasting picture here – between the mountains collapsing into a roaring fearsome sea; between the earthshaking and on the other hand this rock solid city … this city of God into which flows the river of God’s gladness in which God Himself dwells with us. “The nations are in an uproar; the kingdoms are tottering but He utters His voice and the earth melts. The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” The nations may well be in an uproar; there may well be wars raging; the world economic system may well be in meltdown but when God speaks the earth melts – God is with us; He is our refuge. How does God speak? Through His Word! When is God speaking? Right now! God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, the mountains tremble with its tumult. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city and it shall not be moved. God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in uproar, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice and the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Problem is how do we believe that? How do we get a handle of that? How do we experience that? How can we dwell in that city of safety and gladness – come on – how? Be Still Let me ask you that same question again. The question is: how do we believe in this city of gladness? How do we get a handle on that? How do we experience that? Well, God give us the answer in the last four verses of this Psalm. Let’s take a look together: Psalm 46, verses 8 to 11: Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations He has brought on the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; He burns the shields with fire. “Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations; I am exalted in the earth.” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge When it comes to fear, we have short memories. We go through something scary and God shows up and somehow it all works out fine. Perhaps we remember to say “Thank You, God”, often we don’t. And then things calm down again. They go along just brilliantly for a while and then the next storm hits and it’s raging and we are afraid and fearful and life’s a mess and we are running around like chooks with their heads cut off and we are living through some excruciatingly debilitating, immobilising fear – fear that comes when the ground moves beneath our feet. And we forget … we forget to look back and remember all the times that God showed up and brought us through those storms before. And even if we don’t have many of those to look back on; let’s say, worse case, we have none of those to look back on – let’s assume that you and I have just, this moment, come to faith in Jesus Christ – just this moment put our lives in His hands – we’ve not experienced enough to look back on where we know that He showed up, without doubt, but He stepped in and saved us. We forget to look back on the God of the Bible and see how many times He stepped in to help His people. We do! It’s what He does! And that’s what the Psalmist is reminding us here in these words: Psalm 46, verses 8 and 9: Come, behold the works of the Lord and see what desolations He has brought on the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and shatters the spear and burns the shields with fire. God is saying, “Don’t you realise that this is what I do? I protect My people. I make sure that it all works out. Get a handle on this!” "But God, how ... how can I get a handle on this? You don’t understand; I’ve got all this pain happening. I’ve got all this fear happening. People are after me – my finances are in a mess. My loved ones are sick. My emotions are on a rollercoaster. The mountains are falling into the sea. The sea is angry and foaming and the ground is shaking and the nations are raging ... how do I get a handle on this?" Here’s the answer, right here in God’s Word – listen to it, remember it, let the Spirit of God write it on your heart. Psalm 46, verse 10: Be still and know that I am God! For I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth. It sounds so simple, “Be still and just know.” But you know something? When we are afraid often the last thing we do is get still before God. Even when we are praying, we rant on and we don’t shut up for long enough to hear Him speak - over and over and over again, I have had to learn this one. I’m like you – this doesn’t come naturally. It is something I have had to learn – when I am travelling through fearful places and situations and times, more than ever, those are the times to take the time to get still before the Lord. Not just once, not just twice ... every morning; every time fear grips our hearts – just to draw away for a few minutes and just rest and say, "Lord, just speak to me – just witness Your Spirit to me. Just give me your peace. Lord, I’m here, I’m afraid, I just need to get still before You." I want to open a few simple passages … passages that God put there to write His faith into our hearts. We are going at these passages a whole bunch more next week on the programme. This particular Psalm is a favourite of mine – I come back to Psalm 46 again and again when I’m in one of those places of fear and turmoil. But listen to Philippians chapter 4, verse 13: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Romans chapter 8, verse 31: For if God is for us, who can be against us? Now when we just get still before God, those two verses are so short, even I can memorise them. Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Romans chapter 8, verse 31: If God is for us, who can be against us? When we get still before God and we let those two Scriptures ring out in our heart, watch out devil; watch out fear because they are going to go away. When we just get still and focus on God and wait, day after day, wait! Because of what Psalm 46 tells me is the reality of God’s gladness and His power and His protection – that He is so far above my circumstances. What Philippians chapter 4 tells me – that I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. What Romans chapter 8, verse 31 tells me – that if God is for me, who can be against me? See, God’s Word promises us this! And then, it tells me just to sit still and wait and you know what happens when I do that? I experience the confidence that I need to make it through – not self-confidence, God confidence. I get a handle of the great unseen reality – God Himself – His power flows into me and through me. His peace guards my heart and mind and all of a sudden the panic goes away. All of a sudden the fear is replaced with faith. All of a sudden I have the clarity to think through the problem and to face realities and to do what I have to do and to trust in God for the things that I can’t do. Let me tell you, ten minutes later – half an hour later, half a day later – the panic wants to come back; the fear wants to come back and when they come knocking on the door of my heart, I get still with God again – I go back to Him again. I wait on Him, expecting and waiting – that’s what it means to live in that city and to drink of the streams of that river that make glad the city of God. We need to drink … drink Him in; His presence; His Spirit; His Word and then a peace that surpasses all understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Be still and know that I am God.
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The Battle Belongs to the Lord // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 2
07/19/2026
The Battle Belongs to the Lord // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 2
Most times, we end up fighting our own battles. But sometimes, the opposition is just – well, it’s overwhelming. Then what? Well that’s when we can discover that the battle, belongs to the Lord. I Can Do Anything I Want In this day and age one of the things that they teach us is to be self reliant. To have confidence in our own abilities. You can do anything you set your mind to they tell us. You can make it, it’s all up to you. That’s ok to a point I guess. It’s a good thing to have some confidence in who we are that God made us to be. But you can take this idea too far and it will bring you undone. The positive turns into a terrible negative. See what happens, when the situation we’re in or the circumstances that we’re facing are so far beyond our ability to deal with them, that any idea of self reliance is completely ridiculous. What happens when the problem confronting us requires skills and abilities that we don’t have. What happens when the career we’ve chosen just doesn’t fit who we are? What happens when the one we love, our wife or our husband or one of our children is going through some tough times. Something that as much as we love them, we can’t seem to be able to help them through. An illness, a depression, a crisis. And nothing we can say or nothing we can do seems to make any difference. Well, then what? What happens when a tsunami hits our lives? What do we do when the enemy that gathers around us completely outnumbers and outguns us? Come on. Then what do we do? And this isn’t some theoretical exercise. This is life. It’s my life and it’s your life. Because this happens. It’s real. There are times in our lives when the enemy whoever or whatever that is, when the enemy is so much bigger than our ability to survive. It happens in families. It happens in work places. And it happens in our hearts. When sickness hits for no good reason. When a loved one is taken in their prime and the grief overwhelms us. When a marriage falls apart. It happens when retrenchment hits. When the economy takes a nose-dive. When their isn’t enough food to feed the family. When people betray us. This is life. It’s real life. Let me ask you something. When the enemy is so much bigger and so much stronger than anything that you or I could ever handle, what do we do? Some people panic and they run around in ever decreasing circles wasting their precious energy on panicking. You’ve seen it I’ve seen it. You know we’ve both probably been their too. Some people pull over and stop because they’re immobilised by fear. That’s what happens you know. But neither of those things cut the mustard. Neither of them help. Running around like a headless chook. It’s exhausting. Wallowing in self pity is destructive. What do we do? See I’m a pretty self-reliant kind of guy. I like to think that I can handle most things. BUT – there are times when things happen that are completely and utterly beyond anything I can handle. And in those times to hang on to this notion of self-reliance, this delusion of “I can do anything”, that will only make it worse. It’s OK to believe in ourselves but the reality is that sometimes, maybe this time, we can’t swim against this tsunami. It’s too big. It’s too scary. I was talking the other day with a young woman. She’s extremely competent and confident in her field. Professionally she’s a class act in every way that you can imagine. We got onto the fact that she had a couple of young kids. And her demeanour changed. See, as someone who’s got kids and now they’re all grown up, I’m well and truly past the stresses and the strains of bringing up young children. I love telling parents, “Don’t worry it’s the first 25 years that are the hardest. After that it’s a piece of baklava!” It’s my, I guess it’s my gift of encouragement. Right?” But like any young mother, this motherhood thing was a struggle for this competent, professional woman. It’s so tiring. There is so much that is new and is challenging. There’s so much in bringing up kids. It’s beyond our control. That’s the key isn’t it. When we’re dealing with things that are under our control and we happen to have the skills and the ability and the inclination to control them, well, it’s all good isn’t it. But the further things are out of our control the more they look like that tsunami and that wave that we can’t ride. Then, then it gets scary. I want to introduce you today to one of the kings in Israel’s history. Actually he’s the king of a couple of the tribes of Israel, Judah and Benjamin. His name was Jehoshaphat. Ok it’s a long name. We don’t use that kind of name these days. But he was definitely one of the good guys. And there was a time when he was confronted with an enemy that was way, way, way beyond his ability to fight and defeat. Let’s pick up the story in 2nd Chronicles Chapter 20 verse 1. After this the Moabites and Ammonites, and with them some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat for battle. Messengers came and told Jehoshaphat, “A great multitude is coming against you from Edom, from beyond the sea; already they are at Engedi. Jehoshaphat was afraid; See this was an army much bigger than his own. The odds were completely overwhelming and Jehoshaphat were facing absolutely certain defeat. To the king that meant death for his people it meant death or slavery or loss of all their possessions and land. Probably rape for the woman. The higher the stakes are the scarier it gets, doesn’t it? And for Jehoshaphat the stakes couldn’t have been higher. He was in that place well and truly that you and I find ourselves in for time to time. I just want to establish here that old king Jehoshaphat, well he was human like you and me. He’s not some super-human king. There were armies coming in against him. He was completely outnumbered and outgunned. This was a life and death situation and it says Jehoshaphat was afraid. Jehoshaphat is just one of us. I remember as a young boy going to the dentist. I’d walk in the front door and there was this staircase leading up to the dentist. And the smell of the dental surgery the moment you walked in the door. And their was a knot in my stomach sitting in the waiting room. Fear is something that disables us. It’s not good for anyone when we’re disabled by fear. It’s not good for ourselves, it’s not good for God. It’s not good for those who need our help. Jehoshaphat was afraid. But it’s what he did in his fear that made all the difference and we’re going to take a look at that in just a moment What Happens When I Can’t? Well let's get back into God’s word and take a look at what happened king Jehoshaphat. What he was facing in this completely overwhelming odds. Have a listen. We’re starting, if you have a bible grab it, in 2 Chronicles chapter 20 beginning at verse 3: Jehoshaphat was afraid; he set himself to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. Judah assembled to seek help from the LORD; from all the towns of Judah they came to seek the LORD. Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD, before the new court, and said, “O LORD, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you. Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? They have lived in it, and in it have built you a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house, and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and save.’ See now, the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy— they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” Meanwhile all Judah stood before the LORD, with their little ones, their wives, and their children. See Jehoshaphat didn’t let his fear immobilise him. He didn’t get into a flap or into a panic in the face of overwhelming odds he turned to God. Sometimes that’s the only way that God gets our attention. I’d like to be able to tell you that I first turned to God because I was wise and loving and understood that Jesus is the Son of God. But if I told you that I would be lying. I needed to be hit across the back of the head with a lump of four by two for God to get my attention. Overwhelming odds. That’s what did it for me. I turned to God in the middle of fear. And for me it was the last resort but for Jehoshaphat God was his first port of call. Now a king is supposed to have all the answers. A King like Jehoshaphat should have a powerful army and contingency plans based on a comprehensive threat assessment. He should be self-reliant. A man for the people to respect and to follow and to trust for their safety and their future, but listen again to what Jehoshaphat says when he’s praying to God in 2nd Chronicles Chapter 20 verse 12: O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. I relate to this. When I stepped out of the secure, well-paid job as a consultant into full time ministry, that was a step of faith. Leaving security behind to serve God and I can’t begin to tell you how many times since then I have been in that place that Jehoshaphat and his people were in. See I started out with this naive notion that if I was going to be about God’s work, well lit should be easy. And yet so many times people and circumstances have conspired to be against God’s work. Every couple of years our board gets together to do some strategic planning. That’s important and the strategic plan always looks good on paper. Gives us a sense of what direction we think that God wants us to head in. And then invariably all hell breaks loose because the enemy wants to overwhelm us. He doesn’t want to see God’s will done here on earth as it is in heaven. And that’s what’s going on with Jehoshaphat and Judah. Remember these are God’s chosen people. The king honoured God and by all accounts and by all accounts he was wise and competent. But in the face of overwhelming odds he admitted to God, “We do know what to do.” So was the solution How did he cope with this? And the same sentence, the same breath, he says “but our eyes are on You.” I wonder sometimes when I see people who profess to believe in Jesus running around in panic wasting so much of their energy complaining and worrying and being afraid. See, it takes a lot of energy to be afraid, you realise. I wonder if they spent even half that amount of their energy having their eyes on God, how much better off they’d be. You and I, we can’t help but be afraid. Jehoshaphat was afraid. It’s a natural human, reaction. I’m not here to tell you somehow to pretend that you're not afraid when fear is rocking you to the very core. That’s ridiculous. But it’s what we do when fear strikes that makes all the difference. When we panic we burn energy, when we frozen and immobilised that’s probably the end of us. That’s what fear does. Stop’s us dead in our tracks. We go nowhere. Had Jehoshaphat done that, he and all his people would have been dead literally. Or we can just turn and look at God. “You know something Lord, this is so huge, I just know what to do but my eyes, my eyes are on you. I’m just going to wait on you. I don’t know what you are going to do, I don’t even know if you are going to show up, but no matter what, my eyes are on you.” And here’s the bit that blows me away about this story. It’s this. That God wasn’t Jehoshaphat’s last resort. God was his first port of call. He trusted in the sovereign grace of God. Jehoshaphat was afraid, but he set himself to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. I wonder how different if things would be amidst our fear, if instead of running around and spending all that energy on panic or instead of running to the phone to talk to a friend, if we first ran to God. If the very first thing we did was to take stock and in our hearts, deep inside somewhere – decided to set ourselves to seek the Lord? God, the first point of call, rather than the last resort! A Powerful Outcome So how did it end? Was Jehoshaphat’s trust misplaced or well placed? Let's take a look. 2 Chronicle 20 beginning at verse 14: Then the spirit of the LORD came upon Jahaziel son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jeiel, son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the middle of the assembly. He said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the LORD to you: ‘Do not fear or be dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s. Tomorrow go down against them; they will come up by the ascent of Ziz; you will find them at the end of the valley, before the wilderness of Jeruel. This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the LORD will be with you.” Then Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face to the ground, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the LORD, worshiping the LORD. And the Levites, of the Kohathites and the Korahites, stood up to praise the LORD, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice. They rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa; and as they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, O Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Believe in the LORD your God and you will be established; believe his prophets.” When he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and praise him in holy splendor, as they went before the army, saying, “Give thanks to the LORD, for his steadfast love endures forever.” As they began to sing and praise, the LORD set an ambush against the Ammonites, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed. For the Ammonites and Moab attacked the inhabitants of Mount Seir, destroying them utterly; and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another. When Judah came to the watchtower of the wilderness, they looked toward the multitude; they were corpses lying on the ground; no one had escaped. When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take the booty from them, they found livestock in great numbers, goods, clothing, and precious things, which they took for themselves until they could carry no more. They spent three days taking the booty, because of its abundance. Unbelievable I hear you say. How could this possibly happen?? I’ll tell you how. Because Jehoshaphat decided that he would stand and wait on God - no matter what the outcome! That’s the key. That’s the faith that God was looking for. No matter what the outcome. Let’s take another look. 2 Chronicles 20:9-12: If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house, and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and save. See now, the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy – they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. This is the do or die faith that God is looking for. When we place our faith in God in this way – for things that are completely out of our control – right when that tsunami hits His Spirit and His Word come along and witness His truth to us: This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the LORD on your behalf.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the LORD will be with you.” (2 Chronicles 20:17) Listen to me. Have you put your trust in Jesus Christ? Have you? Then those times of fear are times when we discover what a beautiful thing it is to trust in the Lord, no matter what is coming against us. No matter what the world throws at us. No matter how overwhelming the odds might be. Those times are the times that we get to stand still and discover in our very own experience that the battle isn’t our it’s not ours at all. But the battle belongs to the Lord. Can I encourage you that if you feel right now that you’re on death row, as though there is no tomorrow, to listen to the words of apostle Paul from his dungeon as he writes in Philippians Chapter 4 beginning at verse 6: Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. See that’s the word of the Lord for us today. Jehoshaphat knew it and learned it again in his experience. The people of Judah learned it again under the leadership of Jehoshaphat. This overwhelming army came against them. They couldn’t win. It was a no win situation. And they discovered afresh and anew the battle was not theirs but the battle belonged to the Lord. And they listened to God through His prophets when he said, “Stand still to see and to watch what the Lord would do for you.” Can I encourage you today to remember the battle is not yours. The battle belongs to the Lord. Stand still and watch to see what the Lord will do for you.
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The World's a Scary Place // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 1
07/12/2026
The World's a Scary Place // Do Not Be Afraid, Part 1
The world can be a scary place – so many things that strike fear in our hearts. And yet over and over again, God says “Do Not be Afraid.” What does that mean? How does that work? Spiders and Snakes I don’t know about you but as I look around, it seems to me that the world can be a scary place. Take spiders and snakes – I mean, depending on where you live in this world, they are either dangerous or they’re not. Here in Australia we are seriously over represented in the world’s "top ten" list of most venomous creatures, so when I was growing up as a child I had good reason to be afraid of them. And still today, the idea of a spider crawling into my bed … ! It’s one of the scariest thoughts I can come up with. Let me tell you a funny story. One of the most venomous snakes on the planet is the death adder – great name isn’t it? When I was in the Army training to be an officer at the Royal Military College Duntroon, we were one day out doing some grenade practice and that meant you had to sit in bunkers and the person who was throwing the grenade would go out and throw their grenade. Now we had New Zealanders as well as Australians at the Royal Military College and in New Zealand there are no venomous animals at all, so when the Kiwis come across the ditch to Australia, they are petrified of our snakes and our spiders. Well one Kiwi, we’ll call him Rock – I’ve got to tell you this death adder story. He went out of the bunker to go and throw his grenade and we had a dead death adder. So we positioned it in the bunker so he had to sit down right next to it when he came in. Well he came in and he sat down and he looked at it and I’ve got to tell you, his legs were going before his backside was up off the log and he was running out. We can laugh about it now but the world can be a scary place, especially with friends like me. In my defence I was a young man at the time. So this week we are starting a new series on the programme, it’s called “Do Not be Afraid”. There is a reason for that – there are lots of people in this world who spend much of their lives living in fear. Sometimes it’s because they are living in a war zone – I mean there are plenty of people listening to this programme today who know that only too well. People in the Democratic Republic of Congo for instance, where there is war raging in parts right now – some of those people are sitting in their homes listening to this programme today wondering whether they will see tomorrow or next week or next year. Other times there are different life threatening things that happen. We can have a health scare. The morning I sat down to prepare this message was the morning of the funeral of a friend of mine. Now, he was just a couple of years older than me and he died suddenly of a heart attack. It’s easy to be afraid – and it rocks our confidence. And yet other people, they just live lives with a real sense of dread. There is always something there for us to be afraid of or to dread. There is always something lurking out there. For me honestly, if I allowed it, I could be afraid of quite a few things. I mean, I have some things in my life right now that could cause me to experience fear – and that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter who we are or where we live or … whatever, we all go through times of fear. And that fear can rob us of life itself but time and time and time again, you read in God’s Word, these words from God to His people. He says, “Do not be afraid.” And He speaks them right at the time when the people He is talking to have every reason to be afraid. They have got people and circumstances coming against them and conspiring against them and they’re experiencing fear and yet God wades in and says, “Do not be afraid.” Now if God doesn’t want me to be afraid when I have every reason to be afraid, you know something? I want to have a piece of His brand of confidence. Don’t you think? I mean, think about it! What’s the point of God saying, “Do not be afraid”, when we have no reason to fear? It’s right in the middle of our fear that we need His confidence. I definitely want that – how about you? Well, how can we have that confidence? That’s a good question – that’s what today’s programme is about – that’s what this whole four week series is about … ”Do not be afraid.” So I invite you to come on a journey with me. We are going to start that journey with an account of a time when God’s chosen people, Israel, had every reason to be afraid. They were in exile – they had been living in the Promised Land for about five hundred years and yet they had struggled with God. They had worshipped idols and other gods and eventually the Lord their God lost His patience. So in around 586BC, the Babylonians, who were the dominant world power of the day, invaded Jerusalem. They destroyed the place – they destroyed the temple, the place where God’s presence dwelt and they took this remnant of God’s people back to Babylon as slaves. Talk about a crisis of confidence! Think about it – God made all these promises to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob and then when Israel was enslaved in Egypt, He sent Moses and did amazing miracles and the whole Red Sea thing and the exodus and the manna from heaven … everything that got them to the Promised Land. And when they got there, with Joshua as their leader, they fought battle after battle against nation after nation that was bigger and stronger than Israel itself and yet God was with His chosen people and they took the land that God had promised them. And now … now Babylon wins! God’s own temple is destroyed! Where is God? What happened? Are the Babylonian gods stronger than our God? They have a loss of confidence – it’s a big thing. I mean we hear people talking about shareholder confidence and consumer confidence and that feeling when you go to sleep at night, you know, you get that falling sensation and you wake up in a panic, grabbing onto the bed. Confidence is the trust that the earth beneath our feet won’t move. It’s the trust that the stock market won’t fall; it’s the trust that the plane we are flying in won’t fall off the sky; it’s the trust that our governments will do the right thing – it’s about trusting, whatever. And then, it’s like the rug gets pulled out from under your feet and you lose confidence and panic and fear set in. Why? Because we no longer feel safe – we are no longer able to trust in the things that we have always trusted in. That’s where Israel was – there was a complete loss of confidence in their God. Now He was punishing them but they couldn’t quite see that. It was like they were flying in a plane at thirty two thousand feet above the ground and all of a sudden, all the engines are silent – panic, fear! And fair enough too! So what does God say to them right in the middle of their fear and panic ... what does God have to say? We are going to take a look at that next. I am Your God So here is Israel in this scary, fearful place. They have in slavery, exiled in Babylon for the best part of three generations – that’s a long time – so only a handful of Israel’s elders who can even remember Jerusalem in its heyday. So what does God have to say to these people of His who are cowering in fear under the yoke of slavery? If you have got a Bible, grab it and open it up at Isaiah chapter 41, beginning at verse 8 – he says this: But you Israel, My servant Jacob whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, My friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest corner, saying to you, “You are My servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off. Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My victorious right hand. See, the first thing that God does is He reminds them of His promises to Abraham. When Abraham stood in that Promised Land, centuries before, this is what God promised him – just flick back to Genesis chapter 15, verse 18: On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, “To your descendants I give this land; from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Rephaim and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites. See, God’s promise is that God had chosen them; God had chosen Abraham, their ancestor, God had promised this land and God said, “I will do this.” Notice it is all about God! Do not fear, I am with you; I am your God; I will strengthen you. I will help you; I will uphold you with My victorious right hand. The whole thing that God relies on here in talking to His people in their fear and in their despair, is not who they are or how strong they are or how clever they are, or how well they have done because they haven’t, they are there being punished. No, He is saying to them, “Look who I am, My promise, I am your God, I am with you,” but how does that help them? Isn’t He the God who failed them seventy years earlier? Okay, so He sends them some prophet, Isaiah, to tell them this – BIG DEAL! And that may well be what you are going through right now. You look at your circumstances – they are so fearful! Okay, so God sends you some joker on the radio with a smooth voice who says "Do not be afraid", but how can you put your confidence in that? It was exactly the same problem that the Israelites had. Their circumstances, the Babylonians, looked so much bigger than their God. I mean, you think about it in your head and you know God is bigger than the things that we are confronting but in your heart, it’s so hard to believe in your heart – the fear is destroying any confidence that you might have in God. God knew that – that’s why He also said this to them: have a listen to this … this is powerful stuff! So let’s pick it up in Isaiah chapter 40 – this is the chapter before the one we have been looking at, verse 18. Have a listen to what God says about Himself: To whom then were you likening God or what likeness compare with Him, an idol? A workman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. As a gift one chooses mulberry wood – wood that will not rot – then seeks out a skilled artisan to set up an image that will not topple. Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? Hasn’t it been told to you from the beginning? Haven’t you understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches the heavens out like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to nothing and makes rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely are they sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when He blows upon them and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble. “To whom then will you compare Me, or who is My equal?” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them by name, because He is great in strength and mighty in power, not one of them is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord and my right is disregarded by my God?” Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint and grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable.” Do you see how powerful this is? God is saying, "Look, I am God. I created the whole shooting match. See those trillions of stars up there – lift up your eyes, have a look, who do you reckon put them there? I know the Babylonians worship them but I created them. They are out there every night because I tell them to march out there. This is Me who is talking to you – not some crummy idol like the stuff that Babylonians worship – I am bigger than your circumstances. It makes absolute sense to put your confidence in Me.' See, God is speaking this stuff into the hearts of His people when they are afraid; when they have no hope and no future, God comes along and says, “Do not be afraid. Not because of who you are; not because of your circumstances, no, do not be afraid because of who I am. I will come to help you; I will fight your battles for you; I will be your God; I will keep My promises to you." A Part for God to Play The hardest thing I think in overcoming fear in life is actually getting to the point where we have a high level of confidence in God; in who God is, what He has done – His might and His power and His sovereignty. That all sounds great in theory but what about the practice; what about when the rubber hits the road, then what? See, I used to think it was up to me and I guess in part it is, but not completely. That’s just as well because you and I, we’re human. We can’t conjure up confidence; we can’t take this theory about who God is and let the theory somehow wipe away the fear because fear is real. Now, I need something more than that; I need something more than promises on paper and fortunately, that’s exactly what God had planned too. He didn’t want to leave it all up to us – He wants us to actually experience His peace – not our strength – but a "peace" and a "strength" that come from Him and Him alone. Let’s pick up the rest of this story in Isaiah chapter 40, beginning at verse 28. This is what it says: Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. Great, there was the theory again! But now, watch for what comes next! Verse 29: He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Do you see the point? The power and the strength, where do they come from – do you or I conjure them up? No, they come from God. He gives those things to us, why? Even youths will faint and be weary and the young and the strong will fall exhausted, but…..” And here’s the ‘but’ – the glorious, wondrous, powerful ‘but,’ “but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not grow faint." You know what it means to wait? It does not mean to wait with a bad attitude; it does not mean to wait with grumbling in our hearts and on our lips; it doesn’t mean to stand there paralysed by fear either. No, it means to wait expectantly; to wait on God with the expectation that He is who He says He is and that He will do what He says He is going to do. To wait, right in the middle of our fear – boy that’s hard – with our emotions on a rollercoaster; with our enemies around us; with our hearts cast down but with an expectation, never the less, that somewhere deep inside, that God is going to act. Who knows – will God give us victory over our enemies today? I don’t know! I mean there were more Christians martyred in the twentieth century than in the whole two thousand years before that, combined. We all die sometimes – is He going to heal this cancer or let it take its course? I don’t know! But this one thing I do know, that: those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. God is saying, indeed He is commanding us through His Word today, “Do not be afraid” instead, wait on Him. You know, when we are waiting in fear and when we are waiting in pain and when we are waiting and it is uncomfortable and unpleasant, we want to grumble and whinge and complain and blame everyone else and have bad stuff coming out of our mouths and have grumbling in our hearts … isn’t that what we want to do? We don’t like being uncomfortable; we don’t like being afraid, we just want it all to finish – "God what are You doing? Come on, move along, let’s get over this." But those who wait….who wait expectantly for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. See, come what may, if I am diagnosed tomorrow with terminal cancer, I still am going to put my confidence in God who has given me a life eternal with Him. Because Jesus said to His disciples when they were afraid…..listen to this, John chapter 14, verse 27: Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I don’t give it to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not let them be afraid. And yet, so far as we know, each of these disciples, other than Judas, went on to do mighty things for God and then … then they died for their faith. So often, we are focused on the here and now but God’s plan for my life and for your life is a life eternal. God’s perspective is an eternal perspective and that … that my friend is why you and I can put our confidence in Him. When we are afraid ... when we are in this place that is so scary, we can go to His Word and say, "You know what it says – it says here that 'those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength'.” You know, you never feel big; you never feel strong when you are waiting for God. When we are afraid we feel so small – you know, I think God means it to be that way. When we humble ourselves and we just come before God and say, "God, I can’t do this. I don’t know. I’m afraid; I don’t know what to do next. I’m just going to wait on You. I’m just going to wait for You – I don’t know what You are going to do – I don’t know if You are going to show up, I don’t know if You are going to talk, I don’t know. I am going to put my faith in You and I am going to wait on You and I know my emotions are going to go up and down. I know it is going to be hard but I’m just going to wait for my God." That’s an eternal perspective – that’s a God perspective. Jesus had to put His faith in God. Jesus lay all His glory aside and He was there in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before He was crucified – struggling – He was afraid and He was hurting and He just put His trust in God. Do not be afraid. God gives us His peace; that’s what this passage from Isaiah says: “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength,” the strength comes from God. The "mounting up with eagles" doesn’t come because we flap a lot; it comes because we waited on God. The ‘running and not being weary’ comes from God. “Do not be afraid” – take God’s peace from Him – go and wait ... just go and wait before Him and let Him pour His love and His peace into your life. It doesn’t matter how big or bad or ugly the enemy is. It doesn’t matter how fearful we are. It doesn’t matter how dire the consequences of this particular situation might be. Why? Because God is the God who created the whole shooting match – every star in the sky, every part of creation -–God created it. God has an eternal perspective and when we wait on Him, He gives us His peace. That’s the promise my friend! “Do not be afraid.” Let your confidence rest in God Himself and then, let Him do the rest. Wait on the Lord and you shall renew your strength. Wait on the Lord and you shall mount up with wings like an eagle. That’s the promise – it’s a God thing!
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How to Overcome Selfishness and Conquer the Flesh // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 4
07/05/2026
How to Overcome Selfishness and Conquer the Flesh // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 4
Our self-life – self-indulgence, self-preservation, self-gratification – our self-life, as it turns out is a tyrant that robs us of real life. The life that Jesus has for us. And I believe that this selfishness, this craving of the flesh is something that Jesus came to set us free from. OVERCOMING SELFISHNESS Selfishness is a word that we are all too familiar with but I wonder how often we stop to think about what it actually means! Self–ish-ness ... it’s about our tendency to put ourselves, our needs, our plans, our reputations before other people. Problem is, we notice when other people are being selfish to us – we notice when they put themselves and their own interests before ours but we rarely notice when the shoe is on the other foot. We rarely notice when it’s us who are being selfish. In fact, for most of my life, I never once thought of myself as being selfish when the reality was that ‘self’ was all I was interested in. How about you? How often do you think of yourself being selfish as opposed to other people being selfish towards you? That’s why selfishness is such an insidious sin. It rears its ugly head all too often without us ever really noticing that we are the ones being selfish. And this putting of self above and before other people – it takes so many different forms. Whenever my interests are more important to me than your interests, the easiest thing in the world is to put mine before yours and that ... that’s what we call selfishness. Over the last three weeks on the programme we have been chatting about overcoming stubborn sin and I know that there are a few people who might squirm at that little word "sin". I used to too. I thought of it as an outdated, irrelevant, judgemental, religious term that, frankly, belonged in the lexicon of those doddering old folk I saw wandering in and out of those places they call "church", and that ... that is a deception that the devil was happy for me to live under for many years. But "sin" – it’s a very simple concept: it’s falling short of all the good and wonderful things that God has planned for our lives. It’s missing the whole point and the point is that God wants us to enjoy Him and worship Him and glorify Him with our lives and that brings such a great source of delight and wonder and peace and joy to us. It’s the way things are meant to be, now and for all eternity – through every up and every down – every mountain top experience and every trial and temptation and hurt this world has to offer. And so those "sins" that are particularly stubborn, that one sin that keeps coming back again and again and again, is Satan’s messenger to torments us; to try and rob us of the abundant life that God has planned for us. And this one, selfishness, is one that so many people suffer from. It’s one that used to be right up there right on top of my list too. I couldn’t see what was wrong with it either. I worked hard, I applied myself and I’m this outcome focused person who drives hard at life to achieve what I set out to achieve – my agenda, my success, my way or the highway. So what’s wrong with getting my way? If other people want to get their way, well, they should be like me, otherwise tough, right? That’s the world’s template for success – climb over whoever you have to; roll over the top of whoever you have to; crash through whoever you have to, to get to wherever you are going. And here’s how it changed for me. There were two parts – one to do with my heart, the other to do with my hands. In other words one part to do with my motivation and the other part to do with my practical "doing" – how I lived that out. I was always after greatness – I wanted people to recognise who I was; to recognise my achievements. And I, like most of the rest of the world, thought that that was about getting ‘my’ way and other people going "WOW!" isn’t he fantastic? Ha, well, that a deception; that’s a lie, because it doesn’t work that way. Jesus, in what the theologians called the ‘Great Denunciation’ in Matthew chapter 23, where He rips into the religious leaders of the day; people who were selfish and were ripping off those in their charge. Right in the middle of His vehement argument against their hypocrisy and selfishness, Jesus has this to say - He says: The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves, will be exalted. That’s Matthew chapter 23, verses 11 and 12. Now, I thought about that a lot and the truth of that first sentence really ... really started to do its work in me. “The greatest among you will be your servant.” The greatest people in my life; the ones whom I truly value and honour and respect are the ones who have served me more than all the others. There’s a man called Graham. He was a Colonel in the Army when I was a young Captain. Together Graham and I and another man, Mark, left the Army and formed an Information Technology consulting firm. Now Graham is not only intellectually one of the smartest people I know, but he has a deep wisdom about life; about dealing with other people – about all sorts of things. Now he’s twenty years my senior and over a period of seventeen years when we worked together in this consulting firm, he was my mentor; my teacher. He taught me how to listen, how not to roll over the top of people, how to influence instead of control. He taught me any number of things – many of those come out through these radio programmes, day after day, week after week, all these years later. He served me, even when I was young and precocious; even when I didn’t deserve it. Ask me who are amongst the greatest people in my life and he is right up there. Once I figured out the deep truth of what Jesus said: “The greatest among you will be your servant,” my motivations changed. And then ... then it was time to live that out, minute by minute, relationship by relationship, interaction by interaction. And here’s what I discovered when I took my selfishness out of the equation; when I no longer had to win every time and get my way every time, all of a sudden life became much easier. James chapter 3, verse 16: For when there is envy and selfish ambition there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. And that is absolutely right! Take away the selfishness and instead of disorder and wickedness, what you get, nine times out of ten, is peace. Once I learned to collaborate instead of obliterate, WOW, what a great way to live your life! You know why ultimately, selfishness has become one of the easiest of my stubborn sins to give up? You know why? Because the rewards are so great and they are pretty much instant. Stop the selfishness and conflict reduces, peace increases, relationships improve and it happens quickly. And after a while it’s really easy to get addicted to those rewards. You know, I’m wondering if that isn’t what God planned all along. Have a listen to a bit more of what James chapter 3 says – verses 16 to 18: For where there is envy or selfish ambition there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. When we give up our selfishness, we are sowing peace and whatever we sow we will reap – we’ll reap a harvest which is peace. This really works. OVERCOMING THE FLESH Well, I don’t know about you, but for me this last few weeks on the programme, where we’ve been looking at overcoming stubborn sin, once and for all – it’s been a real challenge and for me too, a breath of fresh air. See, as we have travelled through God’s Word, you know what’s really leapt out for me? The truth that Jesus truly does want to set us free from the terrible effects of those stubborn sins that linger on in our lives. How many people I know – I was just sitting the other day having coffee with a man; a really successful businessman who was telling me about something in his life – a stubborn sin. And as successful as he was in business, he completely resigned himself to the fact – as least he thought it was a fact – that this stubborn sin would never go away. He was utterly convinced of it. Man, that is such a tragedy! Does that mean, he believes that when it comes to that one particular stubborn sin, that Jesus died and rose again in vain? Does he believe that the cross of Christ is mighty and powerful and able to save everyone and everything except him from that one sin? Evidently so! Well, let me be perfectly blunt – too many people for too long have been living with stubborn sin; destructive patterns of behaviour that they could be completely free of through a simple, yet tenacious faith in Jesus Christ. Today, right now, I want to show you that this truth is for you too. But here’s the problem: so many people want a foot in each camp. They want to be free of the destructive effects of stubborn sin, but they don’t want to pay the price of letting it go. Let me paint a picture for you. The man who works in a company; he’s incredibly competent at what he does – he knows his job backwards and as it turns out, his skills and knowledge and abilities are invaluable to his employer – BUT he’s incredibly critical. No one else can ever do the job to his standards and so he complains about people – he almost always has a bad attitude, he grumbles and because no one else can do things to his standard, he becomes a control freak. So, valuable as he may well be to his employer, he just doesn’t have any friends at work. When people organise to go out to lunch together, they somehow ... forget to invite him. The others seem to laugh together and enjoy each other’s company but he’s is always on the outer. He knows deep inside, that his attitudes are robbing him of those relationships. But the truth is, he’s not prepared to let go of the bad attitudes and the destructive behaviour that is robbing him of life. And that’s what happens! See, we justify our own sin to ourselves and we want to be rid of its effects – we just don’t want to have to pay the price of letting the sin go out of our lives. Huh, does this sound familiar? We’re double minded about our sin. We want a foot in both camps – we want to be free but we just don’t want to let go. Now, here’s the question – how to we take this decisive step to let go of the sin? How? Well, I believe that what’s required is a decisive step; a firm decision; a firm resolve in Christ to make a change. And if you know you have been double minded; if you know that you have been struggling, trying to have one foot in each camp and it hasn’t been working, I want to share this powerful few verses from the Word of God with you. Because I believe that through them the Spirit of God is going to help you to decide, once and for all, to let go of whatever stubborn sin has been tearing your life apart. I’m reading from Romans chapter 13, beginning at verse 9: The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up by this word, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Here’s what God is saying to us through the Apostle Paul and this chapter from Romans: you know all the obvious rules; the ones we just can’t seem to keep because of the stubborn sin in our lives. You want to know what they boil down to? Love the people around you; just love them the way God loves you and then He allowed His Son Jesus to be brutally nailed to that cross for you. Let me ask you: can you do that? Are you prepared to love others the way Jesus loved you? That’s the question God’s asking each one of us right now. “Take a good hard look at My Son, nailed hands and feet to the cross,” God’s saying, “gasping for breath, dying, bearing the price of your sin in His flesh that you might be forgiven. Take a good, hard look. Now, tell Me, now that you have seen My great love for you, will you love others with that same love with which I loved you? The day’s coming; the time of your salvation is much, much closer than you might imagine. It is time ... it’s time My child, for you to live in that light, to lay aside the works of your darkness and put on the armour of light. Replace whatever sin it is that’s tearing you apart, replace it with a love that you have in My Son, Jesus Christ.” Here’s the problem: God’s saying through this passage: you have been making provision for your flesh to gratify your worldly desires. It is time ... it is time for you, for each one of us to decide instead to clothe ourselves in Christ – to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and stop making provisions for your flesh – stop pandering to your desires. And this, my friend, is the crunch point: we start off with all these great intentions ... ”No, no, I won’t be selfish anymore; no, no, I won’t get involved in sexual immorality anymore; no, no, I won’t let anger ruin my life” ... but then ... then the flesh cries out. See, the flesh never wants to let go; it never wants to die to self and when it hurts; when it screams out; when we can’t get the gratification that we have become addicted to ... a gratification no less destructive than heroin or ice, mind you, when we can’t get it anymore, what we do is pander to the flesh. And just continue on that downward spiral of self destruction that sin is all about. Today ... today, God is calling you and me to a decisive point in our lives. Listen again to the very call of God to you and to me – listen, allow it to rest on your heart. Romans chapter 13, verse 14: Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Now I have a question – as the Holy Spirit takes that Scripture and begins to do His work in your heart by it, are you prepared to make the decision to die to self – to stop making provision for the flesh each time it cries out and once and for all, clothe yourselves in Jesus Christ? Because that’s what God is calling each one of us to do. I can’t answer that call for you, only you can. As you stand and behold the Lamb of God, suffering on that cross for you, let me ask you this: do you hear His call? "Die to self and come ... come and enjoy the new life that My Son died to give to you." Do you see how much God loves you? "Come! Do you hear the call? How do you answer? THAT WE MAY STAND As we come to the end of this four week series “Overcoming Stubborn Sin Once and For All”, I know that there is still some among us, whilst they hunger in their hearts after God, find that something ... an elusive something is holding them back. Something is not quite right. If that’s what going on inside you right now, then you should not be surprised – you’re not alone. There is indeed an elusive something holding back many a man and many a woman – holding them back from giving their lives; all of who they are over to God - holding them back from letting go of this stubborn sin that has been ruling their lives all too long. I’m going to read something to you that was written by the well known author A.W. Tozer in the mid-twentieth century, in his book “The Pursuit of God”. The language and the turn of phrase may have dated a little but it makes the truth of what he says no less true and no less powerful. Have a listen to what he writes: There is something more serious than coldness of heart; something that may be back of that coldness and be the cause of its existence. What is it? What but the presence of a veil in our hearts. A veil not taken away as the first veil was but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our fleshly fallen nature living on, unjudged within us; un-crucified and un-repudiated. It is the close woven veil of the self life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed and which, for these reasons we have never brought to the judgement of the cross. It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify – we have but to look in our own hearts and we shall see it there – sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there, never the less, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress. This veil is not a beautiful thing, it is not a thing about which we commonly care to talk but I am addressing the thirsting souls who are determined to follow God and I know they will not turn back because the way leads temporarily through the blackened hills. The urge of God within them will assure their continuing pursuit. They will face the facts, however unpleasant, and endure the cross for the joy set before them. So I am bold to name the threads out of which this inner veil is woven. It is woven of fine threads of the self life – the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. They are not something we do, they are something we are and therein lies both their subtlety and their power. To be specific, the self sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention until the light of God is focused on them. The grosser manifestation of these sins: egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders, even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. Promoting the self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice. The self is a hard and brutal taskmaster and letting go is painful. Tozer goes on to say this: Let us remember when we talk about the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant but in actuality, there is nothing pleasant about it at all. In human experience, that veil is made of living spiritual tissue. It is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole being consists and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain – to tear it away, this veil of self, is to injure us, to hurt us and to make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross, no cross and death, no death at all. It is never fun to die – to rip through that dear and tender stuff of which life is made, can never be anything but deeply, deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free. Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life in the hope, ourselves, to rend the veil. God must do everything for us – our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake and repudiate the self-life and then reckon it to be crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy acceptance from the real work of God. We must insist upon this work being done. We dare not rest with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion – that is to imitate Saul and to spare the best of the sheep and the oxen. I have got to tell you, that really strikes hard with me. There is a veil of self that hangs over many a...
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How to Eliminate Anger, Sexual Immorality and Low Self Esteem // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 3
06/28/2026
How to Eliminate Anger, Sexual Immorality and Low Self Esteem // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 3
Anger, sexual immorality and low self-esteem are three of the most stubborn sins known to humanity. We know we should eliminate them from our lives, but the question is - HOW? LIVING IN THE GOOD THINGS OF GOD Well, welcome to this third week in this series called “Eliminating Stubborn Sin – Once and For All”. Over the last few weeks on the programme we have seen that God truly does want us to overcome stubborn sin in our lives – that God gives us the power to deal with every sin and whatever temptation comes our way. He gives us the way out – a way of dealing with it. Actually there are very few things that God says “Don’t do!” and the only things to which He says “Don’t do!” are the things, if we are honest with ourselves, the things that are going to hurt us. And today we are going to look at anger, sexual immorality and low self esteem because they are way out there. But when it comes to dealing with these stubborn sins, the issue is not so much that we should get rid of them – we kind of know that – the question is how? So let’s kick off today with anger because anger is actually a big issue in this world today – it seems we’re all so busy doing all the things we have to do – racing around, taking the kids to school, getting off to work and at work these days the pressure is really on. Make more, achieve more, deliver more – it used to be in the ‘good old days’ the pace was much slower. You had to wait for the mail to arrive and when you sent a letter out, it took a couple of days to get it all correct through the typing pool. But these days, even when people are on holidays with their families, they’re answering emails on their mobile phones. We’re so connected, so in demand, so busy – it’s almost like we’re like battery hens – the slightest thing makes us snap. Some people have more of a problem with anger than others. The more achievement oriented and outcome focused a personality we have, the more we are going to be prone to anger. And that was my ‘biggie’ when I became a Christian – anger. Nothing was ever good enough or fast enough for me and as I look at that, the whole "anger" thing was based on a self-centeredness and a sense of self importance. The world was there to serve ME and to fit in with MY plans and if you didn’t play the game by MY rules and deliver what I wanted – well, watch out! It’s a way of living and thinking and behaving that robs us of relationships and tenderness and joy. It’s actually awful! But how can we change that? Well, here’s how! Psalm 145, verse 8, says this: The Lord is gracious and merciful and show to anger and abounding in steadfast love. What that’s saying is that God’s grace and His mercy and His steadfast love make Him slow to get angry. God does get angry sometimes and that’s a fearsome thing but not at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t have a temper that’s on a hair trigger. Why? “Because He’s abounding in steadfast love.” In other words, He’s more focused on loving us for who we are than what we do or don’t do. Imagine if this awesome and mighty God became angry with you and I every time we didn’t fit in with His plans – we wouldn’t last very long, would we? For me, learning to break the pattern of angry behaviour began with loving the people I was dealing with; valuing them for who they were; understanding their hurts and their inadequacies. The things that had happened to them in their lives that made them behave the way they did. And the more I did that, the less angry I started to feel. In fact, what I began to do was prepare myself for people. As I said, I am one of these outcome focused people who moves quickly, sets goals, achieves them. And it’s easy when you’re like that just to roll over the top of people. And then ... then I have to work with someone who just wants to have fun! You know the sort of people? They just want to enjoy the moment and I just want to get things done. But without them to help me enjoy the moment, well, I’d miss out. So I started to prepare myself – "I have to work with him today! Right! Okay! I understand him. He’s not going to be like me today and that’s okay", almost forgiving them, if you like, before they walked into the room. It took me a while to figure it out but that’s what God is like. That’s what that verse from that Psalm is all about. Psalm 145, verse 8: The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And actually that "slow to anger" thing has a lot to be said for it. Here are a couple of verses from Proverbs that really helped me. Proverbs chapter 12, verse 16: Fools show their anger at once but the prudent ignore an insult. In other words, the moment that someone says something that triggers anger in me, well, I’ve learned to let it pass me by, more often than not, these days. No, I don’t have to win every time anymore. I don’t have to have the last say; I don’t have to be right all the time. “Only fools show their anger at once, the prudent ignore an insult.” And this verse – Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1: A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger. This was like being a shock absorber. When someone does something to stir up anger and dissent, how wonderful it is to respond with gentleness and wisdom, calming the situation instead of throwing fuel on the fire with a harsh word. Ignore the insult and respond with a gentle, soft answer. Can I tell you, once I decided to start loving the people around me, these two things took a bit of practice but after a while they became a habit, because they’re a much, much better way of living? These days I have much more peace in my heart; much more joy in my life. Instead of always having MY day ruined by other people’s failure to fit in with my plans, I’ve discovered the joy of fitting in with their plans sometimes too. And the biggest thing ... the biggest thing with letting the anger go is that it set me free to enjoy the beauty and the creativity and the incredible specialness of each person I come in contact with. It’s like a whole new world has opened up. Do I still get angry sometimes? Course I do, so do you! It’s what I do with that anger when it happens that makes all the difference. This anger thing was a stubborn sin in my life. It was one that looked like it would never go away but when I took those few simple Scriptures we just talked about and started applying them to my life, God did the rest. He set me free from a sin that would have ruined the rest of my life. Next we are going to look at another one of those stubborn sins – sexual immorality. STARTING EVERY DAY WITH JESUS Earlier we looked at overcoming anger and right now we are going to move on to sexual immorality because it’s one of the most stubborn sins of all. It seems these days that it doesn’t matter how hard we try, sexuality is constantly thrust before our eyes and under our noses. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a very simple view about sex. God invented it: it’s good, it’s great. But the role of our sexuality - apart from the obvious thing of keeping the human race going by bringing babies into the world – is to bring a husband and a wife into a level of intimacy so wonderful that there aren’t enough words to describe how good that is. But because sex sells, it’s used in the media to such an extent, you can’t walk down the street without the image of a scantily clad woman advertising some product on a billboard shoved in your face. Now, God’s Word is pretty clear on sex and here it is in a nut shell. Human sexuality is a part of His design for humanity and as such, physical intimacy is a beautiful gift from Him but the only proper expression of that gift is exclusively between one man and one woman who have been joined together as husband and wife in the life-long bond of marriage. And people who continue in sexual immorality outside that – whatever form that takes – will NOT inherit the Kingdom of God. They are not my ideas. That is clearly, clearly what God says through what I believe to be His Word – the Bible. Now, I think that one of the biggest issues today is pornography. So many men are caught up in sexual immorality – they’re married, they want to be faithful to their wives but with the internet being available 24/7, the temptation is simply too great. And so they are caught up in the cycle of addiction and shame that spirals ever downward. It actually robs them of the intimacy that God had planned for them. It substitutes a poor impostor for the real thing. And because they are carrying the burden of hidden shame around in their hearts, it robs them of the power that God has for their lives – the power to make a difference for God in this world. That’s why this particular stubborn sin is so insidious. Here are some sobering statistics: over 50% of all men are addicted to pornography; over 82% percent of males between fifteen and twenty-eight have intentionally or deliberately sought out pornography in the last three months. A man whose campaign to help men addicted to pornography, Pastor Steve Davies, puts it this way – he says: “We’re at war and pornography is Satan’s number one weapon against men to destroy their walk with Christ.” So how do we overcome this most stubborn of sins? If you are a man addicted to this cycle of pornography, how can you overcome it? If you are a woman who’s living through the pain of her husband’s addiction to pornography, how can you be part of overcoming it? They’re tough issues and perhaps the odd person is squirming right now and maybe you’re tempted to turn the radio off but God’s Word speaks into every situation ... every situation and this sin is no different. For the man who is caught up in this most stubborn of sins, the first thing he needs to know and understand is this: that Jesus came to set you free from every sin ... every sin, and this sin is no different. Colossians chapter 1, verses 13 to 14, says this: He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So, anyone who has put their faith in Jesus has been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. And this Scripture too – Romans chapter 6, verse 14: For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace. So, here’s the very first thing – this man caught up in pornography is entitled to believe that something has happened – sin no longer has dominion over him and whilst it might take a little while to overcome this addiction, the power of sin is broken because God applied His grace to you in that situation. This has already been dealt with on the cross of Christ; once and for all, the power of sin has been broken. So instead of approaching this addiction with faith in failure, you can approach it knowing that the deal is already done. Success is guaranteed and every time the devil whispers doubt into your heart, you can stand on God’s Word. The second thing is getting really practical about what you look at and where your mind wanders. Proverbs chapter 5 is a powerful part of God’s Word for anyone caught in the cycle of pornography. In particular, verse 8 says this about seduction: Keep you way far from her and do not go near the door of her house. It’s so easy in a world saturated with sexuality, to let one image; one unintended and unfortunate encounter, act as a trigger for this addiction. Keep away; in other words, don’t put yourself in places where you are going to be trapped and when the temptation does come your way, "don’t go near to the door of her house". In other words, guard your eyes, guard your mind, guard your heart – stay away and don’t go there. Any man knows that there is a line he can step over, allowing his mind to wander into places where it should never go. And that wandering ultimately conceives sin. Thirdly, you men who are married flee ... flee into the arms of your wife. She is the real thing; she is God’s perfect provision for you. And as I said earlier on the programme, God’s plan for exclusive intimacy between one man and one woman who are yoked together for life, through thick and thin, is so utterly wonderful. It can never be replaced by this impostor called pornography. This may surprise you – if you have never read it before, but the Bible – First Corinthians chapter 7, verses 1 to 5 - tells husbands and wives to be intimate with one another. Go on, read it for yourself – it’s all there – it's God’s plan. Finally, you men who are addicted to pornography, let me say this – and this is going to be perhaps the hardest thing of all – you need to be accountable; to your wife if you are married and to other men. It’s time for us to go beyond the shame and look for solutions. God’s plan is to set men free from this addiction. It is the most stubborn of sins because it’s hidden. Bring it out into the open and as much pain as it may cause in a marriage, that’s the place where healing can begin. And if you are a wife, hurt you may be by this infidelity and adultery – because that’s what it is - here’s my counsel to you: forgive your husband and be part of the solution. Love him, hold him, and the Lord your God will use you as His instrument to heal this man whom He has entrusted to you. Love does hurt sometimes and this is one of those times, but the prize ... the prize is worth it, isn’t it? BE ON YOUR GUARD Now, finally on the programme today we will look at low self esteem. Low self esteem is a rampant disease in our society, particularly let me say, amongst women. And while the Bible has lots to say about pride, it appears to be almost silent on this thing that nowadays we refer to as ‘low self esteem’. So what it is? Well, put simply, it’s an unhelpfully low sense of self worth. "Aw, I’m no good, I can’t do anything, I’m useless, I’m stupid, I’m worthless ... " all those statements are thoughts that constantly ... constantly plague people with low self esteem. And the impact of them is that the people who suffer from this unhelpfully low sense of self worth, struggle to have any meaningful relationships. They don’t have any joy; they don’t have any peace in their lives; they are touchy; their feelings are easily hurt – and it’s like a prison, this low self esteem thing - for many it seems like a life-long sentence. Now, we would all agree that anyone who suffers from low self esteem is missing out on a full and healthy life. They are in a sense, missing the point of life, at least the point that God meant for them, which is a full and abundant and rich life. And if that’s the case, then there is only one name for low self esteem: it’s "sin". Now I don’t mean to make things worse but "sin" as it is defined in the New Testament, literally means, "to miss the mark", or as we might say today, "to miss the whole point of life", and wandering around with this incredibly low sense of self worth, misses the whole point, doesn’t it? We all know people with low self esteem – we know how debilitating it is – we can see how it robs them of rich and meaningful relationships. But how many of us would have thought of it as "sin"? Well, let’s call it for what it is and there’s a good reason for that, because whilst "sin" is all too common, it is not normal. Jesus came to set us free from sin and its effects. Not just that we might have forgiveness for sins past but that we would be free from them today and for all eternity. The problem with people who have low self esteem is that they don’t, for one minute, imagine that their lives could be any different. They don’t for a single minute believe that Jesus came to set them free from the pain and the anguish of their low self esteem. But what if ... what if He came to do exactly that? Would you want to be part of it? Maybe that’s for you; maybe that’s for someone who’s close to you, well, I come to you today with some good news. It’s great news! Jesus came to set us free from sin; every sin, including this sin – stubborn though it may be; persistent though it may be. As much as someone who suffers from low self esteem imagines they will never be free of it, Jesus came to set them free!! Here’s how I know: without a shadow of a doubt, this is true. At the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus stood up in the synagogue to tell people about Himself and He chose to quote from the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, using chapter 61. Let me read to you the opening few verses of Isaiah 61: The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. Tell me ... tell me that those who are suffering from this debilitating sin of low self esteem, tell me they are not included in that – gladness instead of mourning, God’s favour, comfort for all who mourn, binding up the broken hearted, liberty for the captives, release for the prisoners. The key ... the key to being free from low self esteem is simply to know this: that you and I, we are fearfully and wonderfully made – Psalm 139, verse 14 – handcrafted by God in His own image. See, most of us have spent so long, so very long staring at our reflections in this distorted mirror of the world that we’ve developed a distorted image of ourselves. We look at people who are more successful, more beautiful, more intelligent, more anything else you would care to name, more than us. We watch the ads on TV full of beautiful people, telling us we could be like them and no wonder people have low self esteem! But what if we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully handcrafted by God Himself, made in His image? What if when He looks at us His great and mighty heart aches for us? And here’s a question ... this is THE question: what are we going to believe, the world’s distortion or God’s truth? Well, what are you going to believe? The problem is that someone with low self esteem may well be able to get a glimpse of that but the feelings of complete inadequacy crash over them day by day by day, minute by minute, swamping any budding confidence that they might have developed in God’s truth. That’s why, if you are someone who is struggling with low self esteem; if this is a stubborn sin that you just can’t overcome in your life, I want to give you something today that I believe ... in fact, that I KNOW God will use it to heal you from the sin and its devastating effects. It’s a short, simple passage of Scripture that even I can memorise. Here it is: Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10: For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do. If you’re someone who’s struggled all your life with low self esteem, I believe God is going to use His Word to help you overcome it, once and for all because every time your distorted image is reflected back at you, through the lives and the deceptions of this world, you can take this Scripture; this verse – say it to yourself, choose to believe God over the world - every time your feelings are hurt, every time you feel that gut wrenching pain of rejection and fear and anguish, take this verse, listen to...
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How to Stop Sin Dead in its Tracks // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 2
06/21/2026
How to Stop Sin Dead in its Tracks // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 2
Most of us have heard sermon after sermon, message after message, telling us that we shouldn’t sin. That instead, we should repent and live a godly, holy life. That’s great – but the real question is HOW? STIFF-NECKED GENERATION I was never much of an accountant but I do remember learning about double-entry book keeping systems. They were really important back in manual accounting systems because they provided a double check to make sure that the accounts balanced. Basically, here’s how it worked. Every financial transaction in the accounts had two entries – hence the name double entry. A credit entry and a debit entry. And the whole point of that was the double entry provided a double check. And it’s not just in accounting that you find this approach. You find it in physics too. Newton’s third law says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In other words – whenever a body exerts a force on a second body, that second body exerts an equal and opposite force on the first body. Maybe that’s something we should have learned at school. And it’s not just in accounting and physics that we see this two sided approach to life, we also find it in the spiritual dimension. Absolutely we do. Every spiritual transaction has two sides to it. Every spiritual action in one direction creates an equal and opposite action in the other direction. So what’s the point? Well in this double-sided mystery lies our rubber-hits-the-road solution to overcoming stubborn sin – which is the thing that we’re talking about in this series, “Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All”. And it’s a powerful solution indeed. Last week on the program we saw that each one of us finds ourselves with at least one stubborn sin in life that we can’t seem to overcome. Now it’s different for each one of us – anger, temper, sexuality, greed, self esteem, pride … the list goes on. And somehow that one particular sine comes back again and again to defeat us. But whilst sin is all too common, it’s not normal – and God’s intention is to set us free from that sin. Not only His intention – it’s His plan, it’s His will and it’s something that He has the power, the divine power to do. Last week on the program we looked at this particular passage, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5: For the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. Every proud obstacle in our hearts that sets itself up against the knowledge of God – and that’s what the strongholds are that the Apostle Paul’s talking about here – can be destroyed by the weapons of warfare which are not human, they’re divine. God’s divine power. And it’s a power that God delights in exerting right in the moment our of our weakness – so that it’s His power and not our strength that overcomes sin. Here’s Paul again. We looked at this last week too, 2 Corinthians 12:7-9: To keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Don’t you just love this. Instead of just taking the messenger of Satan that was tormenting Paul away – God instead gives Paul the opportunity to discover God’s perfect power – the power of Jesus Himself – in His own experience in overcoming Satan. But it’s one thing to know that whilst we all have a stubborn sin and even though it’s God’s plan to wield His divine power to overcome that sin in our lives – well, all that’s one thing. But what you and I really need to know, beyond that wonderful liberating truth – is how! HOW to lay hold of God’s power and how to overcome the stubborn sin that’s been wracking our bodies for a lifetime. Well today, right now, I want to take you deep into God’s Word and show you God’s how. Not my how. Not the world’s how. But God’s HOW! Now I’ve heard this Scripture we’re about to go to have a look at quoted often – but only half of it, only one side of the transaction, and not the other side. And a half truth is as good as an untruth because a half truth can easily be made into a lie. It’s something the devil does all the time. The half truth – the part of this Scripture that’s most often quoted – goes like this, James Chapter 4 verse 7: Resist the devil and he will flee from you. And so a whole bunch of people set about resisting the devil. Problem is that the old enemy’s been around much longer than you and I have, and he’s seen it all. He’s wily, crafty and deceptive and he’ll go to any length to catch us in his snare. He’ll wait to till the most opportune moment, until we’re tired or weak or distracted or frustrated or all of the above – and then he’ll pounce. 1 Peter Chapter 5:8: Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Lions wait in the long grass until they see a weak animal or a young animal or a slow animal separated from the pack – and then they pounce on their prey. The devil’s the exactly the same. And what we discover when we set about resisting the devil – is that working hard just doesn’t work. We don’t need human weapons in this spiritual battle, we need weapons full of divine power. And it turns out that the way to access and wield those weapons involves a double-sided transaction. The half truth from the Scriptures that I gave you before – let me give the whole thing to you now – and you’ll see what I mean. James Chapter 4:7-8 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Do you see the two sides of the transaction involved in defeating the devil – in overcoming stubborn sin? The first is, submit yourself to God and then resist the devil – two sides – and the result of that is that he will flee from you. When we submit ourselves to God, we rebel against the devil. When we submit to the devil – we rebel against God. It’s a double sided entry, it’s a double sided transaction. But some people have a foot in both camps – they want to honour God but they want to go with the devil and they’re the ones who are double-minded, the ones who have to cleanse their hands and purify their hearts. We’re going to look at some intensely practical examples of this after the break – but just for now think back to Adam and Eve in the garden. When they were living that perfect life prior to the fall – they were submitting to God (and getting all the benefits) – but on the other side of the ledger, they were resisting the devil. The tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it was there all the time, they just didn’t eat of it – and so they lived in the benefit of God’s blessing. BUT – the moment they submitted to the devil – on the other side of the ledger, they were resisting God, they were rebelling against God – in that very first, terrible, double-sided act of rebellion. Submission to God = rejecting the devil. Submission to the devil = rejection God. And in this double-sided transaction lies the practical truth of overcoming stubborn sin. If we try to do it by resisting the devil, as we’ve already seen – that’s a half truth and it doesn’t work. The answer is first to submit to God, to draw near to Him, because in so doing, He will draw near to us. And since He’s the one with the power – He’s the one with the weapons of warfare that have the divine power, the first thing that we need to do, is to submit our selves to Him. Resisting the devil is what flows out of that. RULES DON'T WORK Stubborn sin – that sin that we just can’t shift, sin that keeps on keeping on long after we’d hoped that we would have defeated it – is a fact in many, many people’s lives. And over the last couple of weeks on the program, we’ve seen that not only does God understand that, but He wants to give us His weapons full of His divine power, right in the middle of our weaknesses defeat the sin. Jesus died and rose again to give us victory, to give us a new life – and so whilst stubborn sin is commonplace, it’s not normal and it’s not what God means for our lives. In fact, this is something that God takes so seriously – that He sends not only His Son just to die to pay for all our sin on the cross, but to rise again to give us a new life. 2 Corinthians 5:17: that if anyone believes in this Jesus, then that person is a new creation – old things have passed away and look all things are new. So, whilst many a Christ-follower is convinced that their particular brand of stubborn sin is just a fact of life, just something that they have to live with for the rest of their lives here on Earth, that’s a luxury that the Gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t afford us. Jesus came to set us free from every sin. And right now we’re going to continue our look at this practical “how to” – how do we lay hold of God’s divine power to allow ourselves to be set free, by God – of this sin and, and it’s painful consequences. Now this is something that frankly puzzled me for a long time. First, I thought I had to do it all. And so I fought against the devil and I tried and I tried and I tried to resits him and overcome these temptations … but as strong willed an individual as I am, that just didn’t work. I ended up lying bloodied and beaten and discouraged and dejected and defeated on the battlefield. OK ... OK ... OK that didn’t work. So, what I’ll do is I’ll leave it all up to God. I’ll sit back and let God do it all. But let me tell you – the old “spiritual couch potato” model didn’t work either. And it wouldn’t amaze me at all to know that you’ve been there too – right? So the question is, how do we make it work? What’s God’s part, what’s our part? Come on – how do we break free from the power of stubborn sin?? Well, before the break we discovered that not only do accountants have double entry book keeping, not only did Isaac Newton discover that in physics and in nature, every action has an equal and opposite reaction – but when it comes to defeating sin, this spiritual transaction too is double-sided. And, it’s in the double-sidedness of the transaction that we discover our role and God’s role. If you were with us before the break you’ll have heard this Scripture, James 4:7-8: Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Do you see its double sidedness? This is really important – that’s why we’re covering this ground again briefly. It’s not just about racing on and resisting the devil – that’s something we can’t win on our own. First, first submit yourselves to God – that’s the God side of the ledger, and then, on the devil’s side – resist him and he will flee. That’s because when we submit to God, we lay hold of His power, and we have the power to resist the devil – and once he sees that power at work – he’s on his bike and out of there because he and all his demons have to submit to the name that is above all names – the name of Jesus Christ. Now the danger is that we leave it there and we don’t get down and practical enough to give us something to take away to implement. So I want to go deeper into the “how to” so that each one of us knows how to live out this submission to God AND resist the devil, so that the devil will flee from us. That’s how you overcome stubborn sin. This first example is one that jumped out at me in a Bible study group. Have a careful listen, it’s the Apostle Paul on death row, writing to his friends in Philippi – telling them how not to worry: now listen and see if you can pick up the double-sidedness of God’s solution to worrying, Philippians chapter 4:6-7: Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I remember sitting in this Bible study group and we talked about worry and people hedged around this and they were prepared to move on from it without taking God at His Word. Worry is a sin – people with their trust in God needn’t worry. Worry falls a long way short of living the life of abundant peace that God purchased for us on that cross. What this passage says is – look, here’s the solution to overcoming this sin of worry. Instead of worrying – instead of spending your time doing that, replace that with praying and giving thanks to God and telling Him your needs. First submit to God – see that’s what’s going on here. This is God’s way of dealing with the problem, the sin of worry. First submit to Him, do it his way. Pray and give thanks. Let your needs be known to God. If we take the time that we would have spent worrying … and instead we used it to do it God’s way – to pray. The devil loves throwing doubt in our minds. He loves it when we’re discouraged. How to deal with him?? We submit to God, we do it God’s way – and the promise is that when we do that, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. What’s just happened here? God’s weapons of divine power have been brought into play – we have a confidence that comes from God, because we did it His way in faith – and so the devil ceases to have any power over us to make us worry. Now, now stand in this newfound power from God … and watch the devil flee. The secret is in proactively replacing the bad with the Good, proactively stepping into this space and saying – No, no – no, no! This worry is from the devil. My only answer is to submit to God. Now I discover His divine power in my weakness. Now I can resist, now the devil must flee. Let’s have another quick look at another practical example. It has to do with the things that we say that hurt other people. So many of us have a problem with that don’t we – always grumbling, always pulling other people down. Have a listen again to the double-sided solution, Ephesians chapter 4:29: Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. How do I stop this addiction of evil talk coming out of my mouth. Do I just sit there and try to hold my tongue. No! – God’s saying – instead of doing that, proactively replace it with my way – instead of speaking the things that are only going to hurt people, speak only what is useful for building other people up as there is need. Replace the bad with the Good. Deliberately step out with God and do it God’s way and not our way. So when we feel like cursing people with our words instead we go “No! God’s way is to bless them”. The devil’s got nowhere to go. He’s lost his power. Then, having submitted to God, then we simply stand and resist the devil in the power of God because we’ve done it God’s way. And let me tell you – they way I’ve learned this is simple. I sat down and thought about my weaknesses. I identified them. And I had more than my fair share. And I looked through the Bible and found a simple verse to tell me - when I’m in a situation where I’m prone to live out this particular stubborn sin – what is it that I CAN DO, to submit to God in my actions and my thoughts and my words, right there and then how can I submit to God. And so when I found myself in that place, I knew God’s word, I knew how to submit to God. And you know what happened, little by little – God changed me. And the devil, well, he had no choice. He just had to flee. And when you think about it – this isn’t rocket science. This is something that we can apply to any sin in any situation. It’d be just like God to make it that simple, wouldn’t it? In fact next week on the program, we’re going to look at some more specific details – common stubborn sins that people have in their lives, – to help each one of us stop sin dead in its tracks. THE POWER TO CHANGE Over the next couple of weeks on the program, we’re going to be looking at some very common stubborn sins that people deal with – anger, sexual immorality, selfishness, low self esteem – and how to overcome each of those. But as we come towards the end of our time together, I want to share with you perhaps the most important thing that I know about overcoming stubborn sin in my life. In fact – there’s no maybe about it. It is the most important thing that I know. And it’s this – that prayer works. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says very simply that we should: Pray without ceasing. Can I tell you something – that verse has stuck with me over and over and over again as God’s done His work in me to overcome the stubborn sin in my life – and let me tell you, I had more than my fair share – and this is what I’ve found. When I was in that time of overcoming anger or overcoming selfishness – God dealt with them one at a time in me – I discovered that on those days when I specifically and deliberately prayed about that sin in my life first up in the morning – and got focussed on those handful of scriptures that God gave me – perhaps only a five minute investment each day – but when I made that investment I didn’t sin. But somehow when I didn’t quite get around to it, didn’t have time, you know what it’s like– those sins just got the better of me – time and time and time again. And still today, if I don’t spend that time with the Lord each morning in prayer and reading His Word and letting Him have sway in my heart – I tell you - those stubborn sins will find their way back into my life. To put it very succinctly – PRAYER IS THE ONLY THING THAT WORKS. I can’t make it any simpler than that. And even through the day, when I was in a situation where that sin was prone to come out of me – just a quick prayer under my breath – LORD HELP ME – that’s all It takes. Pray without ceasing – because prayer works. I’m always taken by the time that the disciples were trying to cast a demon out of a boy while Jesus was up on the mount of the transfiguration – they couldn’t do it. And Jesus came down – cast the demon out no problem and later the disciples went to Him and said, “So Lord, how come you could do it but we couldn’t?” And Jesus said the most surprising thing to them, Mark 9:29: He replied to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting. Now just stop and think a minute – He’s been up on the mountain, He’s walked down into this farce where there’s a crowd and the disciples are trying to cast out a demon and the demon’s not going and instantly Jesus casts out the demon. Let me ask you – did Jesus have time for prayer and fasting right at that moment? Not at all – He was talking about his normal, every day prayer life, He was talking about the fasting He’d been doing before that. And when I scratch around looking at the original text of what Jesus said – recorded in Greek not English – the deep sense of what He’s saying here is this – nothing but prayer and fasting has the power to cast out the stubborn demons such as these. – The stubborn demons. The sort that wont go –...
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Where There's a Will There's a Way // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 1
06/14/2026
Where There's a Will There's a Way // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 1
Stubborn sin – the sort that just keeps coming back again and again, no matter how hard we try –is a fact of life for so many. And we have a choice – we can just accept it and its devastating consequences, or we can believe God’s Word that where there’s a will, there’s a way. THE BIG CON Today we are kicking off a new series of programmes for the next four weeks. It’s called “Overcoming Stubborn Sin – Once and For All.” And God triggered in my heart, just the other day, when I was sitting talking to a man – but more about him later. Now let me ask you, have you ever had a pen in your pocket and it’s leaked? More common for men, I guess – we’ll put a pen in our shirt pocket or maybe on the inside pocket of our jacket and then, for one reason or another, the pen leaks and you end up with an ink stain all over your shirt or your jacket. Now that stain, it’s called a stubborn stain, isn’t it? At least that’s how we refer to it where I come from. And the reason we call it a stubborn stain is that, no matter what you wash it with or scrub it with – it doesn’t matter what you do to it – it just won’t come out. I remember when that happened to one of my favourite jackets, years ago now. I mean, I really liked this jacket; it was soft and comfortable and it looked great. I spent a fortune at the dry cleaners, but it doesn’t matter what they tried, the stain didn’t come out. And so I simply couldn’t wear it out any more. I mean, it would have looked ridiculous. But isn’t it funny, these days, when we have a stain like that on our characters, it seems we almost wear it out with pride, or at the very least, we just put up with it. After all, it’s a stubborn stain – nothing we can do about it. And that’s the attitude of that man that I was telling you about at the beginning of the programme. Here’s the thing: he rang the other day and wanted to catch up for a coffee. I agreed and as we sat down in the cafe, we had a bit of small chit-chat and then the crunch issue – the thing he wanted to talk to me about. Well, it was his sin. It was a sin he’d been struggling with all his life. It turned out that his particular Achilles heel was his temper. A lovely man but he has a hot temper and just flies of the handle at the drop of a hat. He was sharing with me what had happened just a few days before. A situation where he’d hurt some people that really mattered to him and the more I listened, the more I got this impression that as far as he was concerned, this was something he was stuck with and the best he could do was to manage the symptoms. There wasn’t a single thought in his head of treating the disease. And the reason this shocked me was this man is a Christian with a powerful heart after God and a commitment to God’s Word. So I listened without saying too much but the more I turned this conversation over and over in my head, the more disturbing it became. It was like he had a stubborn ink stain on his jacket but he was intent on wearing that same jacket out, day after day, with that stain on it. There was no thought of changing the jacket. Do you see the point? We wouldn’t think of wearing an ink stained jacket out to work and yet we’ll take who we are - with this great big stubborn stain, smack bang in the middle of our character and our personality, so prominent; so obvious that nobody could ever miss it - and wear it out day after day after day, for a whole life time, resigned to what we think is the fact that there’s just nothing we can do about it. Changing the jacket never crosses our mind. Have a listen to this. In the context of what we have just been talking about – stubborn sin – Galatians chapter 3, verse 27: “As many of you as were baptised into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ.” And again this: Ephesians chapter 4, verses 22 to 27: “You were taught to put away your former way of life; your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to clothe yourselves with a new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” Both of these Scriptures from the Word of God are very, very clear. They’re about putting on a new jacket; they’re about clothing ourselves in Christ; clothing ourselves in the new creation that we become when we put our trust and our faith in Him. There’s nothing ... nothing, so far as I can find in God’s Word which says that sin is normal. Sure, it’s common; all too common but normal it ain’t! Have you put your trust in Jesus Christ? Have you? Then you are a new creation. The old things have passed away and all things ... ALL THINGS are new. That comes from Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17. We all have one or two stubborn sins in our lives. For some people it's temper and anger, for others it lust, for others it’s always seeking glory and recognition, for others again it's low self esteem or un-forgiveness or gossiping or slander. Other people are addicted to gambling or perhaps it's worshipping other gods. Some people don’t seem to be able to help themselves – some are involved in the occult. My friend, the list goes on and we sometimes behave as if the only person who has this stubborn sin stain on us is us! Listen to me – it’s everyone! I’ve never met a person who hasn’t had to grapple with at least one stubborn, persistent, ongoing form of sin in their lives. So many men are addicted to pornography, which now with the internet, has over half ... over half of all men addicted to this – something we are going to talk about in the coming weeks – and they live in secret shame, imagining that there’s nothing they can do about it. And over half of all women, in Western society as least, suffer clinically from low self esteem. And each one of these stubborn sins is the devil’s way of robbing us of life. Sure, so many of them are dressed up to look respectable – so seductive; so normal. Now the person who puts their faith in Jesus, kind of knows they’re not right, but like that man that I was talking about at the beginning of the programme, they’ve kind of resigned themselves into believing that there’s nothing they can do about their particular brand of stubborn sin. Whether it’s a red stain or a blue stain or a black stain, "Well, that’s just my coloured stain and there’s just nothing I can do about it." Let me give you this very direct and very blunt response to that kind of thinking: rubbish; its absolute rubbish! That’s a deception of the devil and you won’t find it in the Bible. Jesus said, quoting Isaiah chapter 61, verse 1. He said: “God had sent him to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.” Now, there’s no fine print in there that provides you or me with a personal exclusion for our particular colour of stubborn sin. Now, I’m a man who has had more than his share of stubborn sins to work through – anger, temper – all sorts of stuff and because I am one of those strong willed people, those things have had even a stronger hold on me than most. And here’s what I’ve discovered along the way and I’m still discovering it – Jesus came to set me free from every sin that robs me of life. He came to set you free from every sin that robs you of life – to clothe us in Christ, to make us a new creation that shines His glory and His image into this lost and hurting world. That is the truth! WAKE UP One of the worst feelings that we can have in life is that sense of being trapped ... trapped in a place, trapped in our circumstances, trapped in our own destructive patterns of behaviour. And try as we might, we just can’t get out. Now, God has a name for those destructive behaviours; a much shorter name – He calls them ‘sin’ and that’s exactly what sin is – behaviour that’s destructive; behaviour that misses the whole point of life. And it seems to be the case that pretty much each one of us has one particular pattern of destructive behaviour; one sin that seems to be stubborn in our lives. Like a stubborn stain that just won’t wash out – as much as we wish we could get rid of it. We’ve tried and tried and tried and tried over the years – we just can’t. For many people it feels like they’re trapped; like there’s no way out. It’s a pattern of behaviour that we seem to be locked into – repeating over and over and over again. And so many people have just resigned themselves to the fact that that’s the way it is and that nothing’s ever going to change – they’re trapped; hopelessly trapped in sin and there’s no way out and so they just have to live life with the painful consequences of that sin. Well, if that kind of resonates a bit with you, I have some good news for you – in fact, it’s some great news. Stubborn sin comes in so many different forms. Have a quick listen to this list written by Paul the Apostle, a couple of thousand years ago. It comes from Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 to 21: “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Some people are just naturally prone to being critical or argumentative. Some are locked into patterns of jealousy or sexually immorality. And in this world of ‘anything goes’, where cheating on your wife or your husband has been reduced to a lifestyle choice, it’s easy for us to rationalise our particular form of stubborn sin away, as being just that. "Well, the world’s moved on, you know – we think differently these days. Sleeping around – hey, what’s wrong with that? Arguing, criticising, pulling other people down, flying off the handle, ranting, raving, getting drunk until all hours – aw, they’re just the way we do things these days." But no matter how much we rationalise our sin away, if we are going to be brutally honest with ourselves, most of us – with just a few minutes thinking about it – will be able to point to the one sin that seems to recur over and over and over again in our lives. And come on, let’s be honest – there are consequences; serious consequences to our sin. And those consequences hurt – they hurt us and they hurt other people. And I don’t know, maybe we have tried to break out of that pattern of behaviour from time to time, but it’s so easy to fall back into it again and that’s when we feel trapped. That’s when we feel like there’s no way out ... no escape. And the worse thing is, it feels like, well, like we’re the only ones with this problem. Well, have a listen to what God has to say. Come on, because, I for one, am prepared to take Him at His Word. Let’s have a listen – it comes from First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13. It says that: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Now, that’s powerful stuff, so let’s take just a few minutes to unpack this because my hunch is the power here in God’s Word is going to set some people down a path of actually believing that God can make a difference ... that God wants to set them free. “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.” Testing is about a trial and a temptation – it’s testing our fidelity to God. Let’s take a man walking down the street: a young, scantily clad woman comes walking towards him. Now there’s a test of his fidelity to his wife. What’s he going to do with his eyes; what’s he going to do with his imagination? I heard an interesting statistic from research conducted by an American Jewellers Association on employee theft. Have a listen to this: Ten percent of people will always steal, no matter what. Ten percent will never, ever steal, but eighty percent will steal if given the opportunity and if they think they won’t get caught. So, for eighty percent of us, our honesty and integrity is tested on a daily basis. Testing happens all the time and nothing that you and I are tested with is unique to us – indeed it’s common to everyone. We all go through this. Sometimes we feel condemned because we think that it’s just us that are being tempted with this or with that. No! Everyone is tempted ... but and here’s the great BUT, “but God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.” I love that – that’s a promise from God. When we feel trapped and weak and impossibly vulnerable, the promise of God is that He will never allow us to be tempted by our own desires or by the devil or, as is so often the case, by both, to an extent that is one hair’s breadth further than our capacity to withstand or resist the temptation. So many of us head into temptation just expecting defeat – just planning on failure – so, well, we fail the test; we yield to the temptation. The great news is this: that God is faithful, and He will not let us be tested beyond our strength. Instead, with the testing He will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. And over the coming weeks on the programme, what we are going to be doing is investigating that way out – a practical; rubber hits the road, expose of how to stop this stubborn sin dead in its tracks, because God’s Word is so incredibly practical. For the man who for years has been caught in a cycle of shame and addiction to pornography; for the woman who for years, has had a miserable life because of her low self esteem; for anyone and everyone who has ever felt trapped and completely powerless in their destructive patterns of behaviour that lash at their soul like a whip that never stops tearing into their flesh. For you, I have this good news – First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” You’re not alone! You’re not unique and God is faithful. He has already prepared the way out for you; a way out of the shame and the pain of persistent, stubborn sin. And I want you to remember this – these aren’t my words. This is God’s Word and God’s Word is sharper that any two edged sword. God’s Word has the power to change us; a power that we simply can’t begin to understand, until we experience it for ourselves. That’s what we are going to be talking about next. BACK TO PLAN "A" Have you ever noticed that we can be chugging alone okay, living in victory for a week or two or maybe even a month or two and then all of a sudden – WHAM – that sin comes back and pounds us like a battering ram. It pounds the living daylights out of us. Have you ever wondered why that is? Why these ebbs and flows? Why is it sometimes I can live in victory over this thing and other times, I feel completely and utterly powerless to do anything at all to overcome this destructive behaviour called "sin". Well, here’s my take on it. Well, actually, no, no, it’s not my take at all, it’s God’s take – it’s God’s truth from God’s Word. We live on a spiritual battlefield and our enemy, the devil, is always prowling around, waiting for a good time to strike. He did that even with Jesus. After Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations when He had been in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, Luke tells us in chapter 4 of his Gospel, verse 13 that: “When the devil had finished testing Jesus, he (the devil) departed to wait for a more opportune time.” So here we have this picture of the devil prowling around looking for someone to devour. He has the element of surprise and that’s why we feel powerless when he strikes. Well, today and over the next few weeks, we are going to take an intensely practical look at how to be ready for him. As I said before, we all have this Achilles heel; a part of our makeup or our personality or who we are, that’s more vulnerable to attack than others. I was telling you before on the programme about this man whom I met who struggled with his temper and for other people it’s their sexuality and for others again it’s pride or they are addicted to money or recognition – we all have some area in our lives where we are vulnerable. And we all have times when we are more vulnerable than others in our lives. Now sometimes we have learned to exercise self control over our tempers but then, you know, the pressure is on and we’re tired and the circumstances just seem to conspire to make us snap. So it doesn’t matter what our particular weak point is, there are times when we feel stronger and times when we feel weaker. And there are times when we feel completely tossed around and completely vulnerable, like we have no strength at all to resist the prowling devil who is just sitting back waiting, like a lion in the grass, to pounce and attack while we are feeling weak. Now, what I’m about to say may sound completely perverse. In fact, if we judge it by the world’s wisdom, actually it is. God’s wisdom often seems perverse by the world’s standards, but have a listen to God’s wisdom about our weakness. It’s written by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament – Second Corinthians chapter 12, verses 7 to 9. Paul says: ... to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Now, we never discover what the thorn in the flesh was – was it a physical ailment? Was it a particular temptation to which Paul was prone? We’re not told, what we do know is that it was a messenger from Satan to torment him. And God doesn’t take this torment away because, God, it appears, is quite content with Paul’s weakness. He doesn’t actually want Paul to be strong, in and of himself but instead, He wants to give Paul the real thing - God’s perfect power amidst Paul’s weaknesses. And so that completely changes everything for Paul. Instead of being ashamed of his weakness, he boasts all the more gladly of it so that the power of Christ may dwell in him. And here’s the crunch: anyone who has tried and tried and tried to be strong to overcome stubborn sin and overcome the devil will know that working hard at it doesn’t work, but it’s in our weakness that we have the opportunity to discover the good and perfect awesome power of God to achieve what we can’t; to achieve victory over stubborn sin. My friend, this is fantastic news – it’s liberating news! The opportunity to give up trying and to tap into the power that works – it’s divine power. Have a listen again to Paul – Second Corinthians chapter 10, verses 4 to 5: For the weapons of our warfare are not merely human but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. Paul’s saying that we are living on a battlefield and instead of just using...
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Choose Your King // On Solid Ground, Part 4
06/07/2026
Choose Your King // On Solid Ground, Part 4
When the storms of life hit, as they do, right, what we do is that instinctively we grab a life vest, we look for a lifeline here on earth, a worldly solution if you will … instead of turning to the One who can calm the storm. So, you have to ask yourself then, who exactly is the Lord of our lives? Just Like the Rest Over these last few weeks we have been looking at what it means to get our feet back on solid ground in life. You know, when we are going through storms we are bobbing around like a tiny little boat floundering on an angry sea and sometimes we don’t know which way to head – which way is up, which way is down. All we want to do is put our feet back on solid ground. And it turns out that you don’t always find that solid ground exactly where you expect to find it. And we have been exploring this whole idea of getting our feet on solid ground through the story of a humble woman called Hannah who honoured God and turned to Him in the midst of her storm - and at completely the other end of the scale, a priest called Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas. They were evil guys and they got their just rewards and the nation of Israel who struggled with their God. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it and open it up. Over these last three weeks we have been looking at the first seven chapters of the Book of First Samuel. Now First Samuel appears about a third of the way through the Old Testament. We are going to finish off that series today with the crux of what this is all about. We are going to have a look at the decision that ultimately determines whether our feet are on solid ground or not. It’s a decision between the obvious and the not so obvious. What is it that you and I can decide to do that will absolutely ensure that no matter what comes our way, our feet are on solid ground? Now the pivot of this whole story – the contrast of Hannah on the one hand and Hophni and Phinehas and their dad, Eli, on the other – happens, if you remember the verse – if you have been with us over these last few weeks – in First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30, where God says: Those who honour Me, I will honour but those who despise Me will be treated with contempt. We are going to pick up that story today. The priests are dead, they’ve got their just rewards, Hannah’s son – she couldn’t have a son remember, but she now has a son, he is grown up – Samuel is the judge and the prophet and the leader over all Israel. Now that’s a really important concept – they didn’t have a King. All the other nations had a King but Israel did not because Israel’s system of government was a theocracy – that meant that God was their King. And God appointed judges and prophets to declare His Word over the people of Israel. So He administered justice – this was Samuel – he was a prophet who declared the will of God and God was the King to the people. Now that was unique among the nations and as we saw over the last few weeks, when they honoured God; when they obeyed Him, that nations’ feet were on solid ground. Now the story takes an interesting twist. We are going to pick it up in chapter 8 of the Book of First Samuel. Here’s how it goes: When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his first born son was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah and they were judges in Beer-sheba. Yet his sons didn’t follow in his ways but turned aside after gain – they took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel came together and they came to Samuel at Ramah and they said to Samuel “You are old and your sons don’t follow in your ways, appoint for us then, a King to govern over us like the other nations.” But this displeased Samuel when they said “Give us a King to govern us. So Samuel prayed to the Lord and the Lord said to Samuel “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being King over them. Just as they have done to Me from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking Me, serving other gods so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice – only you shall solemnly warn them and show the ways of the King who shall reign over them.” So Samuel reported all the words of God to the people who were asking him for a King. He said these will be the ways of the King who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horse men and to run before his chariots and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some will plough his ground and reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and to make his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give them to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves and the best of your cattle and donkeys and put them to his work. He will take one tenth of your flocks and you shall be his slaves and in that day you will cry out because of your King whom you have chosen for yourselves but the Lord will not answer you in that day. But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel. They said “No, we are determined to have a King over us so that we may also be like the other nations and that our King may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” Isn’t that interesting? All this time you go right back to the slavery, when Israel was in slavery in Egypt and God released them through some major miracles and through the parting of the Red Sea and then into the Promised Land and they captured the Land, battle after battle. All this time it was a simple, simple principle that God honours those who honour Him. And God did and God won the battles for them and God delivered them. And now they reject their King, their God who is able and willing to bless them and to protect them. Why? Well, actually, first they blame Samuel’s sons and no doubt there is something in that, but actually you find out the reason towards the end of that verse. Look again at the passage we have just read: verses 19 and 20 of chapter 8: But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel. They said “No, we are determined to have a King over us so that we also may be like other nations and that our King may govern us and go to battle and fight our battles for us.” They wanted to be like all the other nations. Now, let’s think about that. Israel is unique – God is their King, He promised them the Promised Land, He has the power to make it happen. Whenever they honour Him He does make it happen and yet they want to reject Him – why? So that they can be like all the other nations! Is that stupid or what? None of the other nations have an invincible god as their king so why do they want to be like the other nations? Because in the heat of the battle they want a king they can see – a king of flesh and blood! Their enemies have a king at the head of their army so they want one too and they are prepared to give up the perfect power of the King of Kings for a poor substitute so that they can have a king that they can see! How often do we do that? How often do we put our faith in things that we can see – in our investment portfolio to provide wealth is fine until the economy goes belly up, in our career, which is fine until our health fails, in other people, which is fine until they desert us or fail us? See when we hit a storm you know what we want to do? We want to reach out and put a life preserver on instead of go to the One who can stop the storm. We want something we can see and touch and feel, instead of putting our faith in the One whom we can’t see. A favourite Scripture you hear people quote is Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7 that says “We walk by faith and not by sight” and that’s great until the storm hits, when we will definitely go for something that we can see and touch and feel, ahead of someone we can only see by faith – we’ll pick that anytime. And that’s the point – when we step off solid ground onto a stormy ocean. What’s the Problem? Yea, just like Israel, we want to be just like everyone else some days; just normal, everyday people who put our faith in things that we can touch and feel. It is something the Apostle Paul rejected – have a listen – Second Corinthians chapter 5, beginning at verse 1. He says: We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, if indeed, when we have taken it off, we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing, is God, who has given us His Spirit as a guarantee so we are always confident, even though we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. See, here Paul is talking about the struggle between the temporal and the eternal – between what we can see and what we can’t see. And Paul is saying "Look, I have got a body; I’ve got a tent but one day that is going to pass away and my faith isn’t in the "here and now" – my faith is in God – I walk by faith not by sight." It’s about where he puts his confidence. Now, let me tell you how easy it is to appoint an earthly King, like what Israel was trying to do and to reject the King of Kings – even when we are out and about doing God’s work. This ministry that I am involved in, Christianityworks, it has been going for fifty years out of Australia and yet when I took over four years ago, there were hardly any people supporting the ministry. It had almost no income, it was going broke, there were no programmes going to air. And four years ago – it’s still pretty fresh – I remember the panic attacks over finances – you see the money dwindling away and wondering when we are going to go broke – not if but when. You see, what I was doing: I wanted a big bank balance – something that would provide security that I could see and I had to turn away from that. I had to put my trust in God alone and these days, sometimes, let me tell you, things are still very, very tight. And whilst I do my part in all of that, as a good steward of the money that supporters entrust to the ministry, over and over and over and over again, let me tell you, as we have done our best just to simply honour God in all that we do here in the ministry of Christianityworks, He has honoured us. It’s as simple as that! Now, let’s get back to the story and find out where the real problem was here with Israel and the Kingship of God. Well, Israel got its very first King like all the other nations and God, through the prophet Samuel, appointed Saul. Let’s have a look at it in the first couple of verses of chapter 9 of the Book of First Samuel: There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish son Abiel son of Zeror son Becorath son of Aphiah, a Benjaminite, a man of wealth. He had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he – he stood head and shoulders above everyone else. So the prophet hears from God and God says “Saul is the King. If they want a King they are going to get Saul”. And initially at least, after he is anointed, Saul has success because even though God was rejected by His people in favour of Saul, God is a God of grace and He continued to honour them and bless them even though He warned them of how the King would turn out. We saw that earlier. See, sometimes when we reject the Kingship of God in our lives and choose something else – career or wealth or whatever it is – initially we have some success but as we will see later, Saul ended up in abject failure. In fact, Saul (if you want to read it in First Samuel chapter 31) committed suicide in the middle of battle. It’s easy for you and me to say "Well, what’s the problem here? It’s probably not a bad thing that they had a King to lead the nation. What’s the problem? I do have to invest and plan for my retirement, sure, but do we do it under the Kingship of God?" When God is calling us to give a substantial amount of our money to let’s say the poor, do we do that? Or do we sock it away for our retirement? Who or what do we put our trust in, who or what do we submit to? Listen again to what Samuel said to Israel – First Samuel chapter 10, beginning at verse 17: Samuel summoned the people to the Lord at Mizpah and he said to them “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “I brought you up out of Egypt – I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you. But today, you have rejected your God, the God who saves you from all your calamities and all your distresses and you have said “No! but set a King over us.” That’s the problem – they rejected their God; they rejected the great Unseen for a King who was far inferior to God but whom they could see. See, despite all that they knew – they knew that God had brought them out of Egypt; they knew that He had rescued them from the Egyptians; they knew that He had rescued them from all their oppressors. God said “I did all that. Couldn’t you see that I was your King? Couldn’t you see that I am worthy of your trust? Couldn’t you see that with Me you have your feet on solid ground? Couldn’t you see that?” No, they couldn’t see and no, some days we can’t see it either. We are blinded by the dazzle of what this world has to offer. It never ceases to amaze me, you know, in times of economic prosperity, people behave as though there is no tomorrow. They put their faith in the money they are earning, their stock portfolio that is growing and the house that’s mortgaged up to the hilt and the new car and all that stuff. But then, when the economy eventually takes a dive - as mind you, it always does – they cry out and scream at the price of petrol and the high interest rates and the risk of losing their home. Can I tell you something? You can’t live a life of peace if you are putting your trust in an inferior king. You can’t have security when you put your faith in those things that will fail. You can’t! I can’t! It just doesn’t work. Choose your King I want to take us right back now to the beginning of this series – to the first chapter of First Samuel. It’s the story of a simple woman called Hannah - she was one of Elkanah’s two wives. The other wife Peninnah had children, Hannah had none. And if you have ever been in that situation where you can’t have kids or you know someone in that situation, you know how incredibly painful that is and to make it worse the other wife Peninnah, would give Hannah a hard time over this. Pretty tough! There is a real storm that was going on year after year after year – this pain of being childless. Now Hannah had a lot of choices in that space. She could have been angry, she could have lashed out or she could have withdrawn. Her husband didn’t help her much so what does Hannah do? First Samuel chapter 1, verse 9: Once they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s temple. In the bitterness of her soul, Hannah wept and prayed to the Lord and she made a vow. She said “Lord God Almighty, if You will only look upon Your servant’s misery and remember me and do not forget Your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head. And as she kept praying to the Lord, Eli the priest, looked at her mouth – Hannah was praying in her heart – her lips were moving but her voice couldn’t be heard. Now, Eli thought she was drunk and said to her “How long will you keep on getting drunk. Get rid of your wine.” She said “Not so, my lord, I’m a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. (Isn’t that beautiful?) Don’t take your servant for a wicked woman. I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.” And Eli answered “Well, go in peace and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked for.” She said “May your servant find favour in your eyes.” Then she went away and she ate something and her face was no longer downcast. Now it turns out – see, Hannah was a "nobody", not like the priest – she wasn’t a man in the social structure – she wasn’t a priest, she was a "nobody". She just goes and pours out her heart to God amidst the bitterness of her soul. Turns out God honours those who honour Him, as she does have a son, she calls him Samuel. She gives him back to Eli; she gives him over to God as soon as he is weaned and he comes and serves as a priest in the temple, under Eli, whom she discovers later, is a bad dude. This priest is supposed to be a go-between between God and His people, yet he and his sons have no respect for God and His people at all, so Samuel is put there by faith by her. Now we have heard the story: Samuel grows up, he becomes a mighty man of God. Do you know why that happened? Because Hannah honoured God! And God says “I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me, will be treated with contempt". And that’s what Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas found out when they died because they did not honour God. And then we saw how, because of them, Israel ends up rejecting God. And you know how that ends up? In defeat! Saul ends up committing suicide – you can look at it in chapter 31, the last chapter of the Book of First Samuel. Israel rejected God as its King and God said “Well ok, I am going to warn you – you’re rejecting Me. I am going to give you a King but this is not going to go well for you.” And because they wanted a King that they could see, they rejected God anyway, they chose Saul and it ended up not well for them. The Philistines defeated them, Saul died. The one who is honoured by God is the one who honoured Him! How did she do that? In her misery and her pain; in the bitterness of her soul – she didn’t act up, she didn’t complain, she didn’t grumble – she put her trust simply in God. She poured her soul out to Him, God honoured her. Eli didn’t, his sons didn’t! At the end of the day, Saul didn’t, Israel certainly didn’t – the one who did was Hannah and God honoured her because she honoured Him. I want to lay a challenge before each one of us today through this story. We all go through times, you know, when we would like to have our feet on solid ground and yet we are all over the place and things don’t seem to be working out and everyone is coming up against us. I want to lay a challenge before each one of us today – you and me – we have to choose our King – it’s either God or it is something else we trust in. You can’t have both – you can’t serve two kings, you can’t serve two masters. It’s either going to be God, the great unseen reality; the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords or its going to be something we see – a life preserver that we can grab onto. Problem is, life preservers might stop us from sinking for a while but they can’t stop the storm. Only God can stop the storm! There are people listening today and your life seems to be one endless storm....
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Pushing God Away // On Solid Ground, Part 3
05/31/2026
Pushing God Away // On Solid Ground, Part 3
It’s so easy to look at God and come to the conclusion, well I want that part of Him – but not that part. And definitely not that bit. It seems that all too often, we want Him on our terms rather than His. But God just doesn’t work that way. Take it Back Have you ever wanted something in life – I mean really, really, really wanted it and then when you finally get it, you just want to give it back? I think we have all experienced that at some point and you know, I think that for some people, it can be the case with God. I know people, lots of people, who hunger to be close to God. I know there are people listening today – maybe you are one of them – and all their lives they have wanted God – whatever that means. But can I tell you something? Even something really good – I mean really, really good like God, well, it can be a shock to the system and the reason is that we have these idealised, unrealistic notions of what that good thing will be like. Take the young woman who wants more than anything else, to be married and she meets her knight in shining armour, she marries him and a year later she is wondering, "What happened to all my ideas of romance 24/7?" Today on the programme we are going to take a look at some people who got God and couldn’t wait to give Him back. Now over these last few weeks we have been working our way through the story of Hannah and Eli and his sons in the Book of First Samuel. And the crux of it is that Hannah honours God but Eli and his sons don’t and the turning point of the whole story comes in the verse First Samuel – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up here in First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30. God says: I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me, will be treated with contempt. And we have seen how the central reality of that verse has played itself out in the lives of Hannah, who was blessed when she couldn’t have a son and she honoured God and God gave her a son Samuel and the opposite is Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas who didn’t honour God and were greatly punished, in fact they lost their lives because of that. This story plays its self out in the storms of life. I mean Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, they were the priests; they should have been bringing God’s people close to God yet they were living life of Riley, as we saw last week on the programme. And God had them killed. They’re job was to bring people close to God and yet they were not honouring Him. Instead they had led Israel to a place of defeat. We saw last week in First Samuel chapter 4 where the Philistines attacked, Israel thinks "Oh well, God is always on our side – we will go to battle" and they had a huge defeat – thirty thousand of their soldiers were killed. The Ark of the Covenant, the presence of God itself, was captured by the Philistines. See the Ark of the Covenant was where God actually sat in the midst of His people. You see that in the journey through the Exodus – forty years in the Tent of the Meeting and later on in the temple. The Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies; it is the very presence of God. And strangely, you know, when the Philistines are close to capturing the Ark they kind of realise, with a sense of foreboding, what this is about. It says in First Samuel that: When they learned that the Ark of the Lord had entered the camp of the Israelites, the Philistines were afraid. “A god has come into their camp” they said “we are in trouble. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Woe to us. Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods?” And so it goes on … Well, it turns out that they should have followed their instincts. Today we are going to look and see what happens to the Philistines and to the Israelites when the presence of God comes close to them. Let’s have a look at it. If you’ve got a Bible, open it up at First Samuel chapter 5, we are going to begin the story at verse 1. After the Philistines had captured the Ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then they carried the Ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, their god, who had fallen flat on his face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. They took Dagon and put him back in his place. The following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold – only his body remained. That is why to this very day, neither the priests of Dagon or any of the others who enter Dagon’s temple in Ashdod, step on the threshold. The Lord’s hand was heavy upon the people of Ashdod and its vicinity. He brought devastation upon them and afflicted them with tumours. When the men of Ashdod saw what was happening they said “The Ark of the God of Israel mustn’t stay here with us because His hand is heavy upon us and upon Dagon our god.” So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and ask them “What are we going to do with this Ark of the God of Israel?” And they answered “Have the Ark of the God of Israel moved to Gath.” So they moved the Ark of the God of Israel but after they had moved it, the Lord’s hand was against that city, throwing it into great panic. He afflicted the people of the city, both young and old, with an outbreak of tumours so they sent the Ark of God on to Ekron. As the Ark of God was entering Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out “They have brought that Ark of the God of Israel around to kill us and our people.” So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and said “Send that Ark of the God of Israel away. Let it go back to its own place or it will kill us and our people,” for death had filled the city with panic and God’s hand was very heavy upon it. Those who did not die were afflicted with tumours and the outcry of the city went up to heaven. Do you see? The Philistines looked like they had won and yet they take the presence of God; the Ark of the Covenant, they put it in their temple next to their god and Dagon falls down, face down in front of the God of Israel. And the second time his head and his hands are cut off and then wherever they took the Ark of the Covenant, the impact of God, as a captive in their midst, was devastating – they got tumours, we will see later, there were plagues of mice. They had captured God – in human terms, they had won but you know what they had forgotten, in fact they had never realised it in the first place? God is not subject to people – God is not someone you can capture and stick in your temple. He is not someone you can tame and subdue. Why are we talking about this stuff today? Because you and I, deep down, we try and tame and subdue God – we try and swing Him around to our way of thinking; to meet our needs. We put Him in the temple of our choice; we put Him in the town and the city of our choice. You know what happens when we try to do that? We discover exactly what the Philistines discovered – we discover that God is not someone you can push around. "Well, I’ll just take this God and He’ll bless me whenever I want Him to." Ok, we can’t see Him! Our present circumstances perhaps, appear much more powerful than Him but if we want to have our feet on solid ground, amidst the storms of life, (that’s what we have been talking about over these last few weeks) we look at this maelstrom of the storm; the battle between the Philistines and the Israelites – thirty thousand Israelites killed because they didn’t honour their God. Who appeared to win? Who should have been, according to our simple human expectations, on solid ground? The Philistines – they won the war. They captured Israel’s God but who they captured was the God who created the entire universe – not some idol; not some tin pot little god. They captured God and He wrought destruction upon them because they tried to subdue God. So much so they couldn’t wait to get rid of Him. Do you get it? When we try to take God by force – force of argument, force of opinion, force of anything – anything that doesn’t recognise Him for who He is – watch out! There are so many people playing "church". There are so many people playing at being Christians; playing at religion, putting God here, putting God there. That’s not what it is about. As Dagon found out, the only way you honour God is when you bow down before Him because of who He is – the sovereign God, above every name and every power and every authority in heaven and earth. That’s what Hannah discovered; that’s what Eli discovered; that’s what Israel discovered and that’s what the Philistines discovered, the hard way. You can’t have God on your own terms. You can only have Him on His terms. We Don’t Want Him Well, the Philistines finally came to their senses. They realised they couldn’t have God on their terms. They had a choice – you either accept God on His terms or you get rid of Him. So they decided to send Him back from whence He came. Now, let’s have a look at how they did that. We are going to pick this up in First Samuel – grab your Bible – First Samuel chapter 6, beginning at verse 1 – it’s a great story. When the Ark of the Lord had been with the Philistines for seven months, they called for the priests and the diviners and they said “What are we going to do with this Ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.” They answered “If you return the Ark of the God of Israel, don’t send it away empty, but by all means, send a guilt offering to Him then you will be healed and you will know why His hand has not been lifted from you.” The Philistines ask “What guilt offering should we send Him?” and they replied “Five gold tumours and five gold rats, according to the number of Philistine rulers because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumours and of the rats that are destroying the country and pay honour to Israel’s God. Perhaps He will lift His hand from you and your gods and your land. Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and the Pharaoh did when He treated them harshly, didn’t they send the Israelites out so that they could go their way? Now then, get a new cart ready with two cows that have just calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart but take their calves away and pen them up. Take the Ark of the Lord and put it on the cart and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to Him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory towards Beth-shemesh then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it doesn’t then we will know that it was not His hand that struck us but all this happened just by chance. So they did that – they took two such cows, hitched them to the cart, penned up their calves. They placed the Ark of the Lord on the cart, along with the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumours. Then the cows went straight up towards Beth-shemesh, keeping on the road, lowing all the way. They didn’t turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh It is fascinating stuff! See, these people didn’t know God – they got their own pagan spiritual leaders to advise them. Now their system of faith was not one God; that’s called mono-theism. No, they believed in many gods; they were poly-theistic. And so they see the God of Israel as just another god on their list who may or may not have power. Now, He clearly does because He has brought all of this destruction on the Philistines. So they devise a test for this God. They get these two milk cows, with their calves. You see there is no way two cows that have just calved are going to leave their calves and these cows have never been yoked. So only God could cause them to go back to Israel, away from their young and that is exactly what ends up happening. They don’t turn to the right or the left – they are lowing all the way. They don’t want to go but they go and clearly this is an act of God. That’s how the Philistines saw it. This is a story about so many people in this world who don’t know God. See, they hear about God – it’s amazing, God is still speaking. The number of times that I have had a letter or an email that says "You know something – I just happened to flick on the radio or turn to a channel and your programme was on and God spoke to me and changed my life." I’m going to share one of those at the end of this programme – an amazing story of a rebel fighter in Africa who laid down his arms. See, God is still speaking today, all over the place, and He reaches out to us and He ends up in our midst, one way or another, as He did with the Philistines. Remember back, how did the presence of God, the Ark of the Covenant, come to be in the midst of the Philistines? The Philistines fought Israel, Israel hadn’t honoured their God – they got defeated by the Philistines big time. Eli the priest and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas were killed in that battle. They expected God to show up like He always did, but He didn’t. And it was a sovereign act of the sovereign God to allow defeat to come upon Israel and to allow His presence, the Ark of the Covenant to be captured by the Philistines. God’s own decision was to be in the midst of the Philistines those seven months. And they discover that you can’t have Him on your own terms, so they give Him back – they send Him packing. That’s what I did for many, many years of my life. Every now and then I encountered God. And you see I had my own agenda for my life; I had my own plans. God didn’t fit so I would send Him packing. And it seemed like He would like to cause me grief and pain; want me to give up things I didn’t want to give up. And time and time again I’d want to hang onto Him on my terms. Let me tell you something – it never, never, never worked so I sent Him packing. I rejected Him like the Philistines. I wonder if that has ever happened in your life. Come on, how much do we want God, but on our terms? Well, I believe this about abortion or I believe that about sexuality or I believe this about the different roles of men and women and when I discover what God has to say about those I say to myself "Well, I can’t believe that! No, either I have God on my terms or not at all." Come on, there is a reason that God went to the trouble of recording this story about the Philistines and the Ark of the Covenant and then preserving it for a few thousand years and then broadcasting it on this radio station today. There is a reason! He is speaking to us through His story today. To all those people who would have God on their own terms, He is saying “No, you can’t have Me on your terms. You can’t capture Me and stick Me in your temple. You can only have Me on My terms.” And as we are going to see soon, this problem was not reserved for the Philistines – it’s not just for the people who didn’t really know God but it was also for God’s own people – God’s own people who would push Him away. This series that we are going through is called “On Solid Ground”. We need solid ground beneath our feet and we are going to discover next, exactly how to get it. When Will We Learn? As I said earlier, the problem wasn’t just restricted to the Philistines, sending God packing with those cows with the Ark of the Covenant in tow – it was also a problem that happened with the Israelites. Let’s see what happened when the Ark of the Covenant arrives back with Israel - First Samuel chapter 6, beginning at verse 19. The Ark has just wandered down the road with the cows and this is what happened: God struck down some of the men of Beth-shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the Ark of the Lord. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them and the men of Beth-shemesh asked “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the Ark go up from here?” Then they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath-jearim, saying “The Philistines have returned the Ark of the Lord, come down and take it up to your place.” So the men of Kiriath-jearim came and took up the Ark of the Lord. They took it to Abinadab’s house on the hill and consecrated Eleazar, the son to guard the Ark of the Lord. See, God is a sovereign God. We get Him on His terms and not ours. And the Israelites dealt casually with God’s presence when He came back – they looked upon Him. Now God says “You can’t look upon Me and live.” How often do we treat the mighty sovereign casually? You and I – we take on God. Can I tell you who is going to win? Not us! Israel was God’s people – they should have known better but they didn’t. So what was their reaction? The same as the Philistines – “Who can stand in front of this sovereign God. Where are we going to send Him?” They sent God packing and it’s a pattern repeated over and over and over again. So what is the answer? What these people needed was some solid ground beneath their feet. What you and I need is some solid ground beneath our feet. Well, that comes next in this story – it’s exactly what happened. First Samuel chapter 7, verse 2: It was a long time, twenty years in all, that the Ark remained a Kiriath-jearim and all the people of Israel mourned and sought after the Lord and Samuel the prophet, said to the whole house of Israel “If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him alone and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines. So the Israelites put away their Baals and their Ashtoreths and they served the Lord alone. And then Samuel said “Assemble all Israel at Mizpah and I will intercede with the Lord for you.” When they had assembled at Mizpah they drew water and poured it out before the Lord. On that day they fasted and they confessed “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel was the leader of Israel at Mizpah. When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them and when the Israelites heard of it they were afraid because of the Philistines. They said to Samuel “Don’t stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, that He may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.” So Samuel took a suckling lamb, offering it up as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. He cried out to the Lord on Israel’s behalf and the Lord answered him. Whilst Samuel was still sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle but that day the Lord thundered with a loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before Israel. The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth-car. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and he named it Ebenezer, saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” So the Philistines were subdued and did not invade Israelite territory again. Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines. From the towns of Ekron to Gath – that the Philistines had captured from Israel - they were restored to Israel and Israel delivered the neighbouring territory from the power of the Philistines and there was peace between Israel and the Amorites. First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30 says this: I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me will be treated with contempt. See, that’s the place of solid ground – Israel finally got it...
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If You Can't Change the People // On Solid Ground, Part 2
05/24/2026
If You Can't Change the People // On Solid Ground, Part 2
We tend to see the world from where we are. It’s only natural. We want everyone and everything else to fit in with us. But God, well, He doesn’t quite see it that way. A Boy Called Sam Last week on the programme we spent some time talking about the fact that when the storms of life hit and they inevitably do, what we need is some solid ground beneath our feet. It’s a scary place to be, out on that stormy ocean – we are not made for that. We are made for solid ground. And we began looking at the story of some people: a woman called Hannah and her son Samuel and some priests – Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas. Hannah, now here was a woman who honoured God and He honoured her – the priests, on the other hand, although they should have known better, they didn’t honour God. And as we will see on the programme this week, they reaped their just reward. And the reason we are looking at this story of these people, is that when we are in the midst of the storm, as we so often are, we lose our bearings. We so often lose sight of those things that really matter and for me, as I have spent time in that story, it has clarified some things for me – it’s brought them into sharp focus and my hunch is that as you and I spend some time together today, well, maybe you will find that too. So let’s just recap briefly on this story of Hannah. Hannah married a man called Elkanah and he had two wives: Peninnah and Hannah. And Hannah didn’t have children and Peninnah did, so Peninnah would taunt Hannah and there was a lot of pain around that, so Hannah goes to God – she pours out her heart to Him in the temple and she gets God’s peace. It is what always happens when we do that. Eli, on the other hand, is the priest that is at the temple at the time when Hannah comes to pour her heart out and he mistakes what Hannah is doing – he thinks she is drunk. And the priest Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas, they are bad dudes – they are plundering the sacrifices, they are not honouring God and there is a real contrast between these two – between Hannah and her family and Eli and his - this nobody Hannah and this priest Eli. See that’s what we so often miss in life – God is hidden; He is invisible – we forget about Him – we go on living our lives, wondering why things are going from bad to worse. And in the middle of this story (last week we stumbled across this verse) when God was pronouncing His judgement on Eli and his family – you can read this if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up at First Samuel chapter 2 and verse 30. God said: Those who honour Me, I will honour but those who despise Me shall be treated with contempt. And that’s kind of the pivot on which this whole story turns and this week on the programme we are going to look at how things turned out for Hannah and for Eli. There was a sharp contrast to their approach to God and there is a sharp contrast in how things turn out for them. It tells us a lot about God; it clarifies the confusion in the midst of our storm when we can’t see God, necessarily. When that happens we know how to put our feet on solid ground. Well let’s start today with Hannah – this pain of being childless and the taunts of the other wife. Childless couples the world over, know how painful this is. So she goes to God – let’s have a look at it again in First Samuel chapter 1, beginning at verse 9 and she pours her heart out. Once they had finished eating and drinking at Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s temple. In the bitterness of her soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord as she made a vow saying “O Lord Almighty, if You will only look upon Your servant’s misery and remember me and not forget Your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head.” Then she went on her way, ate something and her face was no longer downcast. Let’s take a look to see what happened next. First Samuel chapter 1, verse 19: Straight after this, early the next morning they rise, they worship before the Lord and then they go back their home in Ramah. Elkanah lay with his wife Hannah and the Lord remembered her so in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named his Samuel, saying “Because I asked the Lord for him.” When the man Elkanah went up with his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord and to fulfil his vow, Hannah didn’t go – she said to her husband “After the boy is weaned I will take him up and present him before the Lord and he will live there always.” “Do what seems best to you,” Elkanah, her husband told her, “Stay here until you have weaned him, only may the Lord make good His Word.” So the woman stayed at home, nursed her son until she had weaned him. After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three year old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. When they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli and she said to him “As surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you, praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I ask of Him so now I give him to the Lord for his whole life – he will be given over to the Lord and she worshipped the Lord there.” See, Hannah had this terrible pain – she came to God with this impossible prayer – it was a humble and heartfelt prayer and God honours that. See we so underestimate the power of humble prayer; prayer from the heart; prayer that just lays it out before God the way we see it and feel it. God honours that! When He honours her with the impossible, she honours God back and gives her son over to God to serve at the temple for the rest of his life. Now that’s easy to gloss over that, but can you imagine? I mean, she wanted her son more than anything and now she gives him up to honour God. God honours that – her incredible heart was to honour God, so she does. She honours Him by giving up the one thing that she desired most – her son. And what’s more, she gives over her most precious to be under the wicked Eli and his sons. Now figure that out! It’s not exactly a great strategic choice – this young, impressionable child, but see, God honours those who honour Him. And God honours her and protects young Samuel, and we will see, raises young Samuel up and makes him strong. See, the more we honour God, the more He honours us. Look at this - First Samuel chapter 3, verse 7: Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The Word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And verse 19: The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up and He let none of His Words fall to the ground and all of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba recognised that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh and there He revealed Himself to Samuel through His Word. And the word of Samuel came to all of Israel.” You see, God honoured her in her storm! Young Samuel went on to become the chief priest, the prophet, the judge of all of Israel. Why? Because this nobody; this woman Hannah, honoured her God, so simply by pouring her heart out to Him, by trusting Him. I want you to notice how insignificant that may have appeared to her at the time. She had this big hairy giant; this huge storm; the pain of being childless, the taunts of Peninnah, it was impossible but for God nothing is impossible. God honours those who honour Him! She honoured God in her naivety – giving young Sam over to Eli. And even there in that impossible situation, God honoured her and He honoured young Sam. So simple – it’s so powerful. The Contrast Continues I guess intuitively, we understand that the things we say and do, the way we think and behave – well, they have consequences. There is a link between cause and effect. We kind of know that but how easy is it to delude ourselves in this area; to make excuse for ourselves? To live out our own selfish desires and pretend that, well, really, that cause and effect stuff applies to other people but not to me! You know what I am talking about. We deny it, we deny it, we deny it and all along the warning signs grow – the storm clouds start to gather over the horizon. But sometimes it’s not till that first clap of thunder that we take any notice and then, so often, it’s too late. The storm has gathered momentum and all we can do is brace ourselves for when it hits. We are going to spend some time in that space today with a man called Eli because he was in exactly that situation and he left it too late. Let’s make no mistake, there is a definite link in God’s economy between cause and effect, especially as it turns out, in our relationship with God. We have been working our way, in this series, through the story of Hannah, this woman who honoured God and Eli, the priest, a man with his sons who did the exact opposite – even though he should have known better. And right now I want to look at how things turn out for Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. These were men who were priests – their job was to be shepherding Israel, bringing them close to their God. Instead Hophni and Phinehas were plundering the sacrifices of God’s people, they were sleeping with prostitutes – they were doing anything but honouring God. Look at how God reacts to that. If you have got a Bible, open it at First Samuel chapter 3, verse 1. The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the Word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord. Remember Samuel is Hannah’s son. He was in the temple where the Ark of God was. Then the Lord called “Samuel” and Samuel answered “Here I am” and he ran in to Eli and said “Here I am, you called me.” But Eli said “I didn’t call you. God back, lie down.” So he went and lay down. Again the Lord called “Samuel” and Samuel go up and went to Eli and said “Here I am, you called me.” “My son,” Eli said, “I didn’t call you, go back, lie down.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, the Word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel a third time and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said “Here I am, you called me.” Then Eli finally realised that the Lord was calling the boy so Eli told Samuel “Go and lie down and if God calls you again, say “Speak Lord for Your servant is listening.” So Samuel went and lay down in his place so the Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times “Samuel, Samuel”. Then Samuel said “Speak for Your servant is listening.” And the Lord said to Samuel “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything that I spoke against his family from beginning to end, for I told him that I would judge his family forever, because of the sin that he knew about. His sons made themselves contemptible and he failed to restrain them, therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, the guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice of offering.” Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli of the vision but Eli called him and said “Samuel, my son,” Samuel answered, “Here I am.” ”What was it He said to you?” Eli asked. “Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything He told you.” So Samuel told Eli everything, hiding nothing from him. And Eli said, “He is the Lord. Let Him do what is good in His eyes.” Here’s the paradox – Samuel is this young kid, he didn’t recognise God’s voice and finally Eli did. Yet Samuel is the one that listened to God and Eli didn’t, even though he knew God’s voice. Remember that verse: First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30. "I honour those who honour Me” says God, “but those who despise Me I will treat with contempt.” And here it is – it’s happening to Eli. Here is this powerful truth working its way out in Eli’s life. We can be beetling along in our own selfish ways, ignoring our conscience, treating people with contempt, treating God with contempt, ignoring God but God never stops speaking. And even someone like Samuel can hear Him. If you want to know what He has to say, just listen. He spoke to Eli over and over again but Eli didn’t listen. He talks to us over and over again. How? Maybe you were just flicking around, channel surfing today and you happened across this programme – kind of by chance or by accident, it seemed – there you go. God is always trying to communicate with us; to reach out to us but eventually, enough is enough. Eventually we kindle His anger – eventually the time comes when we reap what we have sown and that’s exactly what’s happened with Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. And here it is coming: the first lightening strike of the storm and what God tells Samuel actually goes on to happen. You can read it in chapter 4, verses 12 to 22. This is a wakeup call! In the storms in life – yea, they happen – and sometimes they are of our own doing, as it was for Eli and his sons. And we keep going and we keep going and we keep going and deluding ourselves, pretending there is no cause and effect, but there is. Eventually, there is a day of reckoning, here in this life and one day, you and I will stand before God and He will judge us and He will! We may not like the idea, but that doesn’t change anything. Today is a wakeup call. Perhaps we are in one of those stormy times of life and you know, when things are going badly we are tempted all the more to behave badly. This truth rings out – “I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me, will be treated with contempt.” Those are the words of the sovereign God, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords who is above all things and there is no solid ground beneath the feet of those who turn their backs on God. None! It might feel like that for a while but it will crumble. Heading Off Without God I have said a few times that I am a confirmed landlubber – give me solid ground beneath my feet any day – I love good old terra firma. You know, what we have seen with Eli is Eli heading off in the wrong direction and you and I have done that too. How do we stop doing that? How do we not go in that place? Because it is so easy for us to head off there, go in the wrong direction, like Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas and plunder sacrifices and do all the wrong stuff that they did, in our own lives and forget that God honours those who honour Him. There is an executive summary of what God thinks about Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. It’s in First Samuel chapter 2, verse 17. It says: The sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord for they treated the offerings of the Lord with contempt. And remember the central theme – the pivot on which this whole story turns is in First Samuel 2, verse 30. God says: I will honour those who honour Me and those who despise Me, I will treat with contempt. Now there is a great part to this story; a great adjunct that goes with this story and it’s about what happens when Israel just takes God for granted. This bad stuff has been happening among the priesthood and Israel ignores it and just expects God to keep on blessing them. Let’s pick it up in First Samuel chapter 4. See, the Israelites went out to fight the Philistines, the Israelites were camped at Ebenezer, the Philistines at Aphek. The Philistines deployed all their forces to meet Israel and as the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the Philistines who killed about four thousand of their men. When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel said “Why did the Lord bring defeat on us today before the Philistines? Let’s bring the Ark of the Covenant from Shiloh so that it may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies. So the people sent men to Shiloh, they brought back the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord Almighty, who was enthroned between the cherubim and Eli’s two sons Hophni and Phinehas were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. And when the Ark of the Lord’s covenant came into the camp, all of Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook. Hearing the uproar, the Philistines ask “What are those Hebrews shouting about? When they learned that the Ark of the Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid. “A God has come into their camp” they said “we are in trouble. Nothing like this has ever happen before, woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the desert. Be strong Philistines, be men or you will be subject to the Hebrews as they have been to you – be men and fight.” So the Philistines fought and the Israelites were defeated and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great. Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers, the Ark of the Covenant of God was captured and Eli’s two sons Hophni and Phinehas died. See, Israel is so used to God being on their side, they just kind of head off, assuming that He was, despite the fact that all this bad stuff was going on. Despite the fact that the two priests Hophni and Phinehas were dishonouring, they were despising God - they were doing what was wrong. They deluded themselves – see, there is a cause and effect. No, no, she’ll be right! God is always on my side, He is a good God, and He blesses me. See, we take this mighty God, who created the whole universe and expect Him to become our performing poodle – don’t we? He does tricks on our command, He comes along behind us. Their first defeat, they get defeated and they lose three thousand men – what do they do? They go and send for the Covenant of God – “Let’s bring God to us, let’s make God do what we want Him to do, to protect us against the Philistines.” But God is not like that! God is an awesome, mighty, powerful and good God and when we start dishonouring Him let’s not expect Him to put our feet on solid ground – let’s not expect Him to keep honouring us. He always loves us – He’ll always forgive us; He’ll always bring us close but on His terms, not ours. We can’t sow dishonour in God’s direction and expect to receive honour from Him in return. See the humiliation of this story is: they treat God like a performing poodle, by bringing Him to them and in fact the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines. This was the place of the very presence of God Himself and over the next couple of weeks we will discover that people, when they realised what they actually had, these Philistines, all they wanted to do was to get rid of Him. But that’s for another day. Today, the simple message of this story is this: we can’t go living out a life of stiff necked rebellion and expect God to toddle along behind us on the leash and bless us on cue. We just can’t! God is a powerful and mighty God. You know when you put it that way it’s pretty plainly obvious, isn’t it? And to tell you the truth, that’s my agenda today – to make that plainly obvious. It’s blindingly, glimpsingly obvious. Let’s all take a big wakeup call here. When a storm hits, do you want solid ground beneath your feet? Do you want to know that God is with you? Do you want that certain knowledge that: well, He is going to bless you, no matter what this world throws at you? Gotta tell you – I sure do! And let me get back...
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It Starts in a Storm // On Solid Ground, Part 1
05/17/2026
It Starts in a Storm // On Solid Ground, Part 1
When the storms in life strike, as they inevitably do, it feels as though we’re caught in a small boat out on a stormy ocean. At that point, what we really need is some solid ground beneath our feet. And fortunately, God knows that only too well. Dealt a Cruel Blow You know you can always tell when we are starting a new series – I am excited. I love to get onto a new series in God’s Word and that’s what we are doing today. We are starting a series called “On Solid Ground” to listen to what God has to say into one of the central dilemmas of our lives and that dilemma is this: dealing with the storms of life. I remember when I was a young boy – I was about four or five years old. My mother and my sister and I sailed in a ship from Australia to Europe. Now that was a four week sail through the Suez Canal and back again. It’s a long way and I remember, even to this day, there were some huge storms along the way. I remember they had ropes in the corridors on the ship to hang onto. I have never forgotten those storms and remember, this was a large cruise ship and yet it seemed to get tossed around in those storms. I was sea sick; I was very afraid as a young kid, even though I was on this big cruise liner. I remember going out onto the deck and seeing the huge waves and the winds and the ship was pitching around in this fearsome ocean and for me, there is nothing as frightening as an angry sea and a violent storm – the ground as it were, moving under your feet. For some people life seems to be a constant storm. The ground under their feet is never solid – there is always some fear and some uncertainty and they can never quite figure out why. What is going on – why is my life always like this? Now many of these people believe in God and yet life seems to be one endless storm. What we really want to have is solid ground under our feet. When you are in a storm the question is – how? That’s what we are going to be exploring in this series called “On Solid Ground” starting right here and right now. Now if you have a Bible, I’d like you to grab it because we are going to be spending most of our time in the first eight chapters in a Book called First Samuel, in the Old Testament. We are going to discover the truth that we kind of know or we should know and yet it gets lost in the world that we live in. See this is a ‘me’ centred world where so often we find ourselves going to God asking Him for things for me, for me, for me and little by little, instead of God being God we expect Him to start being like a performing dog – to do tricks on our command. It may seem harsh but you get God the wrong way around and it spells dog. Am I expecting God to start dancing to my tune or am I dancing to His? It’s a good question. That’s what we are going to be exploring in this story and it begins in the storm. It’s a story about a woman called Hannah and it turns out that she is going through some incredibly tough times in her life but she has the Creator/creature relationship the right was up. Open you Bible – let’s go to First Samuel – it’s the ninth book of the Old Testament. It’s kind of just over a third; between a third and a half way in. We are going to start at the first verse of the first chapter of First Samuel. There was a certain man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah, son of Jeroham the son of Elihu the son of Tohu the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives; one was called Hannah, the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children but Hannah had none. Year after year this man went up from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh where Hophni and Phinehas the two sons of Eli, were the priests of the Lord. Whenever the day came for Elkanah to sacrifice he would give portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters but to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her and the Lord had closed her womb. And because the Lord had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year – whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord her rival provoked her until she wept and wouldn’t eat. Elkanah, her husband would say “Hannah why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you down hearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?" Pretty tough! Anybody who has ever gone childless or had someone in their family who has gone childless will know the incredible pain of a couple who would like to have a child and yet they can’t conceive. Can you imagine this going on year after year after year and in between these annual trips, as well? And of course, there were two wives – now the Bible doesn’t talk about the fact that there were two wives – obviously the author doesn’t feel a need to comment – praise God that has gone away. But never the less, poor old Hannah had a pretty tough time – a real storm, year after year, the pain of being childless and she had lots of choices in that space. She could have been angry; she could have lashed out; she could have withdrawn. And her husband is pretty useless; typical male – "What’s the matter, why are you crying? You’ve got me!" So what does Hannah do? Let’s look at First Samuel chapter 1, beginning at verse 9: Once they had finished eating and drinking at Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the door post of the Lord’s temple. In the bitterness of her soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord and she made a vow saying “O Lord Almighty, if You will only look upon Your servants misery and remember me and don’t forget Your servant but give her a son then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head." As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her “How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine.” “Not so my lord” Hannah replied, “I’m a woman whose deeply troubled. I haven’t been drinking wine or beer. I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Don’t take your servant for a weak woman – I have been praying here about the great anguish and grief that I have.” And Eli answered “Go in peace. May God of Israel grant you what you have asked Him.” She said, “May your servant find favour in your eyes.” Then she went her way and ate something and her face was no longer downcast. Turns out she does have a son, calls him Samuel, gives him over to God as soon as he is weaned and he comes and serves as a priest in this temple under Eli, whom we discover later is one bad dude. He is the priest; he is supposed to be the go between, between God and His people and yet he and his sons have no respect for God. We will look at them later and also we will see Samuel’s fate. At the start of the programme I talked about this "me, me, me" thing – always asking God for stuff; kind of turning things the wrong way round, instead of us being made in God’s image, we try to remake Him in ours. And yet here is this story – this story that begins in a storm – this story that begins with Hannah in a storm and she is asking God for something. Did you notice she doesn’t lash out or whine or complain? She humbles herself before God and asks her sovereign God; pours her heart out to Him. Eli, this scoundrel, with as much spiritual insight as my pet cat, thinks she is drunk and feeds her with platitudes – "May the Lord give you what you ask for." Yet here is a simple woman at the bottom of the heap, pouring her heart out to her God. And notice what it says after she does that, in verse 18 of chapter 1: “Then she went her way and ate something and her face was no longer downcast.” See Hannah’s feet were on solid ground – even before her prayer is answered – a seemingly impossible prayer. You know what that tells me? She trusted her God – no matter what His answer would be – she trusted Him; she let it go; she stopped worrying and God answered her prayer. I’m not saying "Let’s all be like Hannah" – we are clearly not, our storms are different to hers but what we discover in this story is that when we put God in His rightful place – God – He honours that. We are going to have a look at her understanding of her God again next. Chalk and Cheese What comes next in this story is Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving. She is in this storm; she asks God for the impossible; she has got the taunts of the other wife and she comes to God in a prayer of humility; pouring out her soul and God answers her with a son and she gives that son back to God for the rest of his life. Now listen to what she prays and how she rejoices. We are now at chapter 2 of First Samuel, beginning at verse 1: Then Hannah prayed and said ‘My heart rejoices in the Lord, in the Lord my horn is lifted high, my mouth boasts over my enemies for I delight in Your deliverance. There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one besides You. There is no rock like our God. Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance for the Lord is a God who knows and by Him deeds are weighed. The bows of warriors are broken but those who stumble are armed with strength.' And this prayer goes on and on ... read it for yourself in First Samuel chapter 2. And you know what it’s all about? The power and the sovereignty of God! It’s about a Hannah who went to God with this in her heart – God is above all things. Not this attitude of "Let’s reform God in my image. Let’s turn Him into a performing poodle." You know how I know that? Because when she poured out her heart to God she offered her son back to Him and she honoured that promise when God delivered her son. There is a challenge there for each one of us about how we go to God – how we see Him – as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords or some puppy dog that performs tricks on our command? Come on! And how can we tell the difference? See, this is a very hard thing to discern sometimes. How can we tell the difference between a right and a wrong attitude towards God? Let’s go back to His Word and we will see what a wrong attitude looks like when we look at the priest Eli and his sons. Join me is First Samuel chapter 2 verse 11. Remember Eli was the priest that was at the temple when Hannah went to pray. Eli’s sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord. Now it was the practice of the priests with the people, that whenever anyone offered a sacrifice and while the meat was being boiled, the servant of the priest would come with a three pronged fork in his hand, he would plunge it into the pan or the kettle or the cauldron or the pot and the priest would take for himself whatever the fork brought up. This is how they treated all the Israelites who came to Shiloh. But even before the fat was burned, the servants of the priest would come and say to the man who was sacrificing “Give the priest some meat to roast – he won’t accept boiled meat from you but only raw.” If the man said to him “Let the fat be burned up first and then take whatever you want, the servant would answer “No, hand it over now, if you don’t I’ll take it by force.” So this sin of the young men; the young priests was very great in the Lord’s sight for they were treating the Lord’s offerings with contempt. You see the way we tell the difference about our heart attitude towards God is through how we behave. Hannah could have complained; Hannah could have fought back; Hannah could have acted up badly; she could have lashed out at her husband; she could have grumbled at the other wife and yet, in her pain, who could have blamed her? She could have shaken her fists at God and instead she went to Him with her mission impossible and poured out her heart to God and trusted Him because He is God and then she had peace. He honoured that! Here’s an amazing truth – it’s one of those pivotal passages in the Bible that tells us a huge amount about why, when we have a wrong heart toward God, things go badly in our lives. Listen to First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30; this is a verse that’s worth writing down. God says: For those who honour Me, I will honour. And those who despise Me shall be treated with contempt. And what we read in the remainder of chapter 2 of First Samuel, starting at verse 27, is that God deals with Eli and his two sons and He sends a prophet to Eli and this is what happens. First Samuel chapter 2, verse 27: Now, a man of God came to Eli and said to him “This is what the Lord says” “Did I not clearly reveal Myself to your father’s house when they were in Egypt, under Pharaoh? I chose your father out of all the tribes of Israel to be My priest, to go up to My alter to burn My incense, to wear an ephod in My presence. I also gave your father’s house all the offerings made with fire by the Israelites. "So why do you scorn My sacrifice and offering that I prescribed from My dwelling? Why do you honour your sons more than Me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by My people Israel?” Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares “I promised that your house and your father’s house would minister before Me forever,” but now the Lord declares “Far be it from Me; those who honour Me, I will honour but those who despise Me I will disdain. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father’s house so that there will not be an old man in your family and you will see distress in the dwelling and good will be done to Israel. In your family line there will never be an old man. Every one of you that I do not cut off from My alter, will be spared only to blind your eyes with tears and grieve you heart and all your descendants will die in the prime of their lives. And what happens to your sons Hophni and Phinehas will be a sign to you - they will both die on the same day. And I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in My heart and in My mind. I will firmly establish his house and he will minister before My anointed one always. Then everyone left in the family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a crust of bread and plead "Appoint me to some priestly office so I can have food to eat." The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the Word of the Lord was rare – there were not many visions. There it is – these priests were in a position of power and authority and responsibility and they ... they didn’t honour God, in their words and in their deeds, they rejected Him. And God dealt with them. Hannah on the other hand – well, she was like chalk and cheese compared to Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. Hannah was the lowly of the lowly – these priests were on the top of the social religious register but that made no difference to God. “I will honour those who honour Me and those who despise Me shall be treated with contempt.” The priests failed! The Word of the Lord was rare – their job was to tell people what the Word of the Lord was and yet, in those days it was rare. You know, if you can’t change the people, sometimes you have to change the people and that’s exactly what God does here. Ultimately, young Samuel becomes the priest and the prophet of Israel – he is the one that grows in favour and we are going to look at his story next week. It’s About Honour Let me ask you something. Who was on solid ground, Hannah who honoured God or the priests Eli, Hophni and Phinehas who pleased themselves? See, it’s so easy to be like Eli, Hophni and Phinehas but it’s hard to be like Hannah. You know why? Because we can’t really see God – not like we can see the physical reality that we are in – not like we can see our circumstances – not like we can see the storm and feel the fear. All those things seem so much more real than this notion of a God that we can’t see – a God that we have to put our faith in instead of being able to touch and hear physically. And so this present reality takes over and God has to fit into our present reality. Absolutely, it is easy to be like Eli, Hophni and Phinehas! It’s easy to relegate God to one of the things that has to fit into our present daily agenda. But God is no less real for the fact that we physically can’t see Him. He is no less powerful for the fact that we interact with Him in faith. God is God and solid ground is the place that Hannah knew – she stood before God. I once heard someone say that peace is trusting in the sovereignty of God. Hannah had that peace. For that very reason – in the eye of her perfect storm, in that place of taunts and disappointments and hurts that she couldn’t even utter when she poured out her heart to God – Hannah discovered God’s peace through a simple, simple act of faith. So many times over these recent years for me, when the storms have blown in – so many times and you know, in a sense - each time I feel so inadequate to deal with those storms. Isn’t that the point? When we are on that ship in the ocean, doesn’t matter how big the ship is; doesn’t matter how strong we are, we are nothing compared to those storms. People come against you – circumstances, finances, things that really hurt, things of real fear, horrible things that people do – and we feel so inadequate just going and praying about them, well, "What good is that?" But you know what that prayer of faith is? That prayer of anguish and pouring out our hearts before the Lord, like Hannah did, it’s honouring Him as the sovereign God. It’s saying "God I may be smaller than this storm but this storm is nothing more than a pin prick for You. You are above all things, above all powers, above all dominions and circumstances and storms." And listen again to God’s Word. First Samuel chapter 2 and verse 30. God says: I will honour those who honour Me and those who despise Me will be treated with contempt. Who had solid ground under their feet – Hannah or Eli, Hophni and Phinehas? Now next week we are going to see how God’s contempt was poured out on Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. Remember that prophesy from the man of God, saying to Eli, “Your two sons Hophni and Phinehas are going to die on the same day as a sign to you that there will never be another old man in your line.” We are going to see that happen next week and we are also going to see how God’s honour was carried forth for Hannah through Samuel her son. We haven’t talked a whole lot about him today but this Book is named after him – First Samuel. We will see that next week on the programme. God blesses Samuel – God sets him up as the priest and the prophet and the judge over the whole of the nation of Israel. This nobody woman, this Hannah, who couldn’t have a son, honours her God and God takes that and changes the course of history. God’s blessing to Hannah flowed on, down the generations through her son. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: when I look at my life, when you look at your life, do we look like Hannah or Eli? Because that’s how I figure out whether I’m someone who honours God as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, as the sovereign of all things. Is this the God I go to, to pour my heart out to? Or do I steal His stuff? Is He the God I rejoice in when He answers me or the God who I try to kind of fit into my schedule when I can be bothered? That God who I manipulate and massage and mould into whatever I want Him to be. Make no mistake – God takes His honour and His glory very, very seriously. He gives them away to no man and to no woman. And as we will find out in the lives of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas,...
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The Top 3 Obstacles to Destiny // Discover Your Destiny, Part 4
05/10/2026
The Top 3 Obstacles to Destiny // Discover Your Destiny, Part 4
We each have a God–given destiny. A plan that God has for our lives, which fits perfectly with who He made us to be. The problem is that many people aren’t living out that destiny – because there are some obstacles in their way. So let’s find out what they are, and how to get around them – so that you can live out your destiny. Putting First Things First Most people these days live hectic lives, just scraping through each day. Personally, my list of things to do is as long as my arm and then some. There are some personal things I have to do; things to do with writing and recording and producing this radio-programme; there’s an organisation to run; people to meet with; this project; that project; a new idea over here, another one over there; hundreds of e-mails each day ... Welcome to my world. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining and none of those things are terribly bad at all, but the point is that with so many more things to do than I can possibly fit into my day, or my week or even my year, my process for deciding what I do is absolutely critical. Chances are, the same is true for you. One of the big mistakes I used to make is that I’d sit down in the morning, which (given that I’m a morning person) is my most lucid and productive time, and just start answering e-mails. After a while, I realised I wasn’t getting anything else done because by putting my E-mails first, I was putting other people’s priorities first. I was in fact dancing to their tune instead of sorting out for myself what the most important things were on my agenda, and doing those things first. There’s a well-known principle or framework that you read in a lot of management books, that sets out the difference between what’s urgent and what’s important, and what you discover is that almost nothing that’s urgent is important, and almost nothing that’s important is urgent. And yet most of us react to urgent things, or at least the things that other people say are urgent, and so we spend most of our time doing urgent things, instead of the important things – day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And before you know it, your life is kind of slipping away, doing a whole bunch of things, which, in the scheme of things, sure, they make you busy, but how important are they? Do you see my point here? How are you spending your life, and are the things you’re spending your time on important and worthwhile? I guess I’m asking those questions for you to ask them of yourself, and answer them. Come on! Be brutally honest. For instance, making sure I have some time with my beautiful wife Jacqui is important. Making sure I encourage her and give her a hug and a kiss, and spend some unhurried time with her in the morning over breakfast is really important, but it’s not urgent. It’s not as urgent say as the e-mail that comes in from a radio-station somewhere around the world that says they weren’t able to download tonight’s radio-programme from our FTP server. And yet what I used to do (because remember, mornings are my most productive time) is get up early and spend no time at all with Jacqui over breakfast, and just work furiously through that time, and by the time she comes home from work and I come home from work, we’re both tired and there you go. We haven’t spent any time together. Do you see how easily this stuff happens in people’s lives? The urgent trumps the important in so many people’s lives, and before you know it, your life is falling apart. Things are in a mess. Marriages are falling apart, all because we allow the urgent to crowd out the important. It’s scary, isn’t it? So what about you? What about your life? Are you letting the myriad of urgent things crowd out the important things like spending time with people, managing your finances properly, nurturing your children, developing relationships with your co-workers? See, all those things are incredibly important, and in many-a person’s life, they’re being cast aside simply because we’re too busy doing the urgent stuff. ‘I don’t have time to exercise!’ Well, if you don’t make time for exercise (which is important), let me tell you you’ll certainly be making time for sickness (which will be urgent), and actually, that’s how it works. Doing the important things generally over time reduces the number of urgent things that you need to do because if the important things go undone, that leads to crises and those crises increase the number of urgent things requiring an immediate response. I don’t know what your destiny is, but this is what I do know: It doesn’t lie in a myriad of things that other people tell you are urgent; it lies in the things that, in your heart of hearts, you know are important. If you or I went to God, this God who handcrafted us, who designed us in His heart – blueprinted our DNA, if we went to Him and said: ‘Lord, what’s the most important thing that I have to do with my life’, what do you think He’d answer? What would He put at the very top of our to-do list? Well, actually, we already know. A clever young lawyer once asked Him a very similar question. The lawyer sort of said (and this is my paraphrase): Well, Jesus, you and I both know that in the Law of Moses handed down over all those years, there are 613 commandments and prohibitions. That’s kind of a lot. I mean that’s a lot day-to-day to remember to do, so how would you sum up the Law? I mean, if I’m trying to prioritise these things in my life, which one of all those commandments is the most important one? You can read the exact words in Matthew 22 and Mark 12, and if I had to paraphrase Jesus’ reply in kind of here-and-now speak, it’d run something like this: Look, I know you have a lot of things to do. There are lots of rules: Do this, do that ... They’re all good things, but you can sum up the whole Law in just two commandments – to love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. That’s the most important one, and the second one is just like it: Love the people around you as much as you love yourself. That’s the whole Law in a nutshell. Do you know something? The most important thing that I do almost every day, the thing that I do before anything else, is that I spend an hour or so alone with Jesus praying; reading the Bible; asking Him questions, and that’s what sets the course for my whole day – day after day, month after month, year after year. Actually, it sets the course for my whole life. It is quite simply the single-most important thing that I do, and it’s through that time with Him that I’ve discovered my destiny. A Lifelong Journey If I were to ask you, "What’s your destiny? What were you put on this earth to achieve – to do? What impact are you meant to have on this planet of over seven billion people? What’s the point of your life, and is it heading in the right direction", I wonder how you’d answer those questions. I ask those questions of people rather a lot, and I can tell you the number of people who have a clear sense of destiny and purpose and direction – well you know, it’s less than five per cent – maybe one in twenty; maybe. Now I’m not saying that we should each have our lives completely mapped out because things happen along the way. There are twists and turns in life that are totally unexpected. Little things can change the whole course of a life. We can’t map out our whole lives in the minutest detail and say. "Yep. That’s what I’m going to do, that’s where it’s going", and yet deep-down, we need to have some sense of a destiny. Another way of putting it would be to have a sense of direction for our lives. Where’s your life headed? And that destiny is invariably tied up with two things: Our dreams, and our skills and abilities. If you’re one of the majority – one of those people who hasn’t quite yet cottoned on to the direction for your life, where it’s meant to be headed – then this is for you. Can you remember the dreams that you had for your life when you were young? Can you? There were some back there that were never going to fly. I mean, if you’re short and slightly dumpy, and you were dreaming of becoming a famous basketball-player, well, that was obviously never going to happen. But so often, there’s a dream in people’s hearts that’s been there for a very long time. Here’s a conversation that I’ve had so many times with people about this whole question of destiny. We get to talking about the direction in which their life is heading, and the person says to me something like: ‘But you know, I’m sure there’s meant to be something else, something more, something that I don’t know, something I’m meant to be doing, but I don’t know what it is’. Does that sound vaguely familiar? So I ask them then, "If you had no constraints, if money wasn’t an issue, if you could be anything or do anything that you wanted, what would that be?’ And the answer invariably comes back along these lines: ‘Oh, well! Anything I want? Well you know, I’ve always dreamed of" ... and then, they tell me the answer. They tell me about their destiny. It’s already there; it’s already been woven somehow by God into their DNA. Now of course, there’s a risk that this is a short dumpy basketball-player kind of dream, and so then I follow up with my second question: ‘What are the things you’re really good at?’ Most people can tell you that, and what I’ve found is that there is almost always, in 90% of cases, a wonderful fit between their dream and their natural skills and gifting. You know something? We’ve just discovered their destiny. We’ve just discovered what they’re meant to be doing with their lives, and the tragedy (I mean, the absolute tragedy) is that deep down they probably already knew that. So what’s held them back? The constraints we put on our lives. Remember my first question? ‘If you had no constraints, if money wasn’t an issue, if you could be anything or do anything that you wanted, what would that be?’ My question removes the constraints. Then all of a sudden, people can look at things the way they’re meant to be looking at them – through the eyes of freedom. For twenty years, I was a high-priced IT consultant, but there came a time of dissatisfaction – a time when I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t fulfilling my destiny. Every few years, the opportunity emerged to do what I’m doing now – to produce these radio-programmes, and use one of the small handful of talents that I naturally have (which is to be a communicator), to bring hope and change and transformation into people’s lives through these radio-programmes, but that meant taking a risk. It meant confounding people’s expectations of me. It meant leaving a big salary behind, and going and working in a small, at-the-time ailing, not-for-profit organisation. And those constraints and expectations and the money thing and the risk, all those things I have to tell you, were tough issues to navigate. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. It was (at the time) a huge leap of faith for me. When I look back on it now, this is what I know ... it’s always like that when we have to make a decision as to whether or not we’re going to get out there and fulfil our destiny, because destiny requires courage. In fact, the two seem inextricably linked. When we step out on the destiny journey, there’s always a risk of failure, and yet there is nothing as fulfilling and energising as living out your destiny. These last years doing what I’m doing now, there have been some real challenges, some really tough times, but I wouldn’t swap them for anything. And in pursuing this destiny, here’s what I know: The only person who can make it happen in our lives is Jesus Christ. Now some may scoff at that, and sure; there’s plenty of evidence of genius and achievement out there in the world. People are capable of doing amazing things, but here’s what I’m absolutely certain of: Jesus the Son of God, when He laid His glory aside, when He became one of us, when He came into this world with a destiny, His destiny was twofold. It was to reveal God to us and secondly, it was to die on that cross and rise again to give you and me a free gift of eternal life. And without that Jesus who fulfilled His destiny for you and me, you and I may well be able to achieve some amazing things, but we will never achieve anything of eternal significance and value. Because of my gift of communication, I guess I can hold people’s attention. I think I can make them laugh and even cry, but without Jesus, without His story, without His grace, I have nothing of eternal value to impart, ‘cos he’s the One that saves. He’s the One that transforms. He’s the One that gives new life, and my destiny lies in Him to be who He made me to be, and to do the things that He made me to do, so that His purposes will be achieved on this earth; and my friend, your destiny, your true destiny, lies in Jesus too. He has plans and purposes for your life, and He came up with them even before you were born, and when we give our lives to Him completely, wholly, fully, without constraint, without limit, without reservation, then we discover that destiny, and let me tell you it is a perfect fit (your destiny) with who He made you to be. How do I know that? Psalm 139. Go read it – His Word, His truth, your destiny. Ugly Duckling Syndrome The final obstacle to living out our destiny is this: We compare ourselves to other people. We all do that. We all look at these talented and gifted people around us, and we convince ourselves that we can never be as good as them; we can never do what they can do; we can never live out our dream, our destiny. You know what I call that? I call it ugly duckling syndrome. Hans Christian Andersen’s powerful story The Ugly Duckling is a literary classic, not so much because of the way it was written (my hunch is that the piece probably loses some of its poetry and lilt, having been translated into English) – no, the power of The Ugly Duckling, the thing that’s made it a classic, is in the way that it resonates so deeply in our souls. A swan’s egg, by some strange set of events, finds itself in a ducks’ nest in a farmyard, and so a swan is born into a family of ducks. No one really cares why or even realises that it’s happened; everyone just assumes that this little guy is meant to be a duck, and all of his little life people reject him for being an ugly duckling because he’s ugly! Everyone misunderstands him; everyone rejects him, and it hurts. He’s all alone, but amidst the bleakness and hopelessness of this world, there is one thing – just one – that makes his little spirit soar. Have a listen. One evening, just as the sun set amid the radiant clouds, there came a large flock of beautiful birds out of the bushes. The duckling had never seen anything like them before. They were swans, and they were curved with their graceful necks, while their soft plumage shone in the dazzling whiteness. They let out a singular cry, as they spread their glorious wings, and flew from those cold regions to warmer countries across the sea. As they mounted higher and higher into the air, the ugly little duckling felt quite a strange sensation as he watched them. He whirled himself in the water like a wheel; he stretched out his neck towards them, and uttered a cry so strange that it frightened him. Could he ever forget those beautiful, happy birds? Then when at last they were out of his sight, he dived under the water and rose again, almost beside himself with excitement. He knew not the names of these birds, nor where they’d flown, but he felt towards them as he had never felt for any other bird in the world. He wasn’t envious of these beautiful creatures, but wished to be as lovely as they. Poor, ugly little creature, how gladly he would have lived even with the ducks, had they only given him some encouragement. At the moment, he didn’t yet know who he was. He just knew who he wanted to be, but because he didn’t know who he was, who God had made him to be, he simply didn’t have a license to go and be who he’d been made to be, and even when he finally encounters those birds again, he thinks he’s going to die. Surely, surely, that can be the only outcome. ‘I will fly with those royal birds,’ he exclaimed, ‘And they will kill me because I am so ugly! And to dare to approach them ... but it doesn’t matter. Better to be killed by them than to be pecked by the ducks, beaten by the hens, pushed around by the maiden who feeds the paltry, or starved with hunger in the winter.’ And he flew to the water, and swam towards the beautiful swans. The moment they spied him, they rushed to meet him with outstretched wings. ‘Kill me!’ said the poor little bird. And he bent his head down to the surface of the water and awaited death, but then something happened that changed everything in an instant. What did he see in the clear stream below? His own image: No longer a dark grey bird, ugly and disagreeable to look at, but a graceful and beautiful swan. To be born in a ducks’ nest in a farmyard is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan’s egg. It’s not until we really know who we are that we discover how inconsequential the distorted images the world’s misunderstanding reflects back to us, in fact, are. My friend, as I meet people around the world (and I’ve met so many; more and more as the years go by), I’m so deeply impressed by the amazing abilities – the talents, ideas, creativity, perspectives, motivations – that are buried inside each and every person, each person whom I’ve ever met. And that’s not just other people: It’s each one of us. It’s not just them: It’s you, because each (in our own unique different way) have the capacity, the capability, the potential to do the most amazing things – to be the most amazing people. Please, please, don’t fall for that ugly duckling deception. You are such a person. You have a destiny, and it’s waiting for you to be lived. That’s precisely the thing that God wants you to know today, when you step out on your journey of destiny – your God-given destiny, for as the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works which God prepared beforehand, so that you would walk into them. See? God made you in a certain way, and He’s already prepared the way – the good works, and they’re waiting for you on the road ahead, and He’s created you as a piece of His workmanship, perfectly suited to the destiny that you’re called for. If you go back to Psalm 139:13-18, you discover that not only did God create us in our mother’s womb, not only did He lay down every strand of DNA and give you a hair-colour and your heart and your eye-colour and all those characteristics, but He also at the same time wrote down in His book every day, every experience, everything that would happen on your journey, and those two (that He made you, and what He made you to do) are an absolutely perfect fit. It’s about discovering that we are indeed God’s workmanship, you and I. It’s about discovering who we are and what our purpose is, so that we can go and walk into the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk into, with a certainty and a quiet confidence, in the knowledge that we’re a perfect fit – that we’re the right one for the job, no matter how daunting that job may first appear. Father God, we’ve heard Your good news. We know we’ve made so many mistakes. We’ve stepped out of Your plan. We went our own way, and each one of us (in our own way) knows it didn’t work out. And...
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Getting the Most Out of Life // Discover Your Destiny, Part 3
05/03/2026
Getting the Most Out of Life // Discover Your Destiny, Part 3
We all have some sense that there is some destiny to fulfil with our lives and yet so many people struggle to lay hold of that, to really start living the life that they know would be fulfilling their destiny. That’s what I think it means to actually live our lives to the full. That’s what I think it means to get the most out of life. Living Life to the Full (1) So can I ask you something? Are you really living the life to the full? I mean really. The worst possible outcome to my life and I think to yours too, is to get to the end of it one day and to look back and think to ourselves ‘I think I missed out, I don’t think I lived the life I was meant to live, I don’t’ think I’ve fulfilled my destiny. If only I could go back and live it again and do it properly this time.’ Don’t you agree? Wouldn’t that be just the most tragic outcome to our lives here on earth? It seems to me that we can be alive and kicking but not really living life. We can be alive but for all and intense and purposes be dead. So I guess when I talk about discovering your destiny is what I’m really talking about is being who you were always meant to be and living the life you were always meant to live. Getting the most out of life, is that something you want? I certainly do, and I hope you do as well. And so today we’re going to take a look at a man who in a very real sense managed to get a second chance and whatever you may think of his story, his name is Lazarus, the question is, what does it say about your life here and now and the possibility of a second chance? It’s a powerful story the story of Lazarus. It’s about a real man who died and whom Jesus we’re told brought back to life again. Now there are two parts to the story, we’ll look at the first half right now and the second part after a short break on the program so let's have a bit of a read. Johns Gospel chapter 11 is where you’ll find the story of Lazarus. Now a man named Lazarus was sick, he was from Bethany the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Now this Mary who’s brother Lazarus now lay sick was the same one who had previously poured perfume on Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sister’s sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love Lazarus is sick’. When he heard this Jesus said, ‘The sickness won’t end in death. No, it’s for God’s glory so that God’s son may be glorified though it. Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was for two more days and then he said to his disciples, ‘Well ok, lets get up and go to Judea’. ‘But Jesus,’ they said, ‘a short while ago Jews there tried to stone you and here you’re going back?’ And Jesus answered them, Isn’t there 12 hours of daylight in a day? A man who walks by day won’t stumble for he sees the worlds light, its when he walks by night that he stumbles for he has no light.’ After he said these things he went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep but I’m going there to wake him up again’. And his disciples replied, ‘But if he sleeps he’ll get better.’ But Jesus had been speaking of his death and the disciples thought that he was just asleep. So then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I’m glad I wasn’t there so that you may believe. But let us go to him right now’.” The last couple of programs we’ve dealt with an issue, well, so many of us don’t really want to deal with head on – sin. I mean in our world sin is something of a four-letter word. The stuff in our lives we know is wrong that robs us of life itself, when I look back on my life as a wealth apparently successful businessman on the outside people envied me. I seemed to have it all together and I seemed to have it all, but on the inside I was dying. I was dead and empty and hollow just like a shell, truly. I describe myself as a dead man walking. And so many people are living their lives that way today, truly they are! Are the things you're doing wrong robbing you of the life you were meant to be having? Are you a bit like this Lazarus alive sort of but not really? Sure physically alive but spiritually through the things you are doing with your life not really having a life at all? You know something, it doesn’t matter how much we deny it and try and put a respectable face to it, or sell it as a feature of our freedom to do whatever we want, sin does that to all of us. It makes us dead on the inside. At this point someone might be saying, "Come on Bernie, what an old fashioned point of view." If you’re in that camp I encourage you to do something, take a look, a good hard look at the way you are living your life and ask yourself am I really being the me I was meant to be? Am I really living the life I was meant to live? Do I have this sense that I’m fulfilling my destiny? See to me, it’s a tragedy when people can’t answer those questions with a clear assurance that yes they are being the person they were meant to be. Yes they do have a deep sense that they’re fulfilling their destiny that God has for them because that’s what God wants for your life, he wants a new life. Let's look at new life; let's look at how things unfold in this story of Lazarus. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him and Mary stayed at home. “Lord, Martha said to him, if you’d been here, if you’d only been hear earlier Lazarus wouldn’t’ have died!’ and Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ But Martha answer, ‘I know he’ll rise again in the resurrection on that last day.’ Jesus said to her ‘I am the resurrection and the life, who ever believes in me will live even though he dies and who ever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ And she said, ‘Yes lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into this world.’ And after she said this she went back and called her sister Mary, ‘The teacher Jesus is here.’ she said, ‘he’s asking for you.’ when Mary heard this she quickly got up and went out to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered their village but was still in the place where Martha had met him, when the Jews who had been with Mary in the house comforting her noticed how quickly she got up and went out they followed her thinking that she was going to the tomb to mourn there for Lazarus. When Mary reached Jesus and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, ‘Lord if only you had been here my brother wouldn’t’ have died.’ And when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit was troubled. ‘Where have you laid him?’ ‘Come and see Lord.’ And Jesus wept. And the Jews said, ‘See Jesus loved Lazarus!” But some of them said, ‘Couldn’t he who opened the eyes of the blind come and kept this man from dying?’ See here’s the thing, nobody was expecting Jesus to come along and raise Lazarus from the dead. And when we look at our lives and when we see our dead things can be on the inside and we look at God and say, ‘God, why didn’t you show up earlier?’ And we can’t imagine how God could possibly breath life into our situation, we can believe he could have done something back then like the people with Lazarus, he could have stopped him from dying. We can believe that one day we will rise again and have eternal life, but it can be so hard so hard to believe that Jesus could come and breath a new life today, here and now. Let me ask you, what do you believe? Living life to the full (2) Well let's get back to the Lazarus story because there is so much more in it about living our lives to the full, remember that everyone wanted Jesus to have fixed the problem before Lazarus died, but Jesus had said to his disciples he had a different plan. A plan that people around him didn’t really understand, so no one could see it. Jesus was saying to Martha, Lazarus’ sister. He said, "Your brother will rise again." But Martha said, "Look, I know he’ll rise again on the resurrection on the last day" so she doesn’t get it. She’s happy to believe in pie in the sky when you die but not so much about steak on the plate while you wait if that makes sense. Lets pick up the story and lets read the simple story, its in John’s gospel chapter 11 and it begins verse 38: Jesus was deeply moved when he came to the tomb, it was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ‘Take away the stone’, he said. ‘But Lord,’ said Martha the sister of Lazarus said, ‘by this time a bad odour will be there, I mean he’s been dead for four days!’ And Jesus said, ‘Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the Glory of God?’” I love that! If you believe you will see the glory of God! So they took away the stone and Jesus stood up and said, ‘Father I thank you that you have heard me, I always knew that you would but I’m saying this for the benefit of the people around that they might believe that you have sent me.’ And when he had said this Jesus said in a loud voice ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out. His hands and feet were wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth was around his face, and Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’ ” Jesus was deeply moved … I mean he loved Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha; he cared for them! Lazarus was a good friend, that’s why Jesus wept for him. So it’s not some publicity stunt, but it’s a tender encounter when people were thinking well, what’s Jesus up to? He can’t do this I mean Lazarus is dead he’s going to smell, he’s on the nose, his flesh is already rotting! I reckon we have to be very, very careful indeed about telling God what he can and can’t do. About putting God in a little box of our expectations, imagining somehow that he could somehow never bring Lazarus back to life, imagining somehow he could never really bring life back into us! You see, all these people – Mary, Martha, the disciples all the others – they’d seen Jesus do amazing things, do amazing miracles, yet they couldn’t believe that he would actually bring a man back to life. It didn’t even enter their minds, but he did! And look at the picture of Lazarus when he walks out of the tomb. ‘Lazarus come out!’ said Jesus. The dead man came out, his hands and his feet where wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth was around his face. See Lazarus was bound up in his grave clothes, and this looks a lot like some people that I know. Living a half-life. On the one hand Jesus has spoken a word of life into them but on the other they’re still bound up in their grave clothes, bound up in the things of the past, the old life. When Lazarus walked out of that tomb, beneath those grave clothes he was living and breathing there was colour in his cheeks but he couldn’t’ live the rest of this life wrapped in those grave clothes and the same is true for you and me. Some people have life flowing through their veins because Jesus put it there and yet they have one foot in the past in that dead half-life that didn’t work, trying to live life to the full, kind of hoping things would work out but they never quite did. The picture of a living man wrapped in grave clothes is the picture of many a man’s life, many a woman’s life. We want to live life to the full, we want to discover our destiny and yet the past wraps us up and stops us from doing that. You know something, there is a reason for that. You can’t live your life wrapped in grave clothes. What sort of life do you think would it have been if Lazarus had continued on wrapped in those grave clothes? And anyway, that wasn’t Jesus’ plan for him, Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." You like that bit? Let him go, set him free. Set him free to be the Lazarus he was always meant to be. Friend, how are you living your life? Is your life lived to the full? Or is your life held back by the past? Is it a life filled with joy and peace or are you still struggling with the stupid things you keep doing all the time? Is it a life of freedom or is a life wrapped in the grave clothes of your past? I can ask you those questions but I can’t answer them for you, only you can do that. And wherever you are does a question rise up in your heart, a question that goes something like this? "Isn’t there some better way of living my life? There has to be!" Well there is, and it’s a personal thing. "Aww you know Berni, but I want to hang on to this compromise or that old attitude I still want to cheat or lie or be tight with my money or not serve other people and I want to be selfish because you know, all this Jesus stuff is not particularly convenient." Great, great! Stay in your grave clothes, but don’t expect to live your life to the full. Don’t expect to realise your destiny. The alternative is to set our hearts like flint on living life to the full know matter what the cost. You know there is a cost. There is a cost for a heroin addict to give up heroin and there is a cost for an alcoholic to give up alcohol and a cost for a smoker to give up smoking. The first step always is admitting who we are, where we’re at and the second is the step of deciding here and now, "You know something that joker on the radio has a point. I DO have to do something, I can’t live my life wrapped in these grave clothes anymore." And you know our grave clothes are all different. For some people it might be lying and cheating, for others it might be gossiping, for other people it might just be a deep attitude of selfishness. You look in the mirror and you know what it is, and yet we’re powerless to take off the grave clothes until Jesus speaks his power into our lives and says, "Take off the grave clothes and set him free." My friend the answer, the only answer is Jesus. Jesus is the one whose power breathed new life into Lazarus, Jesus is the one who set him free. Jesus is the one that can bring new life to you and to your life and set your free from the things of the past that have robbed you of your life, the full life the life God made you to live. THE answer, the only answer is Jesus. A New Creation You know, it can be a lot easier to believe in something way, way out there something spiritual, something crazy even, than it can be to believe that anyone or anything could improve the lives that we’re living right at the moment. How could anyone take a beaten up old wreck like me, me for goodness sakes and do anything with me? I want to be the "me" I was meant to be, I want to live the life I was meant to live, but it all just seems impossible, but you know so many people have that problem. I had that problem. It's just incredible to me how easily we throw ourselves onto the scrap heap. How easily other people put us out there on the scrap heap. How easily the advertising industry and our economy and all that stuff throw us out onto the scrap heap! It’s interesting to me that back in Jesus’ day there were plenty of people ordinary people like you and me, people who weren’t rich or powerful and some of them were outcasts of society. If you were disabled in someway, blind or lame, you became a beggar because there was no social welfare system in first century Israel. If you had certain types of diseases, leprosy for instance you became an outcast. If you had certain types of occupation a tax collector, you were an outcast. We have an amazing propensity as people to push other people away for all sorts of different reasons, and sometimes we’re not even being pushed away so much as well, you have an unhealthy perception of ourselves, low self esteem it’s called these days, or an inability to trust people. There are so many different things from within and without that can act to isolate us to make us feel as though we don’t belong and that tragedy of all that is that people live their whole lives not belonging, not feeling loved, not feeling accepted, as a result well what do you do? That’s the question. Each person is valuable. You’re valuable, you’re beautiful, you have gifts and ability that can have such a great impact on this world if only other people could see that, if only let's face it, if only we could see that in ourselves some days. But how? There is a beautiful poem by Myra Brooks-Welsh, I’d like to share it with you today. It’s call "The Touch of the Masters Hand". Maybe you’ve heard it before and maybe you haven’t but it’s really worth listening to because speaks into this very dilemma. T'was battered and scarred and the auctioneer,thought it scarcely worth his while to waste much time on the old violin but he held it up with a smile. "What am I bidding good folks?" He cried. "Who'll start the bidding for me? A dollar, a dollar then two, only two? Two dollars and who'll make it three? Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three." But no, from the room far back a grey haired man came forward and picked up the bow. Then wiping the dust from the old violin and tightening the loosened strings he played a melody pure and sweet as carolling angels sing. The music ceased and the auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low said, "What am I bid for the old violin?" And he held it up with a bow. "A thousand dollars? Who'll make it two? Two thousand and who'll make it three? Three thousand once, three thousand twice and going and gone." Said he. The people cheered but some of them cried, “We don't quite understand, what changed its worth?" And swift came the reply, "The touch of the masters hand." And many a man with life out of tune and battered and scarred with sin is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd much like the old violin. A mess of pottage, a glass of wine, a game and he travels on. He's going once, going twice, he's going and almost gone. But the master comes and the foolish crowd never can quite understand. The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought by the touch of the Master’s hand. It's only now as I look back on those twenty years of living this new life that I can see how little by little I’ve become the "me" I was meant to be. I keep stressing this but I’m not here to tell you what to believe or how you should see the world, that’s something you need to figure out for yourself. But what I can do is tell you how this played itself out in my life. Around twenty years ago, I was experiencing deep depression and I had this sense of worthlessness. I thought I’d lost everything; all my hopes and dreams and my future. I was that dusty old violin. Truly! People don’t expect the guy on the radio to talk about himself like that, but that’s exactly how it was! I just couldn’t see beyond tomorrow. I couldn’t see how I could possibly be useful again, or achieve anything or become the "me" I was meant to be! Who the heck was I anyway? But there is something you have to recognise about that dusty old violin. It’s still a violin. Maybe it’s been neglected. Maybe he’s been disused, maybe it’s out of tune, maybe it doesn’t look that good anymore, but it’s still a violin. All that it needs is for someone to see it for what it is and that someone in my life is Jesus. This God they talk about who appeared somewhat irrelevant to me in most of my life was the one that stepped forward from the back of the room to show me exactly what I’m worth, and that right there was the most amazing experience of my life. Still is. You and I are made in the image of God you want to read about that? Go to the very first chapter of the bible, the book of Genesis the first page and it’ll tell you that God looked at everything that he created and he said, "Let us make man in our image. Male and female he created us." Our mistakes and all the stuff that life throws...
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Becoming Who God Made You To Be // Discover Your Destiny, Part 2
04/26/2026
Becoming Who God Made You To Be // Discover Your Destiny, Part 2
Have you ever looked at yourself in a photo and cringed, or seen yourself in a video and thought – Yich – do I really look that bad? Other people don’t seem to have a problem with how you look, but somehow you always do. And it’s not just you by the way … we all do it. Today, we’re going to discover how you and I can be truly happy with who you are. Being Happy with Who I Am As I look around at people, big, small, black, white, young, old … what I see is an awful lot of people who aren't happy with their lot in life. And as you talk to them, what it often comes down to is not that they're not happy with their lot and the things that are going on – although that's sometimes part of it – but something much deeper going on. Because more often than not, they're not happy with who they are. In our last program, we chatted about the fact, that often, that's because we feel we don't measure up to what the world expects of us but today, I'd like to go even deeper than that again. Let me ask you, forgetting everything that goes on around you, when you're alone in a quiet room, completely alone, do you like who you are? Are you excited about who you are … your potential? Do you enjoy your own company? Or are you one of these people who can't stand to see themselves in a photograph or in a mirror? Every now and then I think to myself, "it's time to get right in your face about something", and today’s one of those days. I mean, I don't mean to shove anything down your throat, that's never my intention but I don't know, I just feel that today it's time to really challenge you about how you see yourself. I'm someone who for many, many years, in fact the first 36 years of my life, appeared to be so confident on the outside. I have to tell you, everyone who ever met me thought to themselves, "this guy is so confident". But on the inside, which after all is where we live and where we feel and where we laugh and where we cry, I wasn't happy with who I was. People would never have guessed it, because in my confidence I used to roll over the top of them. I'm not talking about the things that we do but who we actually are. As a woman by the name of Joyce Meyer says, "It's not our do that I'm talking about but our who." I didn't like my "who", I didn't like myself and you know the more I tried to pump myself up in my own eyes and in the eyes of others, somehow the lower I sank in my own estimation. But the very day, the very instant that I gave my life to Jesus back in 1995, from that moment onward I knew I was okay. I've thought a lot about this and I thought why did it happen like that? It's one of those things that changed in an instant for me, why? This is such a deep thing. My own self image had been plaguing me for years and years. How could it change in an instant? So far as I can see, there's only one answer because on that day I felt accepted and I felt loved in a whole new way, at a whole different level. Different people believe different things. Oh – whatever you believe – let me ask you this? Does your belief system, does your faith – whatever that is – make you feel loved and accepted? Does it bring healing to that deep, nagging suspicion that you’re not good enough? Does it bring you into a place where you are truly happy and content with who you are? I never used to be able to look at myself in a photo without cringing. I recently had a photo shoot, something I have to do from time to time, to get some images to use on websites and in the back of my books, that sort of thing. And when the photos came back, I looked at them and I was really happy with what I saw. I’m never going to win a beauty competition, you understand – that’s because I’m just a pretty ordinary looking kind of man. But as I looked at those photos, I smiled, because I realised that I now like myself. I didn't become Mr Perfect overnight and all my faults and all my failures and all my weaknesses didn't disappear in an instant, it's not how it works. Sometimes I make mistakes – I don’t like that. So I get up and learn, and work on my weaknesses. But fundamentally, these days, I’m really happy with who I am … and indeed with who I’m not. So change in me didn't happen overnight but the thing that did happen is that I knew that God had accepted me just as I was and that even though I could see all the things I'd done wrong, that I was completely forgiven. He came to me and said, "Now, that you have a new beginning let me help you to change." That’s the thing, I thought if God sees me that way maybe it's time for me to see me that way and still today there are some things that I'm really good at and others that I'm just not and I may never be. Some of the things that come naturally to you, I'll never be able to do it’s unconditional love that brought me to a point with all my heart, I'm delighted to be who I am. I often say to my wife, Jacqui, "I'm so glad I'm me, I never want to be anyone else." That is a gift from God because I never liked me before. Let me get in your face and ask you a question, is it time for you to ask yourself do I see myself the way God does? Do I love me in the right way, not proud and arrogant but in a humble delight in who he made me to be? Because how can you and I possibly ever be the me we were meant to be and live the life we were created to live, if we don't like who we are. When we compare ourselves to other people and think – Wow, I wish I was like him, or I wish I was like her … we’re completely missing the point. Completely. I will never be a basketball player, because I’m too short. I will never be a surgeon, because I don’t have the skill in my hands. I will never be a pop star, because I can’t sing. But what I can be, is the best me that I can possibly be. And you know something – that’s just fine with me. And the reason it’s fine with me is that I was handcrafted by God and the love that He’s shown me is the unconditional love of Jesus … Jesus His one and only Son, who died so that I might be forgiven. We can’t truly be happy with who we are, until we know beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus died to pay for all our shortcomings and failings and because the price is fully paid, we can now stand before God completely forgiven, completely whole, completely loved. And if you’ve ever stood in that place – with your faith in Jesus … Jesus alone – you will know that the acceptance of God is what makes you whole. The love and acceptance of God – is what sets us free to see ourselves through His eyes. Discovering My Gift I think we all have a sense of wanting to fulfil our destiny, doing the things we're meant to do, achieving the things we're meant to achieve and being the person we're meant to be. But the more I talk to people the more I discover how many aren't happy with who they are. I spent a good many years of my life comparing myself with other people, here's how it goes. Here’s what we do when we compare ourselves with other people: all we see, are their good points: 'he's athletic and good looking, and she's really intelligent, and he's caring, and she's so perceptive about people, boy he's got such great hand-eye co-ordination, that couple over there everyone seems to like them. He is such a good cook, she has her house so tidy, they have such well behaved kids.' You see what's going on here right? We construct some super human unreality which is a pastiche of the very best points of everyone we know and then when we don't live up to that unreality, all of a sudden we come to the conclusion that …, "Ah, I'm a failure". Never mind that everybody we know is good a some things and not at others, never mind that each one of those people has weaknesses as well as strengths. We tend to construct an unrealistic image of who we should be and then we spend a lifetime, fuelled by the advertising industry - with all these images of success - we spend a lifetime trying to live up to something that no-one can ever be or live up to. Hello! The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The family next door always seem perfect compared to our family.That job that your friend has – that’s the perfect job, … look at mine. I’ll never have a job like that. I’ll never have a husband as good as hers, or a wife as good as his, my children will never grow up to be like their kids, my house will never look as nice as … Are you getting the picture here?! I wonder if we did a stock take of our strengths and weaknesses maybe sit down with a few people who really know us well whether we would look at that and go, "That's not a bad plus and minus ledger, you know, okay there are some things here I'm not very good at but actually there's one or two things here, oh, that’s really my gig, that's my shtick, that's what I do." The Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter 12:3-8 wrote this he said, By the grace given to me let me say this to you, don't think of yourself more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God's given you. Just as each one of us has a body with many members these members don't all have the same function and so in Jesus, we who are many form one body, each member belongs to the other. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us, if your gift is in prophesying, then do that in proportion with the faith that God has given you. If it's in serving then for goodness sake go and serve. If your gift is teaching go and teach. If your gift is encouragement go and encourage people, if it's contributing to the needs of others giving well for goodness sake give generously and if it's leadership then lead diligently and if it's showing mercy then go and do it cheerfully. Isn't that beautiful? I love this passage and I come back to it often because what it says is, "Look! You can go and think of yourselves either too highly or too lowly". There is nothing worse than when you see someone who aspires to doing something or being something and you look at them and think, "it's just not them'. If you could see me I'm 5 foot 9.5 right, 174 cm if you think in metric. I may want to be a basketball player, I don't, but if I did I could never be a basketball player, you know why? I'm too short and it doesn't matter how much I hope I could be a great basketball player, when you're up against 6.5 to 7 foot basketball players you can’t win. It is so sad to see people to aspire to something they just can't do. People who want to be leaders, even though they were never cut out to be leaders. People who want to be singers, when they can’t sing to save themselves – have you ever watched those talent show auditions on television and someone comes out to sing and they think they’re brilliant, but in fact they’re terrible?It’s embarrassing. It’s painful. They look so foolish. Paul's saying here, "The body has many members; each one belongs to all the others." When we get comfortable with our strengths and our weaknesses, with who we are and who we’re not, with the idea that we’re all meant to be different and complementary, that’s the way it’s meant to work – it is such an exciting thing because you know what? We're not threatened anymore, we're not touchy anymore, we can relax. We can enjoy the things that we're good at and let other people do the things we're not good at. And the very clear message is this: do what you were made to do; discover your gift, your unique talent and ability, that thing that you’re good at, that thing that you enjoy doing … and for Pete’s sake go and be you. Go and do that – because that’s what it means to fulfil your destiny. Right there.That’s it!!! Now there are always going to be some things in our lives we have to do that we don't enjoy doing. Now maybe you’re a young mother thinking … "But Berni what I really enjoy being is a mum. Just seeing my kids grow up, that’s all." As though that's not one of the most important things on the planet, “Well Berni, you know I'm only an accountant." WHAT! That's fabulous, I could never be an accountant, we need accountants. Thank God for Elia! When we pick something up and put it into God’s hands, when we're being the me we're meant to be it is just the most awesome thing and so many people spend their lives doing jobs, aspiring to things that they just aren't. I'm not saying set low standards, I'm not saying don't aim high, I'm someone who always aims high, always think big but you know I don't think big about being a basketball player. What I think big about is doing the things that God made me to do and when we persist and get good at them, it's so wonderful to be the me we were meant to be. Not someone else’s "me" but my me and your me. Becoming Who I Already Am Survey after survey tells us that 75% of people don't enjoy their work. I wonder how many of those are trying to do a job they just weren't cut out to do, it's just not them. And yet it’s not all that hard to see how different we each are. A child at school who is great at creative writing – but terrible at mathematics. So – what do we do? We make them work harder at their mathematics, instead of encouraging them to go with the creative writing thing that we’re good at. Of course, we all have to do a few things that we’re not good at from time to time, but if we end up majoring in those things, it’s a disaster. When I left school I was accepted into a medicine degree – I would have made a terrible doctor, and a law degree – and same with being a lawyer because the law is all about detail and I’m not into detail. So – pardon me for saying so, but blind Freddie can see that we have all been made differently. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said – Be yourself, Everybody else is already taken. Pretty good thought that. Okay baby is born right, what does it grow up to be? It grows into who it already is, let me explain. A little baby gets born, it can't even go to the toilet on its own, it can't feed itself, it can't protect itself – in fact it can’t do anything pretty much except eat, sleep, scream and dirty its nappy. So …is it any less a human being than you and me? Well, no of course not, this little bubs is just in an early stage of life and just like we all did, it goes through all stages. It begins to recognise and smile at its parents and the psyche develops and it grows an awareness and it crawls and walks and it becomes a toddler and it goes to school and becomes a teenager and then an adult, it's a natural progression. What is it that influences who that little baby becomes when it grows up? Well two things, firstly its natural disposition, its abilities, who God made that child to be and secondly, the things that happen along the way. Now some of those things along the way are positive, some of those things like the good parents who love you and good teachers at school. Those things develop the child’s natural abilities, but some of the things that happen rob the person, rob the child, give it a wrong impression of itself. You see bad things will always happen to good people, they do, they always have and they always will. But if we know who we are and if we let God into our lives to be with us, to develop us, to care for us, to nurture us, those bad things instead of robbing us end up enhancing our characters. The negatives get turned into a positive. The problem is so many people never get with God’s plan for who they are. For years I tried to be all things to all people, I set myself up to be this and set myself up to be that because I thought it would make me look important and good. But it wasn't until I got with God’s plan and started seeing myself the way he sees me that I really started being the me I was meant to be. God made me to be doing what I'm doing right now spending this time with you. I'm never as happy and as fulfilled as when I'm sitting here with you. A friend of mine, a Pastor, once said to me, "You know Berni, you should be more pastoral than that." In other words, you should be around lots more people and you should do this and you should do that and you should be this. And I love people but think about it, much of what I do is I prepare these programs alone and then I come into a studio basically alone. Okay millions of people are listening around the world but they're not in this room with me right now. If God made me to be someone who needed to be around a lot of people, don't you think I'd get awfully lonely doing what I do? He didn't so I don't. Who are you? Who did God make you to be? Maybe you're just one of those people who loves entertaining and having a house full of people over all the time. That's a gift, go and be that person, go and grow into that, go and love it and enjoy it and be the person who God meant you to be. Maybe, maybe you're a quiet, backroom kind of person who does things, book keeping or cleaning or cooking and you know, when you're doing those things you feel so fulfilled, can I tell you something? Go for it, if that's what God made you to be, don't compare with other people, grow in that, develop that, be delighted with who God made you. When we compare ourselves with others, we aspire to be someone who we aren’t, who we were never made to be and come on – that’s just plain crazy. I’m excited about who God’s made me to be – and I focus on the things I’m really good at, try to grow in areas where I’m still a bit immature … and leave the stuff I’m not good at to other people – people who actually love doing those things because they’re good at them. It’s not really that complicated, is it? Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good things that God prepared beforehand for us to walk into. That’s exactly what God’s Word says – do the things that God prepared for you – not the things that other people want you to do. God knows who we are, he made us and he made us to be the me we were meant to be. Right now in this instant, His heart and His eyes are on you and me and He knows who He made us to be and He is delighting in us. Wake up! It is time to stop trying to be someone else, it is time to stop trying to squeeze into the world’s mould, into a shape that doesn't fit, into something that ultimately becomes a distressing straight jacket. He wants each one of us to be the person He meant us to be. I am so excited because God has a plan, he has a plan for me, he has a plan for you. And we only discover who we're meant to be - it only happens when we get right up close to him, when we have a relationship with him through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing." And you know? You're going to grow different fruit to me 'cause that's how Jesus made us. And if you want to grow the fruit that you were meant to grow in your life, you need to get right up close with Him. His word and His Spirit in a rich and dynamic relationship that's so wondrous and so huge and so safe and secure and at the same time exciting, then and only then can we be the me we were meant to be.
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The Roadblock Between You and Your Destiny // Discover Your Destiny, Part 1
04/19/2026
The Roadblock Between You and Your Destiny // Discover Your Destiny, Part 1
In this electronic age in which we live, identity theft is the big new crime. If someone can steal your identity – well, they can own everything you own. But what if you and I aren’t really sure of our identity in the first place? What if you and I woke up one day and simply didn’t know who we were? Then what would we have? Lost Without a Passport I remember once a few years back being at the airport in Christchurch, New Zealand. My international flight from Australia was late in getting in, and I had to race to make a last domestic connection that night to my final destination – Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. And in the rush, I left my passport lying in one of those luggage trolleys at the international terminal – something I didn’t realise until I was checking in on the domestic flight at the next terminal. Oh, panic attack! Can you imagine losing your passport while you’re overseas? No passport, no identity. Now what? How could I tell people that it was me? I couldn’t leave the country; I couldn’t stay there ... It turns out that our identity is very important. I’ve never forgotten that, and in a very real sense, the same is true in life. We need to know the answer to that all-important question: Who am I? Other people need to know who we are. It’s so basic; it’s so fundamental, and yet so many people don’t have a deep sense of who they really are. It’s a problem deep-down, and it’s not something we talk about much, but it’s there, and as I talk to people, I think it goes something like this. Often we live life day to day without really thinking. We just go along and do the things we’ve always been doing: We go to work or we go to school or we look after the children, whatever it is, but bubbling away deep inside somewhere is a sense of: What’s this all about? Why am I doing this? What’s the point? The reality is this. We just have one life to live here on earth. It’s not a dress rehearsal. We can’t hit the rewind button and play it over again. When today’s gone, it’s gone; that’s it, and every year, every week, every day, every moment that you and I have lived up to this point is gone. We can never get it back. The only thing left in our time here on earth is the time between right now and when we breathe our last breath. It’s a sobering thought, and at the same time, most people have some sort of sense of destiny. Whether or not they believe in Jesus or some god even, they believe in things that are meant to be. How often have you heard someone say, "Well, it was just meant to be", or "If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen?" Whether it’s karma or whether it’s "que sera sera", whatever will be will be, we all have some sense of a future and a destiny to be fulfilled. It’s as though there’s some intelligent design or destiny that we just can’t quite put our fingers on. I believe that that’s there because in each one of us, God has made us in His image – each one of us, and when we look at the time we have left in the context of some sort of sense of destiny, a profound question of life emerges. Am I being the ‘me’ that I was actually meant to be? Am I living the destiny that I’m supposed to be living? They’re huge questions. It’s not about having things; it’s more about being. The turning-point of my life was when I was reading a book, and the author asked this question. He said: ‘Do you want to be, or do you want to have?’ and I realised very clearly that I was one of those people who wanted to have, and having things is not being. Having is about the next car; the next sound system; the next pair of shoes, but being is a profound sense of joy and contentment; being really happy with who we are and what we’re doing, and how we’re living, and enjoying the relationships that we’re having. When I realised that, it was so incredibly unsettling for me because I tried to do stuff my way, and it was turning out to be empty. Let me ask you something. As you contemplate the remaining time you have left here on planet earth, when you ask yourself the question, "Am I being the 'me' I was meant to be? Am I living out the destiny that I was meant to live?" What’s the answer? Yes, or no? If your answer is "yes", then you’re talking about some profound sense of joy and peace and contentment – the sort of stuff I was talking about just before, but if the answer is "no", then probably there’s this nagging sense that you’re missing out on something. Is this all there is? Surely there has to be something more than this. You know, in my experience, most people (by far the majority) are in the ‘no’ category. They have a sense that there should be – that there is – some destiny for their lives, but they also have a nagging suspicion that they’re not really living it out. That’s why we’re kicking off a brand new series of programmes over these coming few weeks called "Discover Your Destiny" – to … I don’t know … help us unscramble that, and maybe get a solid foundation of life sorted out in our hearts, get our lives on track, to live them out to the full so that when we’re on death’s doorstep, we can look back at our lives with a deep sense of satisfaction, and say to ourselves, "You know what? I’ve lived it to the full. I became the ‘me’ I was meant to be, and now I’m ready for my eternity with God." The starting-point of all that is an understanding of who we’re meant to be. It’s knowing where we come from and who we are, and what a tragedy it is for so many people who live their lives without knowing those things about themselves; without having a sense of what their lives are all about; without having, in effect, a really good handle on who they are – their identity. We live in a world that wants to tell us who we should be. We live in a world shaped by commerce and sales targets and advertising, that tells us: ‘You’re this, and if you’re not, you’re not successful, and if you’re not successful, if you buy this, then you will be, and then you’ll be happy. Then you’ll have a sense of who you are, and where you’re going’. Hey, I lived out that life for a good many years. I mean, I lived it out par excellence, and so successful was it that it drove me to the point of suicide. God’s take is completely different. God tells us that we’re made in His image – you and I. He tells us that not only did He make us who we are, but He also made every day of our lives to fit with who we are. More about that a little bit later, but right now, all I’m really trying to do is put my finger on the problem; that nagging thing that just doesn’t seem to want to go away; that sense that so many of us have that we’re missing out on something – something that we just can’t quite explain. Surely there must be more to life than this, this drudgery. Surely there has to be something that sets my heart on fire; that inspires me; that lets me be the me I was meant to be; that lets me live out the destiny for my life. Do you really know who you are, who you were made to be, what you’re meant to be doing, or is your life a bit like a cork bobbing around in an ocean, completely at the mercy of the elements – sunny one day, stormy the next, but just drifting – kind of drifting? The Perennial Pollution Problem I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but living an average, normal, everyday life creates dirt. I mean, just eating and drinking and living – the most basic things – create waste: Carbon dioxide we all breathe out with every breath (and of course if we didn’t get rid of it, it would poison us), perspiration, and we excrete waste. If we kept all of those things inside us, you know, they’d kill us in a pretty short time. On a global scale, we call this pollution; it’s a perennial problem. It’s just the way it is. For so many years, I have to tell you, I listened to these Christians talking about this word sin, thinking, "Oh, go on, get a life. I don’t need this guilt trip. I don’t need to go to confession or to be absolved or any of that stuff. I mean, I’m basically ok. I haven’t killed anyone; I haven’t robbed a bank ... please just leave me alone." The notion of sin had no place in my reckoning. "This is a dog-eat-dog world, and hey, there’s plenty of dog to go around. I will tread on whoever I want to; I will do whatever I want to, as long as I don’t break the law. I’m right, Jack." That was kind of my attitude because, in today’s psyche, hey, anything goes, but this anything-goes thing doesn’t always work so well because it’s all about me, and for you it’s all about you; and when I spend on me, me, me, that’s great, but real satisfaction comes when we give of ourselves, of who we are and what we have. It’s not until we give sacrificially to someone in need that we really get satisfaction in life, and that’s where we really discover who we are and what life is all about. For many, many years I kidded myself that I was ok, but it didn’t work. Just living my life created waste and mess and dirt and pollution, and here’s the rub: When we live the I-am-the-centre-of-the-universe, me-me-me philosophy, we want everything to flow in, and that stuff includes the waste and the mess and the dirt, and it stays inside with everything flowing in, and ultimately it poisons our system. It ruins our lives. Do you get it? The word "sin", as it’s used in the Bible, literally means to miss the mark. Like an archer aiming at a target, his aim doesn’t have to be off by much for him to miss the target altogether. That’s the idea of sin. It’s missing the mark or, as we might say these days, missing the point. Can you imagine getting to the end of your life, on your deathbed, looking back and thinking to yourself, "You know, the way I lived my life, I didn’t love people the way I should have loved them. I didn’t serve people the way I should have served them. I didn’t make the difference that I could have made. I haven’t left behind a lasting legacy of good at all. You know something? I think my life missed the mark. I think I missed the whole point." Can you even begin to imagine what a tragedy that would be? We’re chatting this week about discovering who we are meant to be – our identity, and laying hold of what our life was always meant to accomplish – our destiny, and we can’t do that if we miss the mark; if we miss the whole point. We just can’t. You can’t, and I can’t. See, God has a plan for us. I’m reading now from Psalm 139:13: God, You created my innermost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well because my frame wasn’t hidden from You when I was being made in that secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before even one of them came to be. It seems to me that we can either cooperate with God’s plan or we can run hard against it, and whatever we may want to call it, whatever word we may want to use for doing the wrong thing – for running against God’s plan, whether it’s the word "sin" or something else, you and I know when we’re swimming against the tide. You and I know when we’re into things that are selfish and angry and dishonest and just plain wrong. Come on; we know, and if that’s the way we want to live our lives, then the last thing we’re going to be doing is cooperating with God’s plan. The last thing we’re going to be doing is discovering our destiny; all those days that were written down in God’s book before any of them as yet existed. The last thing we’re going to be doing is being the person we were made to be, and living the life God made us to live. Does it make sense to you? I mean, does it seem like a wise way of spending your life, this one precious life that you’ve been given to live? The reason we’re talking about this today is that the last thing I want for you, and honestly, the last thing God wants for any of us, is to waste our lives; to miss out on our destinies; to live as square pegs in round holes, and this thing sin, the wrong things in our life – that’s what robs us of our identity and it robs us of our destiny, and I can’t say it any plainer than this: That’s just about the dumbest thing that we can do with our lives, you and I. The problem is that you and I are very good at rationalising away our sin, at justifying it, at defending the indefensible. I was just talking to a couple of smokers the other day, some builders working outside the front of my house. I used to smoke heavily, and as I talked to them about their smoking, you know what their response was? "Oh, look, yeah. We know it’s wrong. We know it’s stupid, but hey, we just can’t stop." See, we get addicted to this stuff. We get addicted to this poison in our systems. We know it’s wrong; we just can’t stop, so we rationalise it. We brush it off. We resign ourselves to it, as though it doesn’t matter. And when others challenge us about it, when others confront us with the consequences of our sin, we say, "Come on mate. Get off the grass. It’s none of your business what I do with my life." Well, I guess it’s not, but if you and I want to live a life that God intended us to live, if you and I want to be the person that God intended us to be, if you and I want to fulfil the destiny that God has for us, we need to deal with this. Listen to me: We need to deal with the sin. When we come face to face with Jesus Christ, we know in our heart of hearts the things that are wrong. There’s a woman you can read about in John’s gospel chapter 8 if you have a Bible, caught in adultery and they dragged her out to stone her in front of Jesus, and they were just going to trap Jesus (now there was a legal issue, which we won’t go into now), and Jesus said, "Look. If any of you is without sin, let him be the first one to cast the stone." You know what happened? Those who heard began to drift away – the older ones first, until the only people left were Jesus and the woman. When we look Jesus in the face, we know the stuff that’s wrong in our lives. The question is, how do we fix that? I Find Myself With a Dilemma I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking. What did it for me was when I was with someone when they died of lung cancer. I watched them breathe their last breath, and when I walked out of that hospital-room just over thirty years ago now, I threw my packet of cigarettes in the bin and I haven’t smoked since that day. It wasn’t easy. It was a day by day proposition – a craving by craving proposition. Letting go of that habit actually took years, and there are still times today thirty years on when I feel like a smoke, but I figure I can do it for just one more day. Giving up bad things can be really, really hard. Before the break, we chatted about this me, me, me, anything-goes model. The problem is, for anyone who’s ever tried it, you end up facing a dilemma. On the one hand you know It’s not working. I mean, I did it for much of my life. I’m a very intelligent person; I’m also short so there’s no pride in that; I just happen to be a bright person, and I had everything going for me; and you looked on the outside and everything was going well, but it wasn’t working on the inside, and we know this stuff (me-me-me) doesn’t work. Now on the other hand, we want with all our hearts sometimes to believe in God – to have a relationship with Him that’s awesome and amazing and fulfilling and exciting and tender and wonderful, but we know there are some things in life that He wants us to give up. It’s like there’s a roadblock between us and our destiny with God. With me it was ego; it was a huge thing. I’d speak at conferences all round the world in the IT industry, and I was frankly full of myself and I had an ego the size of a small planet, but I read the bit in the Bible that says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Gulp. Looks like He wants me to do something with my pride, so there’s a crunch time for me. Hey, there always is. There’s always one or two things, often that’s all there is, that we really need to give up; and they’re inevitably things that are so important to us that we want to hang on to them for dear life, or should |I say for grim death (because they’re bad for us and they’re poisoning our lives). When you have a strong pride that dominates who you are, you can’t have close relationships. Pride is also worrying about how other people see you, so you never have any peace. Life is always a competition to be the best; it’s one-upmanship, but I knew I had to give this up, and it’s like giving up smoking. There are two parts: the first part is that deep-down decision of throwing the packet of cigarettes into the bin. You see, you can’t be double-minded about this. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time, can you? So what is it with you; what’s the sin? I hope you don’t mind me using that word, but it’ll do. We have a sense of what it means. What’s the sin that’s robbing you of your identity – the sin that’s robbing you of your destiny, and is it really worth it? Maybe it’s anger or maybe you’re cheating on your spouse or being dishonest at work or being selfish. Perhaps you like playing politics; undermining people behind their backs; playing the game just so you can win, not for the good of others. We don’t have enough time in the day to go through them all, but there’s always something, isn’t there? And here’s what I know because I learned it the hard way: That something is going to rob you of your destiny – the amazing future God has planned for you. Friend, that’s a tragedy. Can I ask you to think right now what’s the one thing, the one sin, that’s robbing you of your destiny? Just think. Know it in your mind. Just look at it; turn it over and over; that one thing – your something. Now let me ask you two questions about it. Firstly, are you proud of it, or do you hide it? The chances are you hide it. That’s what we inevitably do when we know that we’re doing something wrong, and secondly, of what benefit is it to you? The very same question that the apostle Paul asks in the New Testament. Romans 6:21: So, what advantage did you then get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. The key to letting that one thing go, your something – your sin, is realising that it’s not good for you. It’s not good for those around you, it’s not good for the people you love, and it’s robbing you of your destiny. Remember you can’t be a non-smoker and a smoker at the same time. You can’t have your cake and eat it as well. You can’t hang on to sin and fulfil your destiny. You just can’t. Deciding to make the change is something only you can do. I can encourage you, but you have to make the choice. Some people want God on their own terms. "Well, you know, you know, um, I’m living with my girlfriend or I’m living with my boyfriend and that’s just the way things are these days, and if God wants me, He has to accept that because that’s the way I am." You know, we want to remake God in our image to suit our consumer lifestyle. I’m sorry, but that’s not the way it works because our identity, our true identity, is in God Himself. Genesis Chapter 1. God said, "Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the livestock – over everything", so God created us in His own image; in the image of God He created us,...
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Getting Into God's Word // Power Unlimited, Part 4
04/12/2026
Getting Into God's Word // Power Unlimited, Part 4
God’s Word is packed full of power … power unlimited … to transform your life. But one of the biggest problems people have with the Bible is understanding it. Making sense of it. Knowing where it comes from, and where what they’re reading today fits into the big picture. Well, I think it’s time we did something about that. About the Bible – Old and New We’ve all heard of those word association tests that psychologists use. You know, they say ‘black’, you say ‘white'; they say ‘rabbit’ and you say ‘carrot'; day/night; God/mmm love; devil/mmm evil; Bible/hmm … Bible? How do you respond to that? Stuffy, old, irrelevant? Well, different people will have some different views but actually in Australia where I live, the Bible is one of the least trusted of all historical documents. Over the last week and a bit on the program we’ve been talking about the incredible power that we unlock, when we read the Bible. But this thing that we call “the Bible”, it’s a big book, it’s massive and it can be daunting. So today I thought it might be useful just to have a look to see what this Bible is exactly. I want to share with you a secret, it’s sad but true. I never read a book cover to cover until I was in my early twenties. I managed to get through school and university and did pretty well I might add, without ever reading a book from beginning to end. I remember at university, in first year English, we studied the book Wuthering Heights which absolutely bored me to tears, I’m sorry and I never opened the book once. There are companies that publish crib notes, you know the summary of the book and a summary of what’s in it and a summary of what some of the critics say, so I just quickly read those, crib notes, wrote essays and did, by and large, reasonably well. And I never, ever liked libraries either. You know how libraries have this kind of dusty, dank smell; all of them are the same. Every library on the planet has the same smell. I thought about it for a while, I thought ‘Berni, why don’t you like libraries? Why did it take you so long to read books?’ The answer I guess has two parts. Firstly, libraries for me always felt really big and inaccessible. They have tens of thousands of books and in the old days when I was at university, they had card systems for accessing, for finding things, I mean these days they have computers. The old card systems had what they call the Dewey Classification system and finding anything just took so incredibly long. And secondly, when you did find the stuff, there was always so much of it, there was so much time involved to, I don’t know, look through all those books and research them. I mean, some people are natural book worms, well I’m not. I still frankly don’t like libraries. I’m sorry if you’re a librarian, I just don’t like libraries. I haven’t darkened the doorstep of one since I finished my last degree quite a few years ago now. You know something; I think for a lot of people the Bible is exactly like that. It feels big and inaccessible. There are many, many people who wouldn’t mind having a read but, for goodness sakes, where do you start? Well today let’s break it down a bit, let’s make it a bit more accessible. I remember when I started Bible College only a few months after becoming a Christian, everyone took for granted that we knew about the Bible. The reality was, I didn’t and my hunch is, I wasn’t alone. Let’s unpack it a bit, let’s demystify it a bit. All of a sudden you know it becomes a whole bunch more accessible. The thing that we call the Bible is made up of 66 different books written by different people over somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 years. That’s the kind of period over which the Bible was written. And it wasn’t just written by different people but at different times and the last book was written, well almost 2,000 years ago. There are essentially two parts to the Bible, this was complete news to me when I first opened it, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and when I started at Bible College I didn’t know which one was which. The Old Testament, well the Old Testament is God’s story and the story of how He interacted with and engaged with His chosen people, the Israelites. The Old Testament is written completely B.C., before Christ, before Jesus came to be on earth with us here. What Christians call the Old Testament is in fact exactly the same as the Jewish Hebrew scriptures, Jews still use those same scriptures today, Christians call it the Old Testament. It’s written mostly in the original language of Hebrew, the language of the Jews. Now there’s small parts of books like Daniel which is written in a language called Aramaic which is the language that Jesus actually spoke but by and large, the Old Testament was originally written in the language of Hebrew. And what we have today, the thing that we call the Old Testament is an English translation of that. Now there are lots of funny name books, Deuteronomy and Judges and Chronicles and there’s Ezekiel, there are 39 separate books and there are kind of 4 main parts of the Old Testament. The first 5 books, Genesis to Deuteronomy, are the Jewish or Hebrew Law, the Torah. And then you go Joshua through Ezra and Nehemiah and that’s kind of the history of what God did and how His people responded. And then after that are the wisdom books, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Lamentations. And the rest of the books in the Old Testament are written by men called Prophets. Men whom God called to call His people back to Him. That’s the Old Testament, it’s a story of God engaging with Gods people. And the New Testament is 27 books. Now, it was mostly written in the language of Greek. The first 4 books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are gospel accounts, they’re the historical account of Jesus’ life and His ministry. And the next book, the book of Acts is the story of the first 20 or so years of the Church after Jesus rose again to be with His Father. Then there’s a whole bunch of letters called Epistles from people like Peter and John and Paul, written to Churches that they were involved in or in some cases, to individuals. This may be old hat to some, but I know to many, just a simple understanding of the basic structure of the Bible is going to be a real help. I know that when I was a new Christian, no one ever bothered to explain it to me – I wish they had. Now some people might be saying to themselves, that’s all well and good, but how accurate is the Bible. Because before the printing press was ever invented by Gutenberg in 1450, the Bible – there’s this massive thing, the Old Testament and New Testament – was transcribed over and over by hand by people called Scribes who copied them by hand. It’s hard to imagine. But these days, there’s a science called Textual Criticism. It studies whether any errors crept into the Bible as it was copied through all these generations manuscripts. And what it tells us, is that having studied thousands of manuscripts, the levels of accuracy are remarkable. I mean it’s a science, people have done it. There are very, very few words or sentences where there is any doubt what was originally written. And blessedly these days, this thing called the Bible has been translated into easy to read, contemporary versions. No more thee’s and thou’s – great, modern day, accurate, easy to understand translations. And did you know that in the Bible, over half of the 66 books, over half, you can read in half and hour or less. Now look, in a few minutes we can’t hope to do anything but scrape the surface. Today we’ve just talked about some basic factual stuff. No-one really taught me this stuff. I remember becoming a Christian and going and sitting in a Church and people just teach from the Bible which is wonderful but no-one ever explained to me that it was 66 books written by a whole bunch of people over different periods of time. That some of it was stories and history and some of it was letters and some of it was poetry. But when you simplify and demystify all that stuff, it turns out that it’s just a wonderful book. And with the many contemporary translations, it’s much, much easier to read than I ever thought. As I started to read the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament, I was completely blown away by this amazing Jesus. Who would have thought … the Bible. Getting Practical – Useful Resources I have to tell you, that thing they call the Bible was a real problem for me. I mean, first coming to grips with the fact that it is what it says that it is, the Word of God but then, just getting into it. It’s made up of 66 separate books written over about 1,500 years in different times, in different places and different cultures. So there are words and names and places and concepts and ways of thinking … well, we’re not always familiar with them. We’re continuing in our series ‘Power Unlimited’ – because that’s what Go’s Word brings into our lives so today, we’re going to get down and really practical on just how to get into the Bible because unless we do, we’re going to miss out on much of the power that God wants to pour into our lives. Over the years I’ve discovered a few very simple helps or resources that have made such a difference in making sense of God’s Word. You see, it turns out there’s a whole bunch of people much smarter than me who have done some great research and put the information together in such easy usable ways and all their work makes getting into God’s Word, the Bible, so much easier for the likes of you and me. Today I just want to share some of those resources with you. I remember twenty or so years ago, just after I became a Christian, I started attending a tiny little Baptist Church in the southern suburbs of Sydney. A little place called Oyster Bay. Our pastor, Phil, was a passionate and gifted Bible teacher and that man has had a huge impact on my life. Now as well as Sunday services, the Church used to have these little home Bible studies and we’d meet one night a week in someone’s house. In our small group, five of us would gather together. And at the time, the particular little home fellowship that I’d joined, was studying the Old Testament book of Hosea. So we’d lob in there each Wednesday evening, we’d have a cup of tea and some fellowship and then we’d sit down and do a Bible study together. And right through that book, over and over and over again, Hosea talks about Ephraim – that word is mentioned 29 times by Hosea. So I remember asking these people, most of them had been Christians for a good many years, “Okay, who or what is this Ephraim thing?” I mean, Hosea kept talking about it and so it seemed to be quite central to what he was saying. But you know something, no-one could tell me who or what Ephraim was. Now it turns out the Ephraim was one of the tribes of Israel, Ephraim was one of Joseph’s sons and there’s a whole history around this tribe and how they rebelled against God, but we didn’t know that in that Bible study so a lot of what God was saying to us, through this amazing, powerful book of Hosea, well it was frankly lost on us. And that sort of thing happens a lot more than you might think. Consider the story of the Good Samaritan. It loses its whole meaning if we don’t understand the Samaritans and who they were and what the Jews thought of them. Now when Jesus told that story to the assembled masses they all knew the Samaritan story but we don’t, it’s not natural to us. And there are names and places and concepts and ways of thinking in the Bible that are foreign to us, because we’re separated from them by time and culture. It might have made sense to the people back then but not to us now. And unless we understand those things, we miss out on the richness, on the gravity, on the power of what God is trying to say to us. I remember coming to grips with the Jewish system of blood sacrifice in the Old Testament. Now I kind of think about blood sacrifice and it’s pretty ghastly to me here and now, but it’s something I really had to understand to understand what Jesus did for me on the Cross. So I decided I was going to find out, not just skim the surface, not read through a story and have them talk about Ephraim or Samaria or all these other things I didn’t know about and miss out on what God was trying to say to me through the story. Now these accounts were written such a long time ago and God has preserved them and kept them accurate for us here and now but there is indeed a gap of culture and time in history that we have to bridge to understand completely what’s happening in what’s been written. I mean after all if the Bible is God’s Word and if God is speaking to us through it, I decided I needed to know what He was saying. And surprisingly, that’s not as difficult as I thought it would be. Right now, I’m going to talk about a handful of really simple resources that made absolutely the world of difference. The first one was my Bible, a simple English translation, not the King James with the ‘thees’ and ‘thou arts’, there are so many good contemporary language translations available to you and me today. The New International Version or the NIV as it’s called, is really popular. I happen to use the New Revised Standard Version (the NRSV). There’s a translation called The Message which is really in here and now language. The Contemporary English Version (CEV). The New English Translation (NET). Which one is the best one? The one you’re going to read. You can get a thing called A Study Bible, it’s got not just the words of the Bible, but it’s also got a huge amount of resources packed into it. It explains the meanings of different words, there are notes and maps and cross references. They’re really good, they don’t cost a whole bunch more than a Bible with just the Bible words. So if you want to do more than just skim across the surface, it’s really good to have one of those – a Study Bible. Check them out. One of the most helpful features in a Study Bible is a summary of each book: who wrote it, when, to whom and why because context is so important isn’t it? Before I read Ephesians I read four or five paragraphs in my Study Bible which explain the context and all of a sudden the book of Ephesians made a whole bunch more sense to me. A Study Bible is a really worthwhile investment and it’s not much more than an ordinary Bible. You can get one from a Christian bookshop or you can buy one online. I happen to have an electronic one these days on my tablet device. The second resource is my Bible dictionary. Now I happen to purchase a Bible dictionary called the Holman Bible Dictionary, years ago – it’s just one, single volume. You can get Bible dictionaries that are 25 volumes, mine is just one volume and it has pictures. So when I was reading and it talked about the Temple in the Bible, I could go to my Bible dictionary and look at it and see a picture and plans and explaining the different parts. So I’m able to read a few paragraphs in just a few minutes, and I’m there, I understand what the writers saying about the Temple, about the Holy of Holies, wow! When the Bible talks about Ephraim I look it up, half a column, three minutes, I know who or what Ephraim is. The story of the Good Samaritan; who were the Samaritans? What was their relationship to the Jews? Ah! That’s what Jesus meant by the story of the Good Samaritan. And lastly, the third resource was a Bible timeline. It’s one of these things you can fold out and it’s about four pages wide that show the chronology of the Bible. You read about King David, when was he king? Who was King before him? Who was King after him? What else was going on? Which prophets were writing when David was alive? And all of a sudden you put the whole Bible thing in time sequence, that’s huge. And just to top things off, let me tell you about two stunning websites. The first is biblegateway.com where you can compare different Bible translations. The second is studylight.org, it has Bible dictionaries online, the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words, and so many more great resources. All free. So let me ask you? Do you take Jesus seriously? If you do then we need to take the Bible seriously. And for just a small investment on your part in just a few simple resources, they pay such huge dividends in hearing and understanding what God is saying to us today through His Word. Listen and Learn If you spend anytime with me here on the program one of the things you will know is that I’m really passionate about God and what He has to say. Not in a religious sort of a way but in a Jesus sort of way. The thing that really strikes me about Jesus when you read about Him, is how plain and matter of fact He was about sharing with people who God is and what His plans are. Over these last couple of weeks on the program we’ve been looking at what it means to lay hold of God’s power unlimited, God’s resurrection power that’s available to you, as you open His Word the Bible and listen to what He has to say. The Bible is God speaking to us and He means to challenge us and stretch us and encourage us and bless us through His Word. One of the ways that many people get God’s Word into them is by listening to people speak. Radio programs like this or on television and of course, if you attend a Church. But how can preaching and teaching be a part of really getting God’s Word into us? Over these last twenty years or so, the time that I’ve been a Christian, I’ve seen two things. On the one hand I have been so blessed by some really good teaching and on the other hand I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff too. In my very first Church, a little Baptist Church, our pastor’s name was Phil Littlejohn. Now Phil was a gifted teacher, he just had this ability to open God’s Word and speak God stuff into my heart. I learned later this is a real gifting, different people have different gifts and abilities given to them by God and teaching is one of them. Jesus had that, I mean time and time again when He opened His mouth people were amazed because He spoke with a plainness and a power and an authority that they hadn’t heard before. And you know something, He didn’t always tell them things they wanted to hear. “Love your enemy.” “Take up your cross and follow me.” “Lose your life for my sake and you’ll gain your life.” It’s not exactly good marketing, I mean the spin merchants would not have let Him get up and speak like that today. I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at how Jesus preached. It’s real, it’s powerful. It’s balanced on the one hand and radical on the other and it sort of, well, it cuts through all the selfish rubbish we go on with, right to the heart of what God wants to talk about. And my prayer is that when I discharge my gifting to teach in my own way, I’ll always try to teach like He did. But you know I’ve also sat in Churches over the years and listened to preachers drone on with dry and theoretical, completely cerebral stuff, that’s not relevant to my life. On more than one occasion I’ve walked out after church and two hours later I ask myself “Do I remember what he talked about?” And the answer is, “No, not really.” Or you listen to other speakers and there are lots of words and they’re very entertaining and they make people laugh and they tickle their ears with great stories and things they want to hear and they yell and people slap them on the back afterwards, ‘praise the Lord’ but I’ve been to some of those too and well, I felt like I’d been at the Lord’s table to be fed but I left hungry and empty. The flip side of that is that with some...
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A Radically New Way of Living // Power Unlimited, Part 3
04/05/2026
A Radically New Way of Living // Power Unlimited, Part 3
They say that following Jesus isn’t easy. Because following Jesus means swimming against the tide of popular opinion. Following Jesus means, all too often … in fact most of the time … going in the opposite direction. That’s why we need power … power unlimited … to follow Jesus. WARNING: The Countercultural Christ Over the last couple of weeks on the program, we’ve been talking about the unlimited power that’s available to you and me through God’s Word. It seems like a bit of a crazy notion, this idea that you can find incredible power, unlimited power in a book. But the Bible, well … the Bible isn’t just a book. It’s the living Word of the living God and when God speaks, amazing things happen. This is what the Bible says about the Bible – two key verses that change everything about how we look at God’s Word: Hebrews 4:12: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 2 Tim 3:16-17: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. It never ceases to amaze me how people who call themselves Christians think that they can live their lives in peace and joy and power and service … by never, ever opening the Bible. By never, ever drinking in the living, active Word of God that helps us discern the intentions of our hearts. Because let’s face it, it’s in our heart that we deceive ourselves. It’s in our heart that we conceive sin and give birth to it. And so we do need teaching, we do need reproof and correction and training in righteousness in order to be proficient and equipped for every good work. What I’ve discovered in my life is that there are fundamental flaws and weaknesses in my personality, that, try as I might, I am powerless to change. And yet, when I let God’s Word wash through my heart, when I allow the Holy Spirit to write God’s Word on my heart, He does things that I could never do, He unleashes power … power unlimited … to do the things I cannot do. That’s what happens when we listen to God through His Word. Because God calls into existence the things that do not yet exist (Romans 4:17). Think about it, how did God create the universe? God said “Let there be light and there was light.” (Genesis 1:4) God said “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters. (Gen 1:6) God said “Let dry land appear” and it was so (Gen 1:9) God said … God said … God said … and so the universe was created. In other words God spoke the whole universe, the trillions of stars, the great lights, all the creatures and plants on the earth … God said … and it was so. That’s the power of God’s Word. And if that isn’t power unlimited, I don't know what is. But … there always seems to be a “but” doesn’t there? … but you and I, all too often, we want that power for all the wrong reasons. We want it to make our lives better, rather than to empower us to sacrifice our lives for Christ’s sake. We want it to get ahead, to overcome this, to get that … rather than to take our Cross and follow Jesus. I said at the beginning of the program that Jesus said that following Him would be hard. Here it is: Matthew 16:24-26: Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life. Let me ask you plainly, quietly but very honestly: Why do you want God’s power, God’s unlimited power, in your life? Is it in order to change the difficult circumstances, the difficult people the things out there, the things around you that are causing you grief? Or is it in order that God would change you, to empower you, to enable you to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth? Is it that the Holy Spirit would give you the power to take up your Cross and lay down your life, to potentially lose it all, for Christ’s sake? This whole series of messages Power Unlimited, comes with a warning. Don’t try this at home, unless you’re prepared to lose it all because this wild, untamed, Jesus, is radically counter-cultural and He’s calling His followers to a radical, counter-cultural life. A life that could cost you, will cost you, everything. Have a listen to these couple of encounters that Jesus had with the religious establishment. It’s worth taking a few moments to see how Jesus upset the prevailing culture of His day: Matthew 12:1-8: At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. Do you get it? This is what got Him killed. This is why they crucified Him … because He shone light where there was darkness; because He brought truth where there were lies … and that upset people. Have you noticed how vitriolic people, society, culture becomes when you stand up for the rights of the unborn child, or when you speak with love of the wonder of God’s plan for marriage to be a sublime union between one man and one woman, or when you pull back from the filthy jokes that people tell at work? Have you noticed that? Or have you noticed about the “dangerous religious teachings” in schools that people talk about these days in the news … when it was Christians who are responsible for taking education far and wide across this globe, founding schools, founding hospitals, caring for the needy. Have you noticed? Jesus isn’t calling you to an easy life my friend, make no mistake about it. You follow Jesus and you are going to upset people, and they will come against you like nothing else on earth. And what you’re going to need the power for, is to make it through in love, to continue shining the light of God’s love into this earth, despite the opposition, the persecution, the difficult people, the difficult circumstances. As Adrian Pass wrote: You’re going to need the joy to bear the pain and sorrow. And yet, when we get God’s Word into us, the promise of Jesus, the Son of God Himself, is this: John 15:7-8: If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. Did you get that? If the Word of God abides in you, dwells in you, has say in you, and if you abide in Jesus – you can ask for whatever you wish – whatever – and it will be done for you. There it is. Power unlimited. But not to do the things that you want, because once God’s Word abides in you, you’ll be asking for the things that He wants. Let your will be done on this earth … as it is in heaven. Power unlimited. Laying hold of Power A few years ago now, I had the opportunity to speak with a group of high school students at the opening of their college and senior campus. The subject of my presentation was this: ‘How to Get More out of Your Parents’. I just remember that when I was at high school, speakers at those functions were so boring. I wanted to grab their attention and it certainly did that. A few of the parents, I have to tell you, were listening pretty closely as well but the heart of the presentation was this. Our parents, at least the greatest majority of them, are hard wired to bless us, but one of the things teenagers do, I know I did, is rebel against them and that stops the flow of parental blessing dead in its tracks. I shared some insights with these young men and women about how, in a very practical way, they can respond to their parents’ love at the same time as growing up, to get that relationship and that blessing flowing again. You could see some lights going on as they came to grips with how to respond to their parents. It turns out, our relationship with God is no different. Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been working our way through a series of messages called, 'Power Unlimited'. Over the last twenty or so years I’ve spent a lot of time studying God’s Word, the 66 different books in the Bible and so I’ve had the chance to mull it all over. And whilst I know I’ve really just scratched the surface, the more I think about it, the Bible appears to me to be about 4 things. Who God is, God’s will and purpose for us, who you and I are in his heart and fourthly, the thing I want to talk about today is, how we can respond to God. And as it turns out, that’s the key to laying hold of the unlimited power that He has for us. Now some people think that all the Bible has to offer, is a bunch of rules and regulations. But as I’ve read my way through the Bible, what I’ve discovered is that, how we can respond to God isn’t the main thing, it kind of drops out of all the other three; it’s a natural consequence of who God is, His will and purpose, who I am and as we get our hearts around those things, well for me at least, my heart just wanted to explode and respond to Him. We’re going to unpack this last one today because you know something; it’s not a rules and regulations thing. I don’t stay faithful to my wife because I have to, I do, but that’s not why I stay faithful to her. I stay faithful to her because I want to; it’s my response to her love and to our promise to one another. Not a difficult thing to do at all, because she loves me and one of the ways that I respond to that love is through my faithfulness to her. It’s the same deal with God but you know something, it’s not good enough to know that we ought to respond or even that we want to respond, we need to know how to respond. So often in marriages the husband wants to show love to the wife and the wife wants to show love to the husband, but they’re actually two very different people and they don’t know how. A lot of marriages fall apart simply because people don’t know how to love one another. We were talking about teenagers earlier; nobody ever explained to me what was going on when I was growing up. You know, we start with a total dependence on our parents, we’re a baby, we have breast milk, we’re in nappies and progressively we grow to be independent of them. It’s a natural thing to grow up and become an adult and to be independent of your parents. Jesus quoted the Old Testament, he said: Matthew 19:5 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they’ll become one flesh. In those teenage years, we’re kind of almost adults but not really, we’re still dependant on our parents financially. We’re still under their authority and discipline; we still live in their home. Those awkward in–between years are times when a lot of people rebel against their parents in all sorts of ways. You know the teenage roll of the eyes, "I know it all and what would my parents know". We continually do things parents ask us not to and we yet do them anyway. We leave the empty coke can on the sink or the underwear on the floor in the bathroom, whatever it is that a teenager does that drives their parents nuts, it’s almost like if they know that it drives their parents nuts, they’ll do it more. I did that. We establish a pattern of behaviour that’s rebellious and so you get into a rut that you don’t know how to get out of. In the short time we spent together, these young people and I, I just gave them some practical advice on how to honour their parents so that the blessing will flow to them. You know something; I think it’s the same in our relationship with God. It’s the little things we do or we don’t do. The way we think, the way we behave, the way we hold onto things and the pride and the selfishness. We can understand God’s love, perhaps we even understand what Jesus did on the cross for us but unless we know how to respond to that, we may not respond properly. And sometimes we know but we just can’t bring ourselves to respond. The Apostle John explained how to love God: 1 John 5:3 This is love for God, to obey His commandments and His commands aren’t burdensome because everyone born of God overcomes the world.” Here’s what a regular pattern of Bible reading and prayer has done for me: it’s changed me progressively. Just when I’m going through a tough time in a relationship I read something like this, 1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love but perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears isn’t made perfect in love, we love because God first loved us. If anyone says ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, he’s a liar because anyone who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he hasn’t seen and he has given us this command, “Whoever loves God must also love his brother. You know, when you’re going through a tough relationship and you want to rip someone’s head off, you pick up your Bible and you read that, you go "God’s speaking to me about how I should respond to His love." Just when I’m struggling with this or that, I turn the next page and He speaks to me right into that struggle, right into that need, right into that "I want to go my way" and God says, "but if you want to respond to my love, this is my way. It’s a much narrower path, it’s a much more difficult path, but these are my ways and my ways are not always your ways, my thoughts are not always your thoughts". His quiet, still voice speaks into our heart with a power and gentleness and calls us in His direction, not our own and for me it’s always been that God’s spoken to me in a way that my heart just wants to receive what He says. In a way that nobody else could speak and He does that through His Word, the Bible. He speaks in a way that changes me, that fills me and equips me and prepares me and encourages me. When I read God’s word I’m not just a better preacher, I’m a better husband, I’m a better father, I’m a better work colleague. God teaches me how to respond. Now I have to tell you, this is still very much a work in progress and others no doubt are much further down the track than I am but that’s not the point. Like a surgeon He’s taking out the cancers, the cancers of sin, reconstructing, repairing, healing, encouraging. That’s what happens when we go to Him and listen to what He has to say. He teaches us and shows us how to respond when we spend time in His Word – He just does! That’s why there is such incredible power in the living Word of the living God. Two ways of Living You see to me one of the hardest thing about living my life for Jesus is having to be different from the rest of the world. You see, we are social creatures. God made us that way and so we all liked to be liked and be accepted. By and large, we don't like conflicts, we ... we don't like to ridiculed or scorned. And I am not saying to be a Christian you have to be an oddball or an idiot. Jesus was neither of those, but there times when we have to go in the opposite direction. There are times when we have to be different. And those times are never very comfortable. Some Christians try to have a foot in each camp, they laugh at the dirty jokes and swear like a trooper at work. And then they lift their hands in worship in church on Sundays. It ... it never lasts too long. It's too hard to have a foot in both camps. You can't be a dog with two masters. When one says, "come" and the other says, "stay", which one are you going to obey? How are you going to remain true to yourself? To many of Christ's follower, it comes as something of a surprise that their faith ends up resulting in a clash of cultures. It comes as a surprise that following Jesus, this radical countercultural Jesus leads to persecution. In my country, in my city, questions of family and marriage and sexuality are big issues at the moment. Any Christians who stand up and says, "Excuse me, that is not what God wants for our nation. That's ... That's not where we should be headed", is a narrow-minded conservative big head. And anyhow, "Didn't Jesus love and accept everyone?" Let's take a quick look at just one story of the Book of Acts, just one of many where persecution fell on Jesus's disciple. Act 5:17 onwards: Then the high priest took action; he and all who were with him (that is, the sect of the Sadducees), being filled with jealousy, arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison. When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in the name of Jesus, yet here you are, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised Jesus up, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill the disciples. That point comes for each and every person who believes in Jesus. At some point, we need to make a decision, which way am I going to live. For myself? Taking the easy way, going with the flow? Or for God and others? Standing as those disciples did - well, by this time they were apostles. One sent out by Jesus to proclaim the Good News of the Risen Christ. Standing like that takes courage, it takes power. I don't know about you, but that is the sort of courage and power that I don't have within myself. And yet, God's word - the bible is full of power. Power unlimited, resurrection power, Holy Spirit power that will fill you with every verse that you read. As you read, receive and respond to God's word. Your live is going to be remarkably transformed. As you digest the bread of life, the word of God, the Holy Spirit is gonna turn that immeasurably great power in you. That's his promise! The very same power that raise Jesus from the dead - the resurrection power that you need to live you live for Christ. And the Christians that ignores God's word, the ones that...
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Power to Go // Power Unlimited, Part 2
03/29/2026
Power to Go // Power Unlimited, Part 2
God is so profoundly different to anyone or anything that this world has to offer. His ways are so different to our ways, and unless and until we have a personal encounter with the risen Christ, unless and until we encounter Jesus in our own, personal experience, our lives simply cannot be transformed. Who Exactly is God? Who or what is God? When you go out and ask different people and what you discover is that they have a picture of God in their heads that doesn’t always have a whole bunch to do with who God actually is. It’s almost like we reconstruct Him in our own image, to suit ourselves, to suit our own agendas, but let me ask you something, if God is God wouldn’t it be worthwhile kind of figuring out exactly who He is? IF God has the power, is the power, to transform our lives, shouldn’t we get to know Him? I mean, who is He really and how do you and I relate to Him? What if God is awesome and powerful and loving and kind and we spend the rest of our lives missing out on all that because we never really went after Him to discover who He really is? So how do we discover who God really is? This week on the program we’re setting about laying hold of God’s power to completely and utterly transform our lives. And the place that we discover that power, the place that God the Holy Spirit has made available for us to lay hold of that power – is His Word, the Bible. I mean reading the Bible was something I would never have done in a million years. What do you think I am, some wacky fundamentalist? But you know something, reading the Bible for myself has completely and utterly transformed my life. It didn’t stunt me, it opened me up. It didn’t narrow my mind; it opened me up to the wonder and the possibilities of life with God, to the power that God wants to unleash in my life. Over the last twenty or so years I guess I’ve spent a lot of time in that Book, in fact its 66 different books. I’ve had the chance to study and to learn and to think and to mull it all over and truly, in those twenty odd years I’ve really only scratched the surface. But the more I think about it, the Bible is basically about four things: Who God is, what He’s like and how He reacts to things. What God’s will and purposes are, what His plan is. Where my life is headed. It’s about who I am, made in His image but how does He see me? Who did He make me to be? And … how I can respond to God. Some people think this last one, number four, is all that the Bible has to offer; just rules and regulations … but you know, as you read it for yourself, how to respond to God is quite simply not the main thing, it just kind of drops out at the end, it’s the natural consequence of the first three. Those four things again are: who God is, what His will and purposes are, who you and I are in His eyes and how we can respond. That’s what the Bible contains, it’s real and it’s practical, it’s about life, it’s awesome and it’s exciting and it contains power … power unlimited to transform you, to transform your life, to heal you, to bless you, to empower you. Today I just want to look at the first one of those; who God is. I mean if God is God, shouldn’t we figure out who He is? Who He says He is? Where better to do that, to search Him out, than that great love letter that He’s written to you and to me, the Bible. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When I first laid eyes on my wife Jacqui, when I first saw her from a distance, I was speaking at a Church and she was sitting in that congregation. As far as I was concerned, she was just another face in the crowd and had I never sought her out, I would never have come to know her and to have a relationship with her. So, I did seek her out and she responded to that. In a sense, picking up the Bible is seeking God out, it’s the same thing, He responds. It’s not a dead book written by men thousands of years ago. It’s the living, active word of God and His promise is that when we pick it up, the Holy Spirit, God Himself, will bring it to life in our hearts. God promised that He would pour His Spirit out on all flesh and that He would write His words onto our heart. By far, the greatest reason for reading the Bible, is to encounter God Himself, to discover who He is, and how He sees things; what He’s like and what He’s up to. You see, it’s easy to read this story or that in the Bible and say, "Well that was a story about King David" or “That one over there, that’s the story about Moses or Peter or Paul”. But so often in the pages of this great and mighty book, the great unseen player is God Himself and as I read every story, every verse, I keep asking myself, “What does this tell me about God Himself? What’s He up to in this story?” Let’s take just one example, it’s a short story. God makes a promise to this man called Abram who is childless. You know, Abram’s an old man, his wife Sarai is an old woman, they’re childless and yet God has called them to go from their home on this huge journey. God’s promised them children, a multitude of children, but it’s never happened. It’s gone on for years and years and years. Abraham’s out of his comfort zone, he’s on this long, uncomfortable journey and he’s frustrated and this is what happens. After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6) It’s really easy to read this story and imagine that it’s a story all about Abram. But the real question that we should be asking is What does this short little story, tell us about God? Here’s Abram. He’s frustrated, he’s waiting for a breakthrough that’s not coming. He’s trying to believe in God, but it’s hard. I wonder if that sounds at all familiar to you? And it’s going on for years and years and years and he and his wife are old and it’s just absolutely impossible. But along comes God and He does this kind of gentle and kind and wondrous and patient thing with Abraham, He takes him outside to gaze up into this beautiful masterpiece called the Milky Way. Have you ever looked up at the stars away from the smog and the lights of a big city at night? It’s incredible how many stars are up there and in the middle of Abram’s frustration, God says ‘Abram, look … look at this! This is how many descendants you’re going to have. My promise will actually happen”. And if you read the rest of this story, Abraham ultimately has a son, with his wife Sarah, called Isaac. He never saw all these offspring happen, he never saw the rest of the promise fulfilled in his life time, but here is this good and gracious and powerful God who takes a man in the middle of his frustration and just speaks lovingly to him. It’s a story about God do you get it? It’s a story about how God treats those who He loves when they’re at the end of their tether. the Bible is full of those stories. You pick it up and you read them and wow, you discover who God really is. Do you see the power in that? Do you see how know God, and how in our small, limited way, coming to understand Him can make such a powerful difference to us, when we’re lost and frustrated and clinging onto a promise … but only just? People often say to me, “Berni, you seem to be so enthusiastic about God.” Can I tell you why? Because over the last couple of decades I’ve discovered Him in the pages of the Bible and discovered what He says about Himself there and those things have ended up being etched onto my heart, so that I can experience Him in my life. I can’t help but be enthusiastic and you know, I can’t help but wonder, where would my life be? Where would I be, if I hadn’t laid hold of this power … power unlimited in the living Word of God? What are His Plans and Purposes for Me? You know one of the most common things that we all experience at some point or other in our lives, is this dilemma, this crisis if you will, of, well where is my life headed? I think it’s because somehow we’re hardwired to have hope for the future, to be able to look forward to a good future, to have a sense of significance, to make our mark in this world. Where is my life headed? … can become a question of quite some desperation. And for our lives to be headed in the right direction we need a few things to come together. The way we live, the things that we can control, and the things that go on around us, the ones we can’t control. That’s not easy. It’s almost an impossible juggling act. But … what if God has a plan? What if He has a purpose in the things that we’ve been travelling through? What if there’s meaning behind it all, and He does want to do amazing things and He does want to be involved in the choices we make today? What if? Wouldn’t you want to tap into that? I mean, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want Him to speak those plans and purposes gently into your heart and let them make a difference for you, here and now? Just think … what a powerful way that would be to live. Yesterday we saw that the biggest thing that we can get out of the Bible is discovering God Himself, who He is, what He’s like, how does He react to different situations and things? To me that is the greatest prize of them all, God Himself, getting to know Him, having a wonderful, rich relationship that just gets deeper and deeper as time goes by. Today I want to look at the second thing that I think the Bible is about, God’s plans and God’s purposes, both the big picture and specifically for you and me. The big picture is so important. What’s Gods big plan? What’s He up to? A friend and colleague of mine, Dr Graham Pratt, he and I were speaking a few years ago at an IT conference in Singapore. We were talking over coffee about some technology thing and he said to me, “Berni, context is so important, in fact in understanding something, context is almost everything.” I’ll never forget it, it’s a pearl of wisdom. We want to know where our lives are headed, my life, my little piece of the puzzle, right? If we want to do that we need to understand the big picture; God’s great plan as well as His specific plans and purposes for our lives. You know, when I read the Bible, the stories and the things that happened a long time ago, somehow God’s plan for my life becomes so crystal clear. For me, life was just a ‘here and now’ thing. It was about wealth and career. In reality, it was empty, hollow, directionless. Where was it headed? What was the point? But when I encountered Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, when I started listening to Him by reading the Bible, I began to get a handle on God’s big picture. A big picture that’s best summed up in something that God says over and over again: I will be your God and you will be my people. (Exodus 6:7) From the beginning to the end of the Bible, you see God saying that and explaining it and sending Jesus so that it could happen. They’re not just words on a page. This is the very heartbeat of God to call us back to Himself, to call us back home, here and now and for all eternity, despite our rebellion, despite the fact that we rejected Him, despite all our mistakes; to give us a new life, an eternal life that’s not about rules and regulations but a relationship with Him. And right through the whole Bible you see Him engaging with people and drawing them closer, people just like you and me, people in their weaknesses and their failures and yet He loves them and touches them and reaches out to them. Okay, we see His anger too sometimes, you see God getting angry and yet despite that He still reaches out to people from in the midst of His anger and that’s where we discover His grace and we see Jesus dying on a cross for you and me. As we read those stories over and over again, His heartbeat touches ours, His desire touches us, His grace wraps itself around us and through us. I’ve only just started to wrap my heart around that as I’ve spent twenty odd years listening to Him, hearing His words and His stories and His heartbeat in the pages of that wondrous book – the Bible. You know, you open the Bible and you read the story of Jesus dying on the cross and crying out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46) And from the pages of that book we hear God crying out to you and me, here and now; “Don’t you realise how much I love you”. And you know, as well as this big picture of God’s engagement of all humanity and His plans for humanity as a whole, the thing that, for me, so often leaps off the pages of His word are His specific plans for me. Sometimes we think that ‘Well, you know, God’s stopped talking. God had the prophets in the Old Testament and He had Jesus in the New Testament and He had some Apostles in the New Testament … but that was back then. Today though, here and now God’s stopped talking’. But when we’re travelling through times that are uncertain, when we want to give up, when we’re in a relationship or in a thing we thought God had called us into but now we’re not sure, we need God to speak. I cannot tell you the number of times, in the early days, that I wanted to give up on this ministry of Christianityworks that I’m involved in. I can’t begin to tell you. It all looked so impossible, it all looked so hopeless. How could this guy from the IT industry ever do this thing called ‘sharing Gods love with people through the media’? It was incongruous but as I look back on it now, that regular habit of spending time in Gods word, day after day, is how He touched me and whispered in my heart ‘just keep going’. That’s what happens, you read God’s word and you discover power … power unlimited … power to keep going with God’s plan for your life. That’s what happens. Just when I was rock bottom I remember one time, reading this: My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2,3) Another time, just when I was wondering whether or not to step out in faith by growing the ministry into Africa when we clearly didn’t have the resources to do so, I opened up to the next chapter and read about Peter stepping out of the boat. He didn’t wait for the storm to stop. No, he stepped out in the middle of the storm and walked on the water towards Jesus. Just when I was feeling so incredibly inadequate one tome, I read about how Peter and all the other disciples deserted Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. And yet Jesus still went on to use them to start this thing He called “the church”. The Bible is full of this stuff and somehow God, through His Spirit, takes those stories and connects them with our lives and in our hearts we just know that God is speaking to us. There have been so many times when just when I needed a gentle touch from God … then I read about how He healed the leper or the blind person or the lame man. The Bible is full of God’s promises and plans and purposes. And when we establish a regular habit of just spending some time in there with Him, His Spirit writes His promises and plans and purposes on our hearts with indelible ink, in a way that no person, no man or woman, no situation, no trial can ever rub them off. God Himself brings His word to life and that changes everything. So often I wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t established a regular habit of reading Gods word. You know, it just doesn’t bear thinking about. Who Am I, Really? One of the things that many people ponder in life is this question, “Who am I?” We have so many pictures and images of who we should be thrust under our noses each day … and yet none of them ring true, so we end up feeling a bit like refugees, lost. The media and the advertisers, they want to define success for us. They want to tell us what it means to be open-minded. They want to tell us what we should aspire to. They want to tell us what a happy, well adjusted family looks like, and what beauty looks like and what we have to achieve, who we have to be, what we have to look like, to be successful. They tell us if we don’t look like this, we haven’t made it, but we will if we buy their product and I don’t know about you, but I can get so lost in that maze because my life never quite looks like those images of success that they wave under my nose. And we compare ourselves with other people, people who look successful and so often we come to the conclusion that we aren’t. And so that question, "Who am I?" rattles around in that empty, hollow void inside. Who am I? Have you ever been to one of those fairs, you know where they have Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds and amusements and sideshows? And in side-show alley, they have those distorted mirrors. You know, you walk in front of one and you look all tall and skinny or short and fat or all wobbly and wavy. They’re good fun for a little while, about a minute or two. But imagine, imagine if our mirrors at home were like that, all distorted … not good. I remember when I was working as an IT consultant one of the clients I used to work for, the front door of their offices had this glass that was a perfect distortion of me. It just made me look a bit slimmer and a bit taller, you know I could have stood in front of that door all day and looked at myself. We’d like to have a mirror like that at home, wouldn’t we? Or would we? My hunch is, whenever we get a distorted image of ourselves, of who we are, that’s not a good thing even if we happen to like the distorted image better than the real one. For example, the distorted image that society puts up that you can be whoever you want to be, it’s all up to you, it’s all out there, just go and be whoever you want to be. I’m 5 foot, 9 inches or 174 cm tall, so it doesn’t matter how much I want to be a basketball player, I’m never going to be a basketball player. In fact there are some things in life that I am decidedly not good at. If I try to be those things, it would be a bad fit. Maybe that’s why so many people aren’t happy, because they’re trying to do jobs or be someone that they’re quite simply not cut out to be. Aspiring to something that we’re never going to be any good at is one of the worst things that we can do in the world. I wonder if that’s why there are so many people, who literally hate their jobs. I was looking at a recent ‘job satisfaction’ survey on the internet. Have a listen to these stats: 45% of workers say that they’re either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. You know what that means? That means that 55%, or over half, aren’t. Of those 45% who said they were happy, less than half again, in fact only 20% said that they felt really passionate about their jobs. That means that 80% of people don’t feel passionate about their jobs and 33%, fully a third believed they’d reached a dead end in their careers, there was no hope for a future. 21% were eager to change careers. I think that these statistics are a tragedy. The vast majority of people aren’t...
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Power Source // Power Unlimited, Part 1
03/22/2026
Power Source // Power Unlimited, Part 1
Too many Christians, in fact, way too many Christians, are living lives that fall so far short of the life that Jesus promised. When Jesus promised power, they instead end up living a powerless life. I wonder if you know anyone like that. Resurrection Power I wonder if this scenario sounds at all familiar to you. At some stage, way back when, you decided to believe in Jesus. Perhaps you, like me, can remember the day that you took that step. Or maybe like many people I know, you can’t remember a time when you didn’t believe in Jesus. So you’ve believed … and believed … and believed … and somehow life doesn’t seem to get any better. You seem to have the same challenges, successes, failures … whatever, as all the other people you know who don’t believe in Jesus. In fact, often times, they seem to be living a better life than you are and on top of that, they’re not wracked by guilt the way you are, because by not believing in Jesus, they don’t have to worry about the idea of temptation, or falling short of God’s ideals, or any of that stuff. Does that sounded all familiar? Sadly, it’s de rigour for many a Christian. Most Christians in fact. The Christian life doesn’t seem all it’s cracked up to be. Wasn’t it Jesus who said: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10) So where is that abundant life (the original Greek word used there actually means super-abundant!) Where is this super-abundant life that Jesus promised us? Why is everything so difficult? Why is it that I’m not filled with the joy and the excitement that I first felt when I gave my life to Jesus? Can I tell you, I speak to a lot of people, all around the world, who come to me with basically that scenario; basically that same story. Here it is in a nutshell: I know that my life isn’t what it’s meant to be in Christ. I know that. But I don’t know why. I don’t know what to do about it. And that’s why today we’re kicking off a brand new series of messages called "Power Unlimited". Because the thing that’s lacking in the lives of these people – perhaps in your life too – is the power to live the life that Jesus promised us. The devil comes along and whispers in our ear You’re not good enough for God. And actually He’s right. That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul says of himself (and remember God called him to write almost half of the books of the New Testament). For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. (Romans 7:14-21) So Paul, as it turns out, has exactly the same problem that you and I have. But happily, he doesn’t give up, because the old Paul, God bless him, also has the answer. The only answer that has the power to make a difference: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24) You see I have some very good news for you today. Listen carefully so you don’t miss it: God has already placed within you all the power that you need, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus died and rose again to give you. God has already made the resurrection power, the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead, available to you, here and now, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus came to give you. I know, I know … you don’t believe me. Good, you shouldn’t believe me, it’s not within my purview to grant you that power. But will you believe what God says in the Bible: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:17-22) Do you see? Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is that they would discover the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe … the very same power that raised Christ from the dead. Each year we celebrate Easter, the death on the Cross (which receives most of the focus) and the resurrection (which frankly, we don’t focus on as much). But this resurrection is the evidence of the immeasurably great power that is available to you and me, so that we can live a new life. The life that Jesus promised. As Bible teacher Casey Treat once said … we need to stop praying for power, and start praying with power, the power that we already have. One of my Bible college lecturers from years ago, Dr Barry Chant, once said that if he were to transliterate the original Greek words used there for immeasurably great power, it would sound something like this: hyperballistic, megathonic, dynamic power! Do you get it? Do you realise the immeasurable greatness of God’s power that He has placed at your disposal to live your life for Christ? Hello, wake-up! And the purpose of this power, the whole point of this power, is to enable us to live the new life, the born-again life, the resurrection life, the super-abundant life, that Jesus came to give us. Yet so many Christians, most Christians, fail to live that life for one reason and one reason alone. Because they don’t lay hold of that power. We live on a spiritual battlefield. The Apostle Paul puts it this way: … our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17) No I’m an old soldier from way back. And I can tell you that as I look at each of the elements of that spiritual armour that Paul lists there, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes, the shield the helmet, each of them those is a defensive piece of armour. Defence is important to protect yourself, but you don’t win a war by defending. To win, you have to attack. And the only offensive weapon in that list is … what? The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God! That’s the only attack weapon in the spiritual armoury that God has given you. And the truth is that most Christians leave it in its scabbard. They leave the sword of the Spirit at home, and then they wonder why the devil keeps on winning! And that … that’s something we’re going to talking about in the rest of the series. The Power to Change As you can imagine, I speak with a lot of people. People who respond to this radio program, people I meet in my travels, people who’ve hear me speak and want to know how to apply it to their lives. And most people, come to me with a problem. This is working in my life … and I just don’t know why. That isn’t working in my life … and I don’t know what to do about it. I want to follow Jesus … but Satan keeps on winning as he tempts me with this sin or that sin. Over and over again, I hear the same thing, the same question, the same problem, the same frustration in people’s voices. Why isn’t my life all that Jesus promised it would be?! It’s a question that plagues many a Christ follower. It causes many to fall by the wayside. It causes many people to live a life that falls so far short of all that it could be in Christ. To my way of thinking, this is one of the greatest tragedies playing itself out in the Kingdom of God today. And just like many of the lifestyle and diet related illnesses that are killing people across the globe, this is a sickness that is completely avoidable. Here is what I see happening in God’s Kingdom, amongst God’s people. The societies in which we live are moving further and further away from God. Look at the United States. A country of religious freedom, founded by the pilgrims, who came to the land to have the freedom to worship God. A nation who, on its dollar bill, has the words “In God we trust”. And now, a country, where it’s illegal to pray at school, illegal for an officer in the military to share his faith or a Bible with a soldier, a country where four in ten unborn children are 'terminated' – that’s a genocide of around 1.2 million children each year. I’m not just picking on the US of A … it’s happening right around the globe. Societies founded on Christian love, as they become more secular, are shifting further and further away from God. And they’re behaving as though this is progress. It’s progress to allow one man to marry another man, or a woman to marry another woman. It’s progress to allow a woman to choose whether or not to kill her unborn child. It’s progress for women not to respect their husbands and men not to cherish their wives. And anybody who stands in the way of this so-called “progress” is a narrow-minded, conservative bigot. And these sweeping changes are sweeping many a Christian along them. Christians en masse are forsaking a life based on God’s Word, for a life based on the world’s ways. And not just individual Christians, but preachers, Bible teachers, churches and denominations. And then we wonder why things aren’t going so well for us in our lives. Really?! Back to the Bible International based in Lincoln Nebraska, is a ministry that I have been closely involved with now for a good many years. They in fact founded the ministry of Christianityworks that I now lead here in Australia, way back in 1957. Part of Back to the Bible is the Centre for Bible Engagement, which has conducted extensive research around the world on the impact in the lives of men and woman, who are engaged with God’s Word on a regular basis. Remember, the Bible itself says that there is incredible power to defeat Satan, in God’s Word: … our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17) The only offensive weapon in our spiritual armour given to us by God is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. All the other parts of the armour are defensive, which is good, but you don’t win a battle by going on the defence. You have to go on the offence, you have to attack the enemy to defeat him. And the one tool, the one weapon that God has given us to do that, is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. So the Centre for Bible Engagement researched the spiritual lives of more than 100,000 people 21 countries, ranging from ages of eight to 80 years. They began with this question: What is it, of all the things that Christians do, that is the most powerful predictor of spiritual growth? When you think about it, Christians do a lot of things to express their faith. They go to church, they pray, the listen to sermons, they attend home groups, they give, they serve … and many more things. The Centre of Bible Engagement’s research project wanted to find out which ones of those had the most impact in the life of a Christian. That’s not a bad question to ask through a large, scientifically constituted, statistically valid, international research project. That’s not a bad question to ask, for anyone who wants to lay hold the super–abundant life that Jesus promised (John 10:10) to give us. The conclusions of this research was as follows (and I quote from their report): The findings consistently show that engaging in the Bible four or more days a week is the single most powerful predictor of spiritual growth – and they defined spiritual growth as becoming less of the person I was before I committed my life to Jesus and more like Christ in my thoughts, words and deeds. In fact, I know Arnie Cole, the President of Back to the Bible pretty well. His background is as a professional researcher and statistician. And he said to me that statistically speaking, the correlation between engaging with God’s Word, the Bible four times a week or more and spiritual growth, is stronger than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Just think about that. What powerful evidence of the importance of receiving, reflecting on and responding to God’s Word having a powerful impact in changing our lives. Making the changes that we ourselves have been powerless to change. Let me come back to the Apostle Paul’s reflection on this whole question of the power to change: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24) The answer is that only God can give us the power to change, the resurrection power to be able to live the born-again, new, super-abundant life that Jesus came to give us. What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4) Do you see? God’s plan is for you to walk in the newness of life, the resurrection life made available to you through the Cross and the Empty tomb. And the power to live that life is something that you will find in the Word of God, as the Spirit of God breathes His Word into your heart: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (1 Tim 3:16,17) That’s where you’ll find the power to change – power unlimited. In God’s Word. So … you have to ask yourself, why do so many Christians ignore their Bibles?! Not Just a Theory Lesson Discovering the power to change in God’s Word isn’t just a theory lesson. It’s real. I remember one time in the early days of my involvement in this ministry of Christianityworks that produces these radio messages, just when I was rock bottom, reading this: My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-3) Another time, just when I was wondering whether or not to step out in faith by growing the ministry into Africa when we clearly didn’t have the resources to do so, I opened up to the next chapter and read about Peter stepping out of the boat. He didn’t wait for the storm to stop. No, he stepped out in the middle of the storm and walked on the water towards Jesus. Just when I was feeling so incredibly inadequate one tome, I read about how Peter and all the other disciples deserted Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. And yet Jesus still went on to use them to start this thing He called "the church". The Bible is full of this stuff and somehow God, through His Spirit, takes those stories and connects them with our lives and in our hearts we just know that God is speaking to us. There have been so many times when just when I needed a gentle touch from God … then I read about how He healed the leper or the blind person or the lame man. The Bible is full of God’s promises and plans and purposes. And when we establish a regular habit of just spending some time in there with Him, His Spirit writes His promises and plans and purposes on our hearts with indelible ink, in a way that no person, no man or woman, no situation, no trial can ever rub them off. God Himself brings His word to life and that changes everything. So often I wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t established a regular habit of reading Gods word. You know, it just doesn’t bear thinking about. You see God is no pedlar of good philosophies or belief systems; He’s not some distorted mirror of low self–esteem or unrealistic stereotypes. God wants to make a real difference – in my life and in yours. The problem is that there are so many things out there, ways of living, ways of thinking, fads, things to buy, places to go … all of them promise a great life. All of them promise something that they simply cannot deliver. You and I, we both know that we have flaws and weaknesses. As much as we wish we didn’t, we just do. And you and I both know that we have people in our lives, situations in our lives, problems in our lives … mountains in our lives, that we just cannot overcome. And as much as we wish we didn’t, we just do. It's the way things are. Well … right in the middle of all of those, God wants to make a difference. And He does that as we listen to Him, as we listen to His truth, as we take it into our hearts and let Him work powerfully in us and through us by His Spirit and His Word. That research I was talking about earlier in the program – the research by the Centre of Bible engagement which scientifically and statistically proved that frequent engagement with God’s Word makes a powerful difference in our lives … that shouldn’t be any surprise to us. Because God’s Word is living and active, sharper than any two- edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12) And neither should the opposite be any surprise to us – that people who don’t engage regularly with God’s Word are going to live powerless lives where temptation, the enemy, people and circumstances constantly overwhelm them. Does any of that surprise you … really?
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The Refuge of the Lord // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 4
03/15/2026
The Refuge of the Lord // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 4
Sometimes, when life looks dangerous and dark – we need a place of refuge. Fortunately, as things turn out, God’s Word talks an awful lot about the refuge He has for us. God’s Refuge I want you to imagine that you are out one night, walking along a dark and lonely street and all of a sudden you see some drunk and unruly men coming towards you. They are swearing and they look to be wielding knives. You take a quick look around and there is not another soul in this street and just then, you see a house to your left – you look in the window and you see a family sitting down to dinner. What do you do? Well, I know what I’d be doing – I’d duck in and knock on that front door and as quickly as I could, I’d ask if I could step inside until those men disappeared. Wouldn’t you do that too? Now there is a name for that – it’s called "seeking refuge". It’s not a sign of weakness; it’s doesn’t mean that somehow we are a loser. It just means that in that dark and dangerous place, we need to be somewhere safe; we need a refuge. The problem is that in this world, when we are going through difficult times; dark times, so often there doesn’t seem to be a refuge to be found. "Refuge" is a word that appears over and over and over again in the Bible. In fact, just in the Psalms it is used forty eight times and forty six of those times, the refuge that God is talking about is God Himself. Have a listen to just a few of those in Psalm 36, verse 7. It says: How priceless is Your unfailing love, God. Both the high and the low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings. Psalm 62, verses 7 and 8: My salvation and my honour depend on God. He is my mighty rock and my refuge. Trust in Him at all times, people – pour out your hearts to Him for God is our refuge. And Psalm 119, verse 114: You are my refuge and my shield. I have put my hope in Your Word. I’d like to spend a bit of time today looking at this idea of "refuge" because when we are going through those tough times; those dark and dangerous parts of our lives, a refuge is exactly what we need. Over these last few weeks we have been working our way through a series that I’ve called "Dark Night, Bright Light". And it’s been based of a Psalm written by King David; Psalm 34. It’s a Psalm that David writes with the wisdom of hindsight because he’s been in lots and lots of dark and dangerous places through his life. And in this Psalm he praises God because what he has discovered is that, at the end of all those dark times, God delivered him. God came through no matter how grim or how dark or how dangerous it appeared at the time. That’s great stuff! And if you have some time, I really encourage you to get aside and have a good read of Psalm 34 and just discover for yourself the things that David learned in those dark times. But it is one thing for David to tell you and me what happened in his experience – "WOW!" says David, "I discovered that God delivered me every time." And it’s so easy for you and me to respond, "Well, that’s fine for you, Davo, that’s brilliant – glad that God came through for you but right now, I’m out here in that dark place and I’m petrified. The fact that God showed up for you doesn’t help me much right now." And that would be a pretty natural human response. When we send out an SOS to God, it may well be that God will come through sometime but what about the meantime? Well, have a listen to the end of this Psalm of David’s – Psalm 34, we are going to look at verses 19 to 22 because in the very last verse of this Psalm, God answers that question. Let’s pick it up at verse 19 – if you have a Bible please go and grab it; let’s do this together. Psalm 34, verse 19: Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. He protects all our bones; not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems His servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in Him. There it is, that word "refuge" – it means to flee to Him for protection. Now we understand that in a physical sense – that’s what we started the programme off with today; that little story and that makes sense. But when something in life is scary; when we have been diagnosed with cancer or our finances have fallen in a heap or our marriage is falling apart or one of our kids is on drugs, what does it mean to take refuge in God then? Good question because here’s what happens when we take refuge – we feel safe. The fear is gone – that’s the point of refuge. Along the journey, through a dark place in life we want to know that we are safe. And that story that I just shared with you at the beginning of the programme – you know, you are walking along that dark street and you see these drunken youths with knives coming at you and you duck into a house and you knock on the door and you seek refuge and you go in through that front door with the family – the whole point of that is, once you do that and you go through that door and that door is closed, you feel safe. The way that God best explains this, through any part of the Bible, is through a passage that I come back to again and again and again and again. The Apostle Paul wrote this about a thousand years after King David wrote Psalm 34. Paul is locked away in a Roman dungeon on death row and he writes these words in Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7: Don’t be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, put your request to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard you hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Don’t be anxious about anything. What man by worrying or what woman by worrying can add one hour to the length of their lives. Don’t be anxious about anything. Take it to God, put your trust in God, pour your heart out to Him – in fact that’s the other meaning of that word "refuge". To put your trust in someone or something; to rely on them; to resort to them – out there in a dark place, put my trust in God. Just go to Him, pour it out in front of Him and then He does something; He fills us with peace. Don’t be anxious about anything but take your prayers to God, present your request to Him and the peace of God which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. See, when it’s dark and dangerous, God’s peace doesn’t make sense, but when we take things to Him; when we take our concerns and our fears to Him; when we present our requests to God; when we put our trust in Him, that’s taking refuge in Him. And His peace defies any human reckoning or logic – the only way I can describe it – because I have been in that dark place, time and time and time again – is it’s like a light. Darkness is scary – God comes in and shines His bright light; the light that you just know is Him and the darkness isn’t scary any more. You just know He will deliver us – Dark night, bright light. A Just God If you were able to join us last week on the programme, you may recall that we talked about the afflictions of the righteous – the fact that so often bad things happen to good people. A lot of the times it seems unfair – sometimes evil appears to triumph in this world. Sometimes someone who lies and cheats and stabs people in the back seems to be the centre of attention; they get all the applause and the promotions and the accolades. And maybe we are just living our lives, quietly, day by day for the Lord and we miss out or we are the victims of injustice and not only is there pain to deal with in all of that, but there is the injustice of it all. We have this built in sense of justice and when we are at the receiving end of injustice – WOW that really gets us. Now, obviously, King David had been through that. It is something he writes a lot about in the Psalms and in particular, in this Psalm. Have a listen again – in Psalm 34, verse 19: Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. He protects all our bones, not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked and the foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems His servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in Him. I particularly want to focus, just for a moment, on verse 21. Let’s have another read: Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned. You know what that tells me? That God is a just God – He sees everything that goes on; every act, good or bad and in this world there are wicked people. Sometimes what they do shrouds us in darkness. Africa is a continent that is very much on my heart – almost a billion people, many living in the poorest of conditions; many starving. And then you see the wicked profiting from their misery or fighting for power or wealth with wars and riots and innocent people being killed and food and aid being stolen and misappropriated. I know that there are so many people today, listening to this programme right across Africa and you’ve seen atrocities; you’ve seen greed; you’ve seen riots; you’ve seen people being exploited in the most horrible ways and this guy from Australia has the hide to get on the radio and talk about a God of love and a God of justice. For much of my life I ignored God; I was against Him and not for Him. The Bible is full of this word "wicked" – when I look back and describe myself as wicked – yea, probably – I was selfish; I was self seeking and you know, as I look back on that, God didn’t stop me once from doing what was wrong. He never bound my hands or struck my down or held me back because He gave me a free will. And often my wickedness; my wrongs hurt other people. But again God didn’t stop me, not once – He let me decide for myself to be for Him or against Him. He never slew me and that’s the reality of this world. God gives us a free choice – that’s why there are wars; that’s why there are riots; that’s why there are over twenty million slaves still in the world today; that’s why there are millions of refugees in this world because God gives us a free choice. And, yes, sometimes the wicked will appear to triumph but a day of reckoning is coming – a day is coming where the wicked will have to give an account and the Lord will deal with them. God is a God of justice - David writes about that in Psalm 11, verse 6. If you have a Bible, grab it and open it there; Psalm 11, verse 6. He puts it like this: On the wicked He will rain fiery coals and burning sulphur; a scorching wind will be their lot. For the Lord is righteous; He loves justice; upright men will see His face. It is such a hard thing to come to grips with but one of the things that you and I need to know is that when we are on the receiving end of wickedness, He is our refuge. See, we don’t always see justice prevail on this earth. Did you know that in the twentieth century, more Christians were killed or martyred for their faith than in the previous nineteen centuries since Christ was on this earth all put together? That’s a fact! And no matter what situation we are in, how dark or how dire; how unfair or how many wicked people surround us, sometimes to hurt us and pull us down, David learned this: Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned but the Lord redeems His servants. No one will be condemned who takes refuge in Him. Now you may well say to me, "Berni, how does that help me here and now?" And my answer is this: We who place our trust in Jesus Christ; we have a certain hope for the future. The decision to save us from the wicked today, tomorrow, next week, next month is entirely God’s decision – His will; His purposes. Jesus wasn’t saved from the wicked! He was obedient to God and allowed Himself to be nailed to that cross. He died, He suffered but He rose again and then ... then He was delivered; then He had victory. You see, Jesus went to God in that Garden of Gethsemane and said: Lord, if there is any way You can take this suffering away from Me, do it! But not My will, let Your will be done. It’s the same for you and me. Sometimes God chooses to give us that victory – today, tomorrow, next week, maybe in our lifetime – other days we will have to wait until we stand before Him to see the justice. But then … then we will have victory for all eternity and that is a very long time. The Weaver As we come towards the end of our time together today, I want to share a poem – it’s a really special poem that perhaps you have heard before – it’s a wonderful poem that I carry around in my head and my heart. I don’t know who wrote it; it’s fairly old – it’s called ‘The Weaver.’ Just have a listen: My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me I cannot choose the colours as He weaveth steadily Sometimes He chooses dark threads and I in foolish pride Forget He sees the upper and I, the underside. Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly Shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why The dark threads were as needful in the weaver’s skilful hand As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He hath planned. Isn’t it so true that when we are in the trenches of life, it can be so hard to get a handle on God’s bigger purposes and even though He will reveal some of it along the way, much of it we won’t know until that day that we stand before Him in glory. Truly, I look at some of the things I have gone through in my life and you know when you are going through them, they hurt so much, it’s so hard to see that God has a bigger picture and a bigger plan. And even afterwards, you look back on some of them and think, "Well, why hasn’t God fixed that? Why hasn’t He gone back and addressed that? Why did I have to go through that?" You know the sort of stuff I’m talking about – we all have those but God doesn’t always explain Himself. Job is an amazing Book. Job was a wonderful and righteous man of God. This is a book in the Old Testament; comes just before the Book of Psalms. It’s the story of how the devil goes to God and says, "Look at this Job – you have pampered him all his life. What if he starts to lose everything, he won’t honour you then" and God said this to the devil "Well, go for it". And the devil takes away Job’s possessions, takes away his health, takes away his family, takes away his friends, takes away everything. God lets the devil rob him of the lot, even though he was such a righteous man. And Job went through so much pain and so much suffering over the years and over and over he asks God "Why? Why did you let this happen to me? I’m a righteous man; I have lived my life just for you; I couldn’t have done any better." And God’s basic response – and you can read the whole thing in Job chapter 38 and onwards – God says, "Well, Job, you are not God. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you when I made the stars or the land or the ocean?" In other words God’s saying, "Job, I’m the sovereign God and I’m not going to tell you. My ways aren’t your ways and My thoughts are so much higher than your thoughts." God says to Job, "I don’t have to explain Myself to you" and so often that’s the way. Things happen to us and we just have to humble ourselves and say, "You know something, God? I don’t know why – I don’t know why You are letting me go through this but I’m just going to trust You." And that’s what Job did – Job remained faithful to God all through his years of suffering. And let me now read you just the last few verses of the Book of Job – this is how the story ends – Job chapter 42, beginning at verse 10: After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted him and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys and he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemima, the second he named Keziah and the third Kerenhappuch. Nowhere in all the land were found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this Job lived a hundred and forty years – he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation and so he died, old and full of years. In other words, Job went through some really dark times and Job’s dark times lasted a long time. And at the end, after Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and He gave him twice as much as he had before. Job was given by God double for his trouble, as it were. See, sometimes God does that. Sometimes we see things turn around in our lifetime on this earth and we go through dark times and they only last for a short while and God turns them around and we look back and say, "You know, God, I wouldn’t go through that again for anything and I would wish that time on my worst enemy, but thank You so much for delivering me." But other times … other times, we will have to wait until we stand in glory before God. The question is this, when we come right down to it – are we prepared to stand completely alone on this earth for Christ sake; to honour Him; to humble ourselves before Him? Because God is looking for those sorts of people – people prepared to take up their cross to follow Him. Jesus promised that we would have tribulation – He promised dark times and He is looking for people who will just trust in His light in those dark times. And those people, He will shine His bright light into their dark places; He will take their fear away with His perfect love; He will comfort them and hold them and protect them – those who would be prepared to lose their lives in order to gain them. Because unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a single seed but if it dies, it produces many seeds and if we love our life we will lose it but those who are prepared to lose their lives in this world, will keep them for eternal life. “Whoever serves Me,” said Jesus, “must follow Me and where I am, there My servant will be too and My Father will honour the one who serves Me.” That’s the promise of God – to follow Jesus means to suffer like Him. But the promise of God is that He will honour us. Whoever serves Me must follow Me and where I am, there my servant will also be and My Father will honour the one who serves Me. God will honour us; He will make His face to shine upon us; He will be our bright light amidst the darkest night.
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The Afflictions of the Righteous // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 3
03/08/2026
The Afflictions of the Righteous // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 3
Sometimes – we’re just living life the best way we know how, honouring God and Whammo, something so unfair hits us – right out of the blue. You’ve been there too, right? His Way, Not Ours There are times in life when bad things happen to good people. And perhaps you are someone who believes in Jesus and you have been living your life just the best way that you know how; just day after day walking with Him and all of a sudden "Whamo"; something happens. The sky turns dark and all of a sudden you are in one of those dark, black times that we can go through in life. A time of loss or pain or sickness or whatever it is and you kind of look around and think, "What is going on here, God? I mean I know I’m not perfect but every day I just get up and just do my best and I walk with You and now this!" My hunch is that there are a few people who kind of relate to that today. And so I want to deal with that because when bad things happen to good people, it’s such a shock – it seems so unfair, especially when we take a look around and we see there is a whole bunch of "good" things happening to some really ‘bad’ people out there. "What is going on, God?" Well, over these last few weeks on the programme we have been just working our way through Psalm 34 in a series that I’ve called, "Dark Night, Bright Light". Psalm 34 is a Psalm written by King David and King David was a man who went through more dark times in his life than you or I would ever hope for. And yes, he makes some mistakes but right from the beginning God had him picked as a man after His own heart. And yet David lived through so many dark and difficult times; scary times; on the run for his life from King Saul who wanted to kill him, for years; battles with enemies and it looked like he would lose and yet, God would show up. When you take a look at his life and you weigh David’s life on our human scale of justice, well, you come to the conclusion David was definitely one of the good guys. He tried with all his might to honour God and even though some days, he blew it, he was probably the greatest King that Israel ever had. And I’m sure that as David would take a look at his life, he’d probably come to the same conclusion. And yet this man went through so many difficult things – dark and lonely times – times when his people criticised him and times when he was in fear of his life. So God, what’s going on? Why is that? How come bad things happen to good people? I’m not sure I can answer all of those things. I mean, God is God and He decides those things but as we continue to walk through Psalm 34, let me share with you David’s own wisdom on this, because Psalm 34 is a Psalm where he looks back on all those bad times and he reflects with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Let’s pick it up in Psalm 34, verse 15, he writes: The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their cry but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off their memory from the earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him from them all. Well, David doesn’t even bother with the "why" question here, does he? When we hit those dark times the first question we want to know is ‘Why me, God? Why is this happening? Right? And the second question is: "How long is this going to go on, God – how long?" Well, David doesn’t carry on with any of that. He seems in this Psalm to accept the sovereignty of God and after all that he has been through in his life, he draws this obvious conclusion – Psalm 34, verse 19: Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. In other words, stuff happens – it just does. Jesus put it this way: Your Father in heaven causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and He sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Good stuff and bad stuff happens to good people and bad people – there you go, that’s just it. And it seems to be a rule that the more a man or a woman turns their lives to following hard after God, walking in the footsteps of Jesus, the more afflictions they suffer. It’s such an incredible contradiction because on the one hand, God wants to bless us – He does – all the way through His Word the Bible, He tells us that. But on the other, when we set our hearts like flint to follow Him, it seems like the rest of the world wants to stop us. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. "Many" – gee, there’s one of the promises of God! I don’t hear many people shouting, "Halleluiah, Amen" to that promise. But the Lord delivers us from them all. His eyes are on His people; His ear is attentive to their cry. We cry out, He hears us and He delivers us from our troubles. You know what I have learned? He doesn’t always deliver us in the way that we expect Him to. Sometimes we want Him to do one thing and He does exactly the opposite. Sometimes we cry out to Him and things seem to get worse. Sometimes we want Him to do "A" and He turns around and does "B". And sometimes it seems like His solution; His answer means that we lose and someone else wins. But in the wondrous fabric of His mighty plan for our lives, He is so much more interested in our characters – who we are – and our relationship with Him than He is in our perceptions of what we think we need and our comfort. He is so much more concerned about His glory shining out into this world than He is about some of the things that at the time, well, we think they are important but in the bigger scheme of things, they really aren’t. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Romans chapter 5: Suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and this hope doesn’t disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And the longer we walk with God the more afflictions we have to suffer, the more we discover the truth of King David’s words: Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. It’s not Fair You know when I think when the darkness is the worst? I think when something happens to us that’s not fair – someone treads on us or hurts us or stabs us in the back and it’s not fair. And when that happens, instead of running to God, we are so tempted to behave badly – to stoop as low as the person that has hurt us. If they stabbed us in the back, well, we have to do the same only ten times worse. Many are the afflictions of the righteous and we will avenge them all, right? No, that’s not what God tells us in Psalm 34: Many are the afflictions of the righteous, He says in verse 19, but the Lord delivers us from them all. But boy, oh boy, it is so tempting to carve the other guy’s heart out isn’t it? I want to take you to one of the most challenging verses in the Bible, for me – I mean, really challenging. It’s talking about when things happen that are not fair and it’s about a slave and his or her master. It was written a thousand or so years after King David penned Psalm 34, by the Apostle Peter. Come with me almost to the end of the New Testament – to the letter, First Peter – it’s a letter to Christians who were being persecuted. They were going through incredibly dark times; it was incredibly unfair, and Peter writes this piece of wisdom. First Peter chapter 2, verse 18 and listen, if you have a Bible, open it up, come with me here to this verse – First Peter chapter 2, verse 18. This is what he writes: Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect. Not only to those who are good and considerate but also to those who are harsh, for it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God but how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and you endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. This is what you are called to because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in His mouth. When they hurled insults at Him, He didn’t retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats, instead, He entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly. He, Himself bore our sins in His body on that tree so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness: by His wounds you have been healed. For you, like sheep, have gone astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and the overseer of your souls. Do you find that challenging? I certainly do. See there’s something in our makeup that when injustice happens to us; when we are on the receiving end, we want to rail against it and in the hurt and the pain and the anger – we want revenge, we want justice ... Peter is writing to slaves – I mean, slavery is something in the twenty first century, we just find disgusting and abhorrent and yet here in God’s Word, Peter is writing to slaves - one human being, being owned by another human being, to labour without payment – human degradation at its worst. How can one person do that to another? And yet Peter says: "Submit to your masters who are harsh." Slave, submit to your masters with all respect. Not only to those who are good and considerate but also to those who are harsh, for it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. See, travelling through pain, we want to end that pain in our own strength – it is a natural human instinct. It is so unnatural to honour God in that place. It is so unnatural to wait for Him to deliver us. It is so unnatural for us to do what is commendable in God’s eyes but if you suffer for doing good and you endure it this is commendable before God. To this you are called because Christ suffered for you; leaving you an example that you should follow in His footsteps. It is unnatural to suffer for doing good but it is commendable before God and in that, Christ is our example. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in His mouth and yet when they hurled insults at Him, He didn’t retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats instead He entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly. See – insults and He didn’t retaliate! Imagine what the Son of God could have done to those people? When they hurled insults at Him, He bore them like nails in His flesh; when He suffered, He didn’t make any threats; He didn’t utter any words of revenge. And you might say, “Berni, how can you be preaching this stuff at me? How can you believe this stuff? This is so hurtful.” Well, the answer and the solution come in the very next verse. Listen: Instead, He entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly. There it is again – a millennium after Psalm 34 was written, Peter is saying exactly the same thing that David said in Psalm 34, verse 19: Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. So many of the things that happen to us in life aren’t fair but in that darkness God’s light shines; a certain hope. Look at how Peter finishes off this letter: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore, under God’s might hand that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. God’s Deliverance I just want to finish up today by encouraging you that God is in the deliverance business. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, Peter writes in First Peter chapter 5, beginning at verse 5: Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you. You know, for me as I have travelled through these incredibly dark times, every now and then, when I have been treated unfairly – what I have learned is that it is not about getting my outcome or my way – it’s about humbling myself before God and that is so hard sometimes. It’s about being like Christ and saying, “God, not my will but Your will be done.” And God somehow always, always comes through and so do I, but as a changed man. A few more of the rough edges knocked off; a little of God’s polishing here and there – definitely a work in progress but it changes you, little by little. When we are passed over; when we are being ignored; when someone who is half as good as us is promoted twice as quickly; when people whisper behind our backs, those are painful times. Yet they are precious times when we have a choice to make – to get our own back or to humble ourselves under His mighty hand; to retaliate and threaten or to wait patiently in pain for God to deliver us like He did with Jesus; to be like everyone else in this world or to be Christ like - to be about the devil’s business or about God’s business. We started off today looking at this wonderful part of Psalm 34, beginning at verse 15: The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory from the earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the broken hearted and He saves those who are crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. You see, God’s eyes are on the righteous; He does hear our cries. And God is a righteous God – we are going to look at that next week. God is against those who do evil and ultimately, there will be a price for those people to pay. One day they will stand before God and be judged. When we cry out God hears us and He delivers us from our troubles. When we are broken hearted; when it’s so dark and it’s so lonely and it’s so scary, He is in that place. And even sometimes when we can’t see it, He’s out there protecting us; keeping us safe; doing things that we can’t imagine. Take a look back a page or two at Psalm 31, beginning at verse 20. See, this is one of those times that David is talking about that is so unfair. This is what he writes: In the shelter of Your presence You hide them from the intrigues of men. In Your dwelling you keep them safe from accusing tongues. Praise be to the Lord our God, for He showed His wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. In my alarm I said “I am cut off from Your sight,” yet You heard my cry for mercy when I called to You for help. Love the Lord all His saints. The Lord preserves the faithful but the proud He will pay back in full. Be strong and take heart all you that hope in the Lord. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t it sometimes when we are the subject of the intrigues of men and accusing tongues, it’s God who keeps us safe in Him? And when we come through that and we see what’s happened and we are changed, we can look back and say, “Praise be to God for He showed His wonderful love to me when I felt like I was in a besieged city.” Have you ever felt that? In relationships it’s like everyone turns against you and you feel like you are under siege. Praise be to the Lord for He showed His wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. In alarm I said “I am cut off from Your sight” yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. So often in those dark places it just kind of feels like there is no one there. It feels like "I’m cut off" – we are afraid and we cry out "I’m cut off" but God is always in that place. Can I just say to you from now on, when you are suffering afflictions; when you are the subject of human plots or accusing tongues; when you are in that incredibly dark place; when you feel cut off like a city under siege; when it’s black, I believe that the Holy Spirit is going to shine a light into that dark place. I remember back in my life when it hurt so much and it was so dark, I just quietly sat there in pain and somehow the Holy Spirit turned my heart to humble myself. See, I was so used to lashing out – I was so used to stooping as low as the other people who were inflicting the pain and yet the Holy Spirit did something. And I believe that as we receive His Word today, the Holy Spirit is going to speak His Word, this Word into your heart, one day, just when you need it. Just when you feel like a city under siege; just when you are in that dark place, this beautiful Word that we have looked at in Psalm 34 and Psalm 31 and First Peter chapters 3 and 5, this is the very Word of God. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. I don’t know about you but some days are really rotten. You know, we go along; we do; we live our lives just the best way we can and something comes out of the blue and it’s so unfair and you know, it’s so unexpected and it hurts and it’s scary. And dark nights – well, they are so dark aren’t they? They are so lonely and often so painful but in that dark night there is a bright light and it’s a light that shines when we put our trust in Jesus Christ – the same Jesus who suffered a scandalous death on the cross; a death that was unfair; a death that He didn’t deserve. When they hurled insults at Him; when they beat Him and when ... He just took it. He just humbled Himself because He knew there was a purpose; He knew that He would have to die for you and me. When we put our faith in that Jesus to deliver us in His time and His way, He will. See, we can have faith in Jesus from a distance; you know, we can believe in Him with our heads from a long way off but that sort of belief is pretty useless when you get to one of those dark nights. Because Jesus never meant for us to have Him at arm’s length; He never meant for us to believe in Him just with our heads; He never meant for us to say, "Well, yea, I have an insurance policy", He meant to be part of our lives. And when we believe Him with our lives – do you know what that means? It means in those dark times when people are doing bad things to us, not lashing out in pain. It means saying, "You know, I’m not going to do the thing that comes naturally, which is wrong, I’m going to humble myself; I am going to believe in Jesus’ deliverance with my life and just sit here and be like Christ – not like the rest of the world." When we believe like that with our lives; when we put our lives on the line and honour Him in those times of affliction, that’s when He shows up. For God opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers us from them all. May He bless you as you receive His Word, today?
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Fear the Lord // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 2
03/01/2026
Fear the Lord // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 2
When we’re travelling through a dark and scary patch in our lives, there’s a strong temptation to do the wrong thing, to save our skin. But there is another way…. What We do in the Dark Well, it’s great to be with you again this week. I’m not sure if you were able to join us last week but we began a new series called “Dark Night, Bright Light”. Darkness, well, we all travel through darkness in our lives. There are times when, I don’t know, the storm clouds just come rolling over the top and maybe we’ve been sick or maybe we have lost someone we love or maybe we have been hurt and it’s not to say that we are a bunch of losers. I don’t mean that, it’s just the reality of life. Jacqui, my wife, was talking to a long time friend of hers and their children are growing up and there are lots of challenges and problems and she is just exhausted. Or a dear friend of mine whose son committed suicide and he and his wife are still reeling from that. Or a friend who has been retrenched and he’s in his fifties and it’s hard to find a job. Stuff like that happens – dark times; difficult times, well, in those darknesses, we just can’t see where we are or where we are headed. I have had them, you’ve had them and that’s life. Jesus said this amazing thing – He said: “I am the light of the world,” and one of the things we saw last week is that He is in the "light" business and that’s good news for anyone going through a dark patch. The very first thing that God created in Genesis chapter 1 was "light" – a trillion, trillion stars, at least – God is definitely in the "light" business. Halleluiah! Don’t you think? And we spent some time last week with King David in a Psalm; Psalm 34. If you have got your Bible, grab it, open it up – we are going there again today. Psalm 34 is kind of a retrospective; a hindsight look at the dark times that David has been through where he was afraid and God showed up. Let me just read the first part of it again. Psalm 34, beginning at verse 1. David says: I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look at Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him; He saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. You see, what David is saying here is that God is a God who shows up in the dark times and delivers us. And David is not saying that off the top of his head or out of a text book; he is saying it from having experienced God in all the dark times that he travelled through in his life. He spent such a long time on the run from Saul who was trying to kill him. He lived in dark places and lonely places, in fear for his life. He fought so many battles where he was hard pressed and he should have been killed but God was there for him – God showed up. And one of the things that we touched on last week was fear – the bad fear that we have and the good fear. The bad fear is the fear that David talks about in verse 4 of this Psalm. He says: I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my ‘fears’. And we do get afraid and it immobilises us but the good fear he talks about in verse 7: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who ‘fear’ Him and He delivers them. The fear of the Lord – we are going to have a look at that some more today because it’s what the next part of Psalm 34 is all about. I want you to come with me now as we read just the next five verses of this Psalm. Psalm 34, verses 9 to 14 which is where we are going to spend our time together today. This is what David writes – he says: Fear the Lord you His holy ones for those who fear Him will have no want. The lions may grow weak and hungry but those who seek the Lord will lack no good thing. Come my children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. This is a really important part of the Psalm. The first part told us all about God and what He is like and that’s fantastic but this second part; it’s about the part that we have to play in those dark times. I want to tell you something about darkness. People will do things in the dark that they won’t do in the light. Let me say that again because it’s really important: people will do things in the dark that they won’t do in the light. Think about it – we are much more careful about where we walk and what we do out there in the dark; in the night time than we are by day. Robberies, muggings, murders are all more likely to happen under the cover of darkness than they are in day light where the criminal might be seen and get caught. The same thing is true in our lives – dark times – well, those are the times where we are far more likely to do things that we know are wrong. Let me just give you a few practical everyday examples. Things are tough; we are feeling down – you know what a lot of people do? They over eat – comfort food, they call it. They put on weight; they feel a whole bunch worse about themselves than when they started. Or a husband and wife – they are going through a tough time in their marriage and their minds and eyes start to wander; they start looking around; that’s how adultery begins – instead of holding each other close and working through the issues. Or perhaps there is conflict at work – someone is just not treating us well and we are feeling under pressure. It’s really getting to us; the boss is being just horrible and we take that as an excuse to justify being lazy or stealing something or gossiping behind their backs or not servicing a customer properly so that the firm will lose some money. Or perhaps money is really tight; there is real financial pressure in our lives and we are tempted to lie and cheat on our tax returns, or when the shop attendant makes a mistake and gives us too much change we just slip it in our pockets. Do you see how easy this stuff is? In the dark times; in those hidden places the temptation to do wrong is far greater than when the times are good." "No one is going to notice! After all, times are tough – I have to look after number one – me; I have to justify myself or protect myself or provide for myself." That’s how we rationalise this stuff. And notice the central theme through all of that – me, myself and I. In those dark times we often experience fear – the times when we are afraid and in those dark times we often experience the temptation to sin; to turn away from what we know is right because no one will notice. And we just have to; we have to sin to save our skin. And the devil loves it this way; he’s so delighted to see this. The Apostle John puts it this way in First John chapter 1, verse 5 – he says: This is the message we have heard from Him and declare it to you: God is light. In Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to walk with Him and yet we walk in the darkness, we are lying and we don’t live up to the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin. So today, we are going to take a look at the wisdom that comes from David’s experience in those dark times – the wisdom about how we behave. What he learned to do when temptation came in those dark times. Let’s Take a Closer Look Well, we are going to take a bit of a closer look at this part of Psalm 34 because that’s how we learn what God is teaching us through David’s wisdom. Let’s read just a few verses again. Psalm 34 verses 9 to 11, David writes: Fear the Lord you His holy ones, for those who fear Him will have no want. Sure the lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord will lack no good thing. Come my children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. I love this because it’s a place where God gives us His solutions to our problems. See, it’s not good enough for Him to rap us over the knuckles with a ruler when we are doing the wrong thing. We need to know how not to repeat the mistake and that’s what this piece of wisdom is all about. Let’s look at verse 9 again: Fear the Lord you His holy ones, for those who fear Him will have no want. Last week we saw that the fear of the Lord has two parts. The most obvious definition of ‘fear’ is to be afraid but it also means to reverence and to honour. And I want to talk about those today – it’s important. You know, it’s really easy to imagine that somehow, God is just our buddy; like another friend, And to be sure, He is our friend but God is also an awesome God and ultimately, He will see justice done. There will be a day of judgement; there will be a day when we have to give an account before Him for all that we have done and all that we have said. Jesus made that really clear in Matthew chapter 10, verse 28 – we can read this. Jesus said: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. We need to never lose sight of that – there are consequences to our sin; there are consequences to rebelling against God and if we just go on wantonly, stealing or lying or grumbling or hating or undermining or living in sexual sin or whatever it is, and we think to ourselves, "Well, that’s ok. God’s my buddy", then let me make this clear: we are completely missing the point. Yes, Jesus died for your sins and mine – absolutely. And when I get something wrong, I go to God and admit it and say, "Lord, I just got this wrong. I don’t want to go there again. Please forgive me God," and He does. But that attitude is one that comes out of the fear of the Lord, I have to tell you. A casual attitude towards God; that thinks that we can just keep on sinning, is not on – He won’t honour it. Why? Because if you believe Jesus, His plan is for you and me to be holy; in other words, to be clean and pure and set apart exclusively for God’s use. Listen again to verse 9: Fear the Lord, you His holy ones, for those who fear Him will have no want. See, we are not our own, we are bought at a price and God has this awesome plan to use us just as He pleases and the devil knows that. That’s why, when times are tough; when we are travelling through a dark place, he wants to smear us with that darkness. He is the deception – things are difficult, therefore I have to bend the rules to set it right – money is tight so I have to steal to provide for myself. The boss is giving me a hard time so I have to stab him in the back to set things right. My husband or my wife isn’t everything they should be, I have to start looking around somewhere else to find someone who is everything they should be. The devil will play that rubbish over and over and over again until we swallow it hook, line and sinker and God’s answer is exactly the opposite. “ Fear the Lord, you His holy ones, for those who fear Him will have no want. The lions may grow weak and hungry but those who seek the Lord will lack no good thing. God’s way is to provide for us – not all our wants, but all our needs. And when we fear the Lord; when we fear His judgement and honour Him and reverence Him with what we think and what we say and what we do, God will make sure that we have what we need. What a huge opposite to our natural inclination! "Yes, times are tough; yes, money is tight but I will fill out my tax return honestly. I won’t claim expenses from my company that are really personal rather that company expenses. I don’t care how tough things get financially, I am going to fear the Lord because I am bought for a price; I am holy; I am set apart for Him and His Word says that in those dark times, if I fear Him, I will have no want and when I seek Him with all my heart I will lack no good thing." Do you get it? David is saying here, "I learned in my dark times just to stand for God; just to do the right thing; to fear Him, to be holy because he will provide for me." And remember David is teaching us from having been on the run from King Saul who wanted to kill him for years – sleeping in dark caves; fearing for his life. This is what he learned in his dark places and that’s why he is telling us this stuff. He is saying, "Listen to me for I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Come my children, listen to me.” In other words "Listen to me – this works – I know it does because I have been there." Where the Rubber Hits the Road I hope you are being blessed as I am as we work our way through the wondrous Word of God. Imagine the God who created the whole universe speaking to you and me through His Word; through something that was written about three thousand years ago. I want to finish off with just the next few verses of this Psalm because they contain a specific challenge – a challenge that God is making to you and to me today. Have a listen – Psalm 34, verses 11 to 14: Come my children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. See, sometimes we wonder "Well, how do we live out this fear of the Lord? Do I sit in a corner and tremble?" No, not at all! David remember, this David who is speaking to us from his own difficult, dark experience – he is throwing down a challenge – he is teaching us how to live in the fear of the Lord. Quite simply; paraphrasing, he is saying "Do you want to live a good life? Do you want to live a great life?" Well, here’s how to do it – by living out the fear of the Lord through what you say and what you do. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies, turn away from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. Now, we are all different – we are all prone to different forms of the same thing that God calls "sin". For some people it’s grumbling, for others it’s gambling or lying or stealing or carrying around hatred in our hearts and "speaking it out behind peoples" backs, or gossiping or sexual sin. You name it, the list goes on – overeating, getting drunk, closing ourselves off from other people and family – over and over again – the list is really long. And my hunch is that we each know which one or two are the particular ones that we are prone to. And here’s the challenge: if we are in a dark and fearful place; a place where there is a temptation to stop doing good and to do wrong; to turn away from God and to sin so that we can save our skin – here’s the challenge: to turn away from that stuff and do good instead and put our faith in God. That’s what it means in practical terms to "fear the Lord" – that’s how we live out the fear of the Lord, with our lives. See, we delude ourselves if we somehow imagine that in that dark place, God can’t see what’s going on. Wake up! Listen to what the Apostle Paul writes to his friends in Galatia – you can read it in Galatians chapter 6, beginning at verse 7. And if you have a Bible, come here with me and share in God’s Word with me. I was with a group of Christians recently and they just paid lip service to God’s Word. Let’s be serious about getting God’s Word into us – Galatians chapter 6, verse 7: Don’t be deceived – God cannot be mocked. You are going to reap what you sow. If you sow to please your sinful nature, from that nature you will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, however, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Don’t become weary of doing good for just at the right time we will reap a harvest if we don’t give up. Therefore, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of God. That was written about a thousand years after David and it’s saying the same thing in a different way. In those dark places it is so tempting to grow weary of doing good; to sin in order to save our skin; to provide for ourselves in our own strength. Paul is saying, "Just keep going. Don’t become weary of doing good because in God’s time you will reap the harvest." That’s the challenge! It’s the challenge for each one of us in difficult circumstances in dark place to stop making excuses. They are the very places where the devil wants to tear us apart. That’s the very place where we have to vigilant – to bow down our lives; to fear the Lord; just do the right thing day after day after day and His light will shine in that place. It has too – that’s who He is – God honours those who honour Him. And in those dark places, when step by step, we discover His light, that is such a precious, awesome and mighty thing – it changes us like nothing else. That’s why David starts his Psalm off with such gusto of praise because he knows all this stuff through his own experience. I will bless the Lord all the time. His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord – let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt in His name for I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him; He saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Fear the Lord you holy ones, for those who fear Him will have no want. The lions may well grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come my children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Isn’t it amazing how we can rationalise and complicate and make excuses in those dark places? When you and I are walking through the dark the devil sees what is going on and God’s see what’s going on and in that dark place, God is so ready; so willing to shine His bright light on that dark night. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, just keep your tongue from evil; just stop your lips from speaking lies; turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. God is in that place with you no matter how dark the night is; His bright light will shine in your heart.
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When Life is Dark // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 1
02/22/2026
When Life is Dark // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 1
It doesn’t matter who you are, we all travel through dark and fearful places in life – and at those times, it can be so hard to remember that God is in the Light business. The Darkest Nights I am always so excited to be starting a new series of messages and that’s what we are doing this week on the programme – and it is a series that I have called “Dark Night, Bright Light.” Dark and darkness – I wonder what those words mean to you? There are all sorts of connotations when we apply them to our lives. I remember when I was a young boy - even probably well into my teenage years – I was really afraid of the dark. I remember after dinner in the dining room, it was a long corridor – well it seemed a long corridor – especially in the dark. It was only about, I don’t know, only eight or nine meters from the dining room to my bedroom. But I have to tell you, when it was dark, it was a long way for me to go. And I was afraid to walk from the light dining room into that dark corridor to my dark bedroom. Now in the house where we lived, we were blessed because there was a light switch for the lights at either end of the corridor so I could walk out of the dining room, turn on the light and the corridor was in light and then I could go to my bedroom – and I always used that switch. Now, we lived in a safe part of town and the house was secure and there was no logical or rational reason for me to be afraid of the dark – I just was – and it was a deep fear and I think a lot of kids go through that. It seems that darkness and fear, well, they often go together in life – young or old. Now the truth be known we need both – we need light and dark in this world. I love it when the sun goes down and it’s time to go to sleep and again when the sun comes up in the morning and it’s time to get up and get on with living life. That’s a pattern we live by – it’s a pattern of life. But imagine if it were only ever dark, how awful that would be. In some countries of course, far north and far south, they have many months of darkness. Now take a look at our own lives. If we look back on those dark times – those periods in life that we would rather forget – whether it was a broken relationship or sickness or the death of a loved one or some real financial difficulties or maybe you have been through a war and has seen people killed or been in prison. Perhaps you have seen everything that you have worked so hard for over so many years just go down the drain. Someone has hurt you incredibly deeply or someone you trusted – perhaps you have been through a time of depression or real loneliness or you are working so hard that you don’t feel as though you have a life – that list just goes on and on and on. Life has its dark times, doesn’t it? Maybe you are going through one right now or maybe, who knows, there is one just around the next corner or next year or the year after and that’s why we are kicking off this series “Dark Night, Bright Light” because light is the opposite of darkness and when we are travelling through those dark times, light is the very thing that we need. The problem is it can be so hard to find; so hard to believe in or hope for and over these coming weeks, we are going to be spending some time with King David in Psalm 34. But before we go there, let’s have a little foretaste about darkness and light. If you have got a Bible, I want you grab it; I want you to open it up at page 1 – Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1 – the beginning. Here’s what it say: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said “Let there be light” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness He called that ‘night’. And there was evening and there was morning – that was the first day.” I might hear you say, "Well, Berni, I know that passage and that’s all well and good. You’re talking about physical light here, that’s fine but what about God shining His light into the darkness in my life?" We are going to talk about that shortly but the point that I’m making is this: creation tells us something about the Creator. You and I create different things because we are different. God, the very first thing He creates – the very first thing – is light. That tells us something about God but what a light! We tend to just think of the sun there; one of just an estimated trillion, trillion stars. God is seriously into light and that tells us something about who He is. Let’s take a look at just another couple of verses in the Bible. There are so many of them that talk about God and light – Ezekiel chapter 10, verse 4: Then the glory of the Lord rose from above the cherubim and moved to the threshold of the temple. The cloud filled the temple and the court was full of the radiance and the glory of God. Words from Isaiah chapter 60, verse 19: The sun will no more be your light by day nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you for the Lord will be your everlasting light and your God will be your glory. And perhaps my favourite of all, where Paul seems to bring it all together in Second Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 6: For it is the very same God who said “Let light shine out of the darkness, that made His light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The Bible is full of references about God being our light and our radiance. Can you see why I have called this series “Dark Night, Bright Light”? Over these coming weeks I believed we are going to be transformed by God’s Word about darkness and light. If you have just been through a "darkness" or you are going through one right now or you are going to go through one in the future, the Word of God is going to shine a light into that dark place – “Dark Night, Bright Light.” The Wisdom of Hindsight As I said earlier in the programme we are going to spend some time in Psalm 34, this week and over the next three weeks. It’s an interesting Psalm because it comes out of King David’s life. It’s a Psalm of praise for deliverance from trouble. So it is a Psalm written, if you like, with the benefit of hindsight. David has learned something – something about God in a dark time. Now we are not sure what that time was. The introduction to the Psalm says, “A Psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech so that he drove him out and he went away.” Now we don’t have any other information about that. Abimelech was a judge; he was a leader of Israel; he was Gideon’s son. Anyhow the fact of the matter is, even though we don’t know the precise historical details it doesn’t matter. David had to engage in some deception, it tells us; if was a fearful and scary time and he needed to escape. Now let’s have a look at the first part of this Psalm. If you have got a Bible, open it at Psalm 34 – we are going to look at just the first eight verses today. This is what it says: I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord, let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me – He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look at Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him It’s a beautiful Psalm! You see, it's David looking back on a difficult time. And he starts out be praising God – “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips,” because of God’s faithfulness. And there’s a purpose in him praising; a specific purpose. Look at verse 2. My soul will boast in the Lord, let the afflicted hear and rejoice. See, the purpose of this Psalm is to let the rest of us know when we are afflicted that God is faithful in those darks times so that we can hear that and rejoice. See, this Psalm was written for you and for me. Isn’t God good? And David says, "You know why I am writing this Psalm? It’s for you, you who are afflicted; you who are travelling through a dark and fearful time." You know why? Come and look at verse 3 again with me. David says: Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. In other words so that you and I can rejoice together even though we might be travelling through dark times. We are getting the benefit of what David discovered in his dark and fearful time. And what he discovered, well, it is as profound as it is simple. Look at verse 4; this is what he says; this is the heart of this first passage for me. David says: I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. You know what happens in the darkness? In the darkness we become afraid and that fear immobilises us – fear stops us dead in our tracks. We just kind of sit there and we ache and fear eats away at our hearts like a quick spreading cancer and in that fear - remember, David was as he had been many times before, in fear of his life; real fear – David had more than his share of dark times – he had real fear. Let me say it this way – he was in deadly fear and in the midst of his deadly fear he did the thing that he had learned to do over all of those times in his life when he had been in danger – when he was on the run from King Saul who was trying to kill him for all those years – he did the one thing he knew to do – Psalm 34, verse 4: I sought the Lord and He answered me. David sought God – he’d cry out to God for help. The one thing that we can forget to do when we are frozen by fear is just to cry out to God – just to pour our hearts out to Him. And what a surprise, “God answered him and delivered him from all his fears.” I don’t know about you but I can relate to that. In life and in ministry I come against giants of opposition all the time and I can tell you, some days they scare me – seriously. And we have a choice – we can just kind of sit there and tremble in fear and be completely immobilised or we can spend some time with God, crying out to Him in prayer and reading His Word and listening to Him – and He always delivers me from all my fears. David goes on to say this – verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 34: Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered in shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him and He saved him out of all his troubles. There it is – the light word "radiance". The Hebrew word that sits behind our English translation means literally ‘to beam or to burn with light’. It’s an "over the top" kind of word – it’s not a glow or a flicker or just a shine, but to beam and to burn with light and that’s exactly what happens when we look to God; when we put our trust in Him in the middle of our darkness. See, in those dark times we are downcast; ashamed if you like, but David states this simple truth “This poor man called and the Lord heard him and saved out of all his troubles; He delivered him from all his fears.” This is such a humble and beautiful picture, isn’t it? David, probably the greatest King that Israel ever had, saw himself just as a poor man who cried out to God in his darkness. Don’t you love it how the Bible is packed full of this real life stuff – this stuff that’s right down where we are? The Word of God meant for us here and now; right where the rubber hits the road - the light and the radiance of God in our darkness and fear - and all this out of a simple step that David took; so simple and yet when we are afraid, so difficult. “I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.” Taste and See God is very much in the "light" business, isn’t He – taking our fear and replacing it with His radiance? Perhaps that’s why David writes in Psalm 18, verse 28: It is You O Lord who lights my lamp; the Lord my God lights up my darkness. And again in Psalm 139, verses 11 and 12: If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to You. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to You. You get the impression that David is a seasoned traveller through darkness and he has learned some stuff that God would have us learn, each in our own way. Now let’s head back to Psalm 34, verses 7 and 8, just to finish off our look at what David learned. Let’s have a read: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Now there are two things here we need to get into; the first is the bit about the angel of the Lord. Let’s have a look at verse 7 again: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Angels have a kind of funny symbology these days in our society – fluffy little creatures with wings – but you do just a short study of the angels that God describes in the Bible and you discover they are a fearsome lot. Often God uses them as a messenger and the first thing the angel says is, "Don’t be afraid". They deliver a specific message to God’s people to protect them from trouble and often they appear as fearsome beings to protect God’s people. Look at Second Chronicles chapter 32, verse 20: King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah, son of Amos cried out in prayer to heaven about this and the Lord sent an angel who annihilated all the fighting men and the leaders and the officers of the camp of the Assyrian King. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace and when he went to the temple of his god, some of his sons cut him down with his own sword. Get it? The angel is serious protection. Presidents or Prime Ministers or Kings or Queens all have their security contingents right around them when they travel. Well those security contingents have got nothing on an angel of the Lord. And you might say to me, "Berni, do you seriously believe in angels?" Absolutely! We can’t see them but when we fear God; when we reverence Him – we will talk more about that idea next week – when we belong to Him, He sends His angel to encamp around us; to surround us; literally, to lay siege around us to protect us. How does David know that? Because he has been there; he has experienced it over and over again and that’s exactly what he says in the next verse. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Now, this verse is so often quoted out of context "Taste and see" – suck it and see! When you are in the darkness; when you are afraid, David is saying, "Try this thing that I am talking about 'Taste and see that the Lord is good', you will be blessed when you take refuge in Him." It’s like an invitation to you and me today from God. Come on, try it – I can hear the Spirit of God saying through His Word – "Come on, try it because when you take refuge in Me”. God is saying, “you will truly be blessed”. I don’t know about you but God has seriously spoken to me today and encouraged me through His Word; He is in the light business and it’s something that David discovered through long, hard experiences in darkness and fear. And he comes out the other side of that singing God’s praises specifically for you and for me to hear. I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name. I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called out and the Lord heard him and He saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good for blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Isn’t that an awesome Psalm? People sometimes say to me, "Berni, why do you talk about this stuff? You know, is this Christianity thing for losers?" You don’t have to be a loser to go through dark times – we all go through dark times – we all travel through difficult times. You know, a friend or a relative that is close to us dies young of cancer and we are left reeling and we think "God why has that happened?" We get retrenched; we lose someone else we love; we … – all sorts of things happen to us and at those times it feels like God has deserted us. Listen to David again: I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. In that darkness there is no light so bright as the light of God and His heart is to take a face that has been covered with tears and put His radiance on that face. God is a wonderful God. I want to encourage you to join me over the next three weeks as we further explore the Word of God and what God has to say about His light amidst our darkness. That’s what this series “Dark Night, Bright Light” is all about.
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The Fruit of Worship // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 4
02/15/2026
The Fruit of Worship // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 4
So often we try to make changes in our lives, you know, the difficult things, those entrenched behaviours that keep ruining things for us – but try as we might, somehow we always seem to fail. But worship, well, that’s something that changes us – from the inside out. Worship Sets us Free Well, welcome to this programme; it’s the last programme in our four part series called, "Worship as a Way of Life". I guess the guts of it has been getting our hearts and our minds around the fact that worship is more than just going to church and singing songs on Sunday morning – so much more. And over the last three weeks we have seen that there are really two aspects to worship. Two different words used for worship in the New Testament. Worship on the inside – bowing down our lives to God, the thing that happens in our hearts, and then what we go on and do with that – living out that worship through our service, on the outside. It makes sense – look at a marriage. I love my wife, Jacqui, with all my heart – I adore her but if that’s all I did it wouldn’t be a very great marriage. Once a week, if I just said, “Darling, I love you”, come on, what sort of a marriage would it be? I have to live out that marriage; I have to live out that love. I don’t always do that perfectly, but she has to know that I love her through how I treat her and what I say to her and what I do for her and as I live out that love, it changes me on the inside and I love her even more. So this "inside", "outside" thing, well they feed off each other. The question is, is it like that in our relationship with God? Today we are going to conclude this series by asking that question. Ok, so if I worship God, what happens to me? I mean, does it change me, does it transform me, does it change the way I am on the inside and the outside? We are going to start off today back in the Book of Exodus, so if you have a Bible, go and grab it. We will go to the Book of Exodus and we are looking where Moses went up to Mount Sinai and got the Ten Commandments. Something happened to him up there. Have a look at Exodus, chapter 34, beginning at verse 29. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he wasn’t aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken to the Lord. When his brother Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses his face was radiant and they were afraid to come near him but Moses called to them. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him and he spoke with them. Afterwards all the Israelites came near to him and he gave them all the Commandments that the Lord had given him up on the mountain. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face but whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with Him he removed the veil until he came out again. And when he came out and told the Israelites what had been commanded they saw that his face was radiant again. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord again. See, when you go into God’s presence, you can’t help it, something happens to you. And with Moses, he went into God’s presence up on Mount Sinai and then in the tabernacle (the tent), which was the tent of the meeting place. When Israel were out there in the desert for forty years in the exodus, they built a tent and in the centre of that tent; in a place called the Holy of Holies, is where the presence of God rested with them. And only Moses would go in and speak with God. And when he did that there was this radiance; something different about him, when he came out from having been in God’s presence. He was transformed in a way that the people, well, they really noticed this. A few thousand years later the Apostle Paul looks back on all of that and comes up with the conclusion that when we turn to the Lord our God and worship Him, something like that happens, only much better. Let’s again go to God’s Word and have a look at Second Corinthians, chapter 3, beginning at verse 13. This is what Paul writes: We aren’t like Moses who had to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. Their minds were made dull for to this day, that same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day, when Moses’ laws are read, a veil covers their hearts but whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. What’s this thing that Paul is talking about here? I mean the Israelites in the first century, were bound up in God’s law and in legalism. You know, it was all about rules – there were six hundred and thirteen commandments and prohibitions in the Torah; in the Hebrew Law that was given through Moses and they got so rule-bound and legalistic and that’s the thing that Jesus came to set us free from. I mean, Moses, in the Old Testament, was able to go into the presence of God, and when he came out he used to have to hide his transformation – the glory of God shinning out from his face, because people didn’t understand it; they couldn’t take it – the whole bunch of people around in his day who just didn’t get it. A bit like today really. Whenever we turn to the Lord, to Jesus, the veil is taken away. And then Paul goes on to say in verse 17: Now, the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The picture here is of our faces shinning with the glory of God – not a sense of a bunch of rules that we have to keep – not that at all – a sense of freedom. See, here’s what so often happens – someone accepts Jesus Christ into their lives as Lord and Saviour – right? Fantastic! All great intentions but then little by little we get bound up in rules and regulations and "you have to do this and you can’t do that" – it’s called legalism. And Paul is saying, "No, you get up on the mountain top and you worship God – you don’t have to be like that. He changes you on the inside and you end up shinning on the outside." The veil is removed – you don’t have to hide it anymore. Have you ever met someone who is just glowing with the glory of God; with the goodness of God? You know, they walk into the room and there’s a kind of a light and when they leave something lingers – this sense that somehow, God is in this place. When we like Moses, go to that mountain top and worship God, it changes us; it transforms us on the inside and you end up glowing that on the outside. There’s a sense that this person has been up there worshipping in the presence of God. You know what we try to do? We try to do this in our own strength. We look at God and go, "WOW, God is so amazing", and the more we look at Him the more we realise our own weaknesses, so then we set about trying to change them. We think, "you know something, I have to stop doing this or I have to start doing that, or I have to do this and don’t do that", and before you know it we are peddling so hard, we’re exhausted. And ultimately, we end up failing; it’s too hard, we can’t do it. Paul is saying here that when we worship God on that mountain top, God does something amazing. He fills us on the inside and we can’t help it – it ends up shinning out on the outside. We’ll take a look at that next. Worship Transforms Us When we worship God, that bears fruit in our lives – it changes us on the inside and on the outside in ways that we simply couldn’t do on our own. In fact, as we worship Him, we end up looking more and more like Jesus. Have a read here in Second Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 18, what Paul goes on to say. And we, who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness from glory to glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. See, that veil that Paul was talking about before and here in this passage, is the veil of misunderstanding; it’s the veil of separation; it’s the veil that says, "I can’t come before God because I’m not worthy." In the first century the Jews had the temple, in fact, they had had it for quite a long time before then. And in the centre of the temple, on the inside, was the Holy of Holies, the place where the presence of God was. And only the High Priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement – to make atonement with God through sacrifice for the sins of Israel. Anyone else went in there they would die because they couldn’t stand the presence of the Lord – He’s holy and He’s perfect and we’re not! – and we would surely die in His presence. That’s why, when Moses came down from the mountain and his face was glowing with the glory of God, people were afraid. The Holy of Holies was closed off from the rest of us in the temple, by a thick curtain or a veil. So what’s changed? How come we can go into God’s presence and worship Him? How is it that we can come before a holy God just as we are with our faces uncovered and our hearts uncovered open to Him? Luke explains it in his Gospel as he records the crucifixion of Jesus. You can read this in Luke, chapter 23, verse 44. It was now about the sixth hour and the darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour for the sun had stopped shining and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.” When He said this, He breathed His last. See, the death of Jesus Christ paid for all my sins – He paid for all your sins And that one thing that stopped us from coming into the very presence of God, our sin, was dealt with and so God tore the veil in two – the veil that closed off the Holy of Holies. He opened that up to you and me, the instant that Christ died. That means if we put our faith in Jesus we can go and stand in His presence unveiled; just as we are and just gaze on His beauty with wonder and awe and worship Him. And when we do that then we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness from glory to glory, which comes from God who is the Spirit. Just as we stand in His presence and know that He is God, He transforms us into His likeness, from glory to glory to glory and it works its way out from the inside to our outside and we’re transformed into His likeness. We end up looking more and more like Jesus. Let me ask you a question: Why is it that so many Christians are just plain hypocrites? They go to church on Sunday and yet you look at their lives for the rest of the week and they look nothing like Jesus. I’ll tell you why – because they haven’t adopted worship as their way of life. I struggle so much in my life when I don’t spend time with Jesus. If I’ve been sick or I’ve been travelling or I’m really busy or really tired, in those times I just know that I haven’t got what it takes to do it on my own. And time and time again that’s what brings me back to the foot of the cross. Time and time again I discover and I rediscover I can’t do this on my own. Only when I worship God on the inside and then I live that out on the outside, that’s when I can look like Him. When we get off that mountain top and wander round in the marshes of day to day life, like Moses, the glory fades. But when we spend time worshipping Jesus on the mountain top, on the inside; we don’t have to go out there in life and wander round on our own any more, in our own strength. Instead the joy of the Lord is our strength. When we worship God, He fills us with His joy, just as having been in His presence. The joy of just having seen Him and heard Him and experienced Him changes us – He fills us with the joy of the Lord; the fullness of His Spirit. We need to experience Jesus for ourselves – that’s what real worship is – making music unto Him in our hearts – singing, delighting, resting, praying and when we do that, we who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness, with ever increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. I love this because we can’t do it in our own strength. God has this amazing plan to transform you and me into His image from glory to glory. Just as we turn to worship Him and bow down before Him – to set us free, to fill us with the calm delight of His presence. This is where the rubber hits the road – this is so much better than keeping the veil over our hearts and trying to go out there and do it in our own strength. This is ... well, it’s so God, isn’t it? It’s so.. Him! Do you get it? He wants to change you and me from glory to glory. He wants to transform us to, in effect, be Christ to a lost and hurting world; to look like and to walk like and to talk like Jesus – to ache like Jesus for those around us – in His image – that was always the plan. A Treasure in Jars of Clay I was accosted recently by a man in a coffee shop in Chicago. It turns out, sad to say, that he was an Australian who heard me talking with my colleague in the coffee shop, and so he picked up my accent. Anyhow, this guy accosts me quite aggressively and starts telling me that if we believe in God, it’s possible for us to be perfect here on earth. Unfortunately, I didn’t think quickly enough – what I should have done is ask him, "So, do you know anyone who’s like that, perfect, I mean?" Because the only perfect person I know is Jesus Christ. Now I want to deal with this because it’s important. From what we’ve seen so far on the programme you could easily get the impression that I agree with that guy in the coffee shop. Just keep worshipping Jesus and you’ll be exactly like Him – perfecto! My experience is that there are sometimes gaps between the glory – you know when it talks about us being transformed from glory to glory – I make mistakes every day, I fall short every day and my hunch is so do you. And if we think that we can end up being "perfecto", well, we are going to become very discouraged very quickly. Paul addresses this in the next few verses – go to Second Corinthians, chapter 4 and verse 6 – let’s have a listen to what he says. For the God who said, “Let a light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That kind of reinforces what we’ve been talking about. God does something, "He shines His light" as we get to know Jesus; He shines His light into our hearts. The same God who created light out of darkness – it’s the first thing He did – "Let there be light" – that God speaks light into our hearts through Jesus Christ. But look at what He says in the next verse, verse 7. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our bodies. See, the treasure that Paul is talking about here is the wonder and the glory of God – that light that shines out from our faces and from all that we do when we are people of worship. The jars of clay, well, that’s you and me – that’s who we are! What a great contrast – the light shinning out the glory of God – bright and pure and perfect – but God takes it and He puts it in this rough and imperfect earthenware jar. Maybe it has some chips and cracks and that brilliant light of God’s glory shines out from that imperfect and rough jar. See, sometimes we go and worship God and we come down from the mountain top and we are full of His glory and we think "everything is going to go well", but look what Paul says: We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus Christ so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. He was going through some difficult times in ministry – people were trying to kill him, they were locking him up, they were beating him, they were abandoning him. Just because we worship God doesn’t mean that those things aren’t going to happen to us – they do! We are in an earthenware jar. And what a sharp contrast between this beautiful, perfect, glorious light of God and this rough and imperfect and sometimes cracked and broken earthenware jar – they are so different you can tell the difference, you can’t help it. And there’s a reason for that. So that people will know that this light that they see on our faces – this glory of God, this all surpassing power comes from God and not from us. God is so realistic, isn’t He? He doesn’t expect perfection – He just wants us to come as we are – a bit rough around the edges, a bit perfect, with pressures and tensions in our lives and when we worship Him He pours His glory into us to shine out into the world. It’s so easy for us to get discouraged! The more we worship God the more we see our own imperfections in His light but that’s the plan – just for us to let Him take our lives as we are and for God to use them for His glory. That’s worship – worship as a way of life. You go up to the mountain top and you worship Jesus – you do it with all your heart – you bow down and you worship Him in song and in prayer and in just resting in His presence and His glory with thanksgiving and with praise. And then we come down from that mountain top and we are walking around doing all the stuff we do in life and His glory just shines out into the world through the cracks in our earthenware jars. We go up to that mountain top again and He fills us again and again and we come down again and again and we live out that worship – it’s just the way He made us. My earthenware jar was made for a different purpose to yours – yours is different to the next persons. We are all imperfect – that’s the way it’s meant to be so that nobody can be in any doubt that the glory comes from God. I love getting together with God’s people and singing songs of worship and praise but you know the greatest times of worship for me are in my study with the door closed, with the Bible open, just praying and delighting and worshipping God and being filled with the sense of His presence; being filled with His Spirit. And then when I open that door and I go and do all the things I do in life, I‘m a better husband; I’m a better father; I’m a better teacher; I’m a better manager; I’m a better everything because I spent that time worshipping God. Worship on the inside becomes worship on the outside – the things that we do in life. Worship – worship is a way of life.
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Don't Blame God // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 3
02/08/2026
Don't Blame God // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 3
It’s easy to worship God in the good times. Sure. But what about the bad times, when life is really tough? What does it mean to worship God in the middle of suffering? Because, quite frankly, when we’re suffering, the very last thing we feel like doing is worshipping God. Job in the Face of Adversity Well, this is the third message in a series that I’ve called, "Worship as a Way of Life". Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at exactly what this thing is that we call "worship". I mean we all worship something, whether its money or pleasure or career or recognition, you name it and people sacrifice their lives to worship it. Worship is ascribing worth to something; it’s bowing down our lives to it and sacrificing other things for it. People will sacrifice their marriages for their careers. Why? Because they ascribe more worth to their career than they do to their husband or their wife. People will sacrifice their family and their home to adultery. Why? Because they ascribe more worth to their pleasure than to the fidelity of marriage. Last week we talked a little bit about what it means to worship God. Now the New Testament talks about two types of worship - there are two different Greek words used in the New Testament to talk about worship. One of them means "bowing our lives down" – it’s the word "proskuneo" – it’s the word we get "prostrate" – to prostrate ourselves. The second is the word "latrio" and it’s the word that means "serving". Latreuo is the word that we get the word "lateral" from, so it’s an outward form of worship. Inside worship; bowing down, prostrating ourselves and outside worship; doing things, lateral worship. It’s about worshipping God, not just with our hearts and our mouths but with our lives – it’s what we do, what we say, how we act and behave and treat others. It’s great to sing songs in church on Sundays, but that’s not the whole of worship. That form of worship is the "proskuneo" type of worship. But living worship out is something that’s lateral; it goes out. Remember last week, if you were with us, we looked at Romans, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1, where Paul writes: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Some translations say, “this is your spiritual act of service". It’s the "latreuo". Now this is easier said than done. I mean, when life is going really well; when finances and family are going well; and work and its fun and we’re cruising along, it’s not too hard to be a living sacrifice. You know why? Because when everything is going well, it doesn’t feel like we have to sacrifice much. Man, it’s easy to worship God when it’s all happening like that. ‘I’m honouring God; God’s blessing me – halleluiah! But what happens when things turn ugly? When all of a sudden they start falling apart – family and wealth and health – some of those things start going wrong – what happens when we are put under pressure? What happens when it hurts? What happens when it aches so bad inside that we can barely life the eyes of our soul Christ-ward? What is worship as a way of life look like then? I don’t think that we can talk about worship without talking about this. You see, when things go bad, the most common response is to blame God. "God, what are You doing? Why are You letting this happen to me and we let out this guttural cry?" The most common reaction is to blame God. You know, it's funny how people who worship fame or success or money or pleasure, when all that comes tumbling down, as it inevitably will, they justify their reactions. They never blame those things that they were worshipping but we, well, when we go through some suffering, the very first thing that so often happens, is that people blame God. Jesus made a promise to His disciples - you can read it in John, chapter 16, verse 33. He promised them, “In this world you will have tribulation.” You will – that’s one of those promises of God we don’t like standing on. And when we look at worshipping God in the midst of trial and tribulation as we are today, we’ll look at it in perspective of a couple of men – Job and Paul. Now these guys both went through a lot of suffering. Now I don’t like sermons that say, "Well, you know, Job did it this way and Paul did it that way and you and I should be like Job and Paul." We’re not – I’m not Job; I’m not Paul, nor are you. We are us! But when we look at how these men reacted under suffering, there is some insights; there’s something there where God is telling us about worship under duress – worship in times of stress. Let’s have a look at Job first. Now the story of Job – if you’ve got a Bible, open it up - the Book of Job comes just before the Book of Psalms. Job, chapter 1, verse 1, says that Job was blameless and upright, that he feared God and that he turned away from evil. I mean, this guy was mister, "I have my act together". And the devil approaches God about Job and says, "well, it’s easy for Job, things are going well for him, but let’s see if he sticks with You, God when things are going badly". So God gives the devil permission, one by one, to take things away from Job. First he loses his property, then his children, his reputation, his friends, his health, his marriage – one by one, God lets the devil take those things away from Job. And Job - Job ends up loathing his life, wishing he’d never been born. Here’s this wealthy, well balanced, "I’ve got it all together" guy, who, by the way, has been honouring God and that’s why he’s been blessed. And he ends up sick, lost, alone, a laughing stock, his friends tell him he must have sinned – ‘Job it must have all been your fault”. Do you think that’s tough? I mean, have a listen how he felt – chapter 3 – he said, Let the day perish in which I was born. Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not come forth from the womb and expire? Job wished he was dead! Life for Job was tough particularly in light of the fact that he was blameless, upright, he feared God, he turned away from evil – it wasn’t his fault. Why was this happening? It hurt so much – his friends criticised him –"God what are You doing?" Ever felt like that? Well, next we are going to take look at how Job responded. What happened to worship in Job’s life when it all came tumbling down? Job was Human Too We are looking at Job’s response when all God’s blessings were taken away from him, one by one. His health, his family, his friends, his everything was taken away. And the good news is Job was human. He lost everything and it wasn’t his fault. Now if you thought that I was going to give you some "Job had a perfect response" kind of message today, you’re wrong. Job lost possessions, family, marriage, health, reputation, friends, everything basically. Have a listen to what happened – Job, chapter 2, verse 7. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and inflicted Job with painful sores, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die!” And he replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.” Now, that’s a very noble response – when you read what was happening to him; it was really ugly. It’s hard to read and to listen to, but in the very next chapter he curses the day he was born. And Job takes the situation to God and argues with Him. He ends up loathing his life. Have a listen to Job, chapter 10, verse 1: I loath my very life, therefore I will give free reign to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul. Pretty human response! “I will say to God, “Do not condemn me but tell me what charges You have against me. Does it please You to oppress me - to spurn the work of Your hands while You smile on the schemes of the wicked? Do You have eyes of flesh, do You see as mortals see? Are Your days like those of a mortal or Your years like those of a man, that You must search out my faults and probe after my sin, though You know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from Your hand? Your hands shaped me and made me, would You now turn and destroy me?” It’s a pretty heartfelt response! When this stuff happens to us, we have natural reactions just like Job. It hurts – we want to hang onto God but ultimately, it hurts so much, that like Job, we can end up going to God and saying, “God, I loathe my very life – why are You doing this to me?” We want to know why and sometimes, like Job, our friends end up blaming us. What a great help they were? Job prays for relief and deliverance and God seem to withhold it. He says, “God, how come those wicked people over there are doing just fine and this stuff is happening to me?” Do you recognise any of this stuff? It’s the stuff of normal human reactions. But there’s something that runs through all of this – when you read the Book of Job, there’s a golden thread in the midst the all the dark and the painful ones. Job will not stop hoping in God. As much as this is tearing him apart in every way, at every level, he won’t stop putting his hope in God. Job, chapter 19, verse 25, he says: “I know,” (he’s been through a whole bunch of stuff, and yet he says,) “I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand upon the earth and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see Him with my own eyes, I and not another. How my heart yearns within me.” See what this is? This is Job worshipping God in his heart - it’s "proskuneo" type worship - it’s bowing down saying, "you know something, no matter all this stuff that God seems to have thrown my way, I know that my Redeemer lives." And he decides to worship God with his life too. You pick it up in chapter 27, verse 2. As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of my soul, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness and my tongue will utter no deceit. I will never admit you are in the right till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it. My conscience will not reproach me as long as I live. In other words "I am just going to keep on keeping on in doing good. I don’t care what the world throws at me, I will not let go of my God and I will not let go of my integrity." You know what that looks like to me? That looks like a man bowing his life down and worshipping God. See Job had all the normal human, emotional responses that you and I have when things go bad. I mean, bad stuff happens to us – it’s not the time to deny our humanity; it’s not the time for a sermon that says Job was perfect and we should be perfect, because Job wasn’t. Job was human; Job struggled with stuff just like you and I do. When we lose a loved one, we are going to grieve. When our health fails us, it’s going to be scary. And in the middle of all that, God is calling us to keep our eyes on Him; to worship Him on the inside and on the outside – to worship Him in our hearts and never let Him go and to worship Him with our lives and keep on doing good. I’ve been through some really tough times in my life when it hurt so much that I didn’t even have the strength to lift my eyes and look at God. But He gave me a gift of His Spirit, deep in my heart I wouldn’t let go. The only decision I could make, by the grace of God, I made it. God is my God and my Redeemer lives. I will never blame God for my woes – I’ll be like Job -–I’ll ask Him why, I’ll share my pain with Him but I will never blame Him because He is my God. You know something, that’s worship – worship in the hardest place of all. And as I look back through those dark times, it’s something that I’ve never, ever regretted. When we worship God through tears and gritted teeth and in the midst of the dark times, we look back and we see His piercing light shinning into that darkness. In the midst of bitterness, we can look back and remember the wondrous taste of the sweetness of the love of Christ. Paul’s Party Just going to spend some time briefly, looking at Paul and Silas in prison because there’s something special when we praise God with our lips in our difficult times. It’s a wonderful story - you can pick it up, if you have a Bible, open it up – Acts, chapter 16, beginning at verse 16: Once when we were going to a place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl, who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. Now this girl followed Paul and the rest of us around, shouting, “These men are the servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for days, finally, Paul became so troubled that he turned around to her and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her.” At that moment the spirit left her. When the owners of the slave girl realised that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them in to the market place to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us as Romans, to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas, (as you do), were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open and everybody’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up and he went and saw that the prison doors were open and he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped, but Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself, we are all still here.” The Jailer called for lights and rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas, he then brought them out and ask, “Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved – you and your entire household.” Then they spoke the Word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds and then immediately, he and all his family were baptised. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God; he and his whole family. Isn’t it a great story? Paul and Silas are going along and they’re doing what they are doing and this woman who is possessed by a demon is driving them nuts, so Paul just turns around and casts the demon out in the name of Jesus Christ. They get hauled before a court – Paul and Silas are severely flogged. Listen to this, verse 23 of chapter 16. They had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison. What was their direct response to being severely flogged? Have you ever been flogged? I mean maybe we got a belting as a kid but flogged with whips? They would have been in a lot of pain. They would have needed the odd Panadol. What was their direct response? Look at verse 25: About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them. There is something so special about praising God with our lips at those times. And in the middle of all that – see, this wasn‘t fair that they were locked up – it wasn’t their fault. Someone just got them and locked them up and beat them and in the middle of all that God had a plan. Why were they in prison? Why had they been flogged? Why did God put His Spirit of praise in their hearts and on their lips? Because God had a plan – God wanted to save the jailer and his family. But that plan relied on Paul and Silas not running away the moment God loosed their chains and opened the cell doors, but on standing there and ministering to God. You know what we want to do when we suffer? We want to complain and run away. Instead Paul and Silas praised God and stood firm in His purposes when they had the opportunity to run. There it is again – they did inside worship – "proskuneo" worship and outside "latreuo" worship. They worshipped in their hearts and they worshipped with their lives. We sometimes behave as though God could never possibly show up in the midst of our suffering, let alone do a miracle. But it’s when we are suffering that we are called to praise God – to worship Him. To say, “God, I don’t know why this is happening to me, but You know something Lord, I’m going to praise You. I’m going to sing songs of worship and praise in my heart to You. I’m going to make music to You in my heart. And then when I have finished doing that, Lord, I don’t know why I am in this place, but I am going to stand here for You – just for You. Lord, I don’t know what You are about to do; I don’t know whether You are going to do a miracle or whether not, I just don’t know, but I’m not going to run – I’m just going to be here for You.” See the story of Job and Paul and Silas gives us some things to think about. How much use is it to stand in the midst of our pain and blame God? Instead of blaming Him; instead of accusing Him, in the midst of our weakness, we can stand firm. We are going to go through stuff - our emotions are going to go up and down – we are going to feel pain and distress and some days, fear but when we stand in the middle of that and we worship God with our heart, with our lips, with our hands, with our very lives, there is something so incredible special about that. What about you and me? What prison are we in at the moment? What thing are we going through like Job, at the moment? Are we saying, "God why are You doing this?" Or do we just give up on that and say, “Lord, I don’t know why but I am going to worship You.” Can I encourage you? Worship is really worship when we are going through trials and tribulations – when other people have turned against us – when it’s not fair – when all these wicked people out there are walking around and God seems to be leaving them alone but something bad is happening in our lives, when we have been trying to be faithful to God and it’s just not fair. The most wonderful response that we can have is to worship God, with everything that we are. That changes us – it changes us for ever and ever and ever. Let me encourage you, no matter what you are going through today; choose to worship God with your heart and with your life.
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Living a Life of Worship // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 2
02/01/2026
Living a Life of Worship // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 2
Sometimes we keep our faith and our day-to-day lives in separate boxes. But it turns out that “worship” is something that brings them back together again. Worship does just happen once a week when we sing a few songs. Worship as things turn out, was always meant to be, a way of life. Connecting Inside and Out Well, this is the second message in a series that I’ve called, "Living a Life of Worship". Something that we love to do and it seems to come naturally to us, is to have a disconnect between our faith in Christ and our lives. I mean, Sunday you may go to church – this kind of sacred zone – and we go there and we sing songs and we worship. "O God, You are so wonderful and I love You so much and I exalt You above all. Lord, I worship You and praise You and all of that stuff". Brilliant! Great! We are going to talk about that later on today in the programme. But then on Monday morning we go back to work – the same old, same old – back in the groove. Mum is maybe getting the kids off to school or maybe rushing out the door to work, dad’s on the train or in the car or on the bus doing the commute. Or perhaps you’re unemployed or retired or whatever, sitting at home alone and that thing that we call "worship" that happened back there on Sunday morning, it can seem a million miles away. Somehow it’s not connected to the reality of life. It was great while it lasted but now it’s back down to earth with a thud – it’s Monday morning! Ever felt like that, that there’s some disconnect between faith and life? Worship is that thing that happens over there but back in the real world it’s hard, you know; it’s tough. It’s the grind; it’s the pressure; it’s the issues to deal with; it’s the compromises people make. Well, you’re not alone because in the West many Christ followers experience that. The fact that faith and worship and all that stuff over here, is somehow in a separate box from life over there. In the East, in Asia and places like Africa</place />, people’s upbringing in culture means that their spirituality is a lot more connected to their lives – but not in the West. Anyway, wherever or whatever, it’s important that we understand what worship is all about. It’s not just something we put in a box and take out on Sundays. Worship is a way of life – that’s the name of this series, "Worship as a Way of Life". When we understand what worship is in God’s heart, then all of a sudden life and spirituality become inseparable. Last week we began to look at the fact that the New Testament talks about two different forms of worship. One verse where they both appear is Luke, chapter 4 and verse 8. Grab your Bible. Jesus had been out in the desert; the Holy Spirit had let Him out in the desert for forty days of fasting, so by the end of it He was weakened; He was starved; He was at a low point. This was part of God’s plan, in fact, next year we will be doing a whole four week series on this wilderness passage in Like chapter 4. Today I just want to look briefly at the second temptation because at the end of the forty days the devil comes along and tempts Jesus. And this second temptation is a grand delusion. If you have a Bible, open it up at Luke, chapter 4 beginning at verse 5. This is what it says: The devil led Him up to a high place and showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to Jesus, “I will give You all their authority and splendour for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want, so if You worship me, it will all be yours. Jesus answered, “It is written, worship the Lord, your God and serve Him only.” Here is a standard temptation of the devil - look at this wonderful world that I have control of. You don’t have to look very far to see what an influence the devil has. I mean, Jesus called him the prince of the air. "What are you doing," says the devil, "in this wilderness for God? Look, just worship me and all this can be yours." Yea, right! Listen to what the devil says to Jesus – "so if you worship me, it will all be yours." Now the Greek word that’s used here for the word "worship" is "proskuneo" - it’s the word from which we get "prostrate", so to prostrate ourselves; to lie down; to bow down; to kiss someone’s hand; to fall down on our knees, face down and worship. That’s the sort of worship I guess we do on Sunday morning in church. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 28, talks about worshipping God with awe and reverence – it’s a heart of worship – it’s expressing our allegiance and our gratefulness and our awe and reverence and wonder of God, by singing songs of worship and bowing down to Him. The devil says to Jesus, "Now bow down to me as You would to God." But look at Jesus’ reply! Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” Jesus here is quoting the Old Testament – Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 13 and there are two verbs in this sentence – worship and serve. Now the word "worship", the English word, is the same word as the devil used – the Greek "proskuneo" – "to bow down". But then the second verb – (Verbs are "doing" words) the second verb is and "serve" Him only. Now, this word is "latreuo" – it’s the Greek word from which we get the word "lateral" or "outwards". This word is used a number of times in the New Testament and it’s variously translated either as "serving" or "worshipping". "Latreuo" means to render religious service or homage, to worship, to perform sacred services, to offer gifts, so it’s a "doing" word. It’s about worshipping God through serving Him. For Jesus the answer went beyond simply bowing down to God or in this case, as the devil wanted, to the devil – it included who Jesus served. It’s not only about what we do in our hearts, it’s about what we do with our hands - inside and outside. Jesus said it again. You can read it in Luke chapter 10, verse 27. He answered: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind. In other words, with the stuff that’s going on inside you and then with your strength, which is what you do inside and outside. You know something, if what we believe on the inside isn’t reflected in how we live on the outside, what we believe on the inside will die. In James, chapter 2, verse 26: Faith without works is dead. If we exalt God in our hearts but not in our lives, by the way we think and act and treat other people, it doesn’t work. One of the Psalms talks about having "clean hands and a pure heart". In fact this linking of inside worship and outside doing worship - "proskuneo" on the one hand, "latreuo" on the other – "bowing down" worship and "living out" worship – is something that happens over and over and over again in God’s Word – you just can’t separate the two. Hidden Places The heart is where everything begins – that hidden place, deep inside. The Bible talks a lot about the heart, in fact it mentions it five hundred and forty one times! – over and over again. Jesus talked a lot about the heart. He said, “From the overflow of the heart the man speaks.” He said, "adultery and murder and all that stuff, begins in the heart" – it starts on the inside and then works its way outside. So the heart is incredibly important when it comes to worship. It’s that hidden place, deep inside where we live and laugh and cry and think our deepest and most secret thoughts. Let me ask you – in that place do you worship God? This is "proskuneo" worship; this is bowing our lives down. In your heart, have you bowed down your life to God? In your heart, is He exalted above all things? Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, chapter 8, verse 5: Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. The heart though is a deceptive place. A.W. Tozer in his book, "The Pursuit of God", writes it this way. “The self is the opaque veil over our hearts that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience and never by mere instruction. As well, try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our "self-sins" to the cross for judgement. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pilot.” You see, worship of the heart is bringing ourselves before God, just as we are and allowing Him to discern the thoughts and the attentions of our hearts. And the question for each one of us is this, "who reigns in our hearts, me or Christ – myself or Jesus?" And if Christ, am I prepared in my heart to suffer for His sake? Am I prepared to take up my cross? Am I prepared to let certain things go for Him? Because when we so lay down our lives and our hearts through faith in Christ – when we decide deep on our hearts, to take a "Christ above all position, once and for all" – Christ above my selfish ambitions – Christ above the desires of my flesh – Christ above comfort and future and hopes and dreams and everything else that I want – Christ first, through faith in Him. When we decide that then He makes our hearts pure. And then this point that Tozer is making becomes our experience; the very words of Christ become our reality. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. And we will see God with the eyes of our soul – gaze upon Him – and when we do we can only respond the way the twenty four elders do in the Book of Revelation. “The twenty four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns down before the throne and say, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power for You created all things and by Your will they were created and have their being.” We are talking here about complete surrender of our hearts; that secret hidden place; that place that only we and God Himself may inhabit. When we surrender in that place, our lives to Christ, no matter what the cost, that, my friend, is worship. "Proskuneo" - bowing down our all to Him. So many people try to live out a "me" centred Christianity – get a revelation – there is no such thing! "I am my own little tin-pot god," just doesn’t cut the mustard, when we have gazed upon Christ with the eyes of our soul. Like the elders, if we want to worship God, we have to take off our crowns and cast them down before Him at His feet and cry from deep within our hearts, "You alone are worthy, my Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power and I worship You." How much of our prayer life is worship? How much time do we spend simply resting in His presence and glorifying Him in our hearts? This is the birthplace of worship in our lives. The Spirit in our experience brings the reality of a relationship with God Himself through Christ, to life in our hearts. It is the place of true and complete surrender. It is the place of complete sacrifice of self. It is the place where we take up our cross and utter, “Lord, not my will but let Your will be done”. Painful and glorious, loss and gain, hunger and filling. “It is written, “Worship the Lord your God alone.” Let me ask you gently, but quite directly, have you come to that place in your life or have you been there and perhaps drifted off? Let me pray with you a prayer that A.W. Tozer wrote in his book, "The Pursuit of God". “O God, I have tasted Your goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am so painfully conscience of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire, O God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – I want to want You alone. I long to be filled with longing, I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Your glory, I pray, so that I may know You indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “rise up My love, My fair one, and come away, then give me the grace to rise and follow You, up from this misty lowland where I have wandered for so long. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. On the Outside If on the inside we worship God in our hearts, you know, we say, "Lord, I lay down my life; I bow down; I delight in You," but then on the outside we don’t live that out. Well, that incongruity; that mismatch; what you see is not what you get, well we have a name for that, it’s called "hypocrisy". And it is fabulous that people go to church on Sunday morning or Sunday night or whenever they do, and they worship God. They sing all of those wonderful songs – that is an awesome thing. But if then on Monday, we go to work and tear someone’s head off, that’s adulterous. I mean, that’s professing one thing and doing another. It’s like me marrying my wife and saying, "I’m going to set myself aside for her; she’s my wife", and then I go and find a mistress on the side. You know, that’s a stressful way of living and it doesn’t work and it hurts a lot of people. Eventually, we have to resolve that incongruity - you can’t go on living like that because the tension between inside and outside is just too great. Either we have to bring our lives on the outside in line with what’s happening on the inside in our hearts, or we abandon what’s been going on in our hearts in worshipping God and we just go with the desires of our flesh on the outside – it’s as simple as that. It’s one or the other. I remember before I came to faith in Jesus – I used to try to be someone wonderful and exciting and dynamic on the outside but on the inside, you know something, my heart was rotten? I was selfish; I didn’t care about other people and you know, ultimately, that showed. I’m a tough nut and before I came to Christ I would crawl over people; I would hurt them. I really didn’t care because it was all about "me". Ultimately, what’s going on in our hearts shows on the outside – we can’t live two separate lives. We can’t sit there in the morning and read a Bible and pray and pretend to worship God and then go on and live a life that is so far away from God. The two just never connect. The Apostle Paul knew that! If you’ve got a Bible open it at Romans chapter 12, beginning at verse 1. This is a really pivotal verse for me. This is what Paul writes, he says: Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Let’s unpack that! He begins by saying, "therefore". I mean, whenever you see a "therefore" in the Scriptures, it’s always pointing back to something else. And in this case, the Apostle Paul is pointing back to all that he said in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Romans. And those eleven chapters are about God’s goodness in coming to rescue us through Jesus Christ. It’s the stuff that causes us to worship Him. If you are struggling with the fact that Jesus came to die for you; if you are struggling with the fact "am I forgiven, am I not forgiven", read the first eleven chapters of the Book of Romans and you’ll be in no doubt about God’s goodness. You read those chapters and you just want to worship and praise God for who He is and what He’s done. And so it’s the heart stuff; it’s the stuff that causes us to worship God on the inside. And so Paul says because of what He’s done in your hearts, because of that mercy that you have received deep in your heart, because of that "offer your bodies as living sacrifices." See, in this verse Paul is making a connection between the heart and the hand. He is saying that we need to translate the worship in our hearts into action. We need to be living sacrifices. That is a gruesome picture! It’s definitely not good marketing spin. You know, people in those days knew what sacrifices were – animals were sacrificed at temples, both Jewish temples and pagan temples. But Paul says: I urge you brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercy, because of what you have experienced of God in your hearts, now on the outside, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Now I like this next bit, “This is your spiritual act of worship”. See we are talking about worship but here is the word "latreuo" which is what we talked about before. Some translations us the word "service", the two concepts combine here in this Greek word "latreuo" and it’s about worshipping God through what we do. This is where the rubber hits the road. The worship of the heart is the "proskuneo" worship that we talked about before – this is the worship about prostrating ourselves; bowing down, saying, "Lord, I worship You." It’s about what people do in churches on Sunday when they sing songs of worship and praise. It’s what we do in our quiet times on our own, as we speak to God and say, "Lord, thank You; I praise You; I worship You." That’s great – this worship, Paul is saying, because of that, now live out your worship – now "do" your worship. When you and I treat someone kindly and gently – someone that really deserves to have their heads kicked in, that’s spiritual worship. When I deal honestly and fairly with someone, when I could have ripped them off, that’s spiritual worship – bringing the life into line with the heart, dying to all those things that we would rather do that we know aren’t God’s ways. That’s spiritual worship – it’s being a living sacrifice. It’s hard; it’s tough; the road to follow Jesus always is – it’s a narrow road. Dying to self and living to Christ; this is worship. Worship is not off in some separate Sunday morning sacred zone – we need to worship God with our hearts and with our lives – clean hands, pure hearts. Paul goes on to explain in the next verse what this means. “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mould anymore, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you will really know and agree with God’s good and perfect will for your life.” What begins in our hearts as worshipping God, works its way out into our lives, living life as a life of worship.
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So, What Exactly is Worship? // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 1
01/25/2026
So, What Exactly is Worship? // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 1
Worship means different things to different people. It’s a religious thing. It’s singing songs. It’s a concert with a light show. It’s well, who knows what. But the question we need to ask ourselves, is what exactly does worship mean to God? We All Worship Something Well it’s great to be with you again this week and we are starting a new series on the programme that I’ve called, "Worship as a Way of Life". When we hear the word "worship", well, what does it mean? And people who don’t have any particular faith in God, it’s something, well, those religious people over there in churches or in temples do. Maybe it’s candles and incense or something that happens over there somewhere not something that I do. And for some Christians, well, that’s what we do on Sunday morning at church before the sermon, we sing songs – that’s our worship time. I guess both of those would be true in part, but the notion of worship, from where God sits, is so much bigger and broader than that – not some religious ritual, not just some musical event. When we worship someone or something, we put it above all other things – we pay homage to it. In fact, it directs our lives – we’ll sacrifice other things, even though those things are very dear to us, for the sake of the person or the thing that we worship. We all worship something – I mean, I used to worship money and success and recognition. It was the thing that my whole life was centred on and ordered around. I sacrificed my health, my family, my rest, everything for these things that I worshipped and actually, when you look back on it, I was really worshipping myself. We can all look at our lives and ask, "what’s at the centre of the life? I mean, what’s right up there at the top? Who or what do I worship?" And we know the answer to that when we look at the sacrifices we make for that thing and ask ourselves, really and truly, who or what am I making these sacrifices for? What’s at the centre of my life – is it career, is it my family? I mean, honestly ask ourselves, "what is at the centre of my life?" Look at the sacrifices and that’s who or what we are actually worshipping. Now we all have different elements to our lives. Obviously, we need to make some sacrifices sometimes. The whole thing of being a parent is sacrificing for our children. And sure, some times at work we have to make sacrifices. But if we get those out of balance – I mean, you see parents who self-actualise through their children; through their children’s dancing or through their children’s academic achievement and all of a sudden it’s completely out of balance. Some people sacrifice their whole lives to their jobs and lose their families – I know what that’s like. And so there is a balance and there is a right way of sacrificing to different things but if we take just one thing and get it out of whack, day after day, month after month, we sacrifice and sacrifice and this one thing rises above all of those other things, then chances are that’s what we are worshipping. The notion of sacrifice is an essential part of worship – it’s not new. The very first time that worship is mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis, chapter 22 and verse 5. Abraham was promised by God a son and ultimately, after many, many years he had that son, Isaac, but Abraham had to go through a lot of trials and a lot of uncertainty over a quarter of a century before finally, in his old age, this son, Isaac, was born to him. And so not surprisingly, when Isaac finally arrives, Abraham dotes on this kid – I mean, absolutely dotes on him – because here was the fulfilment of God’s promise. He never thought it would happen – he never thought he would have an heir, but God was faithful and God gave him his son, Isaac, with his wife Sarah. But God saw that Abraham was starting to put Isaac before God, Himself and so He called on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Can you imagine that - to take him and put him on an altar and put him to death? What an incredibly painful thing to do? And on that morning when they journeyed to where God had called them – out to that place – Abraham said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we’ll come back.” Can you imagine the tussle that was going on in Abraham’s heart? Is God first in my life or is Isaac first in my life? Do I put Isaac before God? Is it God or my son? See we think we are worshipping God sometimes but when we look at our lives and ask some hard questions like ‘How do I spend all my time? How do I spend my money? How do I spend my energies? How to I spend my passions? Where are my dreams? Like Abraham we can get a real shock. Let’s read on, the rest of the story – pick it up at Genesis, chapter 22 and verse 6. “Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son, Isaac and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham, “Father,” “Yes, my son,” Abraham replied, “The fire and the wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on. When they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son, Isaac and laid him on the altar on the top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took his knife to slay his son. But an angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from Me your son; your only son.” What God was doing here was testing Abraham’s heart. Who do you worship, Abraham? Who do you put first in your life? And at the end of this, both God and Abraham knew the answer to that question. “Now that I see you fear God because you have not withheld from Me your son; your only son.” Can I ask you quietly, yet deliberately – who or what do you worship? When it comes to the crunch, the one thing on this earth that is most important to you, would you be prepared to lay it down for the Lord your God? All your hopes and dreams and future and life and career – everything – is God exalted above all those other things in our lives? Worshipping God is about adopting a "God above all" position in every part of our lives. Singing songs of worship is great but do we bow down our lives before God? Do we put God before anything or anyone else in our hearts? Do we worship God? When you look at the Ten Commandments – look at the very first one in Exodus, chapter 20 verse 2, it says: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt; out of the land of slavery. You will have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Now, would the first Commandment be about singing songs? No! The first Commandment is about who we put first – it’s about "whom" we worship. The question is do we worship God with our lives? The Heart of Worship The heart is an important place. One of the most common things that’s talked about through the Scriptures is the heart - in fact, it is mentioned five hundred and thirty four times. Several times Jesus made the point that who we are on the outside is a reflection of what’s going on in our hearts. In Matthew, chapter 12, He says, For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And then again in Matthew, chapter 15, Jesus says, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and these are the ones that make a man unclean, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander - these are what make a man unclean.” See for me, here is the biggest danger in thinking about worship. "Well, I go to church most Sundays, we sing songs, therefore I worship then I go home." It’s kind of like saying, "well, I live in the same house and sleep in the same bed as my wife or husband. I peck them on the cheek in the morning before I go to work. Once a week I make sure I tell them ‘I love you’, therefore, I love them." See how crazy that is? I mean, my wife isn’t interested in a ritual. She wants to know, does my husband love me with all his heart and do I see that reflected in the way he lives and acts toward me? That’s why Jesus, when He was asked, “What’s the most important of all the commandments, answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” In other words, with what’s going on inside you and with what you do. This is the first and the greatest commandment. Worship is something that comes from the heart – it’s an overflow of what’s happening inside us - it lives there first and foremost, and then it’s reflected on the outside in our lives. If we just "do" worship once a week, it’s a sham. I mean, I’ve been there, standing in church, singing songs, mind wandering off somewhere else – that’s not worship - that’s not what God is looking for any more that a quick peck on my wife’s cheek is really loving her. Worship comes from the heart – King David knew that. Listen to what he writes in Psalm 24: The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it – the world and all who live in it because He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who doesn‘t lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. See, David is saying here – God created the heavens and the earth and He owns them all and if I want to ascend to the hill of the Lord, which meant, "go to the temple and worship Him", I have to have clean hands and a pure heart. A heart and a life that declare, "I put Jesus first." Look again at Psalm 27, where David writes: One thing I ask of the Lord and this is what I seek – that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and seek Him in His temple. My heart says of You, ‘Seek His face’; Your face Lord I will seek. See what’s going on here for David? Something is happening in his heart – there’s a desire; there’s a besottedness; an overwhelming urge just to be with God. I was away recently, travelling with the ministry for almost two weeks. The ministry that God’s got me involved in is such a blessing and such a delight but each time I have to leave my wife, for me it’s an incredible sacrifice. You see, I love her; I want to be with her. When we go out together, more often than not, we are wandering down the street or through the shopping mall, hand in hand. There’s a closeness and a desire; we want to be together. That in a sense is what’s going on in David’s heart for God. "God, I just want to be close to You. I want to dwell in Your house all the days of my life and gaze on Your beauty and seek You in Your temple. My heart says, ‘seek His face’, and Your face Lord I will seek." There it is – there’s the heart of worship - a holy desire after God Himself – not His blessings, just God. Now sometimes we feel like we have wandered off and we feel dry and we feel like we don’t have that desire. We all go there some days, so stick with me because later on in the programme we are going to pray for the Spirit of God to light that flame in our hearts – the heart of worship. Choosing What is Better We are talking today about making worship a way of life – not just some ritual – not just a few songs that we sing on Sunday. So far what we have seen is worship is about sacrifice and there are two parts to that – what happens in our hearts and how that’s reflected in our lives. We are going to talk a whole bunch more about that next week; connecting our faith with our day to day life realities. But I just want to kind of introduce that today with a story of two women, Mary and Martha. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it and open it up at Luke, chapter 10, verse 38. This is what it says: As Jesus and His disciples were on their way, He came to a village where there was a woman named Martha, who opened her home to Him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations she had made. She came to Him and asked, “Lord, don’t You care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself – tell her to help me?” “Martha, Martha,” said the Lord, “You are worried and upset about many things but only one thing is needed – Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.” I don’t know what your life looks like, but mine truly has more things in it than I have time to get through. This ministry, Christianityworks, is not just about writing and recording radio programmes – it’s all sorts of things. It’s seeing radio stations; producing material to go with messages; administration; fund raising; managing people – lots of things. Not to mention home and family and church and friends and rest and relaxation. The danger for me, as with many other people, is you get so busy with the urgent things that we don’t have time for the important things. And the important things that we tend to squeeze out of our schedule are relationships. Spending time with people; with family; with our wives and husbands (that’s why so many marriages fall apart)and spending time at the feet of Jesus (that’s why so many people end up drifting away from God). We delude ourselves – “well, I’m out there; I’m busy; I’m serving God. That’s what God wants from me - that’s the most important thing. If I don’t do all this the world is going to cave in.” I’m not suggesting that we become spiritual couch-potatoes and do nothing. But have a listen to what happens here – Jesus comes to the house of Mary and Martha. Now Martha is rushing around cleaning and cooking, because they have a guest after all – the Son of God has come to visit. And her sister, Mary, is just sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening – her heart being moved and changed and strengthened and encouraged. She’s worshipping Him! Martha says, "that’s not fair – she should be helping me." So what does Jesus answer? "Absolutely! Mary, get off your backside; stop being so lazy; go and help." No! He says, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about so many things, but only one thing is needed - Mary has chosen what is better and it won’t be taken away from her." Just one thing – a relationship with Jesus! Just one thing – listening to the Word of God! Just one thing – worshipping Jesus! Looking and listening and being overcome with the desire just to sit at His feet. That’s the heart of worship – it’s a heart to want to bow down and just be with Jesus. The first Commandment of the Ten in Exodus, chapter 20 is about worshipping God before all other things or people or idols or anything else in our lives. When Jesus is asked, "what’s the most important thing?" Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind. Are you dry? Are you saying, "I want to do that but I just can’t – I feel like God’s a million miles away? I hear what you are saying but I don’t have that desire in my heart." If that’s you right now, we are going to pray. We are going to ask God in the name of Jesus, that He would change that. Come on – let’s pray together. Father, You know each one of us - You know where we are - You know the things we go through - You know how we get distracted like Martha with all the cooking and the cleaning and the stuff we have to do in life. Father, forgive us for doing that and forgetting what it is just to sit quietly at Your feet, to listen and to look and to desire and to enjoy You. To have this desire like David, Lord, to just spend time in Your house the rest of our days enjoying Your beauty. Father, forgive us for getting so busy that we have forgotten to do that. And Lord You know that we can’t worship You in our own strength. We can’t somehow, conjure this up in our hearts. Father, we believe that worship is a gift from You.We believe, Father God, that when we came and accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, You put Your Spirit inside us, that You Yourself have come to dwell in us. Father, we have wandered in these lowlands; in these murky swamps for far too long. We ask that Your Spirit would spark the desire in our hearts. We ask that Your Spirit would give us a heart for worship. And Lord as you change our hearts by Your Spirit, we pray that that will be reflected in our lives. But first Lord, start with our hearts - change our hearts, O God, that we may truly be people of worship. Father, we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Don’t get me wrong. I love to go to church and to sing songs and to lift up praises and worship to God. It is one of the most wonderful things – to join together with the people of God in worship. But you know, if our hearts aren’t right; if our minds are wandering; if we truly haven’t established an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ, before we walk into that, how can we worship God? This isn’t a guilt trip. I believe God is calling each one of us to come back to Him with a heart of worship and just the smallest bit of faith and just the smallest bit of desire is all that God needs to enliven our hearts and our spirits and our minds and our souls to worship Him. To God be all the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
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